Chris Whiteside's Blog

"The clear lesson of the EU referendum is that while policy matters, economic evidence is not enough.   To win a referendum, economics must be matched by emotion, and statistics must be matched by sentiment. This is doubly important in a post-trust environment – of facts and “alternative facts”. The nationalists’ cry this time will be less “devo max” and more “grievo max”: seeking to entrench a sense of “us and them”, to amplify difference and to use the Brexit vote to conflate the people of England with the politics of the Tories and Ukip. My sense of Britishness is no more defined by Nigel Farage and Ukip than my sense of Scottishness is defined by Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP. I am proud to be Scottish and proud to be British – and to share what we have with our neighbours on these islands. My Scotland embraces the idea of solidarity and the inspiration of John Smith – and stretches from Gregory’s Girl to the work of J K Rowling. My Britain is the country of...

Prime Minister Theresa May writes: Our Plan for Britain   The EU referendum result was an instruction to change the way our country works, and the people for whom it works, forever. It was a call to make Britain a country that works for everyone, not just the privileged few. That’s why today I set out our Plan for Britain. A Global Britain that is outward looking A stronger economy where everyone plays by the same rules A fairer society where success is based on merit, not privilege A united nation that our children and grandchildren are proud to call home You can support our Plan for Britain today.             Our Plan for Britain will deliver a country that is stronger, fairer, more united and more outward looking than ever before. It’s a plan to get the right deal for Britain abroad and a better deal for ordinary working people at home.   So ...

The article below was written for the Whitehaven News and published by them in a slightly shorter form earlier this week.   NOW WE MUST COME TOGETHER TO FIGHT FOR MATERNITY AND CHILDREN’S SERVICES   Following one of the most divisive by-election campaigns ever, I would like to congratulate our new MP, Trudy Harrison on her richly-deserved election. Now we all need to move forward.   Last week the Clinical Commissioning Group decided their response to the “Success Regime” proposals. I had hoped that they would really listen to the views of 91% of the thousands of people who responded to the consultation, and make a permanent commitment to retain consultant-led maternity at West Cumberland Hospital, while reconsidering their views for children’s services, which are needed to support the kind of maternity service our community must have.   The one year’s stay of execution which has been offered is an inadequate response, and our community must work to...

"Nicola Sturgeon promised the 2014 referendum would be “once in a generation”, but now she has ignored the majority in Scotland who do not want another and has decided instead to double down on division and uncertainty. "The first minister’s proposal offers Scotland the worst of all worlds. Her timetable would force people to vote blind on the biggest political decision a country could face. This is utterly irresponsible and has been taken by the first minister purely for partisan political reasons." ( Ruth Davidson , in an article "Sturgeon’s grounds for a new referendum have given way beneath her" which you can read in full on Times Red Box here .)

Latest ONS figures released yesterday show that unemployment in the UK has fallen for the three months to January 2017 to its lowest level since 2005 and joint lowest level since 1975. Joblessness dropped to 4.7%, down from 4.8% a month earlier and from 5.1% in January 2016, according to the Office for National Statistics. The last time unemployment was this low was a period of strong economic growth in 2004 and 2005, and joblessness has not been lower since the mid-1970's. Employment rose to a new record high of 31.85m with an extra 92,000 jobs created over the three-month period, while unemployment fell by 32,000 to 1.58m.   The rise in employment continues to be driven by full-time work. Meanwhile, average weekly wages grew by 2.2% over the last year. Minister for Employment, Damian Hinds said: "I’m delighted by another set of record-breaking figures showing more people in work than ever before and unemployment falling to its lowest in 12 years. ...

"Politics stopped working normally a while ago. The Tories will probably be 23 points ahead in the next poll. This is what happens when the leader of the opposition has the charisma of Albert Steptoe and the intellectual dexterity of a cinnamon whirl. A prime minister’s questions in which the PM admits to a U-turn on a key policy should not end with her own side smiling and laughing. On the Ides of March, with Julius Theresa wearing a target upon her back, the Islington Brutus plunged a dagger into his own left testicle. " ( Patrick Kidd , Parliamentary sketch, source Times/Sunday Times red box  here )

The bill giving the government the power to formally start the process of withdrawal from the EU received royal assent today. It has therefore passed into law and moved from being a bill to an Act of Parliament. This means the government can keep it's timetable and trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty before the end of this month, starting the two-year period of negotiations which will end with the UK leaving the EU in March 2019.

As I first wrote on   2nd June last year , all parties should obey the law on election expenses and should co-operate fully with the authorities if they are investigating any suggestions to the contrary. All the major national parties have had problems with election spending, accounting, or other election practices. In October 2016 Labour was fined £20,000 for undeclared election spending in the 2015 general election. At that time this was a record fine by the Electoral Commission. Among many things Labour had failed to declare was the so-called "Ed Stone." In December 2016 the Lib/Dems were also fined £20,000 for undeclared election spending. Currently UKIP are the subject of an Electoral Commission investigation to "ascertain whether the party accepted impermissible donations from the European political party the Alliance for Direct Democracy in Europe (ADDE) and its affiliated foundation the Initiative for Direct Democracy in Europe (IDDE)." There may a...

I am still struggling to take in the sheer ludicrousness of the Scottish National Party position on whether there should be another referendum on Scottish Independence. By the way, the SNP don't like people referring to the referendum they want to call as Indyref2. Presumably because that might remind people of the first Indyref - and the result. In order to avoid making the SNP's chip on the shoulder any worse, we probably ought to avoid personalising this discussion and framing it in terms of personal criticism of the First Minister. Allison Pearson's article on the Telegraph, " Here's another treacherous Queen of Scots " (that was the title in the print edition) is likely to be very entertaining for most unionists but it probably isn't in the interests of the union to further galvanise the separatists by inflaming their persecution complex. Does the SNP have, as they claim, a mandate to call a second referendum? The position is not as clear-evid...

"May I commend the Chancellor for converting a number of socialists to the benefits of lower taxation?" ( Jacob Rees Mogg MP , in the House of Commons, referring to the National Insurance U-turn) "I normally stand at this despatch box and say I won't take any lectures from the Hon. Gentleman. When it comes to lectures on chaos, he'd be the first person I turn to." (Prime Minister Theresa May responds to accusations of "Chaos" from Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs)

Today is the Ides of March - the anniversary of Caesar's assassination. What got stabbed today was the government's proposals to reduce the differentials between NICs for employed and self-employed people, a policy which was dropped. I feel rather sorry for Rory Stewart MP who was defending the policy on live TV when he was told on air about the U-turn. A certain number of government U-turns when they realise that they cannot get a policy through are an almost inevitable consequence of a the party in power only having a small majority. In fact, if a government has a very small majority and does not occasionally have to U-turn on things it's a bad sign, because it indicates they either have a parliamentary party consisting of robots who never argue or question, or else they are not making any attempt to deal with any really difficult issues. If Britain had an opposition leader capable of knocking the skin off the proverbial rice pudding the PM would ...

I have not been able to find a version of Rameau's 18th century Opera, "The Amorous Indies" with English subtitles, so here it is in the original French. It's classed as a " ballet héroïque " but I think most people other than experts on opera would call it a light-hearted romantic comedy. This piece is nicknamed "Dance of the Savages" which is very much in the tradition of the 18th century ideal of the "noble savage." The hero and heroine of this fourth and final act of the opera are native Americans and they are the two characters who sing the duet. The hero's rivals for the love of the heroine are a Frenchman and a Spaniard. The dance, duet and chorus is actually a celebration of peace and love - the pipe which you see in the hero's mouth represents the Pipe of Peace.

"The SNP's plans to impose a referendum on Independence on Scotland have unravelled within 24 hours. "Nicola Sturgeon is demanding that people are forced to make another choice on their future in as little as 18 months. And yet faced with reasonable questions about what Independence means, she and her ministers cannot answer." ( Ruth Davidson responds to the latest SNP demand for another referendum .)

I was pleased to read that NuGen have realised that to support the Moorside new nuclear Build project West Cumbria will need more permanent housing rather than dormitories. Speaking   at a conference this week  for Local Authorities involved in new nuclear build (NNLAG), Gary Shuttleworth, corporate affairs director for Moorside's developer NuGen, said that "creating sustainable legacy solutions" are its priority for the multi-billion-pound development planned for land next to Sellafield and its associated housing and transport links. The firm's previously-revealed proposals for temporary student-style worker villages, earmarked for Mirehouse, Corkickle and Egremont, have rightly been criticised in some quarters. Giving an update on NuGen's current accommodation plans, Mr Shuttleworth said that: "Using and refurbishing social housing stock and new-build developments are integral to our plans; they could be converted from worker housing to fam...

The following petition has very quickly passed the 10,000 signature requirement for a possible parliamentary response and at the time of writing is rapidly heading towards 100,000 signatures ... Petition Another Scottish independence referendum should not be allowed to happen    "We in Scotland are fed up of persecution by the SNP leader who is solely intent on getting independence at any cost. As a result, Scotland is suffering hugely." Readers from Scotland who wish to sign this petition can do so at https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/180642

Let me make a terrible confession; I'm a globalist and I support free trade. Except during unusual circumstances -  as when repealing the Corn Laws was necessary to stop people starving (and still brought down the PM who did it and split his party for 20 years) a policy of free trade is rarely popular: as Lord Macauley wrote nearly two centuries ago. Yet the truth is that free trade is a massive creator of wealth and prosperity, as is a certain amount of free movement of people, provided you don't go to bonkers extremes (as the 1997-2010 Labour government did at certain stages of their term of office, which is why there is such strong resentment about immigration in some parts of Britain.) The answer to those who complain that the gains from free trade are not always fairly distributed (which is often true) and that some vulnerable people lose our from free trade (also often true) is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and follow the disastrous policy which ...

"If we ran our lives the way ­politicians talk about trade, we would insist on giving a shopkeeper as much money as possible, then reluctantly accepting some of his goods." ( Matt Ridley , article on trade barriers in The Sun which you can read in full  here .)

"I must admit that as a child I got pretty cross when, once a year, Wacky Races and Scooby Doo were pulled so we could all hear Anthony Barber deliver some interminable Butskellian fudge. hat was because in those days television for people with  he IQ of a nine-year-old lasted only from about five o'clock until quarter to six, whereas today it toes on until midnight." (Rod Liddle on cancelling other TV programmes to fit in detailed reports on the budget)

The House of Commons voted overwhelmingly today to reverse amendments which the House of Lords has proposed to the EU Withdrawal bill, and the House of Lords then voted not to challenge the elected house again. This means that   the EU Withdrawal Bill is likely to become law tomorrow and the government will be able to keep to the planned timetable of giving notice to leave the EU by the end of March. Meanwhile, as the BBC put it, the SNP have got their retaliation in first by threatening to call another Independence Referendum in response to the British move to leave the EU. Whatever happens it is going to be a momentous few weeks.

It is interesting how different the actual risks which we face in life are from those which people often think we face. Terrorism by Islamist Jihadi extremists is a curse which has wrecked or brought to an end too many lives, particularly in the middle east. The short, evil, and murderous existence of the "Islamic State" Caliphate is coming to an end as DA'ESH is driven out of Mosul, and will soon lose the rest of the territory it controls. However, Jihadism will remain a menace for as long as there are idiots who fall for the ridiculous absurdity that they can enhance the glory of a God they describe as compassionate and merciful by killing people who do not worship him in exactly the same way that they do. We need to be vigilant to protect our people from further atrocities by Jihadi terrorists. But we must not hand these destructive idiots the victory of allowing them to make our lives ruled by fear or let them turn our society into a police state, or one which opp...

Progress describes itself as "Labour's progressive magazine" - the word "progressive being used, as is generally the case when it is employed by people anywhere on the left-wing portion of the political spectrum, to mean "for people who think like me." (In this case, it is code for "modernising" which means the faction whose enemies refer to them as Blairites.) Jamie Reed, the former Labour MP for Copeland, used to write the " Last Word " column in Progress, and though I suspect that may be an association they are keen to forget for a while, it goes you an idea of the sort of people who write for and read it. ( Here is the index page for his articles in Progress.) I spotted a reference on Twitter to a piece in Progress about possible successors to Jeremy Corbyn if he had a moment of sanity and stepped down as Labour leader. What caught my eye was this cartoon about Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell ... Interested, I went to t...

Here is the late John Scott playing J.S. Bach's Fantasy and Fugue in G Minor which is known as "The Great." One of the greatest organists of all time playing one of the best works for the instrument by perhaps the greatest composer for the organ of all time. There is a amusing story surrounding this piece. The English musician Ebenezer Prout is a sad case of an individual who is remembered for one of the most trivial things he did. Prout, a 19th century Professor of music, made many contributions to the theory of music, and wrote textbooks on harmony and counterpoint which were to appear on the book lists of very many music students. But he is most widely remembered for fitting words to the main theme of each fugue from Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues. Some of these lyrics were pure invention, others were taken from well-known texts, whatever was sufficiently memorable to make it easy to refer to any one of the fugues in th...

I am a huge fan of the "Far Side" cartoons written by Gary Larson and, although in principle I disapprove of cartoons suggesting that early humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs, I had chuckled at a "Far Side" cartoon in which a caveman pointed to the spikes on the tail of a Stegosaurus and said that these spikes were called the Thagomiser, "after the late Thag Simmonds." Some years after seeing the cartoon I sat up in astonishment when watching a documentary about dinosaurs when a real palaeontologist described what appeared to be signs of injury in a fossil of some great meat-eating dinosaur as matching thee shape "of a Stegosaurus Thagomiser." Paleontologists had appreciated the joke enough to start using Larson's term, as this little image explains ...

I observed a long time ago that certain subjects act like "looney buttons" which when pressed (mentioned) cause normally sane people to lose their sense of proportion and common sense. For example, during the 1997-2010 Labour government a large number of normally sane Labour councillors  - not the ones who are barking mad anyway, but the ones with whom you could normally have a civilised and intelligent conversation - would completely lose it if you mentioned that their own government had a policy of gradually but dramatically forcing up the level of council house rents payable by tenants in councils like St Albans to something like double the previous real terms level over a decade. I recall that one normally polite, courteous and reasonable Labour councillor had to be instructed by the Mayor to apologise after shouting a swear word at me across the council chamber at me when I mentioned this. Another "looney button" which affects a great many people on both ...

I am a Unionist for both reasons of national identity - I regard myself as British rather than English - and because I believe that maintaining the United Kingdom is in the interests of each of the four nations of the UK. So I have mixed feelings about the extreme irrationality of the pro-Independence side of the argument in Scotland. On the one hand, my head argues that the fact that Nicola Sturgeon and the majority of the SNP, as they did when Salmond was leader, are making such a contradictory and incoherent case, ought to make the outcome I want to see - the continuation of the UK - more likely. On the other hand, the fact that so much blind emotion rather than rational thought is invested in the argument is one reason the whole debate has been so divisive and harmful. So it was interesting to read an open letter by Jim Sillars, a former Deputy Leader of the SNP who unlike the present leadership of is party, has a logically consistent attitude to London and Brussels, to the...

The theory that the far left and the far right bend back in a circle and become very similar, or at the very least have far more in common with each other than either has with the centre, is a very old and familiar idea. But I cannot remember a time when it has seemed more true than it does today. The likes of Nigel Farange and Donald Trump on the "right" seem to have a great deal in common with the likes of Vladmir Putin in Russia, Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, or left-wing ideologues and populists like Noam Chomsky or George Galloway. Nick Cohen makes this point particularly well on the Guardian/Observer site this weekend with an article called " Farage meets Assange in a shameless illiberal alliance ." Here are a few extracts: "Illiberals now control the White House and the Kremlin. You can track their influence in the Brexit right’s contempt for education and expertise and the Labour left’s alliances with the counter-Enlightenment."  ...