| Hair-shirt syndrome | ||
 It seems to me that
Sir Keir is in a difficult position. I’ve never
taken him to be a man of principle in a political
sense. As I’ve said before, his views change with
the changing political weather: he was a devoted
member of Corbyn’s team but is now, it seems,
somewhat to the right of Genghis Khan, or at least
to the right of Tony Blair. Although the Conservatives, with Mr Hunt as chancellor of the Exchequer started things off (under pressure from Labour) with a decision to revoke so-called non-dom status, Labour has speeded it up. As a consequence of its abolition we have a significant reduction in the number of billionaires living here and an even greater diminution in the number of millionaires. And of course it’s the rich who pay the largest proportion of the taxes to provide the services for the poor. So not a very well thought out plan. But I suppose it is an example of abiding by a principle – that of fairness. We should all pay taxes on our world-wide income as a condition of living here. Although in this instance, it is a version of fairness which actually reduces the money available to support the poorer members of society. And it can also be argued that, as most people in our society don’t actually have any income from other countries, then the situations of the two groups of people could properly be distinguished. Equating them might just be a category error. Perhaps the politicians should have asked themselves if the predictable creation of a loss for ordinary people by the promotion of ‘fairness’ - something designed to work in their favour - should have been looked at differently. As we say: ‘Do the maths’. But it seems that non-dom status is not the only principle which Sir Keir has espoused. His principles have now landed us all with a rather large bill. We have handed over ownership of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius and agreed to take a lease-back from them of one of the islands, Diego Garcia, at a rent of £100 million per annum for 99 years. This so that we (the Americans) can keep the military base there. I’m sure that no-one would have raised any objection had he followed supermarket pricing principles and agreed a rent of only £99 million. But there it is, the deal is done and a supine Parliament will not do anything to stop it. This, even though a substantial cost is involved at a time when the government is searching at the back of the sofa for spare change to restore the winter fuel payment. Using the magic of accounting, The government tells us that the total cost is just £3 billion over 99 years, rather than the actual £9.9 billion of rent plus inflation indexing. The Tories estimate the true cost at £30 billion. This takes into account the other costs associated with the deal to support Mauritius in its new-found burden of looking after the islands of which it was cruelly deprived by the UK in 1965 when Mauritius was given its independence but the Islands were retained by the UK. But it is a little difficult to see how Mauritius has anything to do with these islands. Admittedly, it and the Chagos Islands were administered together successively by France (from 1715) and then, after the fall of Bonaparte, by Great Britain, but there is no evidence of any previous formal connection. They didn’t share a king or a government of any sort before the colonialists came along. And they are separated by approximately 2500 km of Indian Ocean. We also know from the application by numerous natives of the Chagos Islands for an injunction against the signing of the treaty that it is not a deal welcomed by them. Why then are we in this situation? It’s because of an ’advisory opinion’ issued by the International Court of Justice – a body formed by the United Nations. It was asked by the general assembly of the United Nations to decide on the status of the Islands. Having looked through the judgement, I can see no reference to justification for the decision arising from the pre-colonial period. And so the decision is one which ultimately depends upon the administrative practices of the colonial powers. A somewhat dangerous precedent. After all, from 1169 most of Ireland was ruled by England following its conquest by Norman mercenaries led by the Earl of Pembroke on behalf of King Henry II. The King himself landed in Ireland in 1171, the first English monarch to set foot on Irish soil. In 1155, usefully, he had been granted advance approval for the conquest under the Papal Bull ‘Laudabiliter’. So then should we apply to the ICJ for Ireland to be returned to us? Pope Adrian IV said it was ours, and he was infallible... Now I’m not against the concept of international law. There is certainly a place for it. It enables us, if we can get hold of them, to prosecute people accused of war crimes and it encourages us to abide by treaties and such-like. However, particularly in the international arena, there also has to be a dose of realpolitik - as practised by all the other countries in the world. And it’s there where we seem to be weakened by the over-reliance on the sanctity of international law by the human rights lawyers now in charge. This has made us subservient to a form of law, created by lawyers, which Parliament has not actually, in any meaningful sense, voted to adopt. The principles used in its application are ones of which we normal lawyers are only dimly aware. And most new international treaties are only subject to a so-called negative vote procedure. The treaty has to be the subject of a negative resolution in the Commons in the short time (usually a few weeks) given for any opposition to be organised and deployed. In the absence of such a resolution, the treaty is deemed to be approved. This was perhaps appropriate in the old days when international law and treaties were not treated with very much reverence, but we still have that same procedure despite their now having very direct and, as we have seen, costly effect. And I would argue that our leaders’ desire to implement what was only an unenforceable advisory decision had something-else behind it: postcolonial guilt – the modern equivalent of a hair-shirt. It is true that governments have done all sorts of things in times past which we would not consider to be correct now. Amongst those ‘debatable’ actions was the creation of colonies to form an empire – of which Queen (Empress) Victoria was very proud. I’m quite sure that the elite of the country profited very much from it, but the vast majority of people, our ancestors, were not part of the elite. They were instead doing back-breaking work for very low wages and living in squalid condition – the poem inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty is probably an apt description of their condition - "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” And so whilst those governing us now may have decided to self-identify with the elites of times past, I have not. Feeling guilty for other people's actions in the past is absurd. The notion of indelible historic guilt and the need to assuage it has though spread. It has become a prominent and required mark of virtue in ways very reminiscent of the trans debate. Unfortunately, though, I don’t think that it can be settled by a judgement of the Supreme Court. I would suggest, however, that it is not something shared by most ordinary people. They are generally proud of the UK and its history. It was their parents and grandparents who suffered the privations of the war, who fought and died to defend the country and to free Europe. In part it is this approach to life which means that Reform can portray itself as the party of the common man. They have realised that urging the adoption of hair shirts was never likely to be very popular. And of course we do not need hair shirts to make us better people. They were always a stupid idea. 26 May 2025 Paul Buckingham |
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