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Author Archives: Bernard Aris

How Liz Truss emulated Margaret Thatcher as an Education Minister

By Bernard Aris | Tue 26th July 2022 - 3:17 pm

David Laws’ Coalition memoirs tell how Liz Truss’s stubbornness as a junior minister became part of the Tory-Lib Dem mudslinging fest by Michael Gove

I would like to point especially new Lib Dem members to the memoirs of David Laws on his experiences at the heart of the 2010-2015 Tory-Lib Dem Coalition government. Laws tells us about Liz’s first steps as a junior Education minister, and her characteristics and policymaking attitudes which shone through.

On Saturday, Andy Boddington reported on a Times article in which Neil Fawcett, now a Federal Board member and Oxfordshire County councillor, said that Liz in her LDYS days was on the radical wing of our party, promoting both abolishing the monarchy and legalising cannabis. On that last point she made the first of a whole series of Damascene conversions after joining the Tories in 1996. During her 2001 Hemsworth parliamentary campaign she said that she now opposed it.

From 1998-2010 she was active in Tory local politics in Greater London and Greenwich, before entering parliament in 2010 from David Cameron’s A-list. So she knew about local politics, in which Education and Childcare (at least in Dutch local politics) are always a big issue. For all Social Liberals, good childcare and good education from the earliest stages has been a major issue for the past 140 years.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged childcare, coalition diaries 2012-15, david laws, education and liz truss | 3 Comments

Parliamentary scrutiny of a Unitary Cabinet government during the coronavirus crisis – Part 3

By Bernard Aris | Sun 26th April 2020 - 10:40 am

Even in the society of the independent-minded Dutch, a distinct “rallying around the flag” effect can be seen. The leaders of the populist parties questioning established politics (Geert Wilders, PVV, and Thierry Baudet, Forum for Democracy) or the capitalist aspects of Dutch health care and general government (the Socialist Party) used the first new-style plenary Corona debates for sharp, often ad hominem, attacks with overblown rhetoric on Prime Minister Rutte and his ministers. The debate lasted from 14.00 until around 22.00. The Health minister collapsed at the rostrum from overwork and resigned the next day. That scene had a sobering effect on the three attack dogs and when PVV and Forum lost badly in the next weekly poll they toned down the rhetoric and joined the more practical, factual line of arguing of all other parties.

With that toning down of parliamentary politics after the first dramatic debate, the parliamentary party leaders appear to have started a Whatsapp or Zoom group to regularly consult on Corona and other issues.

The Second Chamber Presidium had asked the government around 20 March to supply a list of all Bills (on non-Corona-related issues) they wanted to see being debated and adopted in the coming months. The government sent back a list with 84 Bills; President Khadija Arib immediately saw that 41 of those Bills hadn’t even been introduced to parliament. She sent the list on to the specialist parliamentary committees, who very soon let it be known that there was an impression that, in some cases, the Government was trying to get some controversial big laws passed. President Arib thereupon asked Rutte for Government to review this list, pointing to the limited parliamentary time in Corona times, and asked for a justification for every Bill that the Government really wanted debated.

Reviewing the list of Bills saw parliamentary committees (re)start meeting online, but journalists soon complained they weren’t able to see what happened in those meetings. The Presidium forwarded written summaries of those meetings to the media. But commentators and parliamentary sketchwriters pointed out that in principle all parliamentary sessions should be open to the public and media. And sketchwriters pointed out that every Prime Minister, however popular, even in “interesting times” of high crisis should be subjected to the same parliamentary and media scrutiny as always.

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Posted in News | Tagged coronavirus and netherlands | 1 Comment

Parliamentary scrutiny of a Unitary Cabinet government during the coronavirus crisis – Part 2

By Bernard Aris | Sat 25th April 2020 - 11:05 am

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After Prime Minister Rutte’s March 12 press conference, the Second Chamber ordered (!) all parliamentary parties to make researchers start working from home; only a skeleton staff of co-ordinating people remained and MPs not having meetings retreated. The First Chamber (Senate) only meets on Tuesdays and can only veto or pass laws; their meetings were temporarily suspended (many members are above 60 years old). This was unprecedented.

After Rutte’s 15 March press conference, the Second Chamber Presidium took a double drastic step: only plenary sessions and debates about the progress of the national Corona crisis (one a week) would proceed. Scrutinizing activities by specialist parliamentary committees were to be conducted online via written contributions and committee debates would be conducted online. The weekly “Question Time” hour was cancelled for the time being. Because Parliament too falls under the maximum 100 persons in a room rule (we have 150 MPs), the 15 parliamentary parties were allowed to have one or two MPs from each participating in plenary debates. To obey the constitutional quorum for plenary sessions, other MPs would sign in but retreat after that.

This sort of thing has never happened since the foundation of the Dutch unitary state and its two-chamber parliament in 1814-15. Right after occupying the Netherlands, the Germans disbanded parliament in May 1940; it reconvened after liberation in summer 1945.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged coronavirus and netherlands | Leave a comment

Parliamentary scrutiny of a Unitary Cabinet government during the coronavirus crisis – Part 1

By Bernard Aris | Fri 24th April 2020 - 11:06 am

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Thankfully dedicated to Captain Tom Moore, the NHS backyard walker, whose generation of Britons, Canadians and Poles restored Dutch democracy exactly 75 years ago. Without them, all this would be impossible.

I’ve been a D66 parliamentary researcher for 30 years, and as a history graduate (Leiden University) I know quite a lot about Dutch constitutional and political history. But the developments in that terrain I’m about to describe are absolutely unprecedented, since the Dutch unitary state, monarchy, and dual chamber parliament were established in 1814-15.

As a party founded in 1966 to update Dutch democracy to the 20^th (now 21^st) century, we in D66 believe in as much dualistic politics and decision making as possible between the Executive and the Legislature. So we enthusiastically support the informal working arrangement that has now arisen between the Rutte coalition government (of which we are the Progressive, Pro-European wing) and the Second Chamber, the main part of our parliament.

First, a short sketch of the Dutch parliamentary government system, and some notes about what was usual with government communications.

In the Dutch constitution, Parliament is a totally separate branch of government. MP’s who become ministers have to resign and are replaced by the next candidate on the party election list, and we don’t have a “Leader of the House” cabinet member helping to arrange the parliamentary agenda. The Presidium of sitting MPs (the Speaker/President and one MP from every parliamentary party) arrange everything.

The President of the Second Chamber (elected by all other MPs) is politically in charge of the whole parliamentary staff. The Chamber has its own budget and own plenary budget debate. It’s quite usual in Dutch coalition politics to have a President from the opposition benches; every MP sitting in the President’s chair is obliged to be politically neutral and just apply the Standing Orders and procedures during sessions.

As far as I know a government, let alone the king, cannot prorogue parliament at will; there is no article about that in our (written) Constitution. Parliament is fully in charge of its recesses and working days/weeks.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged coronavirus and netherlands | Leave a comment

Political experiences from a leaderless (!!) Social Liberal party in Corona times

By Bernard Aris | Thu 9th April 2020 - 10:56 am

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First a revelation that will startle you: in strict formal, statutory terms, my government coalition social liberal party D66 has been leaderless since 10 October 2018. That’s when our long-standing leader Alexander Pechtold, who since becoming leader in our nadir days in 2006 (3 out of 150 Commons seats in a proportional system!) had brought us back up to 19 seats at the 2017 elections, and who brought us back in the sitting government coalition, suddenly stepped back and started doing other things in quango and semi-governmental circles.

The parliamentary party immediately appointed a new, 31-years old MP, Rob Jetten as parliamentary party leader; and in the D66 Standing Orders it says that in those circumstances, the parliamentary party leader becomes acting party leader.

To really be party leader, you have to have been our “Lijsttrekker” (party list frontman, political campaign leader) in a general election. The “parliamentary party leader but not party leader” construction has happened a couple of times in the 54-year D66 history; the parliamentary party leader in 1982-’86 refused to apply to become Lijsttrekker in 1986 because our party founder and first leader, Hans van Mierlo, wanted to lead us again to regain lost seats (with success; in 1986 we went from 6 to 9, and in 1986-1994 he led us to conquer 24 seats).

Not having a formal party leader doesn’t hinder in any way the normal functioning of the party organisation and parliamentary parties. In 1982-86 we prepared some groundbreaking legislative initiatives. The two main ones were: the first law legalizing and strictly regulating euthanasia in the whole world; and a law liberalizing opening hours for shops (giving opportunities to moms to return to work; giving students and school dropouts jobs).

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged D66 | 2 Comments

“God only knows what the next government will tell us” – EU citizens in UK watch Brexit happen with very mixed feelings

By Bernard Aris | Tue 28th January 2020 - 1:10 pm

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As a continental European citizen, I’m interested in how the EU citizens living in the UK are experiencing the Brexit process, and their treatment by the British authorities and their British fellow UK inhabitants.

If you live in a EU country where a referendum, in which you’re not allowed to vote, decides it will leave the EU and all the certainties that went with it, that is a fundamental transformation of your position in that country and that society; especially if the sitting government is not always as careful, let alone reassuring, about your position in their country.

Well, I’m not at all reassured that the British government has grasped how sensitive they have to be towards those EU citizens in such a transformative policy move.

Let me point to an Opinium Poll of British EU citizens last December, right after the barnstorming “Get Brexit Done” election campaign. It found that 75% of EU citizens polled thought that UK politicians didn’t care about their views; and 67% thought that they didn’t even listen. 57% said that under May and Boris, the UK government had grown “more hostile” towards EU citizens since the referendum.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged brexit and eu citizens | 4 Comments

Don’t carelessly jettison the European inheritance of the BBC in trying to modernise it (Part 2)

By Bernard Aris | Fri 24th January 2020 - 1:30 pm

Part 1 can be read here.

The clinching factor for all continental Europeans from 1939 was the role of the BBC World Service during the Second World War; and the fact that the BBC World Service on medium wave could be received on car radios, and on transistors on European beaches and gardens in many of the present EU member states. The stupidest budget cut of the Coalition Government in 2011 was, in my eyes, cutting this medium wave availability, restricting the BBC World Service to local DAB+ stations, and to BBC4 at 4.00 o’clock in the morning.

Don’t underestimate the prestige and love that the impartial, objective reporting of news by the BBC (from disasters like Dunkirk to victories like El Alamein) acquired in occupied Europe, where all peoples suddenly lost freedom of speech and got 1984-like manipulated news. The BBC in 1939-’45 also hosted national exiled broadcasters in their own time slots, like Radio Orange for the Dutch. In so doing the BBC even helped establish an obstreperous French officer (marginalised in his army top brass; a political nobody) with a battlefield commission as a lowest tier general, as a pivotal figure in all French politics from 1944 until his death in 1969. The BBC thus helped form EU postwar history; ITV or Sky can’t possibly claim that.

The BBC programming and drama meantime had a huge influence on the continent; smaller national broadcasters such as those in the Benelux countries readily bought BBC programs and directly rebroadcast them or reworked them. I learned my first English from the BBC “Walter and Conny” language course around 1967. The socialist broadcaster VARA put out the Onedin Line; and the daily NTS/NOS radio and TV news readily quoted and quotes the BBC on British and international events.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged bbc and netherlands | 11 Comments

Don’t carelessly jettison the European inheritance of the BBC in trying to modernise it (Part 1)

By Bernard Aris | Thu 23rd January 2020 - 9:46 am

I’ve just been watching the BBC Newsnight broadcast of Monday 20 January 2020, which was mainly filled with debate about what the future of the BBC could or should be in this Netflix, social media platform world we live and work in today.

I’m deeply concerned that Britain, while thinking of how to adjust to the 21^st century mass- and social media landscape (and post-Brexit geopolitics), risks ignoring the inheritance of prestige, respect and exemplary performance the BBC has grown to acquire with all inhabitants of the EU.

Now that Brexit is upon us, Britain risks losing the mobilising force in the EU of its BBC broadcasts and programmes. This is just at a time that the whole gamut of its institutional ties in the EU framework (with Euratom, Erasmus, Eurojust, EMA, EU Social Fund, etc, plus the Brussels diplomatic channels and Comitology) have been cut in one great, very foolhardy swoop, only partially and years later to be replaced with special bilateral arrangements between EU and UK.

These EU branches never were important issues in the Brexit debate in 2015-’19; the only time Downing Street discussed Euratom was around the moment of triggering Article 50, when they suddenly realised that mechanism would be jettisoned too. Erasmus and EMA are mentioned in passing. See Tim Shipman, “Fall out: A Year of Political Mayhem”, Harper Collins, London, 2018, p24, 39, 116-7; look for the other terms in the indexes of this book and his “All Out War” on the Referendum: none!

Let me fill in some personal and Dutch facts so you can see where I am coming from in this debate.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged bbc and netherlands | 13 Comments

The Government’s Brexit plan is dangerous for Ireland

By Bernard Aris | Tue 8th October 2019 - 12:45 pm

The wheeze the Johnson government has come up with to salvage the “complete UK exit from the EU Customs Union”, having customs controls on companies’ premises, may look clever. But in a Northern Ireland with every so often bomb and mortar attacks by dissident, extremist Republican outfits like the “Continuity IRA {CIRA}” and/or “Real IRA {RIRA}”on policemen doing their job (or standing at a petrol station in a street), it carries obvious and serious risks, dangers.

And trying to reconvene the Northern Ireland Assembly, where DUP and Sinn Féin deeply distrust each other about things like green energy projects and use of the Irish language, to have them decide by any procedure about starting, continuing or stopping Johnson’s border policies, where Republicans suspect the DUP could get an advantage or veto, only increases the provocation to dissident Republicans; and could increase their support base.

The first and obvious danger is that, as the Real IRA has already attacked the homes and cars of Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officers (as happened on 21 February 2017) so the homes and vehicles of HMCE officers also could be attacked. And that also increases the risk that neighbours and shops near such homes get hurt, are damaged; even more homes and shops are at risk as a result.

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Posted in News | Tagged brexit and northern ireland | 46 Comments

Labour reliving the 1970s and evading democratic accountability

By Bernard Aris | Wed 25th September 2019 - 1:30 pm

Watching the Labour Party “show of hands” vote in the Brighton conference hall (we Lib Dems know from our own party conferences there) and the absence of proper counting mechanisms:
• no stewards counting specific parts of the hall, and
• no card or paper vote to verify if the impression of the chairwoman (or the party secretary beside her) was right,
– reminded me, a graduated historian born in 1956, of nothing so much as the infamous wildcat walkouts let by (closed-)shop stewards at the Ford, Vauxhall and British Leyland car factories, and at nationalised industries, of the 1970s.

According to Andrew Marr in his “A History of Modern Britain” (about Britain in 1945-2000; Pan Books/Macmillan, London, 2007, p. 133), those very militant shop stewards became powerful in the war and Attlee years (1940-’51), arranging local deals at their plant specifically for their union’s members, in preference to having national union executives call national strikes.

These sorts of goings-on were comically portrayed in the 1959 film “I’m All right Jack” with Peter Sellers playing the steward. That picture is affirmed by Anthony Sampson in his “The Changing Anatomy of Britain” (Coronet/Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1983, p. 65): the general secretaries of national unions may look impressive on the stage of the TUC annual conferences; but in reality they have (or had) to defer to the shop stewards representing the local shop floors.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged labour party conference | 7 Comments

How Continental Europeans view proroguing Parliament and abandoning EU inhabitants of the UK

By Bernard Aris | Fri 30th August 2019 - 3:09 pm

In my earlier June 17^th LDV piece on the concept of proroguing Parliament I reminded readers that the last person on the continent trying to disband a sitting EU parliament was the fascist colonel Tejero who in February 1981 entered the plenary session of the Cortes to disband at gunpoint the Spanish parliament finishing Spain’s transition to a full constitutional democracy.

To give you a flavour of how proroguing is seen here, a small list of continental heads of government who disbanded parliament to get their way without hindrance:

Napoleon in 1799 fled Egypt to conduct a Paris military coup (with grenadiers intimidating parliamentarians in their session) on “18-19 Brumaire” (November) to make himself “First Consul” under a constitution without Civil Rights. Making his brother king of the Dutch vassal “Batavian Republic” in 1806, he eliminated the last vestiges of its parliament. And Napoleon’s nephew in 1851 did the same with the French parliament, eliciting the famous Karl Marx pamphlet.

Mussolini grabbed power from a string of Liberal governments in 1922, and in combination with conservative politicians had a law adopted in 1923 by a divided parliament giving him an absolute majority after the 1924 elections. The Socialist MP Mateotti protesting over electoral fraud was immediately killed.

These examples give you a picture of how “positive” prorogation is seen on the continent.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged proroguing parliament | 30 Comments

Exit costs and wobbly dikes: Brexit could result in deluges in Britain

By Bernard Aris | Wed 14th August 2019 - 4:21 pm

As you can imagine, I have been, as Dutchman, watching the developments this summer first in Lincolnshire and recently in Derbyshire around dikes and dams that turned out to be outdated, and uncertain to withstand rivers or lakes filled with excessive amounts of rainwater.

Even in low-lying, water conscious Netherlands we sometimes get caught out by a dike or dam breaking; but Rijkswaterstaat (RWS, founded in the Napoleonic era), our Public Works & Water-Management government agency, is ever alert. And RWS knows from experience that when a certain type of dike or dam is wobbly in one place, it is important to inspect all dikes and dams of the same type and building era, to prevent surprises when one or more similar dikes crumble. That message is always part of RWS press briefings around incidents: local government and irrigation specialists must go out and inspect dams in their area.

In January 1995, a part of the Netherlands where our great rivers (Rhine, Meuse, and tributaries) flow through in the province Gelderland were evacuated because heavy rains, upstream in the Belgian Ardennes and Alsace, meant excessive amounts of water were coming our way, and it wasn’t certain that the existing irrigation infrastructure could cope. In total 250.000 people had to evacuate, for periods from 5 to 15 days.

Up to then, the main attention concerning massive floodings had been concentrated on our North Sea coast, with the memory of the 1953 North Sea flood which was a massive disaster in both the Netherlands and the UK (Lincolnshire flooded up to 3 kilometres inland). But from 1995, RWS and the Benelux and German authorities started a masssive updating, straightening out and adaption program for rivers and internal dikes.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged flooding | 17 Comments

No deal Brexit preparations: Dutch look closely but don’t see much (Part 1)

By Bernard Aris | Thu 25th July 2019 - 11:15 am

Whoever looks at British-Dutch relations, especially in trade and food (herring), you see a relationship dating back to the Roman Empire, with the Frisians (a tribe in the North of the present Netherlands) kicking off the chain of English/British-Dutch relationships.

The modern relations can be traced back to the British-Dutch anti-Spanish alliance of queen Elizabeth I (sending over her confidant Leicester) in the Treaty of Nonsuch (1585; see Jonathan Israel’s book about the Dutch Republic; Clarendon/Oxford University Press; Oxford, 1995, p. 218-230). This treaty was implicit recognition of the Republic; and the shenanigans between Leicester and the Dutch stadholder and his minister Oldebarnevelt in 1585-87 gave definite form to the Republic, until then a confederation of rebel provinces. It ended up with Leicester returning home; but Nonsuch was reinforced and broadened in the 1598 Treaty of Westminster.

The Low Countries’ principalities trading with England (Flanders, Zeeland, Holland, Friesland) were all smaller than England, and this didn’t change with seven rebel provinces forming a republic; especially because shortly afterwards, under king James I, the union between England and Scotland started being formalized until the Acts of Union (1707). So the Dutch and Flemish peoples are used to look very closely what happens in their big neighbor the UK, especially as it affects our (Dutch) trade relations (re-exporting a large part to the rest of the EU), and our and their national economy. The UK is around three to four times bigger than the Netherlands if you look at our populations and economies (GDP).

The hard Brexiteers around Boris Johnson are emphasising, now that a No Deal Brexit on their holy grail date of 31^st October seems ever more likely, that the British government is even better prepared than under the March Brexit deadline.

We Dutch simply don’t believe them, because we see at best a piecemeal, halfhearted if not comically incompetent British preparation (hiring a shipping company without ships, aiming to disembark at a British port city that on BBC TV News does look more disheveled that well-prepared for intensive disembarkation operations).

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged brexit and netherlands | 2 Comments

Von der Leyens promises to address some of the UK’s direst needs: Poverty, Social Security, Clean Air Cities

By Bernard Aris | Wed 17th July 2019 - 5:44 pm

The speech by German minister Von der Leyen (VDL), the proposed president of the European Commission, appealing to the sceptical centre parties (Liberals, Social Democrats, Greens) in the European Parliament, brought the Brexit Party MEPs to howls of both approval and anguish, according to Dutch media.

When she regretfully accepted that the UK appears on the way out, Farage’s bench applauded wildly. But when she added that she is ready to extend negotiations beyond Halloween, those cheers instantly turned into jeers.

And in his response, Farage again trotted out the “EU = Soviet Eastern Bloc” trope, to which VDL responded “we can probably do without what you have got to say here”. Dutch media quoted VDL responding to Farage’s Orbanite allies: “I didn’t expect to get your support”.

In her speech, and in the accompanying resignation of controversial EU insider/super-technocrat Martin Selmayr, many saw new points that address failings in the present EU procedures, decision-making and legislation:

Giving the European Parliament the right to initiative; possibly heralding a critical review of EU nomination, decision and policy making procedures;
Opening up a formal debate about transnational party lists and “Spitzenkandidaten” at the next European elections; and
Starting, in this Trumpian era, a debate in the EU Human & Civil Rights agenda about sexual violence and its female (and LGBTQ+) victims.

Which beggars the question: why leave the EU just when it finally addresses shortcomings and failures of its democracy and human rights?

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged eu and eu commission | 11 Comments

The unstoppable Rise and Fall of “Tony” or “Pony” Johnson

By Bernard Aris | Thu 11th July 2019 - 10:30 am

Will the Dutch Mark Rutte stay on being the only European Prime Minister who, sitting alongside President Trump during an official White House visit, dared to loudly and unambiguously contradict The Infallible Donald, and on US-EU trade relations no less? The Women’s Football World Championship showed that resisting (longer than others) an American onslaught is a Dutch speciality, but we would like some allies.

The British political reactions to the affair of the ambassadors leaked email comments about the Trump White House showed outsider Tory leadership contender Jeremy Hunt standing up for the ambassador sending his candid “long telegrams” just as George Kennan did in 1946, while Boris Johnson continued appeasing Trumps tender ego, the ITV debate being the clearest demonstration (see the Guardian and the BBC). Boris even almost-supported Trump disqualifying a British prime minister. Hopefully the discrete Mr. Johnson will do the same when he is PM; Trump spares no ally whatsoever when doing his early morning twitter fusillades.

If that doesn’t remind the British electorate of Tony Blair playing the “Iraq poodle” to president Bush junior (with foreign minister John Bolton pushing the WMD myth), the fact that Boris & Raab like Charles I and Buckingham still see proroguing Parliament as a normal way to push through European policies, should reinforce that analogy. In his Guardian interview about creating an “Boothroyd parallel parliament”, Rory “Realist Tory” Stewart reminds us that when Blair wanted to evade a vote on starting the disastrous Iraq War by prorogation, MP’s threatened to reconvene in Church House to demonstrate their opinion that a “War Powers vote” (my term) was obligatory.

The only difference between the Blair-Bush and Johnson-Trump relationship is that Boris, in his liberal mayorial affectation in 2015/6, was more forceful in disqualifying presidential candidate Trump, than Blair ever was about Bush during the 2000 presidential campaign.

Boris will absolutely hate being identified as a second Blair (wanting to put the UK “at the heart of Europe”, after defending the 1983 eurosceptic Labour platform); all the more reason to start calling him “Tony Johnson”.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged boris johnson, brexit, donald trump and Parliament | 13 Comments

How able is “negotiator” Hunt as compared to Johnson?

By Bernard Aris | Wed 3rd July 2019 - 10:15 am

The Tory leadership campaign of Jeremy Hunt is, according to himself and many supporting MPs in the media, based upon the premise that Hunt will be (far) more trusted and more easily welcomed at EU negotiating tables than Johnson. They say this is the case because the European players (national ministers, EU negotiators like Barnier) have come to know him as sitting Foreign Secretary, and that they would trust him more than Boris (who they also know from his accident-prone Brexit spell at the Foreign Office).

Hunt also insists he has experience as an entrepreneur, including negotiating deals, which Johnson lacks because he was a journalist, not a businessman, between his public school/Oxbridge education and his political career.

But right at the start of his term as Foreign Secretary, Mr Hunt made a massive negotiating gaffe while trying to use his personal background to curry favour with his Chinese counterpart, Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

At the start of his business career, Hunt had learned Japanese to be able to work as an English language teacher in Japan in the late 1980s; and minister Wang Yi studied Japanese and was a former ambassador in Japan (2004-07). As a minister in Cameron’s shadow cabinet, Hunt in 2008 met and married his Chinese wife, Lucia Guo. As the new Foreign Secretary negotiating in Beijing in July 2018, Hunt and Wang Yi had been speaking in Japanese, when Hunt, switching to English, made his gaffe when he talked about his wife and her parentage. According to the BBC, Hunt said “My wife is Japanese – my wife is Chinese. Sorry, that’s a terrible mistake to make.” The company at the table politely laughed it off, and Hunt went on to say that he and his wife had close ties with his in-laws still living in the Chinese city Xi’an.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged boris johnson, brexit, conservative party leadership election, jeremy hunt and no deal | 3 Comments

Boris thinks Widdecombe and Non-payment will sway EU his way….

By Bernard Aris | Wed 26th June 2019 - 10:45 am

In his BBC interview by Laura Kuensberg (interview text here), Tory leadership contender Boris Johnson said he had a far better chance of realising an agreed Brexit than May had, because the political situation both in Britain and on the Continent, in Brussels, has been fundamentally transformed since the March 2019 Brexit Deadline (and the British European elections).

Johnson says that the EU leaders are scared because the newly elected Brexit Party – and Tory MEPs – are a new, powerful Eurosceptic force, putting pressure on the European Commission and Council from within the Euro Parliament (EP). I think Johnson’s argument is that now that Ann Widdecombe sits beside known Euro-haters like Farage and Daniel Hannan, EU leaders have started quaking in their shoes and want to lose (or “liberate”) these MEPs soon by agreeing any October 31 Brexit, with or without a deal.

Johnson forgets Brussels has seen off worse anti-system politician threats, like J.-M. le Pen MEP calling Sobibor’s gas chambers a “detail in history”; and prime ministers like Berlusconi suggesting a German Socialist playing KZ Lager guard; or Orban, expelled from the biggest EP party for infringing basic EU principles. Adding Widdecombe isn’t a threat; the Christian and Social Democrats simply include “Renew Europe” Liberals (with new LibDem MEPs!) and the Greens in EP politics; Orban, Tories and Brexiters (who insist the EU is a Gulag Soviet Union) are kept shouting outside.

Johnson’s second point: he’ll use “creative ambiguity” about paying the £39 billion alimony to pressure the EU into a “May deal without nasty Backstop bits” (my paraphrase of his sketched deal). But what if Brussels uses “creative conditionality” about refurbishing the deal: “if you won’t pay the first instalment on the £39 billion, we keep the Backstop in”. And giving EU citizens (many who couldn’t vote for the EP, the hostile environment persists) legislative security as UK inhabitants was already offered by May, so won’t elicit EU leniency around any Brexit Deal.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged Backstop, brexit negotiations, eu citizens and eu parliament | 8 Comments

With Tories deaf to Rory, and Corbyn rehashing Wilson, the Lib Dems should flourish even more

By Bernard Aris | Thu 20th June 2019 - 10:25 am

According to last night’s Newsnight, and Heather Stewart in the Guardian, Jeremy Corbyn told a very fractious shadow cabinet meeting that he was reading Harold Wilson’s memoirs as inspiration. Shadow ministers saw that as a signal that Corbyn, like Wilson, “is not ready to become a cheerleader” for EU membership.

According to those memoirs, published in 1986, end in 1964, the year he became PM and started grappling with the possibility of EEC accession which he asked for after vastly improving his government majority in 1966).

In their book “Post-War Britain, 1945-1992” (Penguin Books, 1993), professors Sked & Cook tell us that Wilson as shadow Foreign Affairs spokesman was “unenthusiastic” about the EEC and was “characteristically (..) content to follow rather than to lead”. Wilson wrote in 1962 that “a dying government doesn’t have the right (..) to take a divided nation into” the EEC.”

Andrew Marr (“A History of Modern Britain”; Pan/Macmillan, 2009, p. 295) writes about Wilsons opinion on the EEC in 1965: “the strongest view” he had about joining the EEC “was that he didn’t have a view”. And Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Wilson ) and Marr say Wilson never had a holiday on the continent; whereas his Tory successor Ted Heath had oodles of continental travels and ditto political conversations from the 1930’s onward (Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Heath ; and Marr, p. 295, 327). And Marr writes that Wilsons contribution to the 1975 EEC referendum was mumbling “vaguely in support, rather than actively making the European case” (p. 348).

You can see many similarities with Corbyn; the only difference is he never wrote that the dying May/Johnson government doesn’t have the right to push the divided UK out of the EU.

So we cannot possibly, ever expect any strong Remain endorsement from Wilsonite Corbyn.

On the other side we have Farage’s raging Brexit Party, and a field of four Tory leadership candidates with unicornish ideas of blackmailing, cajoling the EU (with threats of No Deal and no Severance payments) into a “good deal”. The only voice of reason and realism about that, Rory Stewart, stayed in as long as he was useful to push Raab out, and then was left dangling.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged brexit, jeremy corbyn and labour | 13 Comments

Prorogueing Parliament will scupper any EU goodwill in Trade Talks, prorogueing the Tory Party Conference is better

By Bernard Aris | Mon 17th June 2019 - 6:00 pm

Hearing British politicians talk in a cavalier way about proroguing parliament to push through any controversial policy should remind the British of the age when prorogueing and circumventing Parliament was all the rage (and instilled a different rage in the electorate): the reigns of kings James I and Charles I. In trying to get money without having to ask Parliament, Charles adulterated the “Ship Money” statute by applying it not just to the coastal and harbor cities, but to the whole of England. According to its Wikipedia item, demanding Ship Money of its own was possibly even an infringement …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged brexit, conservative leadership and no deal | 13 Comments

A Photographic Salute to the Lib Dem Resurrection

By Bernard Aris | Wed 22nd May 2019 - 10:00 am

I am sending our best wishes from D66 and The Netherlands for the European Elections tomorrow. Here are some pictures from our own European election campaign.

This first picture is a group of big letters “WEUROPE” (pronounce “We Europe”). D66 activists travel around big cities with these letters, to point out that we are the most pro-European Dutch party. The people behind the letters are D66 MP’s and activists.

The second picture is me standing in front of those letters, holding up the famous phrase from the Preamble to the LibDem Constitution.

The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.

The pair are meant as a salute from D66 to your resurrection struggle, as two comrades in arms in the same pro-EU struggle, embracing the same Social Liberal principles. Good luck!

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Posted in Europe / International | Tagged D66 and european elections 2019 | 5 Comments

Change UK peacocking threatens to let jingoists and the far right run amok

By Bernard Aris | Thu 25th April 2019 - 2:10 pm

As a lifelong active member of the Dutch party “Democrats 66” (D66), I know how difficult constitutional, structural and cultural improvements of state (and European) democracy can be. My party had both improving national democracy (example: direct election of the prime minister who would lead the formation of the post-election coalition government) and direct European elections in its 1966 founding manifesto,

As anybody consulting Wikipedia can read, D66 was founded by a coalition of both members of existing parties (including an orthodox Marxist one) and unaffiliated, new citizens who’d become concerned that Dutch politics was stagnating and becoming oligarchic. (From 1963 until 1967, there were three different coalition governments on the basis of the 1963 general election results).

So, I can sympathise with the pride of Chuka Umunna over assembling a similar British party (wanting to renew the existing party democracy, solidly pro-EU feeling; assembled from active party members and concerned unaffiliated citizens) in Change UK.

We entered the Dutch parliament in 1967 with a spectacular 7 seats (of 150) thanks to proportional voting, but struggled to be heard for years.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged Change UK, history and The Independent Group | 16 Comments

Reflections on the Tory Party Revolution – part two

By Bernard Aris | Wed 24th April 2019 - 11:00 am

Part 2: from the 1940’s generational change to the growing hostility to Europe
Reading Alan Clark’s history of the Tories 1922-1997 (Phoenix/Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999), and Alan Sked and Chris Cooks “Post-War Britain” (Penguin, London, 4th. ed., 1993), you see how in 1940-51, while party leader Churchill was concentrating on foreign affairs (winning a war until ’45, then uniting Europe in his “interlocking circles”: Europe, the Commonwealth, and NATO), the other parts of the Tory party reacted to more domestic modernising trends and proposals. (See about Churchill’s priorities: Clark, Tories, p. 321-22; Sked & Cook, Post-War, p. 77-78).

Alongside the “Post-War Problems Central Committee” (PWPCC) formed at Tory party HQ in 1941 under Education Secretary “Rab” Butler, there emerged a progressive “Tory Reform Group” (TRG) of “Young Turks”. Clark says Food minister Lord Woolton (Tory from 1945) was the only Cabinet minister caring about “Post-War Problems”.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged conservative party, history and winston churchill | 1 Comment

Reflections on the Tory Party Revolution – part one

By Bernard Aris | Tue 23rd April 2019 - 2:20 pm

Part 1: From the 2019 Constituency Revolt to the 1846 Corn Law Split, and back

In its April 22th coverage of the Tory Constituency Party leaders’ revolt in demanding an “Extraordinary General Meeting” to shake May’s throne, the BBC inserted the link to its article from August 2018 about how, between the Chequers Cabinet Brexit Agreement and May’s disastrous Tory 2018 Autumn Conference, a Hard Brexit revolt started brewing in the Tory grassroots.

That 2018 article, by BBC researcher Georgia Roberts, referred to the Tory party Conference revolt of 1950, right after the general election that slashed Labours massive majority, when the Tory grassroots “educated the platform” by pushing through the “build 300.000 houses a year”-target for its 1951 election manifesto (whereas the Tory front bench had reacted to Attlee’s nationalization drive by retreating from state direction). That promise turned out to be extremely popular, election-winning (for Churchill, and later Macmillan), and long remembered. Previewing the 2018 Tory Autumn Conference, Roberts wonders if it will see a similar “educating” Brexiteer uprising; it halfway did.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged benjamin disraeli, conservative party, history and william ewart gladstone | 11 Comments

Dutch opinion poll: Dutch Government coalition supports Second Referendum

By Bernard Aris | Mon 8th April 2019 - 11:30 am

For the past few decades, pollster Maurice de Hond (our Professor Curtice) has published his political opinion polls every Sunday. Now that the possibility of a No Deal Brexit looms as of next Friday, it is interesting to see what Dutch political parties think of the present Brexit situation and what should be done.

First of all, there is a broad Dutch consensus, the parliamentary and procedural shenanigans in the Commons since December having convinced many Dutchmen that the structures and culture of British politics are totally wrong for solving existential questions like Brexit-or-Remain. The winner-takes-all mentality instilled by the …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged brexit and opinion polls | 5 Comments

2012: Under an EU deadline & government collapse, the Dutch parliament grabs the reins Part 2

By Bernard Aris | Wed 27th March 2019 - 8:55 am

Read part 1 here:

As Prime Minister Rutte had announced in his press conference on Saturday, when Parliament reconvened on Tuesday, 24^th April, his Chancellor (Finance cabinet minister) Jan Cornelis de Jager started doing the rounds with all opposition parties. He was surprised when, arriving in the meeting room of the D66 parliamentary party, he found the leaders and Treasury spokespeople not only of D66, but also of GroenLinks and ChU sitting there to confer with him on a new Dutch budget package for Brussels. In telephone (and email) rounds on Sunday, and meetings on Monday, the top people of these three parties had hammered out a common set of adjustment proposals to put to the Rutte government. Mr. De Jager played along finding this convenient, but also conferred with all other opposition parties. Dutch Labour (PvdA), back then still a big party in parliament, refused to join the “Kunduz” trio because they thought Netherlands shouldn’t strictly adhere to the 3% GDP norm (Dutch Neokeynesianism was invented by the PvdA in the late 1940’s).

Within two days of furious negotiating, on Thursday April 26^th, the coalition government parties VVD and CDA, and the trio D66, GroenLinks and ChU had hammered out the outlines of an adjusted package. Coincidentally they together represented 77 of the 150 Commons seats; another orthodox protestant party SGP, 3 MP’s) joined it, and the “Kunduz Coaltion” or “Spring Agreement” package was agreed by the Second Chamber that evening. It was sent off to Brussels immediately, only just before the EMU/SGP.

The priorities of the three opposition parties shone through in the adjustments made.

D66 got the raising of the state pension age from 65 to 67 years of age (a point we had been hammering away at in opposition from 2007 onwards) and reinstatement of the low VAT tariff for theatrical performances; ChU got cuts on subsidizing palliative care for the dying removed. Being three decidedly internationalist opposition parties, we also got the 0.7% GDP norm for development aid reinstated; and being three just as decidedly green parties, we got green measures inserted (coal-fired electrical power plants started paying coal tax along with all other enterprises; investing in/subsidizing home isolation and durable ways of building houses and edifices). D66 and GroenLinks even got VVD and CDA to start diminishing Mortgage Interest Tax Relief on private home-owners (a sacred cow until then). We had to swallow some other things of course (raising the upper VAT tariff from 19 to 21%; scrapping tax freedom from employee allowances for home-work travel expenses). But we (D66) were proud as Punch that we helped the Netherlands adhere to EMU norms we entered into under the Maastricht Treaty and EMU agreements. ECSC/EEC/EU founder Netherlands remained a faithful member, losing the PVV obstructionists (who since withered in opposition).

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged brexit and the netherlands | Leave a comment

2012: Under an EU deadline & government collapse, the Dutch parliament grabs the reins Part 1

By Bernard Aris | Tue 26th March 2019 - 11:55 am

I never in my wildest dreams thought it possible that, after the English Civil War, any English or British parliament would intervene while a government was collapsing (and straining under an EU deadline), grab the reins and impose its preference. But that’s what I’ve just been watching live on the March 25^th late BBC News and Newsnight.

It reminded me of the only instance in Dutch politics when, with an EU/EMU deadline looming, the government lost its majority; with the party giving confidence and supply stalking out and staying out, and opposition MP’s saved the day.

In this two-piece article, I’ll explain what happened; I think it goes to show that with responsible opposition parliamentarians involved, parliament taking the initiative from an amputated government can be positive.

It was 2012, two years into the first (Mark) Rutte government ( with ministers from VVD (car-loving Liberals) and CDA (Christian Democrats), and with Geert Wilders’ PVV giving the support to make up a majority (76 of 150 Commons seats) but without ministers. VVD and CDA had a coalition agreement; PVV supported most of it, but abstained on the foreign bits: (1) Dutch ISAF participation in pacifying Afghanistan (in Kunduz province and (2) European politics: anything remotely related to growing an “ever closer union” as professor Desmond Dinan describes it in his EU history handbooks, starting with EMU. And the PVV got our development aid lowered below the UN norm of 0,7% of GDP.

In 2011, Rutte got the foreign bits of his policy through parliament with the support of D66 (social liberals), GroenLinks (centrist-progressive Greens) and ChU (Orthodox and green protestants); this was afterwards called the (opposition part of the) “Kunduz coalition”.

Being a faithful EMU member in the Greek EMU crisis, and under the EU’s Stability & Growth Pact, the EMU rule book, we had to submit the outlines of our 2013 Dutch budget-package to Brussels and the ECB in Frankfurt by the end of April for clearance: did we adhere to the tough EMU/SGP budgetary norms we were subjecting Greece, Spain and Ireland to? If we missed the deadline or didn’t adhere to norms, a EMU fine of a billion euros threatened.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged brexit and the netherlands | 3 Comments

Part 2: Rutte, from Cameron buddy to May’s stern advocate

By Bernard Aris | Thu 21st March 2019 - 3:15 pm

The liberal Dutch parties VVD and D66 have two distinct identities and historical predecessors. The VVD is more a car-loving, classical-liberal party with, since 1990’s leader Bolkestein, anti-federalist EU instincts, and has less of an environmental record than D66, who premièred gay marriage and are electoral reformers, very similar to the Lib Dems.

Contacts between the Lib Dems and D66 (both social-liberal) are warmer and broader than the VVD-Lib Dems. In Chris Bowers’ biography of Clegg, VVD figures once (p. 104), whereas D66 & Lousewies Vander Laan are on pages 102-3, 104 and 266-7 as Clegg supporters, also in the Coalition.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged article 50, brexit and Mark Rutte | Leave a comment

May gets blunt Brexit warning from old Dutch ally & EU statesman Rutte: Part I

By Bernard Aris | Thu 21st March 2019 - 10:20 am

With the “Bercow Bombshell” (BB), his statement to the house on March 18^th, quoting Erskine May’s 1844 anthology of Commons’ customary laws and Standing Orders, that Theresa May can’t have an eternal Groundhog Day rotation resubmitting her Brexit Deal, it has become impossible for May to offer anything new to the EU summit of March 21^st.

According to Laura Kuensberg (late BBC evening news, March 18^th), that means the EU has no reason to grant May a short prolonging of article 50, making it inevitable that the EU leaders will propose a long prolongation; which would result in a much softer Brexit (the UK having to remain subject to more EU directives, procedures and institutions than under the May deal).

To predict the mood of that EU summit, one can quote the French journalist in Newsnight (March 18^th), who indicated that Le Monde, on March 15^th, lost hope of May rescuing her deal, saying “let’s get cracking, let’s make a do-able (prolongation) arrangement”. Earlier, Macron said on March 13^th that “the solution lies entirely in London”, which must offer a reason for prolongation to make him consider that. The French mood looks unwilling to tolerate any more British “one more heave” pleas for a prolongation; and to start asking concessions.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged article 50, brexit, brexit deal, Mark Rutte and vvd | 2 Comments

May should follow her kindergarten logic

By Bernard Aris | Mon 4th March 2019 - 10:25 am

For the past half year (if not longer), Prime Minister Theresa May has, everytime she appeared at the Despatch Box to talk about Brexit (often postponing votes and talking platitudes), told the broad mass of MP’s anxious about getting a No Deal Brexit cliff-jump: “The best way of avoiding a No Deal situation is voting for the deal I’m putting on the table; there is no alternative”.

For the past weeks, she’s been forced by her own party to see if, in the case of the Backstop (which became necessary because of May’s own “red lines”), there could be a slight …

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Posted in Op-eds | 3 Comments

“No dogs allowed” is back

By Bernard Aris | Wed 27th February 2019 - 7:35 am

On the 14th of February, the Dutch Foreign minister was driven to distraction by a big blue Brexit muppet on his desk, impeding him to get anything done (see:https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/feb/14/project-fur-brexit-is-a-big-blue-monster-say-the-dutch ). Only him being bold already, saved him from pulling out his hair. Today, Monday 25th, Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte was all over British news media, desperately pleading with the British government to get a Brexit deal through parliament, and thereby avoiding a No Deal Brexit. A no deal Brexit will not only disrupt, nay destroy the British economy, its international traffic of people, medicines and foodstuffs, but will also hit their oldest trans-Channel ally and trading partner: the Netherlands, like a ton of bricks (equaling Napoleons “Continental System”, 1806-13; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_System ).

The reasons the Dutch government (fully representing the fears and feelings of its 17 million citizens) makes such a show of its disturbance, annoyance, and grief about the impending chaos Brexit, especially the No Deal variant Rees-Mogg and Boris insist on, will bring, are to be seen from two severe warnings which were also covered by Dutch media today.

On the commercial radio station “Business News Radio” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BNR_Newsradio ), an affiliate of our Financial Times-like daily, chairman Anton Valk of the Dutch-British Chamber of Commerce (NBCC; see http://www.nbcc.co.uk/about-the-nbcc/organisation ) was urging all Dutch enterprises importing anything from Britain, from British companies to urgently look elsewhere for sources of what they’re importing, warning them those imports can be blocked or held up in a No Deal Brexit situation now looming large on the horizon. Needless to say, if the substitute source (in most cases: from inside the EU) proves to be better, its logistics more trustworthy, the British company who was the source, seriously risks losing that contract forever. The eventual delaying of the Brexit Day from 29th of March until say this summer or next year doesn’t diminish the relevance of those warnings one bit; the enduring uncertainty is instead likely to encourage continental importers to seek certainty with EU substitutes to former UK trading partners.

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Posted in News and Op-eds | 5 Comments