Category: Comment

Letter from Edinburgh: Fever Pitch

This week’s letter explores the unifying impact of our “national sport”.

Dear Don,

This past two or three weeks has seen a frenzy of excitement throughout most of Britain, and particularly Scotland and England. There’s a Generel Election on Thursday coming, which is all but certain to see a seismic change in the British political landscape. More of that later.

It hasn’t been politics that’s been on everyone’s lips, it’s football – or what you Yanks insist on calling ‘soccer’. 24 European countries are battling it out in Germany – the “Euros” – to become the European Champions. Countries have to qualify for tournaments like these, which for England is near-certainty every time. But for Scotland, qualification – and therefore participation on such a big stage – is a rare treat indeed.

Miraculously, Scotland did just enough to qualify for the COVID-delayed 2020 Euros, actually played a year later. But COVID reduced crowds, prevented travelling and put a dampener on everything. This time, with all the matches being staged in the one country, Scottish football fans are determined to make up for all the lost years. The slogan NO SCOTLAND NO PARTY has been seen everywhere in amongst the Lion Rampart and blue Saltire flags in Munich, Cologne and finally Stuggart. An estimated 200,000 Scottish fans made the journey to support the national team, roughly 1 in 30 of the entire Scottish population. Hardly any of them had tickets, of course, they were just going to experience the atmosphere. Instead, most have made their way to ‘fan zones’, large areas such as parks and town squares with huge TV screens. The author Nick Hornby made his name with Fever Pitch, his autobiographical account of how being a football supporter shaped his teenage and adult years, and I’m sure plenty of Scots could write similar accounts. Fortunately, it seems that the ‘Tartan Army’ has behaved well and left a positive impression.

There’s one other piece of information that you might need to know. Scotland have, in the course of history, qualified for the final stages of twelve major football tournaments – eight World Cups and four Euros. These tournaments begin with little groups of four, where each country plays each other once, and the best teams go on to qualify for the later knockout stages. Never once in the previous eleven occasions did Scotland do well enough to make it out of the group. In fact, Scotland’s story has almost always been one of hope going into the final group game… followed by a giant let-down. If you’re a supporter of Scotland sport, life can be very hard. But while there’s life, there’s hope, and Scots would continue to party.

So, come last Sunday, what happened?

Scotland probably needed to win, but a defeat would definitely eliminate them. With the scores level at an uninspiring 0-0, Scotland threw everything forward in the dying seconds, the ball fell to the Hungarians, who broke away and scored the winner. “Disaster for Scotland” is part of the Scottish football commentator’s lexicon.

That Other Little Matter – the General Election

It will be a major, major shock if Sir Keir Starmer isn’t Prime Minister by Friday 5th July, or that the Labour Party he leads doesn’t have a huge majority of MPs in Westminster. What’s going on boils down to two things: voters see little or no benefit from 14 years of Conservative rule; and there’s general dismay at what’s being happening at the heart of the Tory Westminster government since 2019. That includes partying through COVID, totally wasting money on a stupid budget (the Truss disaster); a series of sleaze allegations; and a shambolic campaign. It’s fair to say that it was always Starmer’s and Labour’s election to lose, and Labour have resolutely avoided elephant traps by promising… virtually nothing.

Since my last Election letter, however, there’s been a more sinister development. Reform UK, the successor to the UK Independence Party and then the Brexit Party, has been galvanised by the announcement that the demagogue Nigel Farage, their biggest asset, has chosen to stand. It’s critical for two reasons. First, support for Reform will take lots of votes away from both Labour and Conservatives, but the Tories will be hot hardest – virtually every poll predicts a record disaster for the Conservatives. Secondly, it now looks as though there will, after all, be some Reform UK MPs in Parliament, anything from six to a dozen. Reform UK plays into the same anti-immigrant dog-whistle sentiments seen in far-right parties in Europe, and of course with Trump in the USA (Farage and Trump are great mates). Their presence in any democratic assembly is not a good development. Watch this space on 4th July.

Till the next time,

Gordon

Letter from Edinburgh: Palestine, the Hostages and Gaza

This week’s letter looks at – arguably – the world’s least solvable political problem.

Dear Don,

I happen to be a member of Kilspindie Golf Club, which sits perched out in the Firth of Forth a few miles just to the east of Edinburgh. Until recently I was responsible for the club’s communications, which included building a new website, as well as checking for errors all the little things any public body sends out. I also sent out the odd general newsletter about nature and other things not particularly golf-related.

In the summer of 2023, I circulated a short biography of (arguably) the club’s most eminent member and past Club Captain, the former UK Prime Minister Arthur J. Balfour, who served as Conservative PM from 1902-05. Balfour, though, is a man far better known abroad than in his own land. In 1917, a group of international politicians gathered to decide on a possible permanent homeland for the Jewish people, resulting in the ‘Balfour Declaration’. Its key sentence stated:

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.“ (The underlining is mine)

Balfour knew and feared that this could go wrong, but in 1917, with a collapsing Ottoman Empire and a likely postwar redrawing of the Middle East map, it probably seemed the least bad option. One thing we can be certain of: if Balfour were alive now, he’d have suggested something else.

7th October Hamas Attack and Gaza Aftermath

Israel doesn’t have that large a population – fewer than 10 million – which must have brought the Hamas attack during the music festival on the 7th October 2023 into all the sharper focus. 1200 dead and 250 hostages taken led to a sense of national shock. It’s not relevant that most of the world sees these settlements as being in Occupied Territories rightfully the home of Palestinians. Any military action, especially against civilians, carried out without warning is an act of terror, not an act of war. There can be no excuse for what Hamas did. (An ‘explanation’ is not an ‘excuse’.)

In the immediate aftermath, a Ukrainian friend wrote to me expressing solidarity with Israel. I wrote back immediately saying that I thought this would go a very different route from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There was nothing more certain than Benjamin Netenyahu would use the atrocity as an excuse to do something truly dreadful.

What Israel is doing to Gaza at present is truly immoral. As I write this, an entire nation, everyone, is starving to death; if that’s not genocide, I don’t know what is. Nor is it going to get the hostages back any quicker – that’ll only happen with some sort of political deal. Meanwhile, we have to pussyfoot around the Israeli government for fear of being accused of being antisemitic. But it is no more antisemitic to criticise Netenyahu and his thugs than it is islamophobic to say that Hamas are terrorists, or it’s racist to criticise Vladimir Putin’s government.

Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. Israel continued to battle Hamas fighters on October 10 and massed tens of thousands of troops and heavy armour around the Gaza Strip after vowing a massive blow over the Palestinian militants’ surprise attack. Photo by Naaman Omar\ apaimages

Balfour was concerned about unintended consequences of his plan. Long-term, I genuinely fear for the Israeli state. At present, they’re by far the most powerful player in the Middle East, and perhaps still might be capable of taking on every other Arab nation at once, as it did in 1967. But that balance of power won’t last for ever: one day, another state will be able to dominate. When that happens, the map of the Middle East will take another spin.

People have long memories. History becomes part of our culture, our identity. I can’t see how anyone will forget – or be allowed to forget – what Israel is doing to Gaza right now. Sure, there was the 7th October, but two wrongs don’t make a right. I’m pretty certain I already know which will linger longer in the memory.

I fear that we just might be seeing the seeds of destruction of the Israeli state being sown here. It won’t happen in my lifetime, perhaps not even in my children’s. But eventually.

Till the next time,

Gordon

Letter from Edinburgh: Did the Earth Move for You, Too, Dear?

This week’s letter looks at the power of a global phenomenon.

Dear Don,

A couple of weekends ago (6th-8th June), Edinburgh played host to the start of the European leg of Taylor Swift’s ERAS Tour. In case you’ve just emerged from a chrysalis, Taylor Swift is the hottest pop music act on the planet. Everywhere she goes, she fills stadiums. Murrayfield, around a mile from where I live, is Scotland’s international rugby stadium and holds 67,000 spectators – increased to 72,000 for the three successive nights she played here. Over 200,000 tickets sold out in minutes for at least £100 a throw, often more.

I might never see 70 again, but I have a lot of time for Taylor Swift. She comes from a musical family – she was named after one my favourite performers, James Taylor – and began as a teenage country singer before morphing into a pop icon. But Swift’s greatest strength is her ability to play in several different genres, and a Swift concert contains something for everyone. Maybe not a string quartet, but you know what I mean.

Her lyrics speak to the real feelings, highs and lows, of the youngsters who like her music: teenage angst; romantic exploration and rejection, and – above all – girl-empowerment. Taylor Swift is her own woman, that’s for sure, and exudes every inch of it onstage.

Most of my own family were there. Swift fans – or “Swifites” as they like to be known – like to dress up and get in the mood for concerts. Taylor herself works a crowd brilliantly, managing to make each audience feel just a little bit special. And, putting on a three-and-a-half hour show, she gives good value, too.

The ERAS tour is thought likely to generate a staggering £1 billion for the UK economy – Edinburgh alone is understood to have benefited to the tune of £75 million. Taylor Swift’s presence creates an impact everywhere she goes. A few days after she’d moved on, it emerged that her concerts had even registered on the earthquake Richter Scale, the result of audiences jumping up and down at certain points in the show. It was only a small tremor, nothing up at 7 on the scale or anything, but it still demonstrates the young woman’s power.

It’s apparently not an unknown for rock and pop stars to shake the earth. Last year in Rome, the rapper Travis Scott managed to create a tremor of 1.3 on the Richter Scale, reportedly damaging a roof somewhere in the city. It would be interesting to see a court case where the owner sued a performer for damages – literally.

Meantime, here’s a song of Taylor Swift’s that I really like, from the 2020 album Folklore. Unusually, Betty is told from the point of view of a (rather pathetic) teenage boy.

Till the next time,

Gordon

Letter from Edinburgh: The Death Throes of a Not-Very-Good Government

This week’s letter to my friend in Ohio looks at the forthcoming UK General Election. It’s far less on a knife-edge than the Biden-Trump race in November.

Dear Don,

In case you missed it, a General Election has been called for Thursday, 4th July. I make no attempt to hide where my sympathies lies: while you’re celebrating independence on the other side of the Atlantic, I’ll be hoping it’ll bring to an end 14 long years of Conservative rule. Truth be told, even with three weeks of the campaign yet to run, it’ll be one of the greatest shocks of political history if it doesn’t result in a Labour victory and a new Prime Minister in Sir Keir Starmer.

^{(Updated to available data on 14th June)}

The trends since Boris Johnson and the Conservatives won the last election right at the end of 2019 are shown in the BBC graph above. It’s pretty clear that, in the space of five years, the Conservatives (blue) have gone from dominance to disaster. In 2019, the Conservatives won 386 of the available seats; this year, some polls have them down as low as 66.

I think most people – even many Conservative supporters – would say that the Tories deserve to lose this time. They’ve made so many blunders, got so many things badly wrong, that voters just feel it’s time to wipe the slate clean and start again. Five successive Prime Ministers have each written their names into politcal infamy:

David Cameron (2010-16) was so sure he’d win the Brexit referendum that he foolishly gambled his future on it. When he lost, he had to resign.
Theresa May (2016-19) never really supported Brexit, and her exit deal wasn’t trusted by the hardliners in her own party, who forced her to resign.
Boris Johnson (2019-22) “got Brexit done” – his slogan – but turned out to have a poor grasp of following rules. The PM during COVID, he was convicted of holding parties in Downing Street when he himself had passed laws making it illegal. Later, he refused to sack ministers who had been found guilty of breaking rules – dismissal offences, all of them. Eventually, he defended a sex-offending minister; that was one too many, and he had to resign.
Liz Truss (2022) managed to go into history as the shortest-serving Prime Minister in history at just 49 days. Determined to lower taxes to stimulate growth, fer first budget was a fiscal disaster. The markets didn’t believe the sums added up. The value of the pound went through the floor overnight, and cost the UK exchequer a staggering £30 billion in interest charges – money that’s lost for ever. The economy still hasn’t quite recovered, in fact.
Rishi Sunak (2022-24) has always struggled amongst Conservatives who hold him in part responsible for ending the premiership of Boris Johnson, and he also has a couple of other things going against him: first, he’s staggeringly rich, and vulnerable to the accusation that he doesn’t understand real life; secondly, he comes across as wooden – he just doesn’t have that natural ‘man of the people’ ability to connect with voters. Bill Clinton this man is not.

Most of Britain’s problems in 2024 can be traced back to Brexit, however, which continues to divide the country in so many ways. There were huge disparities in the ways the UK voted in the referendum: Scotland voted massively to stay in the EU; Northern Ireland also did, by a lesser margin. London voted to stay in, but much of the north of England voted strongly to leave. Arguably, though, the biggest issues were never thought through: what would our relationship be henceforce with the EU; and, most significantly, what about Ireland? In its entire history, there have never been trade barriers between Northern Ireland and the Republic to the south, but Brexit requires it – it’s now a land border between EU and non-EU territory. Most people in Ireland, even those in favour of Brexit, don’t like that.

That said, the reality is that Brexit is done and dusted. It can’t be undone, and the EU wouldn’t have us back anyway. But a future UK government does need to sort out the

Sunak’s popularity has been ebbing away anyway, but the start of his campaign has been disastrous. First, during a TV debate, he claimed that Labour’s plans had been “independently calculated by civil servants to cost taxpayers £2000”, only fo the “independent civil servants” to immediately say that wasn’t true at all. Not only that, he continued to double down on the ‘lie’. (Even our ‘neutral’ media agree it’s a lie.) It’s opened him to the charge that voters can’t believe else anything he says, either.

The second disaster is in this photograph: look who’s missing? Four world leaders at the D-Day landing commemoration in Normandy… minus Rishi Sunak. David (Lord) Cameron, on the left, had to stand in instead as Foreign Secretary while Sunak went home to appear on an election programme. It was seen as putting party before country, and an insult to war veterans. Even his own party have had to disown him, and he’s been fored to apologise repeatedly.

There will be movement in the other parties. The Liberal-Democrats should increase the number of seats and once again become third-largest; meanwhile the Scottish Nationalists’ dominance in Scotland has declined which should mean that they’ll return to fourth. (They only stand in Scottish constituencies, of course.) The most interesting party will probably be Reform, the latest incarnation of the ultra-right, anti-immigration party led by Nigel Farage, instigator of Brexit. Farage is running for MP, and Reform nationally polls at 12%-13%, but it would still be a surprise if any MP is elected. Electorally, Farage is a serial loser, yet he’s arguably been Britain’s single most influential politician over the last decade. Brexit gave a veneer of respectability to racism and xenophobia in this country, just as Trump – his great friend – made it acceptable for many Americans to voice their baser thoughts.

As for Labour, the government-in-waiting, what do they promise? The answer is… almost nothing, other than ‘not being Conservatives’. Terrified that they’ll make a mistake, they’re content to let the Conservatives dig their own grave, which they seem to be doing very effectively. Keir Starmer finished his first TV debate with a devastatingly simple line: imagine waking up on the 5th July to another five years of Tory rule. That’ll hit home hard.

It’s commonly accepted that the country’s economy is so messed up that Labour will be unable to do anything very radical. Hopefully, there will be some attempt to alleviate poverty, or to tackle the massive hospital waiting lists, but there’s no silver bullet out there.

Till the next time,

Gordon