The dire state of British politics

I left the United Kingdom 25 years ago on a day when there was a profound transformation in British politics as Tony Blair’s Labour Party swept away John Major’s Conservatives with a landslide 179 seat majority on May 1, 1997. This put an end to 18 years of Conservative Party rule (note: The Conservative Party is also known as the Tory Party, they are one and the same.)    

My posting to Asia had been delayed because Reuters Editors’ wanted me to stay in the UK to help cover election night as I was then part of the political reporting team. So I left the London newsroom direct to Heathrow for Asia after election night and as Blair headed to Buckingham Palace to meet with Queen Elizabeth II for royal assent to form a new Government. I have not lived in the UK since. 

As the political cycle ebbed and flowed, there was a switch back to the Conservatives in 2010, who managed to just about scrape an election victory based on forming a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, so they were still not wildly popular.

We now seem to be witnessing an echo of 1997 with the Conservatives again deeply unpopular and riddled by chaos, scandal, economic mismanagement and an almost complete lack of party unity across a wide range of policy issues, but mostly membership of the European Union which for decades has split the Tories. It has torn many political careers to shreds. 

Rishi Sunak is now the fifth Party Leader/therefore Prime Minister, since the Brexit referendum in 2016. By any analysis, Brexit has been fundamental to the Conservative Party meltdown as the far right Europe-hating wing of the party openly battled with moderates and party discipline disintegrated.

Theresa May’s abject failure to persuade the party to rally behind her Brexit plan, Johnson’s apparent lies and disastrous Brexit deal culminated in his resignation over scandals too numerous to list here, and now Liz Truss’s disastrous 44 day dismal failure at leadership has left both the party and opinion polls in tatters.

Truss now owns the cringingly embarrassing ‘honour’ of being Britain’s shortest ever serving Prime Minister. The previous shortest time served was Tory Prime Minister George Canning, who died after just 119 days in office in August 1827.

Most of the current political carnage can be traced back to the 2016 referendum on whether the UK should remain in the European Union which split the country in two with the result only just coming down on the side of Brexit by 52 percent to leave and 48 percent to remain.

It took four long and acrimonious years until a deal was eventually thrashed out for Britain to leave Europe. The hard-right of the Conservative Party continuously pushed for a hard uncompromising ‘walk-away’ deal which created divisions in the party and eventually destroyed the Premiership of Teresa May. David Cameron resigned as Tory leader just after the referendum.

The slow but steady economic damage done by the Brexit deal is now all too evident with the UK’s trade performance recently falling to its worst level since records began, heaping more downward pressure on sterling and upward pressure on interest rates. This was made far worse by a mini-budget under Liz Truss which was quickly unwound but not until it has done even more damage to the economy. 

There has, of course, been the background factors of Covid, the war in Ukraine and subsequent rise in energy costs, but all this has been made worse by Brexit. The sunlit uplands promised by the leave campaign have not come, nor will they. It is obvious to those of even the meanest intelligence that leaving the EU was not a good idea. 

Tory backer and billionaire businessman Guy Hands last week warned the government he supports that is putting the UK “on a path to be the sick man of Europe”, predicting higher taxes and interest rates and fewer social services.

The longtime Coservative supporter called for a renegotiated Brexit otherwise Britain is “frankly doomed”.

The Conservative party “needs to move on from fighting its own internal wars and actually focus on what needs to be done in the economy”, he said in a radio interview.

Britain’s political woes do not just stem from Brexit or the mishandling of events like Covid and Ukraine, but a force far more fundamental and worrying is at play here. That is the level of talent within the ranks of the government’s Members of Parliament. 

“It’s not so much a talent pool,” commented one radio journalist last week. “It’s more of a talent puddle.”

The analogy is a good one. When the Tories were stupid enough to elect Liz Truss as their leader there were many across the media, politics and the public at large pointing out she was a lightweight, was overpromising, had no real substance and would crash and burn in a job she was so clearly not capable of doing. Just 44 days later they were all proved right. 

On the face of it, Rishi Sunak looks a better bet and is way more level-headed than Truss, but his party is nevertheless facing political oblivion according to the latest polls of voting intentions. 

Politico’s Poll of Polls has Keir Starmer’s opposition Labour party on 53 percent with the Conservatives on 22 percent. An election tomorrow would see the Tories all but wiped out.

Former Conservative Party campaign director Mark Neeham said last week “If current opinion polling is correct, Labour will have 500 seats at the next election and the Tory party will be reduced to 48,” he told Sky News host Chris Kenny. There are a total of 650 UK Members of Parliament.

The government does not have to face a general election until January 2025 and they are clearly hoping to turn things around before then. But the general public are sick of them and there are growing calls for an earlier election basically because Sunak is not seen as having a  solid mandate because he was not voted in by the public, or even the around 175,000 card carrying members of the Conservative party.

He had already lost a leadership challenge to Liz Truss and was simply ushered in as leader because he was the only candidate who gained the required 100 supporters among the 357 Conservative MPs. You can see just how shallow the tallent puddle is!

The British public is clearly sick of the constant lies, gaslighting and fantasy economics of the current government and Liz Truss with her pathetic 44 day shelf-life has been, for many, the final straw. 

Less and less people are believing that ‘things will get better’ or ‘we will fix things’ and the empty rhetoric is all sounding increasingly hollow and, frankly, pathetic.

Every voter in every democracy should look at the state of Britain now and reflect that when they hear their own politicians speak and question what they hear. Are they lying, gaslighting, full of empty or impractical promises or, frankly, just plain stupid and lacking in talent? 

Are your politicians swimming in a pool, or a puddle? 

“You can fool all of the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time,” is a quote long attributed to Abraham Lincoln in around 1860.

It would seem that the vast majority of the Great British public is no longer being fooled. 

Tinkerty Tonk...

On the back foot - desperate politics

Politics is a game, albeit a very serious game because it potentially affects millions of ordinary people. But it is a game, and that is something voters quite often lose sight of.

Whether politicians play the game well is open to question. To my mind here is the latest example of someone playing it very badly and perhaps should be considering another career.   

When those playing start to say things that are simply not true, or a bent version of the truth, it really needs immediate push back before it can sow seeds of doubt among those who do not have the time to follow domestic or international affairs closely enough.

The latest, and most blatant, example of this kind of behaviour is the opposition calling the former Health Minister in his bid to become Taipei Major a “Murderer” over the way the handled the Covid crisis. 

Just how absurd do you have to be, or how stupid a politican, to say something so idiotic and so blatently untrue? 

The attacks reached a new high recently when Huang Shanshan angrily criticised former Health Minister, now Mayoral Taipei mayoral candidate Chen, as failing in his efforts to protect Taiwan citizens from Covid and accusing him of corruption in deploying the vaccine. Also, she became more unhinged by saying "If anyone does this, he will be punished by God, watching people die and seeing people hurt but feeling indifferent."

This is clearly an absurd rant and a rather pathetic attempt to play political games. It smacks of desperation and is the politics of the madhouse.

It also comes from someone who refused to pick up phone calls from the Minister at the height of Covid when she was the pandemic coordinator for Taipei City . This is supposedly a responsible politician who is seeking higher office?    

Before we get into the numbers which easily disprove such utter nonsense, let’s reflect for a moment the mindset of those with all the facts and numbers at their disposal who make such a statement. Let’s remember that accusing someone of being a ‘murderer’ is the most extreme form of defamation as the crime is pubilshable by death in Taiwan.

At the time of writing, Taiwan has lost 10,950 lives to Covid, the United Kingdom has lost 207,000. Adjusting for population, roughly the UK has three times the population of Taiwan, you have a comparison of 69,000 vs Taiwan’s 11,000. That is just 16 percent of the UK number.

Looking wider, deaths per million of population are currently around 826 for the world as a whole, with Peru topping the list at 6,421 deaths per million. Taiwan is at 127 from the top on the  list of 219. The United States is 20th worst, UK 23rd, European Union 34th and Germany 61st. China appears on this list in 213th place with three reported deaths per million of its 1.4 billion people, which is, by pure coincidence, near North Korea at 215th place which has reported a similarly low figure of zero per million!

Setting aside the obvious anomalies inherent in such lists which do not take into account methodology of data gathering, or indeed honesty, it is clear Taiwan, and by implication Chen himself, has done a fine job in steering the country through the pandemic.

I rode out the bulk of the pandemic in Taiwan with no restrictions on my movement, no lockdowns and really no inconvenience other than having to wear a facemask. Compare this to my friends in the UK who had to endure weeks of virtual imprisonment in their own homes,   being questioned by police if they were seen on the street and being fined if they did not have an adequate excuse for being outside. 

I had many conversations from those who wished they were in a country which was handling the pandemic sensibly and in a better way. Not to mention the huge economic damage the likes of the UK did to their economy by preventing people from going to work and the sheer waste of billions of pounds on their inept, and failed, Track and Trace scheme. 

In all these respects Taiwan stood head-and-shoulders above a G7 country and the world’s fifth largest economy with its huge resources in its handling of the pandemic. I would say it is impossible to say Taiwan, and the Health Minister, did not do a spectacularly good job.     

Just how politically desperate do you have to be to level such an appalling accusation at someone? Answer, as desperate as an opposition bereft of ideas and trying so hard to find fault as to resort to the rhetoric of the libellous and of the gutter, to try and score political points.

It is sad and depressing to see those vying for high political office are so wretched and have such low morals they cannot bring themselves to be honest and admit the former Health Minister did a good job during Covid and their ridiculous accusations are both weak and pathetic.

The simple facts are there for all to see and anyone can quickly Google them.  

It also puts fully on display the ineptness of their political acumen. Why not pick on his other faults rather than resort to lies? Why not criticise his policies rather than call him ridiculous names, why not come up with some alternative policies than his rather than froth at the mouth and yell “Murderer.” Particularly when it isn’t true. You know it, and worse for you, the public knows it. 

To those involved in this latest piece of nonsense, some advice. It doesn’t work, it never has, and it will not in the future and you are insulting the public. Lose the election by all means, but please just be a bit smarter about trying to win it and not bore us all with these inane and unwarranted attacks.

Tinkerty Tonk...

Hubris ahoy - another one crashes onto the rocks

We have attractive wooden beams on the ceilings in France so the cat’s claws have been firmly embedded in 300 year-old wood rather than the usual ceiling fan in Taipei. 

The reason for the latest bout of feline fury is the hapless Gao Hongan who seems to think the happenstance of going to a certain university seems to give her the right to belittle others. 

It’s highly entertaining when monumentally empty-headed politicians give us a virtuoso performance of arrogance, only to fall flat on their face. 

In an act akin to dozing off while driving a car at 130kph and expecting no consequences, Gao went sleepwalking into a fusillade of criticism over the pompous and self-important assertion that somehow anyone who went to Chung Hua University was somehow a lesser being.

Aside from the ins-and-outs of this particular affray it staggers me that someone seeking political office would say such things out-loud and in public. Just how dumb do you have to be to not to expect any blowback of criticism? 

What makes this case even worse is the fact she quickly got an onion out to force fake tears on TV sobbing people were getting at her. 

Amid accusations of bullying over what she said, the Taipei Mayor who, amazingly, managed to insult every victim of rape alive in the world today by comparing this ridiculous unimportant political spat to one of the worst crimes on the planet. 

Very well done Mayor, you just proved you are even dumber than Gao, although this kind of crassness and stupidity is what we have all long-ago come to expect from you. You don’t have to keep proving that you are unfit to run a bath, let alone anything that affects the public. 

Roll-on November. 

Sensible politicians, and by that I mean good politicians, have the breathtaking ability to actually think for a nano-second before they speak. UK politicians, for example Borish Johnson and Liz mis-Truss would never dream of openly boasting they went to Oxford, the top British university, as they know they would be ripped to shreds by the public who revile pomposity in all its forms. 

People with an ounce of sense could never vote for people who display such boundless arrogance. If they have no ability to think about the consequences of their utterances, muchless the consequences of their actions, if they do gain political power, they are clearly unfit for any public office.  

To cast a vote in their favour risks putting a poisoner in charge of a jam factory. 

Tinkerty Tonk…

Diplomacy in overdrive at the royal funeral

The fictional aide Bernard Woolley in the
long running series Yes, Prime Minister
 

British diplomats and officials were battling with the rare challenge of assembling a vast  number of foreign dignitaries in one place at short notice for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, Britain's longest-reigning monarch. 

It has been not unlike herding cats as the niceties of diplomacy have made it almost an impossible task without upsetting at least some of the invited VIPs.

Obviously, the invites were all sent at short notice and to plan ahead of time for who, where they would sit and how they would travel has been a massive headache due to the ever changing flux of global events and diplomacy. 

It has been 57 years since Britain’s last state funeral of former UK prime minister and wartime leader Winston Churchill and the world is a very different place now.

Around 500 presidents, prime ministers, kings, queens, emirs and other world dignitaries were invited.   

Probably the easiest call was not to invite Russian President Vladimir Putin because of Ukraine and the savage sanctions the UK has slapped on his country. Putin ally Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko was similarly not on the guestlist. 

Despite Putin being almost a global pariah, a Russian official said it was "deeply immoral" the UK snubbed Putin. Although Putin did send King Charles III a telegram wishing him "courage and perseverance in the face of this heavy, irreparable loss."

China’s President Xi Jinping was on the guest list although there was uproar amongst some British Members of Parliament when this became known, who described the decision as “extraordinary”. 

Xi decided not to attend but Vice President Wang Qishan will attend the funeral.

Saudi Arabia's crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman was invited but did not attend. His visit would hvae been controversial because of the murder of journalist and Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. 

More recently, Saudi Arabia sentenced Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani to 45 years in prison and Salma al-Shehab, a 34-year-old PhD student at Leeds University and mother of two to 35 years for comments they made on social media which were deemed as illegal as they criticised the regime. This caused much controversy in the UK and the media made much play of the fact the new King Charles III has close ties with Saudi Arabia.

The ever controversial Islamic Republic of Iran, long the subject of international sanctions over its nuclear programme, received a partial invite and was represented only at ambassadorial level.

Others not on the guestlist include Syria, Venezuela and Afghanistan as the UK does not have full diplomatic relations with the three and Myanmar were also not invited broadly because of the recent coup d'etat and attendant human rights abuses.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Nicaragua had been invited to send only ambassadors, not heads of state. Britain has diplomatic issues with both countries.

However, the guestlist is a fairly easy side of the funeral’s diplomatic conundrum.

To show off its green credentials the UK government also asked VIPs to limit their numbers of delegates and consider commercial flights to reduce congestion at Heathrow. It’s certain this would have annoyed those with private jets they are more used to scooting about in. 

Then there are the buses, yes buses. President Joe Biden has been allowed to bring his mammoth armoured car - better known as The Beast - but other dignitaries have been asked to jump out of their private cars at a meeting point and then climb aboard buses to the service at Westminster Abbey. 

It looks like this request created more than a bit of an uproar as a British prime minister’s official spokesman insisted arrangements for leaders would “vary depending on individual circumstances” and that the information provided was “guidance.” Obviously it was a step too far for many countries, most notably Japan. 

Japanese Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako broke protocol and attended the funeral, as a measure of the close ties he and his family enjoyed with the late Queen Elizabeth. Although I find it hard to imagine the Emperor and Empress climbing aboard a bus with a bunch of other invitees. 

Then, not least, there are the seating arrangements in Westminster Abbey which can hold around 2000 people. South Korea sitting next to Japan, perhaps not! Pakistan and Afghanistan, er no! US and Mexico, maybe not the best idea! Israel and pretty much any Middle Eastern country, no, no! India and Pakistan, definitely not!

There are, of course many, many more and diplomats would have been working long into the night to get the seating arrangements right. 

In fact this exact situation was the subject of a very popular and long-running TV series which ran in the 1980s called Yes Prime Minister which parodied the workings of the British Parliament.

In the episode ‘A Diplomatic Incident’ which amply demonstrates the changing nature of geopolitics, the death of fictional Prime Minister Jim Hacker's predecessor provides a chance for some negotiations with France over the Channel Tunnel at his state funeral.

One scene has his hapless and harried aide, Bernard Woolley, is shouting down the phone “Yes there are about 10 Prime Ministers flying in today, Special Branch are going crazy, so is the band of the Royal Marines who have got to play all the national anthems. It’s lucky Argentina isn’t coming,  not because of the Falklands (War) but because their anthem goes on for about 10 minutes”.

From the same scene. “No we can’t have alphabetical seating in the Abbey, you’d have Iraq and Iran sitting next to each other, plus Israel and Jordan all sitting in the same pew. You’d be in danger of starting World War III.”

Taiwan said its representative in London, Kelly Wu-Chiao Hsieh, was “specially invited” to sign the condolence book at Lancaster House, which is run by the UK Foreign Office.  

The Taiwan Foreign Ministry said the invitation came “based on the importance attached to Taiwan-Britain relations and the precious friendship between the two peoples”. 

The ministry noted Hsieh “enjoyed the same treatment as the heads of state, representatives and members of the royal family of other countries who have gone to Britain to mourn”.

Tinkerty Tonk...

The Queen is dead, Long live the King

To use her official title. Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith - is dead.

Her reign of 70 years and 214 days was the longest of any British monarch and the second-longest recorded of any monarch of a sovereign country. (See note 1) 

Her passing has not only been felt in the United Kingdom but across the world, she was not just a British monarch but someone who was deeply respected around the globe. 

Even many outspoken anti-monarchists understand the total devotion with which she conducted her role and have a great deal of respect for her lifelong dedication and tenacity to do the right thing, even if they do not agree with the role itself.

The Queen was one of a tiny group of people who, by and large, command global respect and affection regardless of race, religion or creed. In fact, I can really only think of two others who get anywhere close, the current Pope and the current Dalai Lama. Of course both differ greatly in as much as they are religious leaders and not heads of state.

It should be understood that while head of state, the British Monarch plays no part in politics. 

Royal assent is the final step required for a parliamentary bill to become law but the Monarch never refuses to sign. In her last official act as Queen, just two days before her death, she met with Liz Truss to give assent for her to become UK Prime Minister, but she could not have refused. 

It is all a bit anachronistic and seems odd, but it is still the tradition and the Monarch has no real power in practice.     

I can think of no other person, monarch, statesman, religious leader, politician, pop star or actor who would receive the same kind of global reaction and coverage of real affection as we are witnessing at the moment over the Queen’s demise. 

I’m guessing what we are seeing now will outstrip what happens when the inevitable overtakes his Holiness the Pope and his Holiness the Dalai Lama.

I will concede that South Africa political leader Nelson Mandela comes close to this exclusive list, but I do not remember a global outpouring anywhere close to what we are seeing now when he died in December 2013. 

TV networks around the world interrupted programming to announce the Queen’s death and tributes from leaders around the world immediately began pouring into Buckingham Palace.

Over a dozen countries recognized Elizabeth II as their head of state, including Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Belize, Jamaica, Tuvalu, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Her death has already prompted some to question whether recognition of the British Sovereign will continue as her son Charles takes over as the monarch Charles III. Yet another indication of the high regard in which Elizabeth was held, and Charles is not.

Katie Pickles, a professor of history at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, summed it up well. “As the importance of the monarchy became less important in society, places like New Zealand hung on because they held the Queen personally in such high respect.”

“King Charles and Queen Consort Camilla will likely not have the same appeal.”

So where did Elizabeth’s obvious magical touch stem from? It was certainly not from charisma, stirring public oratory or great acts of policy, but from a quiet and understated demeanour devoid of ego, a good sense of humour and an uncanny human touch. 

I say uncanny as someone who lived her entire life in the lap of luxury above the wildest dreams of ordinary people was still able to somehow connect with pretty much everyone she met. It was truly a unique quality and the current scandals and millionaire lifestyles of the likes of Prince Andrew and Meghan and Prince Harry only serve to demonstrate how different she actually was. I guess we will never know why, as Matriarch she was unable to control the family better, but do you know a perfect family? I don’t.

Which all throws her personal style into sharp relief given the daily hate we see in the media for her favourite son Andrew and her grandson Harry. A dislike which is very much reciprocated among the British population who have little love for either, and internationally too, for that matter.

Even Private Eye, a savage British satirical magazine which regularly lampoons and attacks politicians and others in the public eye went easy on the Queen, even though she was the top establishment figure in the land. They referred to her as ‘Brenda’ and never really attacked her as they would politicians, the media, actors etc… It was hard because she was simply too nice a person. 

There was a standing joke in the UK that if you were lucky enough to shake hands with her during one of her many ‘walkabouts’ with the public she would ask you one of two questions. “Have you come far?” if it was an open public event which people would have flocked to in order to spectate and be in the crowd, or “And what you do?” if she were visiting a factory/power station/building site/office/hospital/local council office etc. 

But yet with such simplicity she managed to win the affection of millions of people, certainly in Britain where many will spend weeks talking about her, but also internationally. 

Another thing to consider is the longevity of her reign. She ascended the throne in 1952 after the death of her father King George VI, not long before I was born. In fact, 86 percent of the UK population were born after she became Queen and roughly the same figure applies to the rest of the world. So for the vast bulk of people she has been the Queen of England for their entire lifetime. She was actually crowned in 1953, but more of that later because as is the case for Charles, his actual coronation ceremony will be sometime next year.

She will also be remembered for the old British tradition of the Christmas Address, which in 1957 moved from being a radio to a television broadcast. 

The excitement of Christmas Day with presents and then turkey dinner was rounded off at mid-afternoon with everyone stopping what they were doing to listen to the Queen’s speech. For as long as I can remember, including all the years I have lived abroad, I have made a point of listening to the Queen’s Christmas Day address. 

Not out of any innate sense of patriotism, it’s simply something you want to do because she was a good egg and you really wanted to hear what she had to say. 

It was only ever ten minutes or so, and being apolitical she never talked about politics or policy but instead talked about what was happening to ordinary people and to express sympathy for any difficulties and to wish people healthy and happy lives. 

It was never tainted by politics, nationalism or jingoism. It was more like being spoken to by a caring grandmother who really wanted you to do well and be happy. Each was remarkable in the way it was put together…and that comes from an anti-monarchy and some say, cynical journalist.

I also think her steadfastness during World War II and her personal fight against tyranny and fascism also went a long way to bolster her global image. Even at a time when members of her own family were making active moves to side with Hitler and his Nazi Party. (See note 2)

In 1945 when she turned 18, she joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service, a women's branch of the British army, as a driver and mechanic and famously celebrated on the streets of London with thousands of other revellers when the war in Europe came to an end in September 1945.

There is a film about the event called ‘A Royal Night Out’ which tells the story about the young Elizabeth persuading her parents and security to go out incognito on Victory in Europe Day to join the celebrations. The King, her father George VI, was impressed by Elizabeth's keenness to mix with the ordinary people and asked her to report back on the people's feelings towards him for his midnight victory speech on the radio.

The film is obviously a romanticised version of events, but is nevertheless based on fact and underpins the notion that she cared deeply about ordinary people to which she would not long afterwards become Queen when George succumbed to lung cancer in 1952 after a lifetime of heavy smoking.

It is against these kinds of background factors that an enormous affection grew over the decades and her many foreign trips and kindness and decency to the people she met only served to spread this affection overseas. 

She was a true phenomenon and will be remembered as such.

Her eldest son Prince Charles, now Charles III addressed the nation on Friday and said this about his mother. “In her life of service we saw that abiding love of tradition, together with that fearless embrace of progress, which make us great as nations. The affection, admiration and respect she inspired became the hallmark of her reign.

“And, as every member of my family can testify, she combined these qualities with warmth, humour and an unerring ability always to see the best in people.”

As Britain enters 10 days of official mourning, what happens now? Just as Thursday’s announcement of her death was carefully choreographed, the subsequent events have been meticulously planned for years. 

First comes the lesser known Operation Unicorn because the Queen died in Scotland at her favourite summer residence Balmoral Castle in Aberdeenshire which is about 160 kilometres north of the capital Edinburgh and 800 kilometres from the UK capital London.

At the time of writing (Friday) Unicorn is underway and the Queen’s body is being transported from Balmoral to the nearby city of Aberdeen en route to be loaded onto the Royal Train for a journey down Scotland's east coast to Edinburgh.

Following ceremonies in Scotland's capital, the Queen's body will be moved to London on Tuesday and once it has crossed the Scottish border, Operation London Bridge takes over. (See note 3)

The Queen will lie in state for four full days in Westminster Hall in London during which time thousands of people will file past the coffin to pay their respects. The huge Westminster Hall is the oldest building on the Parliamentary estate dating back to 1097. 

On Sunday September 18 visiting heads of state, including US President Biden, will begin to arrive for the funeral the following day. 

The Queen’s state funeral will take place at Westminster Abbey in central London. The Queen’s coffin to be carried on a gun carriage to the abbey, pulled by sailors  using ropes rather than by horses. Senior members of her family will walk behind and the military will line the streets and also join the procession.

Heads of state, prime ministers and presidents, European royals and key figures from public life will be invited to gather in the abbey, which can hold around 2,000 people.

In the evening, the Queen will be interred in the King George VI chapel at Windsor Castle, where her mother and father were buried, along with the ashes of her sister, Princess Margaret. Her husband Prince Philip’s coffin will be moved from the Royal Vault, located underneath King George VI memorial chapel, to join that of the Queen.

Although Westminster Abbey was for centuries the usual burial place for kings and queens, more sovereigns over the past 300 years have been interred in at Windsor Castle. 

Her son Charles, now Charles III became King the moment Queen Elizabeth II died, under the rather quaint old common law rule - Rex nunquam moritur - which means “The king never dies.”

Despite automatically becoming sovereign, Charles will not be crowned for some time, just as his mother had to wait a year for her coronation.

Note 1. Louis XIV of France remains the longest-reigning monarch, with a 72-year and 110-day reign from 1643 until 1715.

Note 2. The Queen’s father, George VI, was preceded by his elder brother Edward VIII who abdicated the throne after less than a year so he could marry the divorced Wallis Simpson. Edward is the shortest-reigning British monarch. It is well documented that Edward had close ties with Hitler before the war and there is a picture of this meeting. 

The full historical documents have never been released but Edward is widely thought to have been a Nazi sympathiser and suspected to have been at the centre of an alleged plot to overthrow Winston Churchill’s wartime government in favour of a pro-Nazi one.

Note 3. This operation is so called after a children’s nursery rhyme “London Bridge is falling down, Falling down, falling down…London Bridge is falling down, My fair lady.”

London Bridge has fallen down many times since it was first built by the Romans in 43 AD, but the most notable was the 1281 collapse that happened when expanding ice from the frozen River Thames crushed five of its arches. The unpopular Queen Eleanor at the time was blamed for misappropriating bridge revenues and failing to use them for repairs. 

Tinkerty Tonk...

When ego takes over

Schadenfreude is a German word which has no equivalent in English. It means ‘pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune’ and perfectly sums up my feeling when I see those with huge egos and full of entitlement make fools of themselves in public.

When the likes of actors, singers or sports personalities say or do something stupid, one can forgive them as is it is generally understood that, to them, any publicity is good publicity. 

Even if they make themselves look like an utter dofus, it is of little consequence to anyone and usually has zero impact on anyone else. By definition of what they do for a living, simply means they are for entertainment purposes only.  

But when a politician allows their arrogance and ego to get the better of them in public it has deeper implications for the rest of us. Although it’s still funny to watch and schadenfreude really kicks in.

Enter KMT Chairman Eric Chu who made the courageous decision recently to do a sit-down  interview with German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW). I’m not sure what he, or his press office, was thinking when they agreed this, but they seemed to assume he would be given the kind of easy ride the local Taiwan media would have given him. 

I guess neither of them bothered to do any research or watch any other recent DW interviews which would have quickly revealed their reporters can be quite feisty and well prepared when questioning politicians. 

Nevertheless, Chu’s minders whipped off the blindfold and sent him tottering into a minefield where he proceeded to step on pretty much every single one. At first, I felt a bit sorry for him as he was clearly out of his depth, but then my schadenfreude sparked-up and I began to enjoy the spectacle. 

Having made his biggest mistake, which was turning up in the first place, it was not long before he was bereft of meaningful answers and lapsed into the waffly style with which he deals with local media, as well as speaking over the interviewer. 

He compounded this with long, rambling and obvious answers, and without really saying anything he struggled through the slow-motion car crash appearance. 

When questioned about the recent NCCU popularity poll putting the KMT on 14 percent versus the DPP at 31.1 percent and the Taipei Mayor's Party on 7.8 percent he reacted with “Don’t give us any wrong information you get from the poll,” going onto say KMT polls show the party rising and confidently forecast “our party will win the election.”

Immediately after, he sensibly decided that it was not going well and like a pilot on a burning aircraft he bailed out with a “thank you, our time is up.’’

I interviewed many politicians and businessmen during my journalistic career and not unreasonably expected them to be as well prepared as I was, and not insult me by waffling or stating the blindingly obvious.

Taiwan Media generally bears little relation to International Media and it is sometimes very obvious that some politicians here really do not understand this. When a boxer climbs into the ring he knows what his opponent is capable of and what the risk is of being beaten senseless.  

Politicians here are generally given a fairly easy ride by the local media who are either on their side, or are not good at formulating questions that really get to the heart of the matter at hand. So you have politicians who feel they can be off-hand with the media, and a media that does not seem to have the authority to hold them properly to account. 

Another background factor evident in this particular interview was the fact the KMT still believes it is the rightful government of Taiwan simply by dint of history and the fact they were in power for so long. In the west the collective noun for such groups is ‘The Establishment’.

This is a term first coined in the 1950s by  British journalist Henry Fairlie, who said, “By the Establishment, I do not only mean the centres of official power, though they are certainly part of it, but rather the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised.

The KMT are very much The Establishment in Taiwan, and are not yet used to being out of power and so unpopular. Given they ruled under martial law from 1949 to 1987 it is no real surprise that actions during those years have left a legacy which considerably underpins the political power they wield in terms of who their rich and influential friends are.

They are no longer top-dog but continue to display an arrogance and ego which seems to make them believe the DPP is just temporary noise that will soon go away.

So I guess this is why they feel they can turn up for an interview so obviously ill-prepared, then try to control the narrative rather than answer questions properly, and then stand up and leave when it does not go their way. 

The other thing to bear in mind is that to turn up for an organisation like DW and make such a hash of it only serves to make Taiwan look foolish abroad, and that is an important issue given the global attention Taiwan is getting at the moment.   

Trotting out tired old platitudes just doesn't cut it. You might be able to get away with it with local media, but when talking to international media you really need something new to say. 

Alternatively, politely decline such interview requests until you feel confident enough, or have something to say, or feel you can think quickly enough on your feet to pull it off. 

Tinkery Tonk...  

My home country is in the shit - literally

You will likely be reading this before the outcome of the UK ruling Conservative Party leadership election on Monday, although the outcome is pretty much assured, with the current Foreign Minister Liz Truss the solid favourite to take over as Prime Minister.

She will take on the seemingly unenviable job of sorting out the dire mess that Britain has become after years of government mis-managment, mainly by the right-wing Conservative party, with a laundry list of damaging policy mis-steps and failures, lies, gaslighting and contempt for the public. All of which prompted the sacking of Prime Minister Boris Johnson who loses his job after this weekend. 

Britain is currently suffering from an acute cost-of-living crisis with inflation running at just over 10 percent in August, the highest in 40 years and also the highest among The Group of Seven (G7) nations. 

A good chunk of this is due to energy prices which have shot up across Europe driven by a spike in demand as countries lifted Covid pandemic lockdowns, compounded by the war in Ukraine as Russian oil and gas exports have been cut back.

But Britain has some unique factors which are making things worse, namely labour shortages as foreign workers left the UK when it pulled out of the European Union (Brexit) and additional taxes on households.

Britain’s debt now stands at just over 100 percent of Gross Domestic Product compared with around 70 percent in 2010 when the current Conservative administration regained power. With a chunk of that due to the now infamous failed Track and Trace system put in place during the pandemic. 

The government blew a colossal 37 billion pounds on the system over two years, which a scathing report by a Westminster spending watchdog described as swallowing up “unimaginable” amounts of taxpayers’ money with no evidence of any measurable difference on the progress of the pandemic. 

Despite this eye-watering spending, track and trace failed in its task of preventing the second and third lockdowns, found a cross-party House of Commons Public Accounts Committee. Committee chair Meg Hillier demanded better control of costs, accusing the government of treating taxpayers “like an ATM machine”.

There are an ongoing series of strikes across Britain by railway, postal, rubbish collectors and even barristers all striking for better pay. As if all this is all not enough, raw-sewage is being pumped in the rivers and surrounding seas due to underinvestment in the now privatised water companies sold off by the Conservative Party government in the late 1980s. There are now fifty beaches in the UK where swimming is banned…Which explains my headline. 

Why am I telling you all this? The reason is that even fully developed nations can find themselves in an awful mess if an electorate allows itself to be duped by unscrupulous  politicians or allows itself to be lied to, blinded by false promises or gives itself up to unthinking political dogma, the so-called ‘red meat’ that politicians throw at the public to gain votes.

This is exactly what has happened in my home country and serves as a warning to other free democracies that career politicians whose main motivation is to gain power and influence, all the trappings of power and influence, a place in the history books, a generous government pension and an easy lucrative job for life hiring themselves out as consultants or speech makers.

There are dozens of examples of this pattern. In this style of life equation, consideration of the living conditions and quality of life of the electorate at large comes a very poor second. The UK is living proof of this with the exit of Boris Johnson who is already churning out opinion pieces for the right-wing press in the UK and lining his own pockets.

Johnson was ultimately undone not by policy disagreements but by his own character failings. When he was elected 32 percent of people thought he would be a good Prime Minister and 32 percent a bad one, 36 percent were undecided. In the latest YouGov Poll 25 percent thought he had done well, 68 percent thought he had done badly, with just seven percent undecided. 

This is in just over the three years he was in power and two years away from a full term in government. Britain has a five year government term compared with Taiwan’s four years.   

There were myriad reasons I decided to leave the country of my birth 25 years ago and  unfortunately my gut feeling about how things were going then, have turned out to be not only  frighteningly accurate, but far worse than I imagined. Politicians with no moral compass were common then, now they seem to have reached plague proportions. 

The unedifying cat-fight between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss for the top UK job exemplifies this, with both hurling promises around which are unaffordable, would damage and already weak economy or are just downright stupid. All they want is the top job and the consequences can go hang.

Pledges to slash taxes by Conservative leadership candidates are unrealistic unless they are matched by spending cuts. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said large, permanent tax cuts could add to pressures on the public purse as the economic outlook deteriorates.

Both Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have promised tax cuts but say their plans are affordable. They are both wrong, lying, or both. It is abundantly clear that all they want is the top job and are both paying lip service to reality in their quest for it.  

I don’t want to sound too cynical, but it’s hard not to be if you take the UK as an example of a democracy gone astray. What worries me is that my adopted country Taiwan has more than its fair share of loose-lipped, over promising, unrealistic and just plain stupid politicians.

Let’s take the Taipei Mayor who in 2014 said he was going to make Taipei surpass Singapore in eight years. Two years later he said it was impossible for Taipei to be like Singapore and that it should be more like the Netherlands. This week the Deputy Taipei Mayor said she would make Zhongxiao East Road like the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

Let’s just let that nonsense sink in for a few seconds…. 

Would anyone in their right mind take any of these statements seriously? Or believe them to be possible? Or believe it was necessary to achieve such a state of affairs? It is just politicians throwing ridiculous statements and promises around hoping the electorate will be fooled into voting for them. These are not serious people striving to improve living standards for ordinary people with realistic strategies over the longer term.  

Someone running for Taoyuan has said he will make the government pay for the downpayment for young people to purchase a flat. There are so many holes in such a ridiculous promise I hardly know where to start, plus the government would just tell him to get lost.

It’s just empty words in a cynical attempt to garner votes and empty vessels make the most noise. Vote for such people and you will end up with the kind of mess that ordinary Britons now find themselves in.

Please don’t fall for the kind of nonsense the British people did and don’t think that just because Taiwan is a fully developed and relatively rich country that it could not all go to hell-in-a-handcart if the wrong people gain power.

One of America’s  Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson, statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect and philosopher who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809 once famously said “The government you elect is the government you deserve.”

Britain, stupidly, gave Boris Johnson’s and the Conservate Party an overwhelming victory in 2019 at the height of Brexit fever….and are now deeply unhappy with the result, the country is being damaged and people are suffering. 

Britain’s recent experience is a stark reminder to beware believing the power hungry, the over-promisers, the popularist and the unrealistic. Choose wisely when you vote, your country’s future is in your hands and is depending on you to do the right thing.  

Tinkerty Tonk...