We are in the initial throes of civil war, and although many will not yet understand this they had better wake up or they will find the country they think they are part of gone.

What is happening now, without any fightback, is everything the far Left and the Corbynistas have ever dreamt of. Total control of the ‘state’ media, aka the BBC, run by the wisest fools who, with unrelenting cynicism, pack panels with left leaning individuals to supposedly represent the Right and outright Trotskyists for the Left and call it balanced.

Black Lives Matter? Of course they do and to suggest otherwise is criminal as well as immoral.

Cries of, ‘the Government must do something’ ring round the rafters. But what must it do - other than set up yet another commission to investigate whether racism exists or not? 

Sturgeon's swagger

But Sturgeon’s arrogant swagger does not make up for her failures in education, health and economic performance.

And frankly, her continued support for her all-at-sea Health Secretary Jeane Freeman is as ridiculous and disrespectful as Boris Johnston’s backing was for Dominic Cummings.

Politicians need to understand that when they behave in the self-serving, self-preserving manner they do, it is little wonder people feel let down and become frustrated and angry.

I’m not suggesting the dismal performance of our political leaders is the direct cause of the unrest and violence we are currently witnessing in our towns and cities. But it sure as hell hasn’t helped.

Until the way change the way we do politics in this country, which undoubtedly means a change in the type of people who aspire to become politicians - that is people with real life experience – there is unlikely to be a restoration of the public’s faith or in our parliamentary systems both north and south of the border.

One thing above all the Covid-19 crisis has highlighted, albeit fleetingly, is that as a nation we are capable of being more caring, compassionate and tolerant.

But unless our political system and those who populate it changes, I fear we will default to unkindliness, anger and frustration.  

6 June 2020           

When in July 2019 Boris Johnson was elected Conservative Party leader and became Prime Minister, I was both pleased and relieved. Not because he was a Tory, but because there was no other politician anywhere close to his popular appeal at a time when the country desperately needed strong leadership.

Frankly, his elevation was a blessed relief from the decent but dull Theresa May who, whatever qualities she may have had and however swiftly she ran though the growing corn, was not and never could be a strong leader.

I was grateful also that Boris had finally ended the nightmare of Jeremy Corbyn.

Boris, it seemed, was a man for the big picture - a man who would lead, who could take the pulse of the electorate and who could guide the nation through difficult times with the strength of his personality and clarity of vision.

I could not have been more wrong.

Still, regardless of the growing evidence of Johnson’s ineptitude, I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he had been seriously ill with coronavirus; he had a new fiancée and no doubt the baby was keeping him up at night.

The Covid-19 crisis has been unprecedented in modern times and dealing with its far-reaching consequences would be a challenge for any government and any Prime Minister.

Sadly, the last few days have clearly exposed Boris’s weakness and lack of vision. He has fumbled the ball whenever it has been passed to him. 

Cardinal Error

Trying to move the UK as a whole out of maximum lockdown when clearly parts of this sadly Disunited Kingdom were at different stages of the pandemic was a cardinal error. All that really achieved was to gift Nicola Sturgeon the opportunity to exploit her relentless separatist agenda.

Compared to Boris’s infrequent and hopelessly muddled appearances at the UK Government’s daily virus briefings, Sturgeon has never missed a chance to be centre stage at the daily Holyrood briefings.

Presentation-wise, she has left Boris flailing in her wake. But her slickness at the podium masks not only the true scale of the serious mistakes she has made during the current crisis, but also her abject failures in managing both health policy and education.

Then there is Johnson’s misplaced loyalty to (or is it fear of?) Dominic Cummings, the Barnard Castle Wanderer. It is not the Prime Minister’s job to be loyal to anybody except the electorate, all else is personal and not relevant to running the nation.

Boris should have cut Cummings down instantly and publicly. If Cummings really were vital to the Number 10 machine, Boris could have started to bring him back within six or so months with little fuss.

Now we have the idiocy of travellers to the UK being made to self-isolate for a fortnight starting in mid-June – it might have made sense if imposed two months ago; it could even be considered immediately – but in a week’s time?

Either it is essential or it is not - there is no halfway house.

Finally – for the moment – consider Hong Kong. Chinese president Xi Jinping is walking all over the agreement of One Country-Two Systems negotiated prior to the handover of Hong Kong from Great Britain to China in 1997.

It was supposed to be a peaceful alignment within the territory of Hong Kong of the competing forces of capitalism and communism. There has been huge unrest in Hong Kong with many public demonstrations against the continuing and increasingly totalitarian imposition of rule from mainland China. 

Boris's Stupidity

Boris barged in offering three million Hong Kong Chinese free entry to the UK and British passports. This was seemingly done straight off the cuff without any consideration for the consequences.

Why? Because Boris wants to be loved. It is his greatest weakness.

I am not suggesting it was wrong to make the offer after due consideration and cross-party consultation (for once a political imperative). But it was wrong to make it without thought, planning, consultation and the wider consideration of the electorate.

Apart from anything, it was perfect grist to the Chinese mill. It removed in one fell swoop most of the external pressure and a great deal of the internal pressure that might have been brought to bear – they would of course have outwardly ignored both but thanks to Boris’s stupidity this card was removed from the pack and can no longer be played.

Now, of course, anyone who argues that it may not be in this country’s interest to offer some three million Hong Kong residents residency in the UK – not that they would all want to come – will be perceived as a bigot, fascist or worse!

Boris has and continues to fail us. Will this change? Not easily. Unless I am missing something, there is a real paucity of political talent at the moment. There is certainly no obvious candidate to replace him.

Matt Hancock is no leader and never will be, Grant Shapps is of no moment and most people cannot understand why he is even in ministerial office.

Rishi Sunak would seem to be doing a good job as Chancellor but should be aware of the fate of William Hague who struck too young.

Priti Patel seems to have faltered and become more authoritarian, usually a sign of weakness. Dominic Raab though at times somewhat insipid, and the more sure-footed Michael Gove are two of the more serious possibilities.

But the real point is will Boris survive? The answer is probably yes because it will be difficult to shoehorn him out. Will he improve as Prime Minister? I very much hope so, but the jury is out.

To survive he must expunge his need to be loved by all. First and foremost, he must display real leadership, develop and demonstrate vision, show he is command of strategy rather than tactics and above all take decisions that benefit the electorate rather than dispensable individuals.  

27 May 2020

By Archie Stirling

Behind every statistic recorded in the daily coronavirus death toll is a person lost and a family devastated. Covid-19 is a cruel and indiscriminate foe.

We know that among its symptoms are loss of taste and smell. But could one of the infection's side-effects also be a loss of sense of proportion?

Every year, about 600,000 people die in the UK. How that average figure will be impacted by coronavirus cannot yet be fully assessed while the disease continues to claim lives, albeit and thankfully at a much slower rate than at its peak in early April.

Undoubtedly, more people will die this year than in an average year. A proportion of these ‘excess deaths’ will of course be directly caused by Covid-19. But emerging evidence suggests that some will also be due to people being unwilling or too frightened to seek medical help for other medical conditions such as heart disease and stroke because of the virus.

So, a crucial question that must be asked – however unpalatable it might be - is whether the unprecedented lockdowns imposed by the UK and Scottish governments are justified by, and in proportion to, the level of additional deaths?

My understanding is that about 10% of people over the age of 80 die every year. So, while there is a big risk that over 80s will not survive coronavirus if they catch it, what are the chances they would have died anyway in the same year?

According to Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, a statistician at Cambridge University: ‘Many people who die of COVID would have died anyway within a short period.’

The average age of people who have died from coronavirus in the UK to date appears to be around 79, most of whom had underlying health conditions.

These are bald facts, but herein lies a greater conundrum. If these statistics are accurate then one might suppose that the lockdown, the ruination of the economy (and make no mistake that is what is happening) and all the interference of the state over the last few months might have been disproportionate and ultimately useless.

However, there is a further complication. It appears that for the elderly death from Coronavirus, if forced into hospital and onto ventilators, is particularly unpleasant.

It is a harsh fact in the midst of a harsh disease: Does this change the answer as to whether the response to the coronavirus crisis has been worth it against the huge longer-term cost, both to the economy and our health?

Maybe such a price is too high, but then the cost to us all might be morally even higher with the knowledge that we achieved financial stability by allowing the elderly to risk a particularly unpleasant and painful death in pursuit of Mammon.

25 May 2020

By Archie Stirling

It has become a daily refrain since the true scale of the coronavirus crisis dawned on a shell-shocked world: Life will never be the same.

What the ‘new normal’ will be is not yet clear. It will not be good, but hopefully not all bad. There are signs the pandemic may result in a more compassionate, caring society, born of a realisation that mutual support and understanding has been key in the fight against a disease that respects neither borders nor background.

As it has become fashionable to say: We are all in this together. Boris Johnston says the crisis has brought out ‘the best in humanity’ and has talked about the ‘phenomenal bravery, compassion and selflessness’ of people as they punctuate each day ‘with a million acts of love and kindness’.

A little florid even by Boris’s standards. But if such changes do occur - and prevail – they will be welcome. However, we can be certain that one thing will not alter post Covid-19. Already there is an abundance of evidence that at Westminster and Holyrood it is, and will be, business as usual. Our politicians are making clear – no change required here.

A different kind of ‘disease’ infects our political systems, both in Edinburgh and London, but unlike the coronavirus, there is little chance of developing a vaccine or finding a cure.

When in 2007 I made a brief venture into politics with the launch of Scottish Voice, my aim was to show there was an alternative to the tragi-comic world of conventional party politics.

Our argument was that politicians had become so mired in tribalism, ideology, petty point-scoring and downright dishonesty, that their service to the electorate was secondary to self-preservation, self-interest and party allegiance.

Independents

Scottish Voice championed what used to be a strong Scottish tradition – the election of independents. Not career politicians, but people of real-life experience and expertise unencumbered by party dogma and ideology.

From a standing start, we fielded 10 candidates in the 2007 Scottish Parliament elections, all from different social, political and working backgrounds. We punched well above our weight in terms of media coverage. A month before the election, The Scotsman reported an opinion poll showing 21% of the electorate was considering casting their regional vote for Scottish Voice. If that support had held, we would have won at least one regional list seat.

When it dawned on the political establishment that we posed a real threat it went into overdrive to attack and ridicule. People were scared off. In the end we came up short.

Now, 13 years on in the midst of a crisis that once again exposes deep scars in the political landscape, I wonder whether Scottish Voice was born before its time.

What this crisis proves is that politicians seldom learn from their mistakes. And the biggest sin is to treat the electorate with contemptuous dishonesty.

The examples are multiplying, the most unedifying of all being the Prime Minister’s ludicrous defence Dominic Cummings after the aide's blatant flouting o the lockdown rules. 

But that pales against the devastating care home crisis and, again, the blatant but hopelessly misguided attempt to conceal the truth. Day after day the SNP administration sought to hide the number of elderly people who had been moved out of hospitals into care homes without being tested for Covid-19.

Then we had Boris’s astonishing claim in the Commons that it ‘wasn’t true’ the care home sector had been advised it was unlikely to face an outbreak of the virus, despite the warning being there in black and white in an official government communique. 

Career politicians

Why do politicians do it? And why, when they inevitably and invariably get caught, do they continue to do it? It is because UK party politics has become a game of PR where deceit, dishonesty and spin are used to conceal the truth from opponents - and, by default, the public. A game in which politicians are terrified of admitting mistakes because they fear the advantage it might hand their adversaries. ‘Never apologise, never explain’ is the only rule in this game.

Career politicians are so immersed in this untrivial pursuit that it never occurs to them that the people who really matter – the electorate, not their opponents – would be prepared to forgive honest mistakes and would accept that politicians don’t have all the answers. All it would take is some trust and humility, two essential qualities that are glaringly absent in most of our political leaders.

We should all pay attention to this. Reform of the larger political parties, I suspect, is a lost cause. As a population, understanding the need to take part actively in the political process is the only sure way to change the system.

Former Prime Minister David Cameron got it wrong when he coined the phrase The Big Society. He should have spoken of The Small Society. In the current malaise of uncertainty, confusion and incompetence, it is participation from within our local communities that will deliver honest political endeavour and more honest, sensible and profitable outcomes.

It is within our own communities that the real experts are to be found – doctors, nurses, teachers, business folk, farmers – all of whom have vital parts to play in creating a more inclusive, trustworthy political system.

We should not be surprised that the current cohort of political masters are not up to the job. Take Health Secretary Matt Hancock: An Oxbridge graduate and briefly a bank economist before entering politics. What makes him an expert in public health?

Or what about his Scottish counterpart, the increasingly accident-prone Jeane Freeman? A former member of the Communist Party, she later joined Labour and became an adviser to First Minister Jack McConnell. She ran her own political consultancy (which became embroiled in a cronyism row) before defecting to the SNP and becoming an MSP only four years ago. What makes her an expert in public health? 

Wise heads

A trawl through the backgrounds of most ministers, both north and south the border, reveals a staggering lack of life experience. And as for their oft-repeated claim that they always follow the science. You only have to tune in to the televised Downing Street daily briefing to realise it is the scientists who are following the politicians. Were they consulted about Boris’s slogan change? No. Did they approve the changes to lockdown restrictions? Probably not.

I speak as someone in the most at-risk age group and who has type-2 diabetes, when I say both governments’ handling of this crisis been chaotic, misguided, at times downright dishonest.

All political careers end in failure. I just took a shortcut. But the more I look at and despair of our political processes, the more I’m convinced that Scottish Voice was on the right track.

Wise heads, unconcerned about party political sensitivities, would not have fallen victim to the kind of ‘group-think’ that has led to some quite irrational political decisions and behaviour. Nor would they have been taken in by the spin masters who dreamt up slogans such as Protect the NHS, Save Lives designed to blatantly divert public attention from the fact that it is the NHS that is supposed to protect us and save our lives.

Don’t get me wrong. I am second to no one in my admiration of the NHS staff risking their lives for the community. But successive government support for, and the hugely over bureaucratic management of the service, has been shameful.

Real experts, too, would have had the confidence and courage to treat us as grown-ups instead of children incapable of fully understanding risk. I am not the only one now questioning the governments’ near-zero tolerance approach to risk. 

‘It is becoming increasingly clear that assumptions central to the models that generate R are flawed,’ he says. ‘One, for example, is that everyone is susceptible to the virus because it is new. But this is clearly not true.’

He says it is likely that as many as eight in 10 people are asymptomatic to Coronavirus and that as many as seven million Britons may already have had the disease.

That being the case, ‘it doesn’t matter if the apparent R is higher than one for healthy people. The best way to deal with the virus is not lockdown but to encourage the R above one for the fit and healthy’ on the basis that this will build herd immunity – probably essential if a vaccine cannot be found.

From a not dis-similar perspective, we do not ban travel on the roads because each year 1,700 people die and 25,000 are seriously injured in accidents.

Sadly, it is inevitable that more people will die from the virus, though thankfully the mortality rate appears to be falling consistently. But the vast majority who get the virus will recover. Efforts to flatten the curve have been chaotic, but at least it is on a downward trajectory, and the NHS is coping.

But we cannot live like this permanently or until a vaccine or cure is discovered. And we cannot, for example, tolerate crass and immensely damaging impositions such as the two-week quarantine on travellers, including returning holidaymakers, arriving in the UK from overseas. 

Personal choice

We need to resume life and hope we don’t get run over by a car when crossing the road in an effort to avoid close contact with another human being.

Our freedoms are being eroded by politicians fearful of their incompetence being exposed (though that has already happened). We are not trusted to make sensible decisions for ourselves or about others, although the evidence suggests most people have behaved with exemplary responsibility.

Personal choice is a pillar of our jealously guarded democracy. It is regrettable when people abuse that right. And no one is suggesting that in the midst of a major national emergency some of those rights should not be suspended temporarily while the experts work out a sensible way forward.

But we desperately need real experts – clear-minded, fearless and frank – at the heart of our political systems. It is true that life might never be the same after the coronavirus crisis.

Perhaps one of the positive changes will be a rethink of the way we do politics.

April 25, 2019

By Archie Stirling

It is rumoured that the only person Theresa May really trusts and listens to is her husband, Philip. If that is true, we must hope that whatever advice he offered during their Easter walking holiday in Wales was sounder than the pearls of wisdom he dispensed during a similar sojourn to Snowdonia in 2017.

That was, apparently, when Philip thought it a jolly good idea for his other half to call a snap General Election - which infamously led to her Government majority being wiped out.

country a referendum on Europe and has now totally immobilised the House of Commons.

The patient might never recover. A Survation poll last week revealed a massive haemorrhaging of support for the Tories among grassroots activists because of the Government’s mishandling of Brexit, with one councillor lamenting: ‘The Conservative Party is dead.’

It is not only the Tory Party in demise. Westminster itself may be in the last throes. But like an elderly and increasingly infirm relative, might its passing actually be a blessed relief?

If the Brexit fiasco proves nothing else, it is that the political system to which we (or more precisely our politicians) have desperately cleaved for generations has reached the end of its useful life.

That it is no longer fit for purpose is something I concluded long before now. In 2007, I and a group of like-minded individuals, launched Scottish Voice, a new independent, non-aligned party which sought to introduce a radically fresh approach to the way in which we did politics in both the UK and Scotland. Our aim was to challenge the whip-driven, party tribalism that has for too long held a vice-like grip on our political system.

We said then that neither Westminster nor Holyrood was working as they should. And they’re not working now. The EU debacle apart, you only have to consider the abject failure of the SNP government to tackle the crisis in Scottish schools to understand that, like Brexit, education solutions transcend narrow party-political interests.

Major challenges such as these will never be fully met will until the worn-out mould of 'machine' politics is smashed and the fragments consigned to the historical dustbin.

We said in 2007 that we supported prudent, common-sense government that did not ask whether an idea was left wing or right wing - but only if it worked. We did not believe this could be achieved by using Westminster or Holyrood as political playgrounds where point-scoring, dogma and party tribalism took precedence over the best interests of the electorate.

Jealously-guarded hegemony

With some notable exceptions, Scottish Voice was favourably received by the media. We punched well above our weight in terms of the column inches and broadcast time we commanded. There was a sense of something new and fresh on the political horizon.

But the political ‘establishment’, fearing any threat to its jealously-guarded hegemony, did what we knew it would – it deployed contempt, arrogance and derision in self-serving measure.

Considering we had launched only four months before the May Scottish parliamentary elections, we polled just under 10,000 votes among a small group of candidates spanning a spectrum of political, social and cultural backgrounds.

But the truth is we failed then to make more than a small dent in the armour of the political classes. Now, 12 years after that attempt to at least begin a debate about the nature of the British political process, Brexit has me, and others, wondering whether Scottish Voice was born prematurely. If ever there was a time to set aside blind political allegiances for the greater good of the nation, then surely Brexit is it.

The problem is, that while we hear politicians from all parties talking about compromise, most of them are too steeped in the convention of adversarial party politics to be capable of practising what they preach. Others are simply too fearful of the party whips, either from cowardice or in the hope of gaining a step up the career ladder.

I don’t know precisely what type of constitutional change, if any, is required to replace the dominant two-party system we have for so long endured at Westminster. The change needed, perhaps, is less about structure and more about attitude. We had high hopes that things would be better in the Scottish Parliament, but you only have to tune in to First Minister’s Questions to realise that tribalism is alive and rampant at Holyrood too.

Major overhaul

I am not suggesting that politicians should abandon their political and moral principles at any cost. But when you have politicians who would rather martyr themselves on their party crosses than concede even an inch to an opponent - because they are an opponent - we must examine whether the political process is serving the electorate or is out-of-date and in need of major overhaul.

When the dust finally settles over Brexit – if it ever does – a re-examination of how we do politics in both the UK and Scotland is needed. Fixing the system, perhaps, might be the only way to affect change in the way our elected representatives conduct themselves. Certainly, in parliaments where a range of smaller parties have greater influence, more sensible decisions seem to be made. And by ‘smaller’ I do not mean single-issue parties such as the Greens. What we need are parties made up of independently-minded people from a cross-section of professional expertise and experience who are not hidebound by ideology.

I ran my political race in 2007. But it now seems I jumped the starter’s gun. The sentiments that led to the advent of Scottish Voice and the principles on which it was founded are even more relevant now than they were back then.

Scottish Voice, or something like it, needs urgent revival. My appeal is to those

with the vision, imagination and courage to step forward and help make it happen.

Our future, and the future of generations to follow, may depend on it.