The Cass Report

Only an idiot would envy Hilary Cass’ job, in analysing the complex fiasco of the GIDS clinic at the Tavistock. Not surprisingly, it’s taken her a long time, and she’s produced a very long report. A lot of it is nece4ssary and intelligent. There is a dangerous lack of clear evidence about the effects of various treatments, and in some cases direct hostility to securing better evidence. The massive increase in young people reporting gender dysphoria is a serious problem, not just a fad to be waved away. And it’s clear that whatever side you take in this complicated mess, the management at GIDS did not handle serious professional disagreements with courage or tact.

Then Cass addresses, as she has to, the climate in which all this takes place. There are extreme views, social media attacks, outrageous accusations of transphobia directed at dedicated professionals trying to do their best. In this area, as so many the prospect of constructive debate is currently looking very remote. “This must stop”, says Cass, sounding like a primary school teacher calling six-year olds to order. But they’re not little kids. They’re older teenagers, swearing defiance and carrying knives, demanding what she plans to do about it, and right now the answer isn’t clear. .

Two Views of Labour

Everyone seems to think we’ll eventually get a Labour government, but there’s not much agreement about how much of an improvement that will be. I read Owen Jones’ Guardian article about why he’s resigned from the Labour Party, and it makes a lot of sense. There’s the urgent matter of Gaza, and Starmer’s refusal to acknowledge the urgency of the situation, or the strength of feeling mong his supporters. And beyond that there’s the dismal tale of retreat, of endless backtracking from positions that had seemed to be principled and secure.

But then there’s Ian Dunt, arguing that we can’t hope for much. This isn’t the time for gestures or even ideals. We should be happy to settle for a government that’s halfway efficient and not actually corrupt, because that would be a massive improvement on what we’ve had for the last ten years. Things might get better, a bit at a time. It won’t be pretty, but in our current desperate situation it would be rash to hope for more.

This isn’t a choice I enjoy spelling out, and at different times I drop on one side or the other, but I’d love to feel more confident, one way or the other.

Heartbreak in Ukraine

When Russia invaded Ukraine I devoured the papers, and took notes. Within a couple of months I’d produced a booklet of poems as a fund-raiser, and I faithfully listened to Ukrainecast to keep track of developments. But now? I know it’s still happening, but I’ve lost track.

So I watched the documentary “Ukraine: Enemy in the Woods” as a way to catch up. Little has changed. Ukraine is short of manpower and ammunition, fighting an enemy with an apparently endless supply of both. These young kids are enormously impressive, but they’re fighting in grim conditions against appalling odds, seeing their friends killed every day.

To them the only conceivable outcome is victory. Any kind of deal with Putin would be a betrayal of the sacrifices already made, because he can’t be trusted an inch. But the Western powers which have so far kept them going have limited resources, limited attention span, and the massive distraction of Gaza. I’m glad to have caught up a bit, but it’s hard to find glimmers of hope.

Aditya Chakrabortty

Where would be without zoom? In the last month I’ve heard a lecture by Pankaj Mishra, attended a seminar celebrating the anniversary of the pit strike, and had Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram educate me about the development of the North. And all without leaving the house. Just remarkable.

The most recent event was one of the best - Aditya Chakarbortty talking about the development of his journalistic career. He is, obviously, a nice, pleasant, intelligent person, which helps. He was fascinating about his family and childhood, and how his own attitudes have developed. It’s probably only in the last year that I’ve consciously sought out his pieces, been aware that he’s one of the stable of Guardian columnists I’m keenest to read. Because they’re familiar faces, sometimes enthusiasm can fade, and people whose views often coincide with mine become over time a bit too familiar, less of a priority to read.

But he’s arrived more recently, and what strikes me most powerfully is his insistence on how much lies beyond the vision of the two main parties. There are lots of people untouched by the mainstream political drama, and Chakrabortty rightly sees it as his role to illuminate these untold stories. In this he joins a growing army of commentators - John Harris, Neal Lawson, Owen Jones, Burnham and Rotheram, Rory Stewart - who suggest that our current political system is not fit for purpose and the urgent priority for all of us is to find something better - more locally responsive, less tied by party loyalty, and able to harness the energies of people who want to improve the lives of themselves and those around them.

Something Better

During the first lockdown, I signed on to the Ezra Klein show (a podcast run by the New York Times), because they had brilliant interviews about Ukraine, and there was a very generous opening offer. That offer’s expired, and I’m now paying over £50.00 a year, but it’s still totally worth it, and one of the few positive highlights of my week.

Ezra Klein is seriously intelligent. He reads a lot, thinks hard about what’s happening, and finds the right, precise questions to ask his guests in sustained 1:1 interviews, usually longer than an hour. They like coming on his programme, because they’re given time to develop what they have to say, and aren’t subjected to artifical arguments to entertain the audience. But that doesn’t mean it’s soft or easy. Klein’s recently completed a series of six programmes on Gaza, talking to a range of experts who between them cover a vast spectrum of viewpoints. You may not end up with an easy answer, but you do get considerably wiser.

Not that he’s not interested in answers. A recent programme explored the possibility of Biden not being the Democratic candidate. He is at the moment, and shows no inclination to stand down, but Klein thinks that may change. He likes Biden, admires what he’s done, thinks he could be President - but doesn’t think he can win the election. At the moment polls suggest that’s right, so Klein devotes careful, ingenious thought to exploring exactly how the Democrats might end up with someone else. Not obvious, but intriguing and constructive; definitely worth a thought.

Benefits

A quick skim through the papers suggests that all is not well with the benefits system. A woman commits suicide, because she has been persistently pursued regarding overpayments, despite the fact that she and her doctor have made it clear the DWP should approach her daughter rather than her. A study of single parents suggests that they are being punished and “set up to fail” by an unrealistic government drive to force them into something near full time work when their children turn three.

But maybe this will change with a Labour government? Don’t bank on it. Liz Kendall is anxious to insist that “there will be no option of a life on benefits.” The aim is not to humanise the system, to provide practical support which offers hope for the future. What’s important is to deny the scoungers, make sure nobody’s getting away with anything.

So the shadow play goes on, offering voters what they think we want to hear, and the chances of improving an inefficient and vindictive system shrink to zero. Like Wes Streeting says, false hope is worse than no hope, so let’s just settle for no hope and forget about making things better.

One-man Band

‘ “Fighting must stop now” in Gaza, says Starmer.’

It’s “fighting” that must stop, you’ll notice. Not the Israelis, who even now are not held to be responsible. But why is “now” so specially different from a month ago, or two months ago, or whenever Jess Phillips and various other shadow cabinet members were forced to give up their post for saying exactly the same thing?

They’re different, of course. They are not the leader who - as Blair and Mandelson are no doubt repeating daily - is in a very special, responsible position of having to decide, and is therefore always right. Except that in this situation, Starmer is blatantly, obviously wrong, and should have the decency to say so. But then again, Blair and Mandelson won’t let him, because that’s not what leaders do.

Starmer continually speaks as if he is simply a wise statesman acting on his own, rather than the leader of a party, to whom he could be accountable. If he’s so desperate to claim sole responsibility for transforming the Labour Party single-handed, he should have the honest to admit it when he cocks things up.

Leadership

Yet again, I’m depressed by the quality of UK politics, especially so far as leadership is concerned. Before he became leader, Sunak seemed to have some admirable virtues - calm, clear-headed, trying to achieve some consistency. But in the present state of the party he seems obliged to go out on a limb, and perform extreme gestures in order to keep the membership onside.

It was fine, for instance, to attack Starmer’s changes of position, but who on earth persuaded him to echo the crude contempt of Johnson’s gibe that “he doesn’t know what a woman is.” As though identity really were a simple blokish fact of life, which only a fool would question. Even without Brianna Ghey’s mother hearing this, whether or not she had actually taken her place, makes very little difference. It’s just shabby, and he should be ashamed.

And then there’s Piers Morgan, who regards it as challenging politics to make a bet on air. I’d guess Sunak shakes his hand simply because he’s trying to be polite, doesn’t want to seem rude, without recognising that he’s putting himself on Morgan’s level, accepting that making an expensive wager is a masculine way of saying he thinks he’s right. And I’d love to say Starmer was better, but he’s just equally depressing in a different direction, constantly changing his mind while pretending that he’s being rational and consistent. Just pathetic.

Fame at last

I’ve been entering poetry competitions for a while, and relative to many I’ve been lucky - I can produce a list which makes me look quite successful. But I know that the price of those few successes is a much larger number of failures. Last year, for instance, I sent out thirty poems in January-May, and has no success with any of them.

So it’s great to record what may well be the peak of my poetic career. On Saturday, February 3rd, at the Dugdale Centre, Enfield, David Constantine presented me with the first prize in a competition he’d judged - out of 1000 entries. That’s good enough in itself, but what I’m even more impressed with is the quality of the judge.

I’d heard the name, but to my shame knew very little in detail - though I discovered a lot through frantic googling between being told on Monday night and travelling down on Saturday. He’s a celebrated poet, winner of the Queen’s Medal (and there’s only one of those each year) as well as being a world-class translator of poetry. He’s also a lovely, decent human being who’s brilliant at talking about poetry, how it works and why it matters. This surely is as good as it gets.

Politics Weekly

During covid lockdown I stopped watching the Tv news, because it was so depressing. I’ve never gone back to it, because it’s so bitty and superficial, and while my main news source remains reading the paper copy of The Guardian, I’ve increasingly supplemented that with podcasts.

But it matters which podcasts. Friends have recommended The Rest is Politics, with Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart, but while they’re both knowledgeable and entertaining, I find the pace at which thy skim over topics (“Can’t take the risk of being boring - keep moving!”) frustrating and dissatisfying. I’m much happier with John Harris’ Politics Weekly, which spends its weekly half-hour concentrating on one main topic, with two or three voices being given the time to explore an issue in depth.

That doesn’t mean the result is cheerful. A recent episode, for instance, was a powerful shove in the direction of despair. It looked ahead at 2024, so far as domestic politics was concerned. By the end, I had a clear picture of a dead-end Tory government, postponing the election for as long as it could, and intent upon poisoning the wells of public discourse so as to make life as difficult as possible for its successor. I think that’s probably accurate, but until now I hadn’t grasped how depressing a prospect that will be, and how unlikely it is that anything can avert it.

The End of the World?

And just was I was starting to get hopeful (see Louise Casey, from January 14) I’m now almost totally depressed. The reason is a TV documentary about the return of Trump, made by Robert Moore, the one who made that incredible liver report from the January 6th assault on the Capitol.

His argument is that Trump is doing much better than he was in the build-up to the previous election, and that Biden - however preferable in our terms he may be in his response to climate, Ukraine or Gaza - is really struggling. There was a patronising Guardian review suggesting that Moore was throwing up his hands in horror, and not analysing the situation clearly enough, but I think that’s wrong.

He produces a series of people who talk about why they used to support Biden, but will now support Trump. Black, Muslim and young - not realistic beneficiaries of a future Trump administration, but nonetheless determined that they haven’t got what they were hoping for, so they’ll try something else. Something else will definitely turn out to be worse than last time. Trump wants a private militia just like Putin has, and is making massive preparations to replace large parts of the government operation with his own supporters. If he gets close but doesn’t win, he has a large number of armed supporters who will fight to support the cause - and that’s a fact, not an image. Win or lose, things will get worse, and the impact of that on climate, Ukraine, Gaza is fairly easy to work out.

Louise Casey

Louise Casey arrived on the scene as an uncompromising bruiser - “I’m the solution, you’re the problem.” There was a notorious early incident when she calculated that the best way to make an impression on assembled police officers was to get drunk and swear at them.

She’s come a long way since then. Her current radio 4 series, Fixing Britain, is just brilliant. She focuses on a range of tricky problems, and in half an hour presents intelligent, specific ways in which these can be tackled. It’s not all about her; she’s assembled an impressive network of experts who really know what they’re talking about, and if you get sceptical there is the track record - with covid imminent, huge numbers of homeless people were suddenly taken off the streets and into safety. And who ran that operation? Louise Casey.

But this isn’t just her banging her own drum. It’s also a very specific analysis of how government can help, and where it can go wrong. She prodcues plenty of examples of both, and over the five episodes she extracts general lessons for government - what works, and what doesn’t. This is a brilliant series, because at this low point in our governance it actually offers tangible, realistic hope.

The Post Office Scandal

It is astonishing, as Gaby Hinsliff writes in today’s Guardian, that it takes a play to make people notice the Post Office scandal. Yesterday I sent a poem about it to Culture Matters, and they posted it; but I sent the same poem to them two years ago, and it sank without trace. The facts, and the outrage, have been clear for years, so what does it take to actually change things?

More than you’d think. A few years ago, you’d have said that the Williams report was the solution to the scandal of Windrush. A detailed tough analysis of what went wrong, with clearly defined solutions as to how to put that right. Priti Patel accepted those conclusions in full.

But now, does anyone remember what they were? Suella Braverman wasn’t impressed, dismissed Williams as “not set in stone”, and cancelled some of the work it had begun. Sunak didn’t seem to mind. Labour didn’t seem to notice. Our fearless independent media somehow found other topics far more interesting. The Amnesia industry is alive and well.

Labour's Line on Israel

Oct 11: Starmer tells LBC he’s no objection to Israel cutting off water and electricity from Gaza.

Nov 16: Jess Phillips resigns from Labour’s front bench because there’s a fierce three-line whip against supporting a ceasefire.

Dec 10: David Lammy - with Starmer’s backing - attacks Israel for ignoring settler violence on the West Bank.

That’s not a line, it’s a zigzag. This isn’t an organised party, proceeding through rational analysis. It’s a dictatorship, where everything is geared to accommodating the leader’s whims today - which may well have changed by tomorrow. And this is what the country is being offered, as an alternative to the Tories. God help us all.

Set your sights on terrorists

Yet another heartbreaking story from Gaza. Three Israeli hostages manage to escape from captivity, and try to get back safely to Israel. They take off their shirts. One of them has a stick with a white flag. An Israeli soldier on a rooftop shouts “Terrorists!” and opens fire. Two of the three are killed immediately. The third runs into a building, where the soldiers pursue him. He’s pleading for help in Hebrew, but they shoot him anyway.

That’s three more casualties from this mess, but it’s also a stunning example of the mindset of the Israeli military - think self-defence, think shoot, think terrorist. Don’t question whether the person in front of you actually needs to be shot, just shoot them. Shirts off, white flag - what else were they supposed to do to show they weren’t a threat?

While Netanyahu sees this as a chance to campaign, and cling to corrupt power, nothing much is going to change. But whose job is it to tell him it’s time to go?

Educational Reform

You probably didn’t see this. The House of Lords has produced a report calling for an urgent overhaul of secondary education in England. Our system is too focussed on academic learning and written exams, and pupils need the chance to experience more practical, applied forms of learning. This isn’t totally unexpected; it echoes what’s been said for years by school leaders, academics and teacher unions.

But we’re England, so we do things differently. Other countries are astonished that we have allowed one opinionated individual without any professional qualification (you’ve got it - Michael Gove) to determine the character of English education for over a decade. This has always been a disaster, but with the shattering impacts of Covid and spending cuts, putting it right is even more urgent than it was.

Should we expect radical transformation from a Starmer government? Don’t hold your breath.

Ceasefire now?

So if Netanyahu thinks it’s OK to be talking about a ceasefire, maybe Starmer is up for that too? Or maybe not? You just can’t tell. First of all he insists on a hard line, throws out a lot of good people who have good reasons for the way they’re voting, but his only interest is in himself, and his solitary role. He’s disappointed but hey, that’s leadership.

Somebody points out that even for a disciple of Tony Blair that could sound just a little self-centred, so he changes tack and says his concern is for Palestinian civilians, not the Labour Party. But the Labour Party is his job. That’s what he’s there for, and if it’s painfully split down the middle by his insistence on demonstrating his leadership skills, that’s damage he needs to put right.

At the moment there’s no sense that he recognises the harm he’s causing. Just stay in step with the US, says Blair, and we know where that leads. What about the way the world sees the UK? The massive discrepancy in values between how we treat Ukraine and how we treat Gaza? What about how young voters see Labour? All Starmer’s calculations are about obeying his middle-aged male advisers, and winning back red wall voters - also aging and white. The possibility that there are a lot of young people out there, many of them not white, who could potentially vote Labour but are currently deciding that they won’t - just doesn’t seem to occur. There have to be people in the shadow cabinet who see that, so why isn’t he listening to them?

Going out with a bang

Finally, Suella Braverman goes. She was only there to get Sunak the leadership, but even he can see that there comes a point when that price is too high. Her supporters, of course, are irate - “Come for Suella, and you come for us all” the Daily Mail trumpets, as though this were the last stand of Che Guevara.

But it’s not a movie, it’s a government. She’s a minister, and there are rules. If you submit an article to No. 10 for approval, and they tell you changes you should make, you have to make those changes - or be sacked. She wouldn’t make them, so she’s out. Just as she was out of Liz Truss’ government for leaking confidential material to a friend. It’s not rocket science; it’s called keeping to the rules.

But rules do not apply. We’re in the lunatic world of performance politics, where the stance is all. Forget competence, making things happen, seeing things through. It’s about striking attitudes, saying I’m right and you’re wrong (whether or not you happen to be Prime Minister), appealing to the base. And somehow behaviour which would be unacceptable in a stroppy teenager is seen to be acceptable if it comes from a leadership candidate.

Managing the News

Tricky for Starmer, how to negotiate Gaza and the Hamas attack. In the early stages, it’s not surprising that he wants to keep in step with other Western powers, not be outflanked by Sunak, retain the credit for fighting anti-Semitism. So he says it’s an outrage, and Israel must be free to respond. Even if that includes hutting off water and electricity? Yes.

That’s what happened. He had a clear chance to distinguish between rational response and a war crime, and he didn’t take it. In that interview, he basically said “Anything goes.” Since then the Mandelson-style machine has whirred into action, insisting that that wasn’t what he meant, that he’s now totally clear human rights must be defended, that he’s in favour of a pause but not a ceasefire, because that would benefit Hamas…It’s all very frantic and insistent, and it doesn’t face the truth, which was that he made a mistake. In this context, under that pressure, not amazing. But it’s so damaging that he can’t afford to admit it.

So, damage limitation. Go and talk to some Muslims, insist that he does care about the Palestinians, and then produce a statement underlining his wisdom and compassion - which infuriates the Muslims he spoke to, because it’s dishonest about the nature of the conversation that they shared. So, so short-sighted, this obsession with presenting the leader as faultless, when all that does is disillusion potential supporters who know that isn’t true.

Israeli Spokesmen

Really tricky territory, Gaza. Lots of different people ready to descend in fury on those who get things wrong, so God help the BBC if they don’t report every development with the proper caution and nuance. Or even if they do, much of the time.

Early on, Starmer and Sunak were competing to show who could be most in support of Israel. And even in those early stages, problems began to emerge. Deplore the Hamas attack, of course, but “want to see you win” ? What does a win look like, for the Israelis? The total demolition of Gaza?

Some of their spokesmen don’t help. Accusing the UN Secretary General of a “blood libel” and demanding his resignation isn’t a rational response to a speech which clearly condemned the Hamas attack. The bit they didn’t like was Guterres suggestion that this attack did not happen in a vacuum. But it’s true. Look at the casualty figures, Israeli and Palestinian, over the last decade, and you see why the Hamas attack might have happened.

In the same way, an Israeli spokesman on pm argued against a ceasefire, because that would suit Hamas. To him, it’s simply war between Hamas and Israel, and Hamas has to lose. There is no recognition of civilians in Gaza, helpless and unable to move, paying the price for Israeli rage. The only thing that counts is the Hamas attack, and making sure it can never happen again. It’s the politics of vengeance, as usual, and it isn’t the answer.