How long between referenda?

We in the UK don't have much of a tradition of referendums, and we don't have a written constitution, so to the question of "should the Scots have another independence referendum?" or "should we re-run Brexit?", our politicians simply shrug and carry on as usual.

But is that really good enough? Both of those examples proved to be marginal decisions and circumstances change. But equally you can't just change your mind as a nation every few years; that would make long-term policy making impossible.

In the absence of a written constitution, our Great British Tradition of Keep Buggering On comes into play: kick the ball into the long grass (for the uninitiated, this is something Donald Trump does to his opponents at golf): too difficult, file it under Virtually Impossible and focus on more urgent matters. But perhaps the biggest problem in British politics is short term thinking.

If my main complaint about the above two referendums is the narrow victory margin, it seems logical that I can't justify a re-run if the margins remain narrow, even if in the other direction.

The biggest problems with both issues is that they were driven by fanatical ideology; maybe we shouldn't allow fanaticism to define our future.

My solution to this problem is:

• set a future date for a repeat of each referendum, perhaps 25 years hence (how's that for long grass?)
• subject to certain criteria being met, those criteria being measures of support in the relevant electorate for the poll; for instance in Scotland a 75% majority in the Scottish parliament for a party whose manifesto for the election for that parliament specifically included an independence commitment. Similarly, if parties with a specific manifesto commitment to rejoin the European Union were to, between them, get 75% of the seats (or perhaps 75% of the votes) in a UK General Election
• Once a referendum has been thus initiated and completed, whatever the outcome, the clock would be reset for a further 25 years
• These rules to be set in stone in a law, with a provision that the law would require a 75% majority vote in both Houses of Parliament to overturn it

What do you think, dear readers? Would you like a constitutional convention to consider these proposals? To plan effectively for the long-term future? Or would you prefer us to Keep Buggering On?

Footy updates 2025/5

As you can see, our two North London favourites are leading the way in the Premier League, albeit after just two matches. The Gunners hammered newly promoted Leeds United with two goals from new boy Viktor Gyökeres, two from the League's best right back Jurien Timber and an exciting Premier League debut for 15yo Max Dowman, who won a penalty and, later tis week, will return to school in year 11.

Tottenham had the easier task, away to a disjointed Manchester City, but a win's a win!

Elsewhere, news is simply awful. So bad I can't bring myself to show the tables. Charlton lost at home to one of the promotion favourites Leicester City. At least they have 4 points in the bag so no panic yet. The other promotion favourites Ipswich Town slipped to a defeat away to Preston and now have just 2 points after 3 games. It's not what we were hoping for. They are still making signings but they seem to be based on development and future resale value rather than improving the starting eleven.

Wycombe scrambled a 90th minute equaliser against Reading and both of them slid into the relegation zone at this early stage. Things can only get better.

Help - invasion!

I've been invaded:

I know that some of my readers are gardening fanatics and I need you to tell me - how do I get rid of this insidious stuff (I think it's bindweed) with minimum strain on my 81yo back and with a guarantee that it won't return?

Alternatively, is there a way I can create a pretty, Chelsea-worthy garden using its pretty white flowers?

My main gardening tool is a flamethrower (aka weedburner) but it doesn't destroy the roots.

Footy updates 2025/4

The mighty Wycombe Wanderers have had many ups and downs in their recent history. Managers came and went, promotion/relegation and some memorable nights under the lights. Notably a FA Cup semi final against Liverpool at Villa Park in 2001. We woz there! They've had some pretty decent managers on occasions - Martin O'Neill in the 1990s got them into the Football League, Gareth Ainsworth achieved promotion to League One in 2018 and to the heights of the Championship two years later. That lasted just one season before relegation and Ainsworth led them to the playoffs a season later, after which he left to become manager at Queen's Park Rangers. His successor Matt Bloomfield, like Ainsworth a Wycombe player legend, made them into a good side again and they competed (unsuccessfully, losing to blog favourites Charlton Athletic) in the playoffs again. Bloomfield left to become manager at Luton. They have started this season disastrously. Defeat at home to Exeter on Tuesday followed two defeats and a draw, leaving them one place above the relegation places. They are at home to fellow strugglers Reading on Saturday - a relegation six-pointer this early in the season?

Wycombe probably need to be better at holding onto good managers.

But the news of the day involves two clubs we are following on this blog series. 24 hours ago, it looked as if England star and chess champion Eberechi Eze was on his way to sign for Tottenham Hotspur. He'd have been a great signing for them but, in typical Daniel Levy style, Spurs apparently wanted to squeeze a few extra pence off the transfer fee. Meanwhile Arsenal's star striker Kai Havertz suffered a knee injury which it looks like would mean him missing a few months of the season. Sporting Director Andrea Berta leapt into action and clinched a deal to take Eze from Crystal Palace and out from under Tottenham's noses. It has to be confirmed but, as I write this, Eze has been left out of Palace's Europa Conference League team tonight, so he is expected to take a medical at Arsenal tomorrow. Oh joy😂

Proper interviews

I’ve become a fan of Amol Rajan’s interviews on his YouTube channel “I’m Amol Rajan”. Recently he interviewed Kemi Badenoch and before that John Major. His first question to Sir John Major was why he agreed to the interview when he rarely did so. The answer was that most TV interviews are short form and inevitably lead to sound bites rather than considered debate. In contrast, Rajan offers a one hour, thoughtful examination of past, present and future.

I like Rajan’s style. He doesn’t indulge in hectoring; his approach is genuinely to allow his interviewees the opportunity to inform the audience and he doesn’t treat them as adversaries. That isn’t to say he ducks difficult questions, just that he doesn’t treat such questions as attempts to trip them up. After Baadenoch dissed her old school as displaying "the soft bigotry of low expectations", he quoted the school principal as denying this; Badenoch responded with, "I don't know who that person is." Although she comes across as thoughtful and likeable much of the time, this dismissal came across as patronising. Her self-description as "culturally Christian" feels shallow.

He gives the feeling of actually liking his victims and relished spending an hour with them. His response to Badenoch's saying she snitched on a fellow 15 year old pupil at school for cheating (he got expelled) was "No wonder you were so unpopular, you sound really annoying", the kind of thing you'd say to a good friend, knowing they won't take offence. Does she do herself any favours in this interview? Not really; she's more like a think tank researcher than a politician. There was not much on policy, because she is still in the learning/thinking stage: "You can give easy answers if you haven't thought it all through. I do the thinking and what people are going to get with new leadership under me is thoughtful Conservatism, not knee-jerk analysis.” So more Keith Joseph than Margaret Thatcher, Anthony Giddens than Tony Blair, Steve Hilton than David Cameron, and who ever heard of them? If Kemi Badenoch is not careful, her innate caution will be swamped by her party's desire for - above all else - winning elections. And there is indeed a sense of vulnerability: "I'm somebody who people have always tried to write off, and I have always succeeded and I believe I can do that with the Conservative party".

John Major, in contrast, has no pressure on him; he's been there, done it, he is free to speak to truth. He comes over as despairing about modern British politics; about Brexit in particular of course but the standard of public discourse and of political debate too. He dismisses a question about Boris Johnson and "partygate" as completely unworthy of his attention. On the Conservative government's Rwanda policy: “I thought it was un-Conservative, un-British, if one dare say in a secular society, un-Christian, and unconscionable and I thought that this is really not the way to treat people. We used to transport people, nearly three hundred years ago, from our country. Felons, who at least have had a trial … I don’t think transportation — for that is what it is — is a policy suitable for the 21st century.” Brexit was “the most divisive thing in our party in my lifetime...Britain has become “weaker, poorer,” isolated from European alliances and diminished on the world stage."

Rajan finishes his interviews with some quickfire questions:

What time do you wake up in the morning? KB: 5.45 (weirdly precise) JM: Around 5.30–6.00am

What time do you go to bed? KB: midnight JM: Usually around 10.30–11.00pm

Greatest achievement in politics (so far)? KB: "getting the postmasters' convictions overturned" JM:  “I think the peace in Northern Ireland is the thing I would most like to be remembered for … though it was not mine alone, it was the work of many hands.”

How would you like to be remembered? JM: fondly

What would you still like to achieve? JM: "I think I’d like to live long enough to see my country at ease with itself"

What's your guilty pleasure? KB: taking my shoes off. JM: lemon drop martinis (to Amol Rajan's confession that he doesn't know what that is, JM: “Then your life needs to be enhanced”)

What makes a good leader? KB: "Honesty, grit, determination, conviction" JM: “You need to carry people with you — the country, your colleagues, sometimes even your opponents. If you can’t, you don’t really have leadership, you just have noise.”

Making a comparison between the Conservative party's (and the country's) past leader and the new, as yet unproven, manifestation, might be unfair. Kemi Badenoch is at the beginning of her journey and I'm sure the ever-courteous Sir John Major might have some helpful advice on how best to succeed in her goals; does she yet have the experience and wisdom to seek it out?

I look forward to more of these ever-courteous encounters.

Blessed are the peacemakers

If I were to ask you to estimate how many nominations there were for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize you might, based on an assumption of seriousness, guess maybe 10-20. The actual number? 338. 

Who are they? We don't know and we won't until 2075, since the names are held secret by the Norwegian Nobel Committee - which is different from the Swedish bodies responsible for the Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature and Economics prizes. Alfred Nobel was Swedish but he stipulated in his will that the Peace prize be judged by a committee of five chosen by the Norwegian Parliament. The 2025 Committee members are:

• Jørgen Watne Frydnes – Chair, a former nonprofit leader & businessman, youngest ever committee head. 
• Asle Toje – Vice Chair, a foreign policy scholar and longtime contributor to peace and geopolitics. 
• Anne Enger – Former Centre Party leader and culture minister. 
• Kristin Clemet – Former Conservative Party cabinet member. 
• Gry Larsen – Former Labour Party state secretary and political adviser.

Despite the "50 year" secrecy, Roger Boyes in the Times of 12 August reported that Donald Trump was "nominated by Pakistan, Israel and Cambodia". Now there's a bunch of happy campers. Boyes doesn't reveal how he came about this information - perhaps an email from Netanyahu?

It seems to be a media "given" that Trump is seeking (maybe even expecting) the prize this year. Indeed, there has been much recently from the White House trumpeting (no pun intended, it just came out) that he has "stopped six wars" or he's "just ending five wars" (maybe one of the original six has started up again). Only the other day the obsequious White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt (no offence Karoline, it's a requirement for the job) said that "President Trump 'deserves' the Nobel Peace Prize." She went a step further, declaring that "it's 'well past time' he be awarded the prize". 

Let's have a look at the criteria for awarding the prize. Nobel's will requires the winner to be "...the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." From the point of view of Trump's claims, I'd say there's a difference between stopping a war, as in a ceasefire, and building a lasting peace. Having said that, some of the past recipients haven't scored too well on that metric. Abiy Ahmed, Prime Minister of Ethiopia, received the Prize in 2019 for "initiating a peace agreement with Eritrea, ending a decades-long “no war, no peace” standoff by agreeing to hand over the disputed border town of Badme and reopening diplomatic and travel links." In practice, nothing happened and a year later Ethiopia erupted in a brutal civil war. Aung San Suu Kyi (1991): Honored for non-violent resistance to military rule in Myanmar but later faced global condemnation for inaction—or complicity—in the Rohingya genocide. in 1973 Henry Kissinger & Lê Đức Thọ were jointly awarded the Prize for "ending the Vietnam War". Which not only didn't happen but Lê Đức Thọ, the Viet Cong leader, refused the prize, saying there was no peace.

Against these egregious examples of misguided decisions there are a few that remain widely respected (at least by the liberal intelligentsia) as being deserved and long-lasting, such as Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela alongside F.W. de Klerk, the latter showing a prediliction for "shared peacemakers" which horrifyingly might lead to Trump and Putin jointly winning for "stopping a bloody war in Ukraine". Although I'm not sure Trump is prepared to share the glory with anyone.

There are also interesting examples of organisations that have won, for instance the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (1997) and Médecins Sans Frontières in 1999. To me it seems more appropriate to honour the ongoing work of the hundreds of people in organisations that work peacefully, often in war-torn countries, than to feed the egos of politicians out for personal glory.

You can tell I'm probably not a fan of the whole circus. There are better things for the five people on the Committee to be doing with their lives for the next two months than shuffling paper in an almost certainly flawed exercise. But - hope for the best, plan for the worst!

By now the original 338 will have been whittled down to a dozen or so and extensive expert research will have been initiated. The winner is announced the second Friday of October—for 2025, that’ll be 10th October. The award ceremony is on 10th December.