Month: March 2017

Moving to a Chinese way of doing things

The rise of China promises a fundamental change in the world. The way China is used to operating is so far outside how the West is used to operating that it is hard to engage with. One of the things fuelling anxiety over globalisation is that this is happening beneath the radar. The change isn’t necessarily bad, but unfamiliarity breeds fear.

China emerging as the world’s major power, and changing the way things are done.

In the west, we are use to thinking of ourselves as global powers. In our own terms, we have been the world’s major economic powers, and have proud colonial histories. In reality, those colonial histories are murky, and we have only had dominance because of widespread poverty. The rise in the economic might of China and India has gone with increased living standards: the only thing that could stop a major re-alignment is the sort of humanitarian catastrophe which we should see as morally repugnant.

But change is not just about economic might: it is also about how nations naturally do things. The western mindset that has been dominant is not the only way.

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The other side of Brexit: What about the Leavers?

I’m increasingly conscious that one really important group has become invisible in the storm around Brexit: the people who actually voted for it.

St Austell: voted heavily for Leave, and now faces an uncertain future as Cornwall faces losing EU funding

Canvassing recently my ear was firmly bent by someone who voted Leave and is worried about the NHS. The promise of £350 million per week might have evaporated on the morning after the referendum, but her concerns have not. She’s not angry at the lie: for her this is just one more in the chain of politicians’ lies. The worry is real.

One of the memorable moments in Laura Kuenssberg’s documentary on the referendum had Leave voters in Sunderland saying “now people in London have got to listen to us”.

Instead we have a prime minister saying “Brexit means Brexit” and talking of the “will of the people”, but who reacted to being reigned in by the courts by bring a bill before parliament to give her huge powers in the Brexit process. This sounds like a land grab from No.10 rather than an attempt at listening.

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