TTIP is a very bad excuse to vote for Brexit

Nick Dearden in The Guardian

Barack Obama gave TTIP the hard sell, but leaving the EU would only make the controversial trade deal more likely – and possibly worse
 

‘In Berlin, 250,000 people took to the streets last October to protest about TTIP.’ Photograph: Axel Schmidt/Getty Images



Barack Obama’s key message to Europe’s leaders last week was “let’s speed up TTIP”. The US-EU trade deal, formally called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, has been mired in controversy on both sides of the Atlantic. The “free trade” agenda has become poison in the US primaries, forcing even pro-trade Hillary Clinton to re-examine TTIP.

The next round of talks begin on Monday in New York and Obama is worried – unless serious progress is made in coming months, his trade legacy may be doomed. The problem for the US president is selling TTIP at the same time as trying to warn against the dangers of Brexit. This is a tough ask because TTIP has been a godsend for Brexit campaigners, who argue that the deal is a major reason to cut loose from Brussels.

It’s true that TTIP is a symbol of all that’s wrong with Europe: dreamed up by corporate lobbyists, TTIP is less about trade and more about giving big business sweeping new powers over our society. It is a blueprint for deregulation and privatisation. As such it makes a good case for Brexit.

Until you remember that the British government has done everything possible to push the most extreme version of TTIP, just as they’ve fought against pretty much every financial regulation, from bankers bonuses to a financial transaction tax. While Germany and France were concerned about TTIP’s corporate court system – which allows foreign business to sue governments for “unfair” laws like putting cigarettes in plain packets – the UK secretly wrote to the European commission president demanding he retain it.

At the heart of TTIP is a radical agenda of deregulation. The ambition is that everything from food standards to financial policies are “standardised” in the US and EU, with big business gaining new powers over the process. This could have been inspired by David Cameron’s own programme of stripping away laws that annoy big business, no matter how important they are for people and the environment.

Cameron’s policy means scrapping two laws for every one brought in and giving every regulatory body the duty to have regard to the desirability of “promoting economic growth”. That could include the equality and human rights commission and the health and safety executive. The TUC described Britain as “exporting their anti-worker position into Europe and it is spreading like a bad outbreak of gastric flu”.

Brexit wouldn’t necessarily stop TTIP anyway – that’s all down to the transition process. At the very least, Britain would need to adopt many of TTIP’s provisions in order to remain in the single market.

But it gets worse: every scenario for Brexit is premised on extreme free trade agreements coupled with looser regulation to make us more competitive. “Outcompeting” the EU through lower standards is the strategy. High-profile supporters of the Brexit campaign have repeatedly said that they believe the UK would be able to realise a more “ambitious” and faster free trade deal if we stood alone. There’s every reason to think that Brexit will turn the UK into a paradise for free market capitalism: a TTIP on steroids.

-----


What is TTIP and why should we be angry about it?
--------


Is there any hope? Yes – the movement to defeat TTIP received the support of well over 3 million Europeans in a little over a year. In Berlin, 250,000 people took to the streets last October. The deal was meant to be signed by now – but together, Europe’s people have seriously stalled things. Would it really be possible to stop such a move if we couldn’t link up with campaigners across Europe? If being in the EU has brought us TTIP, it has also brought us the means to stop it.

Europe also allows the potential to take on the corporate power which TTIP symbolises: the biggest threat to our sovereignty. Even in the best of circumstances, there is only so much a small nation state can do against the size and power of global big business. But through being in Europe we could stop tax avoidance, introduce a financial transactions tax, hold corporations legally responsible for their human rights abuses, enforce world-leading climate targets, develop new forms of public ownership of key resources. At least, we could if Britain stopped standing in the way.

Obama’s rationale for avoiding Brexit is quite different. The US establishment has always been interested in Britain’s role as a fifth column in Europe, undermining a social Europe on behalf of global (read US) corporations. Reclaiming our sovereignty means not playing this role, and instead working with those in Europe who want to build a different world. Another Europe is possible.

The things economists know. . . and don’t know about Brexit

Roger Bootle in The Telegraph

Last week we were treated to a fine exhibition of the economist’s art. I refer to the Treasury study of the economic impact of Brexit, which told us that in 15 years’ time, on a central view, the average British household would be worse off by £4,300 a year. This episode has prompted me to think about what it is that economists know – and what they don’t.

It is clear that economists’ prognostications have, at best, a mixed record. Not only can economists not reliably tell you what GDP is going to be in two or three years’ time but, as a group, they seem pretty bad at anticipating major developments.

Although some economists did foresee the financial crisis, as a whole they did not. Nor did most foresee the emergence of a zero inflation/deflation world.

Let me say, though, that of its type, last week’s Treasury document was a fine specimen. A large team of economists has been working on it for the best part of a year, and these are good, professional people who have not simply been doing what they were told by their political bosses. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that what they have produced is of serious value. 

The problem with much of economics is that what we can readily measure, even when it is tendentious, is often the minor part of the question. Yet there is a natural tendency to measure what is measurable and to leave to one side, or to downplay, the things that are not.
The Treasury study concentrated on the effects of a Brexit on UK trade and the consequences for GDP and investment on a static “other things equal” basis. It assumed that we would be unable to secure any more favourable trade agreements with non-EU countries.

Interestingly, it did not begin to quantify the possible economic gains from a policy of radical deregulation. The reason is apparently that it is not clear that we would repeal and rescind EU legislation and directives and, in any case, the UK is a relatively lightly-regulated economy. The implication is that there is next to nothing to be gained from deregulation.

This is, to put it mildly, a rather odd stance to take – certainly if you were trying to be fair across all sides of the debate. After all, those economists who think that there is much to be gained economically from leaving the EU tend to rest their case mainly on large potential gains from EU deregulation.

Moreover, umpteen businesses across the country bemoan the costs of regulation on their operations. It is not that their case has been disproved by last week’s study; it has simply been ignored. 

The study, in accordance with convention, took a static approach to how the EU might evolve. True, this excluded some of the potential benefits of remaining in the EU from the extension of the single market. But it also excluded some of the most important negative possibilities.

Once the UK referendum is out of the way, if we vote to stay in, it is likely that the EU will turn quite nasty towards us. This will not only be because the EU’s leaders will be cheesed off with us, although they most certainly will be.

More importantly, they will think that we have shot our bolt. In particular, we would probably find that, far from rejoicing in the City’s role as Europe’s financial centre, the EU would renew its attempts to undermine it.

Meanwhile, the EU would have to embark on truly momentous changes in order to make the eurozone work. Banking union, fiscal union and political union must be put in place for the euro to survive.

We don’t know what effects this cocktail of changes will have upon European politics and economic performance – and hence on us.

The overwhelming majority of the EU will be inside the euro, and what needs to be done to make the euro work would be the EU’s leading concern.

We do not know what things will be forced upon us by qualified majority voting. Moreover, with the referendum behind us, there is a good chance of a renewed push to get the UK into the euro. What have the calculations that produce the figure £4,300 a year got to say about this? The answer, of course, is precisely nothing.

And all this is before we take account of the dynamic effects and their political consequences. Perhaps after a Brexit our leaders would become enmeshed in rivalrous infighting and it would be impossible to put together an economic programme for national renewal.

But there is surely a good chance, as Michael Gove suggested last week, that by contrast EU departure would be the equivalent of a shot in the arm.

Nor did the study have anything to say about the congestion and social costs implied by uncontrolled immigration, which are at the heart of so many people’s concerns about the EU.

Although the future is beset with uncertainty, about this issue we do know some things. We know that over recent decades the EU has been a comparative economic failure.

We know that unless something really radical happens, it is set to fall sharply in relative economic performance over the decades to come. We know that the EU is set to embark on a course of integration from which we aim to stand aside. We know that inside the EU we do not have full control of our destiny.

We know that inside the EU but outside the eurozone we will be marginalised.

I cannot say what all this means in terms of pounds per annum for the UK average household in 15 years’ time. But I can recognise the difference between a situation of opportunity and a pig in a poke.

Stunted growth: the mystery of the UK’s productivity crisis

Duncan Weldon in The Guardian

Without it the future is bleak, but despite a bewildering array of theories for why this key economic driver has dropped there is no clear answer

 

Illustration: Robert G Fresson




Our economic future isn’t what it used to be. In March the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) revised down its growth estimates for each of the next five years. The chancellor was quick to blame a weakening world economy but the true driver lies closer to home. The problem isn’t a loud global economic crash but something much quieter: engine trouble. Productivity growth, the long-term motor of rising living standards, is slowing. The fact that this appears to be happening across the globe offers scant consolation.

What’s worse is that no one is entirely sure what is causing the problem or how to fix it. And it is coming at about the worst time imaginable: global demographics are changing, with the supply of new workers set to slow and the older share of the population rising. The future is of course inherently unknowable, but the reasons for longer-term pessimism on economic growth are starting to stack up.

Productivity – the amount of output produced for each hour worked – rose at a fairly steady annual rate of about 2.2% in the UK for decades before the recession. Since the crisis though, that annual growth rate has collapsed to under 0.5%. The OBR has decided to revise down its future assumption on productivity from that pre-crisis 2.2% to a lower 2%. That small revision was enough to give the chancellor a large fiscal headache in his latest budget, but it still assumes a big rebound in productivity growth from its current level. What if that rebound doesn’t come?

The near death of the British steel industry is a tragedy. But for all the political heat it has generated, its long-term consequences wouldn’t be as serious as the wider crisis. For while closing mills are highly visible, slipping productivity is not.

Looking at the global picture shows that while there are of course national nuances, the overall impression is grim and dates back to before the 2008 crash. Everywhere from the “dynamic” United States to “sclerotic” France, productivity growth has dropped considerably in recent years. The UK is an outlier with a bigger fall than many, but not by much.

Some of this could be explained by measurement issues. To use every economist’s favourite example, it is straightforward to measure the inputs, the outputs – and hence the productivity – of a widget factory, even if no one is really sure what a widget is. It is harder to do the same with an online widget brand manager. But the mismeasurement would have to be on an unprecedented scale to explain away the problem.

What we are left with is a bewildering array of theories as to what has driven the fall but no clear answer. We know the productivity slowdown is broad based and happening across most sectors of the economy. Lower corporate and public investment than in the past almost certainly explains some of the shortfall. Weaker labour bargaining power than in previous decades might also be playing a role. Low wages are allowing low-skill, low-productivity business models to expand and deincentivising corporate spending on new kit. Why spend on expensive labour-saving technology when labour itself is cheap?

But if you think you’ve found the full answer, you probably need to read more. There almost certainly isn’t a single explanation. It’s still perfectly possible to argue that productivity pessimism is overdone, that we are still suffering the lingering after-effects of the financial crisis that will eventually end. But with each passing year that becomes more difficult. A good strategy is to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. And the worst is pretty bad.

George Osborne at the Airbus factory in Filton, Bristol. Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA

Productivity growth is more than just a financial concept, it’s a balm that can soothe class conflicts and take some of the sting out of distributional politics. If a worker’s output rises by 2% without an increase in their hours, then giving that worker a 2% pay rise is relatively straightforward. If their productivity is flat then a 2% pay rise results in either a fall in profits or a rise in prices. A world of lower productivity is a world of more intense fighting over the more meagre divisions of economic growth.

Productivity is one of two key factors determining the trend growth rate of an economy; the speed limit at which a country can expand without pushing up prices. The other is population. Falling birth rates across the advanced economies created a demographic “sweet spot” that lasted from the late 70s until fairly recently. Fewer children meant a rising share of the population was of working age. But fewer children in the past means fewer workers today and rising longevity means a rising share of the population who are retired. Across the west, the amount of workers for each retired person is heading in the wrong direction. Increasing the retirement age and more immigration are both theoretical fixes, but the scale of both required to fundamentally change the picture is almost certainly politically impossible.

Slowing population growth and weaker expected productivity growth have led the US Congressional Budget Office to revise down its estimate of US trend growth from north of 3% in the 1990s and 2000s to closer to 2%. In the UK, policymakers once thought trend growth was 2.75% and have now cut that to 2.2%. Without a productivity bounce that could fall to closer to 1-1.5% in the coming years.

UK's productivity plan is ‘vague collection of existing policies’


Japan is the usual cautionary tale of what happens when growth slows. A country that had a financial bust, made policy mistakes in the aftermath and then experienced an ageing society. But at least productivity growth didn’t collapse. Headline economic growth was weak and the government’s debt burden has soared, but real incomes and employment held up well. Japanese demographic transition at the same time as a productivity crunch is the worrying possibility facing the west.

So what are policymakers to do? They could accept lower growth and concentrate on distribution. Of course the politics of redistribution are much easier when resources are growing. Lower growth also means that the public and private debt piles built up across the west in anticipation of a brighter future would be much harder to deal with. The obvious answer is to increase public investment. This alone wouldn’t solve the productivity crisis but it could help, and certainly wouldn’t hurt. At a time when government borrowing costs are near historical lows this is about as close to a free lunch as economic policy ever gets.

Finding ways to boost corporate investment is trickier, as there isn’t much in the way of direct policy levers open to government. Reforming corporate governance to encourage more long-term decision-making could help. And while economists tend to assume that productivity growth leads to wage growth, there could be circumstances in which the relationship is inverted. The government’s new national living wage may act as a spur to improve productivity as businesses see their cost-base rise.

But if productivity remains low then difficult choices lie ahead. We’ll need either a substantially smaller state with less generous social security, or higher tax revenues as a share of the economy. That means raising the kind of taxes that bring in substantial sums – VAT, national insurance and income tax.

Neither a smaller state nor higher taxes are likely to prove popular. But governing in a lower-growth world was never going to be easy.

Management is a ‘dinosaur’ whose time is up

Shubha Sharma in The Hindu

Adman Prahlad Kakkar’s school of entrepreneurship throws participants into the deep right from the word go

Here are some things they will never teach you at Harvard Business School. To begin with, be prepared to throw your Peter Drucker manuals out. Learn from the horses, the sharks, the Himalayas, the tribals of Bastar, at the feet of a spiritual master and the biggest guru of them all: Mr Murphy. He of the Murphy’s Law canon.

Learn that money is not everything. The value you create is just as important to a business. As an entrepreneur, understand your connectedness with all of life.

This unusual curriculum at a Mumbai-based institute of branding and entrepreneurship has been scripted by advertising filmmaker Prahlad Kakkar, a man reputed to break every rule in the book. The Prahlad Kakkar School of Branding and Entrepreneurship offers a one-year course on ad filmmaking and branding as well as a two-year fellowship in business and entrepreneurship. It is run in association with Whistling Woods International, a media and communications institute started by filmmaker Subhash Ghai, and is located in an area that churns out more illusions in a year than you can ever imagine: Film City, Goregaon.

This school is for real, though, and has the hard knocks built in. At the core of its curriculum is fear, and learning to ride it. Fear, says Kakkar, prevents the young and old from taking decisions and responsibility. And failure goes in tandem with fear. Kakkar takes pride in the fact that his curriculum does not have a single success story. All success stories, according to him, are doctored in hindsight. “And therefore they are lies. Failure is something nobody wants to be associated with. It is the truth. So we select, for our teaching, almost success stories.”
He believes in throwing the participants into the deep, from the word go. The course begins with a bootcamp. “You go down to survival level. You’re going to come back with new perceptions, alliances, friends and new teams, all of which will last a lifetime,” says Kakkar.

Flying

The next fear it aims to tackle is that of flying. The course requires participants to jump out of a plane in South Africa, and go on a safari down the Zambezi. They will camp in the dark and survive on meagre rations. The next day, students have to find their way back with the help of a map.

Learning to fall from a horse is also part of the class. The students face an animal that is 10 times stronger than they are. And when they fall, they learn that they never ‘remain fallen’. “If we teach you how to fall, then you lose the fear of falling.”

In the larger scheme of things, either you conquer a challenge through sheer strength or join in – in this case, you merge your being with that of the horse. “But don’t join it and lose your personality. So when you do mergers with other companies, it’s not to destroy them and sell. The whole idea is, is it going to take you 10 years to develop the company of that size, that momentum and those clients, or would you rather buy it over and make it a part of your company?”

And then, there’s the mother of all fears: navigating the ocean. “It’s the fear of the unknown. The only two unknowns left on the planet today are space and the ocean,” says Kakkar. The course requires you to go through a deep-sea diving course in the Andaman Islands, qualify as an internationally-certified diver, and just when you think you’ve conquered it all, you go into a cage and face the great white sharks under water.

Legendary shark

The legendary shark is far more fearsome in our imagination, says Kakkar. “We put you in a safe, controlled environment to overcome your illogical fear of these magnificent creatures. Behind the safety of the cage your mind opens up to the possibilities of their strength, aggression, instinct and beauty and the ability to survive under any circumstances.”

The next big phobia after the sea is snakes. So the curriculum requires you to spend four to five days in a snake farm, handling the species. “There are rules of engagement with them too. Most of the time they’re aggressive because they think you’re aggressive. We call this the reptile sensitisation programme,” says Kakkar.

The stillness quotient comes from the Isha Foundation’s Inner Engineering course. “When you need leadership and you don’t have the stillness that yoga teaches you, you can never ever command respect,” says Kakkar.

And to cap it all, is a tryst with the mountains. Jamling Norgay, who climbed the Everest, will take participants on hiking. “The mountains and the sea are two most humbling experiences. They knock the hell out of your ego. Norgay teaches you rock climbing, leadership and team building,” says Kakkar. The students will also learn how a restaurant runs, because as Kakkar says, Murphy’s Law, which says if something can go wrong it will, is hugely prevalent in a restaurant.

Kakkar himself has dived into various oceans. Besides Genesis Film Production, one of India’s oldest ad film production houses, he runs a scuba diving school and has also been running restaurants. He broke even with his scuba diving school only after 10 years, so “failure” and “falling” aren't new to him either. The curriculum, then, is born out of his experience — notably his 25 years at Genesis.

One of the key things he realised at Genesis was that youngsters need to be trained to own their jobs, and not just do them. No one, MBAs included, are encouraged to own their jobs. They are simply cogs in a larger machine and everybody works them by remote, he says. At Genesis, Kakkar got mostly “misfits” —16-year-olds whose parents used to ‘dump’ them on him — and he had to mould them. “I knew I had to empower them very early to make decisions. I didn’t believe in people who procrastinated.”

Management, he says, is “like a dinosaur” whose time is up. A company like Google is flat, and everyone will need to become like them to survive. Decisions need to be taken at the low end. “Middle management people are afraid because they’ll lose their jobs. Youngsters couldn’t care, because it’s their first job anyway.”

Train young people

The institute will train young people to fight for responsibility, to want to own their jobs, to be territorial about what they do, and take decisions fearlessly. Importantly, it will break one big management practice: there will be no summer training. Instead, participants get to form a management company and take over a sick company from banks. They have one year to turn it around. “If they manage to keep it afloat, let alone turn it around, they will be the most wanted people in any organisation.”

The larger idea is to add value. “They have to be independent and confident, highly motivated and flexible on the ground, understand the difference between value and money. To give back as much as they take. If they add value to whatever they do the money will come.”

With this paradigm shift, it’s only logical that the institute keeps the curriculum flexible. For the first year, students will learn the rules of engagement as they exist – this comprises the theory component of the course, built upon by the practical part. The next year, they will be tested on how they want to change the rules for the future, and this will form the basis of the curriculum for the next batch. He compares the process to a commando’s final test — blindfolded, he takes a sophisticated weapon, dismantles it to its last spring, puts it back together within the timeframe and fires it.

The faculty is drawn from the commando-in-action pool. Apart from Norgay and South African cricketer Gary Kirsten, there’s Dhiraj Rajaram, founder of MuSigma — a frontrunner in the analytics space. The course, which costs close to Rs.13 lakh, is a combination of Kakkar’s passions, whether it’s scuba diving or cooking. At the final graduation dinner, the students will even cook for their parents.

“I’ve never worked a single day in my life. I converted all my hobbies into work,” says the institute’s founder-chairperson. And it looks like some of those are still being stirred. “I’ve suddenly decided to have some more fun,” he says. He plans a line of T-shirts that will be “highly abrasive to everybody.”

“We’re doing a whole line on Papa Pancho (the restaurant he runs). Or on sports. There is also an entire line on Savita Bhabhi, which is all you wanted to know about sex but were too scared to ask.”

Convention can go for a run. Or if you’re afraid of the idea, go ride a horse. Because for Kakkar, this is simply about playing it different. “Somebody says, ‘Where do you think of these ideas? How can you make them a business? I say the business happens. First let’s get a product out that is unique.”

That is perhaps why he is clear his course will create “warriors, not wimps”. From a man who has always dared to pursue his innermost calling, this isn’t surprising.

It took Barack Obama to crush the Brexit fantasy

Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian

The US president destroyed one of the Vote Leave campaign’s core arguments, ending a week that may define the referendum debate

‘The president spelled out that America has no intention of forming some new, closer relationship with a Brexited Britain … it would be at ‘the back of the queue’ if it sought to agree a new treaty with the US.’ Illustration: Nate Kitch


No wonder they were desperate that he keep his mouth shut. At his podium in Downing Street Barack Obama flattered his hosts, paid lip service to the notion that the referendum on British membership of the European Union on 23 June is a matter for the British people – and then calmly ripped apart the case for Brexit.

It was the Vote Leavers’ worst nightmare. For years – no, decades – the anti-EU camp has suggested that Britain’s natural habitat is not among its continental neighbours but in “the Anglosphere”, that solar system of English-speaking planets which revolves around the United States. Break free from Brussels and we could embrace our kindred spirits in Sydney, Toronto and especially New York, Washington and Los Angeles. The Brexit camp has long been like the man who dreams of leaving his wife for another woman, one who really understands him.

Barack Obama: Brexit would put UK 'back of the queue' for trade talks



Obama is that other woman. And today he told the outers their fantasies were no more than that. First in print and then, more explicitly, in person he spelled out that America has no intention of forming some new, closer relationship with a Brexited Britain. On the contrary, a post-EU Britain would be at “the back of the queue” if it sought to agree its own, new trade treaty with the US.

America, he told his British audience – hence his use of “queue”, not “line” – likes the fact that Britain is already married: it works out really well for all three parties involved. His message was unambiguous. Don’t rush into a hasty divorce because you think we’re waiting for you with open arms. We’re not.

At a stroke, he had crushed not only a core part of the leavers’ economic argument – that it’ll be a breeze for Britain to exit the EU and trade just as prosperously as a solo nation – but something bigger: the notion that a brighter, non-European future beckons. Obama burst that bubble.

He also explained that of course he had the right to speak, despite Brexiteer Liam Fox’s letter signed by 100 MPs urging him to stay out of the EU debate. As Obama put it, since the leavers are offering “an opinion about what the US is going to do, I thought you might want to hear an opinion from the president of the United States on what the US is going to do”. And the opinion he gave was devastating.

That he had every right to speak is obvious, by the leavers’ own logic. He and the country he leads have been invoked as central to the alternative utopia that awaits us on Brexit. If he wants to tell us that utopia is an illusion, we need to hear it.

Hence the Brexiteers’ fury. They know how badly Obama’s words undermine their case, especially after what has been a week from hell for the out campaign. One that ended in the absurdity of a Ukip MEP, Mike Hookem, lurching into full-bore anti-Americanism, winding the clock back to 1939 to argue that the US had it in for us even then, seeing the second world war as a way of “smashing the UK’s influence in the world”. When a party defined by its loathing of the EU finds itself attacking the US, you know things have gone awry.

The same is true of Boris Johnson’s Sun screed, which dipped into Donald Trump’s Bumper Book of Political Wisdom to suggest that the “half-Kenyan” president cannot be trusted because he is filled with “ancestral” loathing of Britain.

What an interesting choice of word that “ancestral” was. Not “post-colonial”, which would have located this supposed antipathy in the 20th century, but “ancestral” to be run alongside “half-Kenyan”. It was a reminder of the brilliant slapdown Obama once issued to Trump, when the tycoon was demanding to see Obama’s birth certificate. From the podium at the 2011 White House correspondents’ dinner, Obama said he could go one better and show his birth video. He promptly played a clip from the Lion King, of Simba the newborn cub held aloft – as graceful a way of calling out a racist as one can imagine.

This, incidentally, is where the contortions of Brexit have left Johnson. It may still be true that the London mayor’s decision to back Vote Leave – when his elastic relationship with principle could just as easily have sprung the other way – was politically smart, all but guaranteeing the backing of the Eurosceptic Tory selectorate when they choose a successor to David Cameron. But it’s extracting a price.

Once Johnson promised to be the face of metropolitan inclusivity, a Tory able to reach non-Tories by carrying less of their nasty party baggage. Yet this campaign is stripping away that gloss, reminding us that it was always a fake. Recall that Johnson once spoke of “piccaninnies” and wrote of African men with “watermelon smiles”. In the Spectator in 2002, he declared of Africa: “The problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more.”

Every day he spends tag-teaming with Nigel Farage – who repeated the mayor’s “half-Kenyan” line – risks trashing the Boris brand, defining Johnson as less a future prime minister than a figure of the fringes, less a lovable maverick than a rather unpleasant oddball.

But it’s the wider Vote Leave campaign that has found itself in the wrong place. An anti-EU movement can’t also be anti-US, not without looking as if it hates everyone. Nor is it good to pit yourself against an American president who, whatever his domestic standing, remains in high esteem in Britain and Europe. It’s just too irresistibly tweetable to ask: if Obama’s for remain, and Trump and Le Pen are for leave, whose side are you on?

Above all, the core case advanced by the leavers on the US is flawed. Fox and others say Obama is a hypocrite because the US would never accept for itself the limitations on sovereignty demanded of Britain by the EU. But the comparison is silly. Britain is strong and rich, but it is also a relatively small country adjacent to a continent. The US virtually is a continent.

What makes sense for one would not make sense for the other. Besides, as Obama explained in Downing Street, the US does trim its sovereignty when it suits its purposes: it agrees to be bound by the trade rulings of the World Trade Organisation and Nafta, even if that means Congress is forced to back down on its own decisions.

All told, the Obama visit has been one of those episodes that say rather more than was ever intended. It says that this president retains a lustre even now, eight years on – one that only grows as you contemplate the contest to take his place. It says that, for all of the remain campaign’s problems, Leave now has to rebuild – after a dreadful seven days that began with Treasury numbers showing Brexit will make Britons poorer, and ended with a surgical evisceration from the world’s most powerful man.

And it said something about Britain’s relationship with the US. Ever needy to hear that we’re still special to the Americans, to hear that their president loves our queen and loves our talisman, Winston Churchill, we still listen to them – even when they tell us there’s no future for just the two of us together, that we need to stay in the marriage we’re in, even if sometimes it feels a little loveless.

My perfect affair – how I’m getting away with it

Anonymous as told to Joan McFadden in The Guardian


Tell no one, put nothing in writing, pay in cash, don’t drink, and keep off the phone. How to have an affair for nine years and get away with it

 

‘The first time we slept together, we were like two teenagers, and not in a good way.’ Photograph: Jonathan Storey/Getty Images
Love and happiness are certainly important to me in my 20-year marriage to Stephen. They are also important to me in my nine-year affair with Michael. I didn’t have an affair lightly. I know people have affairs for all sorts of reasons and think ultimately that they have a goal in mind – the end of their marriage, a lasting new relationship or a complete change to what they see as a boring life.

I’m none of these things. I want no drama disrupting my family. I want to stay happily married and carry on my affair and I never, ever want anyone else to know, so I have every detail planned and covered. My husband doesn’t suspect, my sisters and my best friends have no idea and I make sure there’s no evidence at all that can trip me up.

I didn’t start an affair because I’m lacking anything with Stephen. He’s a brilliant dad and funny, intelligent, fit and attractive. We’ve always made an effort to keep things fresh – of course you get bogged down in daily life, but we go out for dinner by ourselves or have a day off when we pack the kids off to school and go back to bed for a few hours. We also do a lot as a family, as well as socialising with friends and enjoying a variety of hobbies, so being organised is vital and, like many working mothers, I keep a meticulous diary to make sure everyone is in the right place at the right time.


I also have a diary in my head of my times with Michael, but I never put anything in writing. No love missives – texts are about the families getting together – and any emails are work related because we work in the same field. Stephen was friends with Michael first, having met him at a school event when our youngest child was just starting. He couldn’t believe we hadn’t met professionally and soon introduced us. He’s completely different from Stephen, who is very forthright, enthusiastic and go-getting while Michael is dreamy and creative, but with an incisive sense of humour and very witty, so they get on well.

I was quite shaken when I started to find Michael attractive. I’m not stupid enough to think you can go through life fancying only one person, but I’d kept any previous little crushes firmly in my head. Stephen is quite a flirt himself and the odd little bit of jealousy never did me any harm, and tended to respark my interest in my husband.

This was different. For the first time since we got married, I could imagine myself having an affair and at first it made me uncomfortable. I started plotting how we could do it and never get found out, and almost convinced myself that I was just being academic about it. Then we all got quite drunk at a party and Michael and I really started flirting. I thought life would go back to normal the next day and it did in front of Stephen and Jane, but we had a completely different relationship when we were alone.

We started talking dirty. At first it was just a little edgy – do you still fancy Stephen/Jane? Ever been unfaithful? Ever thought of it? It got more and more explicit and I couldn’t get him out of my mind. But I got a bad shock when he sent me a filthy text one night. I was sure he was drunk as it was short but very graphic. At that point my conscience was almost clear as we’d done nothing but talk, so I said, “Oh my God, Stephen – Michael’s just sent me a text that’s meant for Jane!”

Stephen thought it was hilarious and I texted back and said, “Isn’t this for Jane? Stephen says lucky her!”

Stephen teased him about it for ages but the next time I was alone with him I was furious and told him never to do something so stupid again. He said he thought I fancied him and I said very calmly that I did, but I wouldn’t risk my marriage or kids for anyone. It took another six months of discussion and planning before the affair started. We agreed that it was to be an added extra to an already strong friendship, but organised calmly and dispassionately, so no one would suspect.

By the time we slept together, we were both in a total state and it was a complete disaster. He’d been to the first day of a conference – I arrived that afternoon and checked into the same hotel. We had three hours in the late afternoon till his flight home and despite all our talk about being calm and dispassionate we were both unbelievably nervous. We were like two teenagers, and not in a good way.

For months I’d been totally turned on every time we were anywhere close to each other, but not now. The sex was clumsy and painful and a couple of times I wondered what the hell I was doing. He had his own worries – it was over far too soon and I felt dissatisfied as well as guilty – and he clearly felt the same. We had another go before he had to rush for his plane and it was just as bad. He said he would text me and I snapped at him not to – had he forgotten all we agreed? Stephen phoned later and in the midst of the chat about the kids asked if Michael was at the conference so I said he’d popped in before he left.

Coming home the next night was hellish. I was sure Stephen could tell I’d had sex with someone else but he was the same as ever and I was pathetically pleased that I was able to enjoy sex with him as normal. It was another two days before I saw Michael again and I was desperate to phone him, despite my rules, though I managed not to. He looked so miserable I was instantly irritated, convinced Jane would have guessed something was up. I was tempted to suggest we just forget it but I didn’t want to make him even more upset so I was reassuring and said we’d sort something out.


We went away for a week’s holiday and I did a lot of thinking. I decided that nerves had made the sex awkward, and once we got over the hump – so to speak – we’d be fine, so I deliberately made plans. Stephen took the kids to the cinema that weekend. I phoned their house, telling Jane I had mislaid papers from the conference and asking if Michael could bring me his so I could copy them. I read one of Stephen’s porn mags to get me in the mood, opened the front door and literally dragged him into the toilet, where we had exactly the sort of sex I’d imagined.

That was the last risk I took. I’m sure no one suspects we’re having an affair. We meet as lovers about twice a month, which probably does keep the magic and anticipation going, but I’m endlessly careful; I do worry about CCTV now as it’s everywhere. We usually meet at a conference hotel or at the airport and I might say to Stephen that I bumped into Michael and had a coffee with him, though I obviously won’t tell him that was after lunch and before sex. We’ve managed to resist that temptation to tell others by talking to each other instead. There are no romantic letters, emails or texts – and because we have fairly constant contact, there’s none of that terrible panic that illicit lovers seem to have about when the next encounter will be.

This care is also my safety net should Michael ever want more. He says he still loves Jane but if he decides otherwise I would just deny everything and there’s no proof. Not a note, credit card bill or hotel receipt – everything is paid by cash – so I’d just walk away.

I wouldn’t be friends with Jane if I didn’t want the smokescreen that provides – we’re too different and there’s a slightly snobbish side to her that irks me, but a monthly coffee or occasional girls’ night makes it seem that we have a separate friendship and so she’s much less likely to suspect anything. She’s even said that I’m good for Michael as he doesn’t have sisters so it’s nice to see him have a friendship with a woman.

I love both men, I’m harming no one and have no intention of doing so. I know we’re being greedy but it’s not affecting anyone else badly. If anything, it enhances my sex life with Stephen and when you’ve got two men seeing you naked you certainly keep yourself fit. I want everything to continue as it is, whereas many people having affairs want something to change, usually other relationships, so they can be together all the time. Strange as it may seem, my biggest worry is that, years on, Michael may die first and I won’t be able to grieve properly, because although the close friendship is known and taken for granted, obviously the affair isn’t. In a matter of fact way, we also assume that, when we’re much older, if our partners die we’ll end up together almost by default. Like everyone else, I’m aiming to live happily ever after, but with both men as part of my life. The only way to make that feasible is to keep everything as tidy as possible.

Perhaps we don’t want to explore the premise that for most people it’s not fidelity and love that keeps them constant to their partner, but fear of potential messiness should they be discovered. How many people, no matter how satisfied with their sex lives and happy with their partners, would say “no thank you” to an explosive sexual encounter if it was guaranteed that they’d never be found out? Domesticity doesn’t do it for everyone long term, no matter how much we’d like it to and although that’s apparent in male behaviour over the centuries now that women are on a par with men, surely this means such potential restlessness applies equally to both sexes?

It takes a very brave person to give an honest response, but, before judging me, ask yourself just one question – what’s stopping you from doing exactly the same?

Pakistan is a state of mind - Tarek Fatah

Tarek Fatah - "Pakistan is a state of mind which believes that a Muslim cannot live in peace in non Muslim majority countries". It believes in the concept of Darul Harab and its Indian version is Ghazwa e Hind.

Tarek Fateh on Lahore blast: Good and Bad Talibans are twins children of mother Pakistan

Is Pakistan waking up?

Khaled Ahmed in The Indian Express

National Management College (NMC), Lahore, an institution for senior bureaucrats, has pleasantly surprised me by going through an elaborate exercise in March about removing extremism from Pakistan. There was a time when it reacted negatively to any guest speaker’s reference to extremism as part of the ideology of the state. Times have changed.

One secondary topic of discussion where I was invited as observer was “Extremism of the Educated”, which struck me as bravely perceptive about the central defect of Pakistan and the Islamic world. My own thinking is as follows:

The survival of a state is hinged on preservation of the status quo. It is endangered if it tries to change the status quo of its neighbours. The world favours status quo because it doesn’t want war. The state’s prime task is the education of its people so that they accept the state as home. If today Pakistan is considering such topics of discussion as “Extremism of the Educated”, it’s assumed it has been doing something wrong in the field of education and wants to self-correct.

All states use education to create a uniformity of the mind. It’s also called indoctrination. It confirms the status quo and causes acceptance of the state. But if the state is revisionist and promises a revised state through a revision of its boundaries, it may imply war. If it goes to war to change the status quo, it may justify war and pledge more of it.

If the state is ideological, it may curtail freedom of thought and expression. It may legislate to the detriment of minorities and enact laws apostatising certain communities. 

Extremism may be born of the interpretation placed on the state’s ideology. The vehicle of state ideology is education; it may become the vehicle of extremism. Ideology is unchangeable; it will challenge the constitution of a modern state. Even the “reason-based” communist ideology in the Soviet Union didn’t change quickly enough. If the ideology is Islam, it will constantly challenge the essentially changeable constitution. The validity of lawmaking under the constitution will be questioned, leading to extreme actions and reactions.

Two examples: The modern state agrees with the international law that war can be declared only by the state and not by individuals. Religious factions may interpret the Quran by rights and decide jihad can be declared by individuals or their groups. The state may rely on this thinking too and start “proxy jihad” that it can deny. In this case, the state actually allows the development of a violently extremist mindset sought to be directed outwards but which it has no capacity to prevent from being directed inwards.

After the middle age in Europe, the modern nation-state was born, disenchanted with the principle of enforcing piety. Today, the nation-state uses coercion to punish crimes. There’s punishment for those who violate the penal code; there’s no reward for those who don’t. But if the state succumbs to parallel interpretations, it can punish its citizens for not being pious.

The principle of Nahi an-al Munkir (punishing the prohibited) has been accepted by the modern state; but Amr bil Maruf (commanding the permitted) has been wisely ignored. 

Terrorist leader Mangal Bagh forced people to say namaz in the mosque under strict roll-call and burned down the houses of those who didn’t attend the five-times-a-day prayer. In Swat, warlord Fazlullah tyrannised the population under Amr bil Maruf, just like the Taliban did in Afghanistan.

Pakistan seems to have woken up to the menace of an extremist consensus wrongly based on religion. The establishment is waking up to the fading away of the modern state. It needs peace without to achieve peace within. It seems the state has completed a dark journey and wants to emerge into light. Its journey has accustomed it to isolation that allows national hubris to grow. Now may be the time to break this isolation and reach out to an alienated neighbourhood.