Jimmy Burns's Blog

There was much tear-jerking comment on an Argentine radio earlier today about the love Messi feels for Barcelona, and the sadness he feels for his friend and neighbour Luis Suarez who has been told he is surplus to requirements by new coach Ronald Koeman.

Appearing on the same programme I felt compelled to introduce a touch of reality on the Messi/FC Barcelona saga. The current story involving Messi and Barcelona   is one of egos, politics and greed, a less than edifying  example for  a world suffering dislocation, deprivation, suffering and death-and yet ready and willing to be uplifted.

This not an uplifting story but a telling one about what happens when football ceases to be a game to be enjoyed.  At the weekend with most of Spain trying to make sense of the continuing upward curve in Covid infections, the Messi camp raised the stakes in its own battle with the club, by refusing to turn up to train, or be tested as is required of all players in La Liga. There is a lot of bad blood.

La Liga represented by its president Javier Tebas pronounced itself on the side of the club’s insistence that the player could not leave on a few transfer  and that the 700 million euros ‘escape’ clause was still active.

Both sides could be heading for an eventual compromise which will see the player being transferred for a record sum of between 110-200 million euros, with Manchester City the most likely buyer, or so I am told by sources  in Barcelona.

Amid reports that Messi has asked for a meeting with the club this coming week to reiterate his desire that he wants to leave,both sides  I understand are anxious to avert the current deadlock unravelling into a potentially protracted legal battle through the Spanish courts.

It is very unlikely that any club would sign up to a transfer deal while the outcome and potential financial consequences of such legal action remaining uncertain.  And if Messi doesn’t play, no one wins in this saga, beginning with those who have loved  to watch him at his most talented with the ball, when he is poetry in motion.

While FC Barcelona appear resigned to the possibility of Messi leaving, they would like to defuse the growing hostility of fans by reaching an outcome that might be acceptable  to  both sides.A poll in the main Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia at the weekend showed 80 per cent of fans blamed the club and not the player for the current crisis.

Of the clubs that might be able to afford Messi, Manchester City seems to remain the most likely fit in a transfer deal given the successful years that the English club’s coach Pep Guardiola’s had managing the young Messi at Barca between 2008 and 2012.

Messi’s good friend Sergio Aguero who still has a year to go on his contract with Man City, would certainly welcome his arrival. Teaming the two up, along with the talented Belgium midfielder Kevin De Bruyne in support would be attractive in football terms, and a boost to the Premier League as tries to raise spirits and revenue.

PSG, the other club which has been most in the speculative frame since the Messi story broke, is seen as less of a possibility, with Messi’s former Barca colleague Neymar in a team that has two other talented and expensive forwards Mauro Icardi, and the French man Mbappe.

The third option of course- that Messi simply thinks again and decides that he wants to stay at FC Barcelona- is only a very remote possibility right now .

Barca has suffered from an over dependency on a Messi that at the age of 33 is no longer in his prime, having lost pace and agility, and surrounded by  other less talented players  and tired and underperforming veterans. This was much in evidence in Barca’s humiliating 2-8 defeat at the hands of a much fitter and more motivated Bayern Munich in the Champion’s League semi-final.

While the defeat accelerated a sense of crisis, the current debacle has been festering for a while with Messi, a succession of managers, sporting directors and club presidents wrestling over money, and for control over who plays and how.

Its finances negatively affected by the impact on revenues during the pandemic, Barca could use the money from a Messi transfer to spend on new players while bringing in some young talent from the youth academy like in the Golden years.

FC Barcelona President Bartomeu would prefer not like to go down in history as the man not only responsible for losing the best player in the club’s history but also ending on very bad terms with him.

His hope is that a deal can be struck so that Messi’s relations with Barca as an institution are not irrevocably broken and that the Argentine can still consider that in Catalonia he has a home to return   to with his family at some future date as an honoured adopted son and legend.

With or without Messi, FC Barcelona’s new coach Koeman has his work cut out if he is to rescue the club from the low point to which it has fallen in performance and results.

It is likely to take more than one season to recover the quality and competitive edge FC Barcelona has lost since it last won the Champion’s League in 2014-2015.

At present Messi’s representatives are playing hard ball, having seemingly calculated that staying at Barca is not worth it in in commercial terms for the player, even if he owes a great deal in personal and image terms to the club and city to which he has been attached to for the last two decades, since signing his first contract  in 2001.

You could say that Messi’s current salary of   over 50m euros net – double if taxes are counted- is not exactly slave money, even for a player that has come to believe he has earned the right to do and say what he pleases.

As Messi’s fellow countryman Jorge Valdano suggested in his excellent   football column for the Spanish newspaper El Pais on saturday, “Messi is leaving because at the age of 33 he can no longer redeem Barca alone, and because in this Barca, he can no longer go on being Messi.”

 

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London Diary : Swans


21 May  Two months on from C19 lockdown.A wonderful early morning in Battersea Park with the appearance of the first cygnet to hatch this year.
For us regular park users the swan colony and its evolution across the seasons and the years has always had pride of place among the wild life that inhabits this historic green space near the River Thames in south London.
But with the park providing a mental and physical life-line during the C19 lock-down, the bonding, mating and hatching of these graceful birds has generated growing reverence, the crafted nest and its occupants, observed in silent contemplation by an expanding park community, as if transformed into a place of pilgrimage.
The park regulars knew something about the enduring fidelity of the two swans who were with us long before we heard of C19, knowing that they bonded before reaching sexual maturity.
In recent weeks, day in day out, park users -new and old- have found time to watch the swans selflessly share out their parental duties building their nest together, incubating the clutch of eggs over a six week period, so that while one sits, the other ventures out across the lake, in search of a diet of aquatic and submerged leaves, roots and plants when not keeping predators away to the point of attacking anything perceived to be a danger to their chicks.
As Wikipedia reminds us , Helen of Troy was conceived from the union of Zeus , disguised as a swan, and Leda Queen of Sparta, the Irish poet W.B.Yeats waxed lyrical about the swan’s mesmerising qualities, a Christian English saint Hugh of Lincoln had a swan as his most devoted follower, while Hinduism consider swans to be transcendental, their chief characteristic that of being in the world without getting attached to it, just as a swan’s feather does not get wet while it is in the water.
If the mute swan has long played a special part in popular culture and beliefs, enduring in our collective sub-consciousness , it is perhaps not that surprising that since mid-March we have found ourselves reaching out to these beloved creatures in unexpected ways so as to help us navigate the troubled waters of C19.
The habits of these swans which in their modernity and consumerism some urbanites might have tended to take for granted in the past, like so many other aspects of nature, have taken on new meaning and proved inspirational.
The swans have been a blessing, encountering them an Epiphany, or several epiphanies, in the original Greek meaning of the word as a moment of revelation.
Watching the swans, we have found ourselves taking time to pause in each other’s company, careful to maintain a social distance, and yet feeling safe while drawn together by the magnetism of their serene presence, watching their patient regeneration, -the nest building, incubation, and hatching coinciding with the lockdown, and the uncertainty surrounding the manner and outcome of a gradual relaxation.
The disruption to the life we had been used to, the suffering and the death, the dislocation and anxiety provoked by C19, has involved us in a difficult and painful journey, but the swans have helped make of our daily outing to the Park a comforting and reassuring experience.
Spending time with the swans has made me think again of that most famous of Epiphanies, the story of the three ‘wise’ men following the star to the birth of Jesus the Christ Child in Bethlehem.
As described in T.S Eliot’s poem The Journey of the Magi, it was a journey that was not without hardship and which was characterised by much uncertainty, those travelling, in the words of the poet, no longer at ease with the ‘old dispensation’ , knowing that they were experiencing a kind of death of their previous existence, and that if they lived on, their lives stood to be changed, even transformed. The swans, noble silent sentinels of the lake, somehow have been helping many of us overcome dark moments of fear and doubt. For that I celebrate the birth the cygnet as a good omen.
May 22nd And then there were three, with three more to hatch. Today a heron stands two meters away from the swan. “A Mexican stand off? “enquires my American friend Susanna, as some of us park regulars gather to observe. But there are no apparent signs of hostility, those gathered seemingly trusting and respectful, nature and humanity held in a fragile balance.

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News of the evacuation at the end of January from coronavirus-hit Wuhan including 83 British and 27 EU mainly Spanish citizens was largely overshadowed,  in the British and Spanish media at least,  by coverage of the UK’s official exit from the EU. Nonetheless reports   focused on the evident sense of relief felt by some of the evacuees at getting out , as well as a sense of uncertainty about their health prospects..

The only certainty about the coronavirus itself  is that it has affected not inconsiderable numbers in China, enough to present the communist regime with a major medical an well as social and political challenge, and that, although  much fewer cases have been  recorded  in other countries in  Asia and Europe, the World Health Organization  (WHO) has declared the coronavirus outbreak a global health emergency – largely because of fears that poorer countries might not be able to cope with an outbreak.

In China, the authoritarian  nature of the state has allowed it to  move with extraordinary speed to build new emergency hospitals  and somewhat chillingly to quarantine a city of 11 million people and then 16 cities with a combined population of 50 million.

The jury is still out on just how negligent the Chinese state  has been in failing to heed warnings about the virus at a much earlier stage, with a lack of transparency and accountability reminiscent of  how the Soviet communist apparatus dealt initially with Chernobyl.

But this is already a story of contrasting attitudes  which speaks to our collective conscience : one compassionate and cooperative, the other intolerant and less than generous.

In the former category I would put a gathering  at Madrid  Barajas airport earlier this week where Britain’s ambassador  to Spain Hugh Elliott rolled up his sleeves and helped supervise the transport to China of half a million protective gloves and other medical supplies, the latest airlift of such assistance coordinated by the  British  and Spanish governments.

I may have missed something but the event has gone almost unreported in the media, and I only knew about it from Elliott’s recent Instagram feed.

A  day earlier he had put on his best uniform to join other accredited  ambassadors at the Royal  palace to hear King Felipe extending a message of solidarity and support to the Chinese to help  deal with and overcome their medical emergency.

Then there was the BBC’s John Simpson tweeting a few days ago that he was on  his way to his favourite restaurant in London’s Chinatown as he had no wish to join those treating the Chinese as untouchables.

Sadly the darker side of humanity has been showed by outbreaks of prejudice against the ‘yellow peril’, from  Chinese being banned from access to restaurants, to some pernicious video   feeds going  viral on social media with lurid claims  about  Chinese eating and sanitary habits.

One such  feed was mentioned in a particularly  heart rendering  account in yesterday’s  FT by my former colleague Patti Waldmeir from the US who reported how  her adopted daughter had told her that she was afraid to cough in class because she was Chinese and how  transfixed she was by a TikTok video of an Asian woman eating a bat and being blamed for the virus.

There is a long history of anti-Asian prejudice, but also of humanity showing its best and worst side when it comes to  dealing with a range of  viruses and diseases.

I remember back in  the 1990’s visiting a leper colony in Egypt when the authorities at the time wanted  to keep journalist away.   I will never forget the kind doctor who encouraged me to visit, shake hands, and talk to some of  those in his care, and what a humbling experience it was to be with them and be in touch with their humanity.

I knew that things had been far worse. Back in the 1950’s the colony north of Cairo, which was established  in 1933,  was an isolated  community, its occupants, shunned by the rest of society  , forced to live there after being taken  from their homes by the security forces.

But  thankfully significant medical advances, international cooperation, and a sea-change in social attitudes towards leprosy have led to patients being cared for, and much of the stigma removed, although enduring misconception about how the disease is transmitted has in the past put up barriers to integration.

The coronavirus is putting the test the international community’s ability to set politics and national self-interest aside in the cause of the common good , ensuring that  honest   health information is shared , and  that progress can be made in understanding and dealing with the virus with the best that modern medical research and practice  can offer  , and yes- with compassion .

 

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In 1954 When I was a one year old  , my Spanish  mother took me to see a bit of Royal pageantry  near Buckingham Palace on the occasion of Emperor Haile Selassie’s state visit to the UK.

So my mother told me  many years later, she arrived to find that the crowds had built up,   led by a line of uniformed English nannies with their young charges occupying the first row giving on to the main square from the side of St James’s Park.

Undeterred, my mother gently moved her pram and baby son to where the nannies stood erect and dominant and politely ,in  best English, asked to be let in. The nannies reluctantly ceded some space just in time , for as they did so the Royal carriage bearing the Emperor and Queen Elizabeth 2nd rolled by . My mother waved enthusiastically and the Emperor  turned  towards her  and nodded gracefully. As he did so, my mother heard one of the nannies next to her turn to another and say: “Oh, she must be one of them.”

My mother  struggled  to make sense in the twilight years of the British  empire of the nannies’ expression of racial superiority and social entitlement , as she,  together with their Queen honored an African emperor who had sought exile in Britain after his country was invaded in the 1930’s by Mussolini’s troops.

I’ve been thinking a lot these   days  of my later mother, and my later Father-an Anglo-Scot  who served King and Country against Hitler in WW2 in the British embassy in Spain and after the war gathered Spaniards and British of different cultures and party loyalties in dialogue and friendship.

I was born in   Madrid, and  brought to the UK in nappies. I  was educated in English schools and universities and  trained and employed by British media, while regularly  visiting and working in Spain .

I was brought up in a Britain  that unlike the rest of Europe did not owe its democracy or its sense of  itself as a nation to the rules and  regulations of the EU,  maintained its currency, and boasted a language that extended across continents.

But because I believe in building  bridges not walls between peoples, I feel myself British and European. I campaigned and voted against Brexit and felt ashamed by some of  the jingoistic thuggery that reached a crescendo in and around Trafalgar Square and other parts of England as the end of the UK’s EU membership finally became a reality.

That said I am sticking to my New Year resolution of  viewing the UK’s exit from the EU with more light than darkness. I have so far refused  to follow several  friends and siblings in  seeking  by every possible means an alternative  EU nationality rather than to hang on to my British passport.

Perhaps I owe my patriotism to that ‘drilling’ George Orwell  spoke of doing its work among those of us educated in English schools and universities,   , a sense of British history as an enduring ability to get out of a serious jam that it would be foolish to sabotage.

As the hours to midnight ticked away last Friday, I sought refuge in my London  home, and indulged in  watching again the film Dunkirk ,where some brave RAF pilots, seamen, and  the small armada of civilian boats rescued what remained of the humiliated British expeditionary force, allowing Churchill’s to claim his Finest Hour, rallying the resistance to Hitler when all of Europe seemed doomed.

The film  lifted my spirits, and  I  reflected  that if there was a lesson from  modern history it was that , of all  EU countries,  only the UK, by virtue of its past and present and faith in its own future,  that could survive outside the EU but still linked to Europe, not only sharing  in the democratic ideals of the EU’s  founding fathers, but prepared to make them work better for the common good.

When asked by a Spanish  journalist friend just hours earlier why it was that despite it all I still thought that the British could pull it off , I mentioned three words which I have experienced more in the UK than any mainland European country:  accountability, transparency and excellence as exemplified  by the  rule of law ,the professionalism of the civil service-notably diplomats, its quality media, and its academic institutions ,  not to mention the Beatles and James Bond .

I also  cannot remember any scandal involving diversion  of EU funds involving  a British farmer or  politician or judge.

On the other hand British  tourists and residents and investments have invigorated European countries, much as EU citizens have enriched London and other UK towns economically  and culturally.

Honoring  the rights of working people and the environment should be a key part of a post-Brexit Europe and the UK has an important role to play in ensuring this. Cooperative trade and business,  and cultural and educational exchange   must also be part of an agreement in the upcoming negotiations. The word Brexit should recede from our daily narrative.  Britain and Europe working together on matters of common concern is  what needs to be aimed at,  with give and take on both sides , and positivity. The EU should not fear Britain but  believe in the possibility of a new alliance with it that both sides can draw strength from.

I like the generosity of spirit   of the  newly minted British coin:  ‘Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations’ .  It could have been scripted by Lennon and McCartney.

Britain is not at war with Europe, nor Europe with Britain not is there any remote prospect of such a calamity.  There is however everything to gain, from making  post-Brexit Britain work for the British and the  EU in the best interests of both.

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El sentido liberal

 

Es estos días que avanzan las fechas de elecciones en España y el Reino Unido,  dos países que por sangre de madre y padre me unen en un compartido sentido de patriotismo, quería  reflejar sobre  aspectos que me llaman la atención ya que tienen que ver con algunos valores de conducta cívica además de política.

De los recién acontecimientos, quería remarcar  en dos que se vivieron por separado en ambos países a principios de  esta semana   y que por algunas horas dominaron la cobertura mediática nacional.

El primero, que se vivió en Barcelona,  fue los abucheos y empujones que recibieron algunos asistentes a  los premios   de la Fundación Prensa de Girona, y los insultos callejeros a la corona Española.

El segundo, que se vivió en Londres, fue el cálido recibimiento en la Cámara de los Comunes que recibió el moderado y conciliador Laborista  Sir Lindsay Hoyle al ser elegido  por un amplia representación  del partidos del gobierno y opositores como el Nuevo Presidente o ‘Speaker’ .

Consciente de las divisiones y al ambiente enfurecido provocado durante el mandato de su antecesor, el controvertido y auto promotor John Bercow,el discurso de Hoyle se centró en enfatizar le necesidad urgente  de restablecer los buenos modos de comportamiento en el parlamento más antiguo de Europa.

Más allá  de mantener el derecho de los diputados de cuestionar y cuando fuese necesario de desviar o bloquear los planes autoritarios y sin consenso del ejecutivo , Hoyle insistió en  restablecer un ambiente de respeto cívico y tolerancia entre los que no comparten los mismos programas políticos pero que forman parte de un estado constitucional  y democrático.

Hoyle también prometió hacer todo los posible para asegurar la seguridad de parlamentarios que han sido amenazados verbalmente y físicamente por extremos exteriores a la Cámara , y que han llevado  a algunos  de ellos ,a  abandonar sus cargos por temor a los actos violentos que podía afectar a su vida familiar además de su derecho de ejercer su derechos democráticos de representación de sus votantes.

El discurso sirvió como una afirmación  de la herencia tana razonable y humana del gran filósofo anglosajón y el ‘padre del liberalismo’  John Locke   que tanta influencia tuvo en le evolución de las democracias.

La idea de razonabilidad y la ausencia de fanatismos  es  hilo dominante  de los escritos  de Locke que describió la  naturaleza como “la convivencia humana”.

Al escuchar a Hoyle también me vino el recuerdo de mi abuelo Gregorio Marañón cuya idea de un España plural hizo que durante  la Guerra Civil señalara que los vencedores debían mostrar generosidad hacia los vencidos.

Ya desde el exilio Marañón habla con  profundo dolor sobre como los protagonistas de la gran tragedia española de los años treinta afrontaron el desgarro que les imponían las circunstancias.

Y ya de vuelta en la España de la posguerra dejaría escrito en sus Ensayos liberales de 1947: “El liberalismo es, pues, una conducta y, por lo tanto, mucho más que una política. Y, como tal conducta, no requiere profesiones de fe sino ejercerla, de un modo natural, sin exhibirla ni ostentarla. Se debe ser liberal sin darse cuenta, como se es limpio, o como, por instinto, nos resistimos a mentir”.

Algo de ese liberalismo limpio  que  unen a Locke y Marañón y que apunta más al talante personal que a las formulaciones ideológicas- es lo  que el  nuevo ‘speaker’ de la Cámara de los Comunes Hoyle interpreta como una manera de ser cívica de hacer y debatir  política.

Taz vez pos eso que en el mismo día que hablo Hoyle sentí dolor a leer desde Londres  que los grupos de choque de los autodenominados Comités de Defensa de la Republica y Picnic por La Republica escogieron una esquina de la avenida del Dr. Marañón en Barcelona para increpar a sus declarados enemigos, con empujones  y gritos y quemaduras de fotografías  del Rey Felipe V1.

Mi abuelo siempre tuvo una gran amor y respeto hacia  los Catalanes y creo que hubiese compartido la esperanza de “una Catalunya orgullosa  de sus señas de identidad, plural e integradora,”- palabras del Rey Felipe en su discurso el lunes en Barcelona, desgraciadamente enfrentadas por los que han perdido su sentido cívico.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Coffee Minister Manuel Canelas

By Jimmy Burns

 

Manuel Canelas is a relaxed, as well as a bright guy who is worth getting to know in  an informal environment. So I was not surprised that the place agreed for our first meeting during my recent visit to his country, was not his ministerial office but a boutique cafe of those that offer a certain style and comfort amidst the urban chaos of the capital La Paz, a genial  and fraternal venue , away from the more spooky aspects of Bolivian politics. As defined by a diplomatic observer, ‘Colombia invented magical realism. Bolivia practices it.’

Canelas comes from a renowned political and journalistic family – his uncle Jorge was the founder of several newspapers. Miguel was born in Caracas Venezuela where his father Víctor Hugo Canelas was exiled for his political activities during the period of García Mesa’s coup. His father returned to Bolivia in 1984, was a political actor during the 1980s to 2000, and was interior minister of the National Revolutionary Movement, whose liberal leader Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was deposed from the government by a popular rebellion in 2003.

Canelas studied Political Sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid, where his study partners were Pablo Iglesias and Iñigo Erejon, founders of Podemos.

Errejon, like Canelas, has distanced himself from the vertical leadership of Iglesias. Errejon is still one of the two best friends Canelas has. The other is his partner Danny, a Spanish architect with whom Canelas has an enduring relationship. The couple have plans to live again in Madrid in some not too distant future.

It was in 2014,  two years after returning from Spain and presenting  a TV talk show, that  Canelas – ‘Manu’ as his friends call him – publicly declared his homosexuality at a meeting of the Bolivian government party of the MAS the Movement to Socialism Movement during a debate on a gender law project that was later approved.

 

A  former Deputy Minister of Planning and former lawmaker , Canelas assumed the key Minister for Communications portfolio, one of the most controversial of the Evo Morales regime, a few months ago after his predecessor had received harsh criticism for her inefficiency and extravagant expenses.

At the age of 37, the media savvy  Canelas  maintains his youthful energy and intellectual lights. He has an open and generally reasonable and measured way of facing the problems of his country, despite being part of a regime that approaches the new elections in October facing growing opposition.

Our conversation took place in two meetings in boutique cafes, the second, a  breakfast meeting in a house that was once owned by a brother of Sánchez-Losada.

 

JB Shall  we speak English?MC I speak something. But  better that you speak  English if you want, and I in Spanish…  JB Well, since we’re both bilingual, let’s talk in Spanish….The Strike / Protest Day in Santa Cruz. The fact that a city / region with a certain political and economic strength – what does the fact entail? MC It is not the first time that the Civic Committee has organized a strike… It is a repertoire of classic action in the country’s modern history-protests,  strikes, civic blockade… It has not surprised us, we do not underestimate it either. The Civic Committee has strength especially in the capital city and the middle classes. It is a parallel entity, not elected by the popular vote of course, but the representation of Santa Cruz is arrogated. It has the support of certain business sectors, and the traditional elite of Santa Cruz. It is not as decisive as twenty years ago when there was not even a governorship in Santa Cruz and when it was really The Institution … Now it has less strength although it is still important and ideologically it has always been located quite to the right. In the moments of greatest opposition to Evo, they were those who defended an independence of Santa Cruz more clearly … and strikes like this one was just a way to maintain a certain initiative …There is a new president in the Committee for a few months … Camacho ..And this man sees the need at the beginning of the mandate to show himself  to be tough and radical  so as to strengthen his following ..Camacho spends  several months announcing initiatives in the media but then they do not materialize in reality. An example is when he goes to  to see the President of Colombia carrying signatures against Evo’s candidacy a month and a half ago and he returns to Santa Cruz and tells everyone that the Colombian President is about to send an advisory opinion to oppose the reelection  of Evo and nothing happened …Camacho organized the strike with a demand that he knows is impossible – the resignation of  the election organising  committee  three months before the elections … but he does it  more to win support among his followers…And then he is a guy who has a lot of money in Panama and The Bahamas … and who features prominently in the Panama Papers, in the  Chapter on Bolivia. And I think he’s doing all this kind of thing to protect himself against being investigated by the government. JB But Mesa was also in the Santa Cruz strike  and Ortiz … You focus on Camacho but I come from outside, for me the ones who seem the most prominent figures in the opposition are these two.   MC Ortiz and Mesa do not have the strength to organize a strike as such….  JB The vice president says the strike was political … MC The origin for me is the President of the Civic Committee Camacho.  He wants to be a strong regional actor. He is a young guy. He probably has a certain ambition. He needs more internal cohesion in the Committee and believes that he can get it, taking strong public positions … and the fact that Mesa attends the strike action  is convenient for both Mesa and Camacho because there is a suspicion among the more radical opposition voter that Mesa is very soft and he is subordinate to the MAS… So when Mesa participates in the Santa Cruz strike, he does it so as  try and show his credentials as a real opponent. JB Polls look  good for the government. . Do you trust them? How do you see the electoral perspectives? MC Three months left. But if the elections were this Sunday the MAS would win in the first round, sure … But everything could change … JB What are the variables .. MC Several things … I think that what will be seen in this campaign in the next three months is two fundamental questions that people will want to ask …Whoever is able to put the question in an election has won a good part of the election …We need one question to be about who is more committed to stability,to  order. The proposal of the MAS in short is to maintain the order that has given us good results …Mesa’s attempt is for people to vote remembering the unease felt around the president Evo Morales standing again, and who say that he should not be a candidate … and the discomfort around corruption and drug trafficking … Whoever is able to deal with these subject will have logically better possibilities ..I think that what happens to the third political figure  is also very important: Oscar Ortiz ..Because Ortiz and Mesa are competing for the opposition vote. That opposition vote today is mostly a hard vote in ideological terms, a very anti-Evo vote, annoyed by the candidacy …Mesa is claiming that vote … in the sense of useful vote … saying I am the only one who can beat Morales so  vote for me ..But that  that hard vote sees Mesa with distrust and there are people who think he has a pact with Evo,….  everything indicates that the MAS will ge over 45 percent, that Mesa will find it hard to get  more than  thirty and that Ortiz will  get 15 percent … If Ortiz wins 15 per cent, he ruins the chances of  Mesa forcing  a second round … JB So you are more concerned about the useful vote in favor of Mesa? MC Yes, of course. Saying I distrust Mesa because he is very close to Evo but I am going to vote with a blocked nose …The problem that Mesa has is that there is one thing recognized by eighty, even ninety percent of the Bolivian electorate. The vast majority of people acknowledge that these ten years have been stable, or foreseeable, ten years. Mesa has two problems…. The distrust of the hard voter, but then to the question if Mesa would give me guarantees of a stable country, the vast majority of people think not. Many Bolivians  believes a vote for Mesa is a jump into  the void because people remember that the Mesa government before  Evo was very bad … his  twenty months of government …We need to recover that idea of ​​Mesa, that people say I am angry with Evo but I want to see what will happen next because even if I express my anger we have to have  government that is capable  of governing the  country….And I would even say that Ortiz offers more certainty of being able to lead the country, that is, Ortiz is more right-wing but conveys an idea that he can govern. Mesa is less radical and more centrist but generates distrust in the hard right wing voter …JB Will  Mesa and Ortiz join forces ?MC In the first round Impossible. In the second obviously, yes. JB So everything to playfor  in the second round? MC Sure JB Moving on to another topic … You run a ministry with a lot of power, with a very large budget and you succeeded a person who was under investigation, after mishandling a huge budget.In your interview with El País you quoted a budget a little smaller than last year … 507 million compared to 527 million … MC The reality is that there are always adjustments. But there are twenty Ministries and there are other Ministries that have more budget than Communications – we are in the middle. Of course health, education, public works have bigger budgets… have others have smaller ones than us, like  Culture, Sport, Productive Development …Last year we had about 560 million this year  528 million ..Because of  low oil prices, from 2015 onwards … except health and government … all other Ministries have lowered their budgets … JB I remember that after the referendum in government spheres, the bad management of government advertising was blamed … it was thought there were too many billboards, and a very a low level of social networks..You represent a  generation, better trained  and very focused on social media … MC For me it is not so much a question of the tools, as the message. I believe that the referendum campaign had two problems. First the dirty war, of lies and intoxication .. JB from both sides? MC Yes, of course. But I think that was we have also seen this  in Brexit, also in the Colombian referendum. The Colombian State Council published  a very hard hitting report saying that the campaign against peace had used false information …Here it was half evident that there was a very intelligent strategy mounted against Evo around his alleged girlfriend, and a son…And then there was  problem of the government’s message … It was a very classic message. The theme of anti-imperialism, very ideological , was appealed to a lot, and even if you had three times more social networks … if your message is not contemporary … it doesn’t matter if you communicate it by press, radio, or network …The key is that the message should  be contemporary … and that this message is accompanied by necessary communication tools …Because you could have a team of  50 guys working for you  on Facebook but if you campaign only talking about imperialism … nothing will happen however much you have a whole team also working all day on twitter. JB But they say you have a team of  ‘digital  guerrillas’ working for you … MC That is not true. It was a mistake of the my predecessor in the job who talked about digital warriors … and several colleagues wanted to popularize  the term…..My  social media network has no more than fifteen people … we concentrate much of the money on state advertising. JB In a pre-election period do you think it is ethical to convert institutional communication into a pre-election communication? MC Sure, it’s not right. The fact is that I do the same thing with the people of the social networks as the TV and the Radio. I am in charge of the management. I believe that any Ministry of Communication in an election year always faces that criticism. When I advertise lithium and hydrocarbons in a normal year, nobody seems to complain.But  if I put the same announcement out three months before the elections, there will always be people who say it is propaganda. I think it is an inevitable criticism. JB And the fact that you control a majority of the media … MC.The information is not correct.  JB let’s move on to another topic… A diplomat in La Paz explained to me recently that while in Colombia magical realism was invented, the practice is in La Paz, a city that feeds on rumors and conspiracies, many of them imagined. .Something unusual among those who form the current government, but in your case I do not find anyone outside the government who  criticizes you … Because they see you as a guy who is trying to give a different image, not demagogic, quite measured … The same diplomat recently explained his perspective on Bolivian politicians and defines them as three categories:  organic, potential and corrupt …The organic are the most enduring unquestioning supporters of MAS, the most ideological; the potentials  which you belong to are, less ideological and acting with the conviction that things have to change … You are not accused of being someone who is only where he is because he likes power. You still know that you can return to Madrid whenever you want … Taking into account that you are not a corrupt but a potential … Let’s talk about Podemos, a movement with which you have had a lot to do in terms of friendships …I remember an interview I did in December 2014 with one of the founding ideologues of Podemos Juan Carlos Monedero where he told me how the statutes of his political  movement  prohibited more than two consecutive presidential terms  …You represent a President who has violated the constitution by running for a third  term … and the opposition says that this is a government that like the regime in Venezuela wants to perpetuate itself in power. And that  if he Morales sees that he  isnt going to get enough votes, , he will resort to  fraud … How do you justify yourself in terms of your conscience? MC: It’s very simple. I think it’s a generalization to say that long governments have more corruption … I can think  of  lots of  examples of  very short ones that steal a lot .. JB Like what? MC: Take a look at the four years of the Guatemalan government … in political science the main argument in favor of reelection is that the government is accountable and has to behave well if it wants to be reelected.Although  I am not defending a limitless time in government…. JB But the most potentially fragile point of this government is drug trafficking and corruption. Do you think that the re-election of Evo Morales is justified because if he is re-elected he will deal these problems? MC: It’s a more pragmatic issue. I do not say that it is good or bad but what I feel is with the government of Evo we have seen that Bolivia has gone through a process of modernization .. before 2005 in this country the parents of my friends had been presidents, I know Mesa since before going to school, my father has been a minister, my uncles have been ministers, the country was really a a political arena dominated by  four families and I speak as someone who was a member of one of those families …As of 2005, with clumsiness, with errors, but we had  a more or less classic modernization process that other countries had experienced in times past …The collapse of the pre-2005 political system make people who voted for  Morales give ehim the power of arbitrator…Evo  is the only guy still in Bolivia today who can speak with the president of Private Entrepreneurs, with the Head of the Trade Unions , who can engage with  a right wing State Governor  and also reach out to the radical left. I  understand why people question his re-election. But let’s not forget that in 2014 the president’s candidacy was very criticized… but it was approved by the constitutional court… JB So you think it’s justified. . And if he goes to the electorate  … you are on record as saying he has to appeal to new voters, less peasants, more urban dwellerrs … There are people who say that you really are a social democrat … MC: I think that although it would bother some ministers, the MAS government has been a very social democratic government ..I believe that the rhetoric for many years has been radical but that the practice has been social democratic, trying to set up  a welfare state … strengthen the state, distribute benefits …,Now what is  need is for the  government to catch up with the times…… Because if the country has changed as it has changed since 2005, it cannot continue talking as in 2005 … that is to say, people no longer think so much about having to belong to  a peasant union … JB But that is a great challenge. This is a government that has said that it is aware of the ecological issue but it is not. It seems to me a country full of contradictions , such as the fact that the country while having huge potential lithium reserves that could help create a world of electronic vehicles still has  huge  pollution in La Paz with cars from the fifties using  diesel as fuel  ; Bolivia is the fifth country in terms of deforestation; the Andes are  running   out of snow …The economy of Bolivia is still extractive … In 2005 the speech was La Madre Tierra ..Mother Earth   MC: I believe that one cannot govern and win elections disconnected with what people demand. And I think that there is a  fragility of the discourse of living well. Because living well was not an extensive and broad demand of Bolivian society … If you see what Morales was asked for in 2005 it was not  an ecological demand to live well … it was  a demand for a new institutional pact to include the hitherto disenfranchised sectors, indigenous people and peasants, giving them a sense of citizenship . Meanwhile the popular demand with the economy was purely extractive … nationalize hydrocarbons to exploit them ..Then, through some intellectuals close to the government, this issue of living well was discussed but still had no popular supportI think that is why in 2014 when the Greens ran in the elections in Bolivia they took only two percent of the vote and had no candidates  elected…What is it that his aving more impact at the level of common sense in Bolivia in ecological terms? Garbage management. Not pollution, not mining.Here people do not perceive that we are screwed because of  the pollution of cars. But they do care about  garbage … And so you see mayors and Evo talking about garbage …Here you ask people what is the main problem of ecology, and they will tell you , it’s garbage … with absolute certainty … Not all countries enter the environmental paradigm in the same way …In the government manifesto  in the October elections I guarantee that the issue of garbage will have an important place … and not even in the Mesa program will they talk about the pollution of cars … JB And deforestation? MC You have to find a balance from the government between what you know is a problem and what people perceive is a problem.I think that the program of the green party in 2014 was fantastic since it talked about deforestation, about car pollution… but it got two percent of the vote JB And you don’t think you have to do more to save the planet? MC We have to find an intermediate point .. If you are going to make me choose between an impeccable government programme that meets European taste like the one the Green Party was projecting but at the cost of not having one deputy elected,  or having the power to decide about garbage….. JB Let’s go to the question: If Morales is re-elected, will ecology be a priority? MC: It’s an issue that is increasingly important. JB For example, will mining cooperatives continue with their  abysmal health and safety and environmental records? MC You have to regulate. I am not an expert in the mining issue. Cooperatives have an important political weight in the country and I imagine that both the MAS and Mesa are going to field candidates  with ties to the cooperative deputies …Well, you try to regulate bad practices. In the end it is a negotiation process. JB: Let’s finish, if you allow me, with a more personal issue. You are in an openly gay relationship with your Spanish partner. That has been a great challenge for you? Are you proud to be the gay prime minister in Bolivia? What does this fact tell us about Bolivian society? MC I come from a socially privileged background , from a well-off family. I have political power, and as someone who  is white does not suffer the discrimination that another person may suffer. My experience is good but I don’t know if I am an example to judge how homosexuality is lived in Bolivia. I think this country is still quite homophobic. But I think one of the good things is that Evo got rid of the the Church as a public actor. The Church before 2005 was a fundamental actor. For example, in 2004 when Mesa was president, the government worked with a law project on sexual and reproductive rights – very advanced. Congress approved it unanimously and sent it for Mesa to promulgate. The Archbishop of the moment sent a letter to Mesa to make him reconsider the project and the project was put off.

Today although there are many conservative people who privately show prejudice in their homes, there are no political leaders, or organized political speeches, that criticize homosexuality. A very interesting case was when we passed the transsexuals law in  May 2016.

I assure you that if you do a survey you will   80 percent of people in Bolivia are against it. But the Assembly approved it with 80 percent of votes and support from the opposition parties. .

 

JB But there is no legalized gay marriage …

 

MC No, not yet. What you have is in the Law to Combat Racism Homophobia is a criminal offense, and in the Family code approved in 2014, the possibility of regulating other types of unions opens up.

 

 

JB Do you think gay marriage  wil be a long time in coming ?

 

MC I don’t think so.  Mesa and Evo already agree and Ortiz cannot go against it. So I think you can expect it to get approval in the  next legislature. Mind you, gay organizations here mobilise very few people in the  streets. But they have a very good lobby. They engage with deputies, with senators, with the President, with Mesa.

 

JB All good. But Evo is labeled a misogynist with a rather negative attitude towards women, with a language and attitude that almost equals Trump. He is not a great example.

MC I think it’s an inaccurate observation. To evaluate what a president does, we must look at the statements, but also the actions taken by his government. It cannot be evaluated simply by grabbing five statements with misplaced jokes and saying that this is all Evo has done in the ten years of government. It is a cartoon that is not reality. ENDS

 

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I know  I am not alone in struggling not to be overwhelmed at times by all the negativity in so many words and acts,  a sense of despair about the  state of the world from Brexit to Trump, via massacres and other man-made disasters.

So let me share three  shared encounters in recent days that reminded me that our spirits can be lifted if we allow  other less binary, less visceral and conflictive human narratives to give us direction and a  sense of  common purpose.

The first was a silent and dignified ‘United in Grief’ vigil, with candles and flowers,  on the steps of St Martin’s in the Fields for the victims of the terrorist attacks in  Sri Lanka which for a short while brought a brief interlude to the hectic  pace  of office workers and tourists  , drawing some of them to the gathering  , in solidarity and shared remembrance and respect, as well as hope. Light in the darkness.

The second was the words I heard from a Catholic parish priest on Sunday, commending to his congregation the example of humanity in the meeting  Pope Francis  had with  the gay comedian Stephen K. Amos shown on the  recent BBC Pilgrimage series .

Amos  told the Pope : “ Being  non-religious, I was looking for answers and faith. But as a gay man, I don’t feel accepted.”

Francis replied: “Giving more importance to the adjective [gay] rather than the noun [man], this is not good. We are all human beings and have dignity. It does not matter who you are, or how you live your life – you do not lose your dignity. “There are people that prefer to select or discard people because of the adjective. These people don’t have a human heart.”

He added: “For those of you who are believers, pray for me. For those of you who do not believe, could you wish me a good journey, so I do not let anyone down.”

The third encounter was earlier today when I caught up with my  Buddhist monk friend  Reverend Gyoro Nagase while walking in Battersea Park.

It is Gyoro who has lovingly tendered the Park’s magnificent Peace Pagoda since it was inaugurated  1984. He belongs to the Japanese Buddhist movement Nipponzan Myohoji  founded by the Venerable Nichidatsu Fuji, affectionately called ‘Guruji’ by his close friend Mahatma Ghandi.

Guruji stated that ‘Civilization is not to kill human beings, not to destroy things, nor make war; civilization is to hold mutual affection and to respect one another’. Following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he pledged to build pagodas worldwide as shrines to peace.

My friendship with  Guruji’s disciple  Gyoro led to a memorable experience when  three years ago we shared chants, and incense for my daughter’s  safe journey to and from Japan . He had welcomed me to the cottage he lives in near the Pagoda where he has a room for shared prayer and meditation.

In our latest meeting this morning Gyoro asked me how my daughter was and I told him she had recently been to Thailand and worked as a volunteer in an elephant sanctuary. The update prompted a huge smile in Gyoro’s round face and an anecdote. He recalled the  story of a young girl who had been saved from the Tsunami by an  elephant who had sensed the impending disaster and saved  his young human friend  by taking her up into the high ground before the wave struck.  “It was telepathy,” said Gyoro.

With that,  we bowed to each other and went our separate ways, after agreeing that it was a beautiful day and promising to pray together again soon.

 

 

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The Falklands War, following the Argentine military occupation of disputed British territory in the South Atlantic,  involved the biggest British naval deployment since WW2, lasted 74 days and  cost the lives  649 Argentine military personnel, 255 British military personnel, and three Falkland Islanders . It ended in British victory, the collapse of Argentina’s military regime, and contributed to Mrs Thatcher’s reelection  as prime-minister.

To a new generation of young  European adults, the Falklands War not only barely features in their collective memory, but is largely ignored as a subject worth studying at school or university.  Compared to the inherited consciousness  passed down by parents  and grandparents of two World Wars, and the more recent experience of conflicts related to the War on and by Terrorism, the Falklands struggles to secure a place in the collective memory, let alone current awareness.

Only in Argentina, and on the islands themselves, and in some British regiments-does the war fought in 1982, continue to impact on a broad  civilian as well as military consciousness, with the dead commemorated in monuments and museums, veterans digging up stories and relics from the campaign, and an argument over its consequences a subject of continuing serious political discourse.

And yet as a two day conference I attended in Manchester, England, last week  showed the Falklands War is a subject that continues to fuel discussion among a relatively small number of academics, and rather more individuals that were directly involved at the time,  not least (now retired) members of the British military, journalists, and Falkland islanders  who experienced it at first hand.

The aim of the conference organisers was in part to test  the suggestion that  the Falklands War was an accident of history, of little relevance to the pressing political concerns and military challenges  of the 21st century,  an anachronistic last  hurrah of a once imperial Britain, on the one hand  and a decadent Latin American military dictatorship, that were a drawn into a war neither of them really ever dreamed of having over some distant islands most people outside Argentina had scarcely heard about, let alone cared about prior to 1982.

Those who contributed to the conference  tried  their best to convey a sense of why the Falklands war mattered, that there  were lessons worth  learning,  while struggling to agree on what was its more enduring  legacy.

One of the few Argentines present , the  Cambridge University academic Guillermo Makim focused on his well-known  thesis that the war might have been avoided  or at least a more enduring resolution  found after it, if only the British  had accepted proposals for a leaseback deal, satisfying Argentine claims but against the wishes of the islanders. I couldn’t help he was thrashing a dead horse with British politicians long ago having lost interest in Argentina and  currently occupied on other more pressing issues of sovereignty and most islanders resolute in not losing their British status .

Other academics were on hand to  share their research-little of it earth shattering, let alone game changing- that ranged from the politics of oil and UK/US diplomacy when Haig was US Secretary of state to well aired accounts of propaganda, and national identity when it came to Falklands/Malvinas.

Unsurprisingly it was the military veterans and island representatives that drew the greatest attention , with detailed personal reminiscences and heart-felt insights about the war and its aftermath.

There was a  fascinating account by retired Major Mike Seear of the debilitating psychological impact on the Argentine troops of false rumours  that spread about the Gurkhas use of their fabled kukri knives.

And you certainly also couldn’t hear a pin drop in the lecture hall as former Falklands marine commander Major General Julian Thompson described  the organisation and leadership of Britain’s boldest military exercise since WW2 –full of improvisation,  good luck ,and no small measure of valour and professionalism. And yet it was hard not to take into account the outspoken Falklands hero’s  most recent public contribution to national politics by his vocal support for  an uncompromising  Brexit as serving Britain’s best defence interests.  Both the Falklands War and Brexit seemed to be part of the same minted coin, a piece of post imperial bravado defying reason.

There was certainly more than a touch of irony that a Falklands Island politician who spoke after him , while showing her gratitude for the way the British military liberated them from  Argentine occupation, and focusing on how much the islands had managed to prosper as a result of the British military victory,  challenged an academic for generalising that Falklands  islanders were united by their English ancestry.

She was, she pointed out herself, born in Punta Arenas, the daughter of a Chilean, and islanders drew their ancestry from a number of nations. And off script and in the corridor of the conference of the hall she shared her fear that having the UK crash out of  Europe could negatively impact on  the islands’ economy. Not only was  the EU market  an important destination for Falkland exports, notably loligo squid, but the British overseas territory has been a recipient of a supportive European  development Fund.

The dreaded B word was of course not on the conference agenda, and the contradictions  emerging from the platform were stumbled on rather than planned, and did not go without challenge.

No-one thankfully wasted much time in resurrecting the old canard that the sinking of the Belgrano was the biggest cover-up in British military history.  But the chilling account  by the navigating officer of HMS Conqueror of the British submarine’s  voyage to the South Atlantic and choice of torpedoes for the kill of the Argentine battle ship was both fascinating and disconcerting both for its insight into the British tensions and dangers on board, and a  reminder of  the death of the 323 people who died, mainly young Argentine sea cadets, with half-naked survivors  struggling in freezing temperatures while swimming to a life craft.Such is war.

Thankfully the navy man had the courtesy not to refer to dead floating  Argentines as ‘Erics’ (sic) ,a  term invoked by another speaker who had not fought in the war, and had  no academic qualification  but  who still presented himself as a leading Falklands War historian while unashamedly promoting his  book as the definitive account of the resistance put up by British marines on the first day of the invasion.

This speaker found himself upsetting several other delegates including the  war’s honoured official historian Sir  Lawrence Freedman who challenged his claims of  exclusivity, failing to provide supportive evidence, and simply making factual errors.

Indeed Professor Freedman doubted whether as the 40th anniversary  approached in 2022  there was anything substantially new  to be  revealed about the war that had not already been written  or that might change our perception of it .

However he did concede that serious and respectable journalists reporting history as it happened not as myth should be listened to more carefully by academics because of their front-line experience and  access to valuable sources and information.

 

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Part One: Nothing like a two day trip out of London to remind me why I still feel profoundly grateful that I remain a committed citizen of Europe.

In Manchester the north-south divide and Brits against spiks mentality that that coalition of nationalist prejudice UKIP , hard-line Tory Brexiteers, and some Corbynistas are so fond of turning into a battle cry, is defied by a less binary reality.

Under its elected Labour Mayor, the very pragmatic and non-ideological Andy Burnham ,Manchester is a thriving multicultural hub full of commercial enterprise, and its two football teams , two of the best clubs on the world, defined in excellence by ‘foreign’ managers and players as well as an enduring local loyalty.

The dismal service of Virgin Trains and the clogged up local road network leaves one wondering just how much more could be done if British policy and public investment mirrored the example of continental Europe’s exemplary high-speed train network.

And yet I eventually cleared the traffic jams and headed out into the Lancashire countryside, entering the stunningly beautiful Ribble Valley, its villages and landscape full of history and literature, nowhere more so that in the approach to Stonyhurst College.

I was soon following one of Tolkien’s favourite walks, imagining Middle Earth, and marvelling , at God’s Grandeur which the poet Gerald Manley Hopkins found in the brushstrokes of light and shadow of the rolling fields and rivers and skyline and the defined beauty of trees.

This is England in Spring time at its most profoundly engaging, both welcoming and universal and mystical -the first buds, the early lambs, and translucent green, all steeped in a history that defies national boundaries.

At Stonyhurst, one of the world’s leading Jesuits schools, I listened to a hugely enlightening lecture by the College’s historian and curator Jan Graffius about the profound and enduring European roots of English Catholicism symbolised by hundreds of artefacts, letters, and paintings .

The Stonyhurst collection shows the extraordinary creativity as well as resilience that survived the destructive Reformation, an act as insular and prejudiced as the machinations of the Hard Brexiteers . It took more than 200 years for European English Catholic men and women to feel tolerated again in their own country.

Thankfully European Brits of all faiths and none have taken rather less time in the modern era to stand up and insist on their right to play their part in shaping national discourse, in the face of those who claim they have no legitimacy.

Part Two:

I  have a close relative and several good friends who work in the House of Commons.

Yesterday as MP’s voted not to be bullied into voting for a dog’s dinner of a deal by a deadline of 29th March for leaving the EU, they were advised for their own safety to either head home early or take cover.

The reason given by their supervisory staff was that a demonstration by hard Brexiteers congregated in Parliament Square threatened a riot if the vote went against them.

Thankfully there was no riot but the atmosphere was hardly consensual, let alone engaging. A snapshot of the crowd outside –largely male, and white, and well into adulthood- had the aggressive edge of hard-core English football fans, waving Union Jacks and mouthing nationalist bigotry of a kind that would have had George Orwell turning in his grave.

And here it is worth pointing out that the size of the demonstration claiming the right to impose the biggest severance of the English people from continental Europe since the Reformation, was not only dwarfed by the more than one million who turned up earlier this month demanding a second referendum to decide our future relationship with the EU, but also very different in character, mood, and adherence.

The earlier massive demonstration, the biggest seen in London in modern times was festive and peaceful, multiracial, multicultural and gender plural with ages that ranged from young children to veterans of WW2.

Yesterday’s attempted siege of the seat of our democracy- inflamed by headlines in the Sun newspaper and social media, was epitomised by the abuse and threats hurled at Europhile MP’s , and the move by a few hundred members of the Beaconsfield Conservative Association to deselect the former Attorney-General , the remain-supporting Dominic Grieve.

So worth remembering here that during the protracted period of unprecedented British government ineptitude, hard Brexit Tory bigotry, and less than exemplary leadership of Her Majesty’s main opposition party by Jeremy Corbyn, few MP’s have shown such non-partisan nobility in gesture and word than Grieve.

He has put his sense of what true democracy is all about before narrow party interest, at the forefront of efforts to ensure that neither the hapless prime-minister, nor the circling sharks of hard Brexiteers and rump of intransigent ‘No Surrender’ Ulster men and women should be allowed to get in the way of a majority of elected MP’s retaining an influence on how the biggest planned constitutional issue in Britain’s post-war history is managed.

At the rally of more than one million people Grieve spoke eloquently as to why a people’s vote through a second referendum might be the only truly democratic solution to the mess Mrs May has dragged the country into.

As Grieve has argued: “One of the tendencies that has crept in throughout the whole of this debate ever since the referendum result came out has been a tendency to close down debate on the basis that it is not proper to pursue it because the referendum result must act as a diktat which prevents such debate taking place.

You cannot have a working democracy where you close down debate … To argue that the referendum result imposes a permanency which cannot be challenged is, in my judgment, entirely wrong and when I look at the mess into which we’ve got ourselves, it does appear to me to be at least in part the consequence of pushing this argument and thereby preventing democratic process working.”

For his ‘sins’ Grieve is being challenged by a group of local Tories who feel themselves better represented by a former member of UKIP, an indication of how May under the guise of trying to keep her party from breaking apart has allowed her party to be infiltrated by extreme-right xenophobes.

And here it is worth noting that not even Boris Johnson believes that Grieve is worth sacrificing on the altar of Eurosceptic political ambitions. “ Sad to hear about Dominic Grieve. We disagree about EU but he is a good man and a true Conservative #grieveforbeaconsfield “, Johnson tweeted in response to the attempt anti-Grieve putsch.

Which is why today I turned to the writings of Britain’s supreme essayist and reread Orwell’s seminal notes on Nationalism. And here I quote some pertinent paragraphs.

“Nationalism is not be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas and involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally, Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he had chosen to sink his own individuality.”

Wanting to be British and European does not make Dominic Grieve a nationalist, but I believe he has his patriotic heart in the right place.

The post Notes around the 29th March appeared first on Jimmy Burns.

Greetings from Turin where I am spending a couple of days updating my double bio on Cristiano and Leo.

Nothing like a quick hop over to the European mainland for a check on reality or as my spiritual mentor St Ignatius would put it ‘discernment’.

Flying in over the spectacular sweep of the snow covered Alps, I overheard some excited Brits exchanging tips about the best ski slopes. Arrival at the small but welcoming airport servicing north and southern Europe was a doddle. A charming policeman took me to on side and explained that I had forgotten to notify British Airways that I had lost my old British passport and was travelling with a new one, but not to worry there was ‘no problem.’ He waved me through as a -still-citizen of Europe.

Turin is a quiet clean yet solid city, without the chaos of Rome, Naples’s Camorra, or the Germanic stamp of Milan, its main economic power base-the Agnellis- not quite as enduring as its Baroque splendour , but now not only boasting Juventus but Messi’s only real contender among Europeans for the title of best player in the world.

Carlo, a youthful and genial Turin businessman and lifelong Juventus fan who trades aluminum throughout Europe with China , told me the player he had most loved was Carlitos Tevez not Ronaldo, and how proud he was of having two young relatives studying and working in London which he still believed in as one of the great capitals in the EU.

This morning the young self-assured woman who served me a superb double expresso under a sign in Italian proclaiming that caffeine helped kick star revolutions (did Gramsci say that, I wondered out loud, and she laughed ) told me that two of her friends were on a two day tourist trip to London and were hugely enjoying themselves.

Italians I meet have the courtesy not to raise the dreaded ‘B’ word but focus instead on positives, like good friends helping one out when one most is in need of it. I find myself telling them, ‘Don’t give up on us’, most of us still feel part of Europe.

It’s a message that seems to have been lost in the quagmire that Mrs May, and her allies in the DUP and the misnamed European Research Group (hard Brexiteers to a man and woman) have thrown us into.

And yet taking my double shot of Turin expresso these lines from my colleague Philip Stephens in today’s FT resonated with me: “Mrs May demands parliament respect ‘the will of the people’. Here, from the lips of a prime-minister, are the sentiments of a demagogue rather than a democrat. ‘The people’ are the 52 per cent who backed leaving the EU (although I would add a less than representative sample of those who should had the right to vote). She assumes they all want her version of Brexit. The 48 per cent behind Remain are ‘citizens of nowhere’ who deserve to be disenfranchised.”

Well, I know that Italy’s current government is hardly a bastion of libera democratic values. St Ignatius also advises never take critical decisiouns when you are in a dark mood. But as I breathed in the clear mountain air along the via Gramsci, I put Mrs May’s desolation road to one side, and looked forward to being back in London this saturday and joining many thousands, marching for a people’s vote, glimpsing the light through the darkness.

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