Meeting held on Monday 21st February 2022.
10 of us welcomed a potential new member of the group. five people sent their apologies.
We welcomed the recent news from Compass that the leaders of the Labour and Liberal parties have agreed to a ‘non-aggression pact’ for the next General Election. Thus they will each concentrate their resources on seats where they are most likely to beat the Tories, there being only one seat where Labour is marginal to Liberal. This would benefit Labour in the so-called Red Wall seats and Liberal in the Southern seats. We felt, however, that we know little about Ed Davey. Furthermore, we were disappointed that the Greens did not (yet) figure in any such arrangement and considered that this was only the start of a process towards co-operation between parties.
We reminded ourselves of the failures and successes of collaboration between Labour and Green in recent local elections and are appalled by the way Councillor Peter O’Brien had been sacked from Labour being associated with a progressive alliance.
We considered whether Starmer would gain in popularity as a consequence of this, given that the majority of Labour members appear to support some collaborations between opposition parties. It was noted that Labour did not appear to be as far ahead in the polls as they should be given the disastrous recent performance of the Tories.
Recent events in Ukraine were now, like Covid, providing a distraction from the recent disastrous record of the government. Would Ukraine prove to be Starmer’s ‘Falklands War’ (qv Thatcher 1982). While not wishing to support the ‘monster’ Putin, we thought the advance eastwards of NATO was a grave mistake which was bound to make Russia feel insecure. The threat Putin poses now is largely his response to perceived weakness in USA. We wondered whether Johnston’s support may be very much like Trump’s, and outlast this government. This led us to think about the essential features of ‘populism’ and its threat to democracy.
Experiences of China, and the Monarchy, were also considered as part of a wider debate about the benefits of democracy vis-a-vis more centralised autocracy.
The next meeting will be on 21st Mach, hopefully at The Anglers and, if possible, later in the evening. Details nearer the date.
Stephen Rowland 01433651167