Ed Davey’s Caring Approach

The new Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Ed Davey, gave his keynote speech to the Party’s virtual autumn conference this afternoon, emphasizing his experience as a carer — for his mother, his grandmother and more recently for his disabled son. So he had fair grounds for staking a claim to be the person who can stand up for the nation’s estimate nine million carers. The natural follow-on from that was to chastise the Conservative government for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, in which health workers as well as patients have been pushed to their limits. He boldly championed the notion of a universal basic income — in line with a motion passed earlier in the conference — and promised to listen carefully to the concerns of ordinary voters. He reminded everyone that when he was Minister for Energy and Climate Change in the Coalition Government of 2010-2015 he made Britain a star performer in off-shore renewable energy — truly world-beating, unlike some of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s boasts. Interestingly, he spent very little time criticising Labour, preferring to concentrate on the positive messages he had to put across. And although his speech was intently focussed on the needs and priorities of the country and its inhabitants, he did make mention of the Liberal Democrats’ internationalism and firm pro-European convictions. He was looking extremely well-groomed, confident and determined, perhaps dispelling the fears of some who did not vote for him in the recent leadership contest. It was a masterly rendition of a beautifully-constructed speech, hitting all the right notes. The big question now is whether the media and the great British public are ready to listen to his message, with the Party currently languishing on around five per cent in the opinion polls.

Shock! Horror! LibDems Love the EU!

Stopping Brexit was the Liberal Democrats’ USP from 2016 until December last year, but that battle was lost. Britain is now in the transition period towards full withdrawal — which the Party unsuccessfully lobbied the Government to have extended, to try to lessen the impact of leaving on 31 December with No Deal or a Johnsonian half-baked deal. So naturally the LibDems have had to consider “what next?” — especially at a time when most of the country is preoccupied with COVID-19 and its multifarious health, social and economic impacts. Accordingly, one of the most important motions at the Party’s (virtual) Autumn conference this weekend was on Europe — debated this afternoon. There was a minority of people online who would have liked to see the LibDems campaigning to rejoin the EU from 1 January 2021, but the vast majority recognised that such a position was untenable and probably counter-productive, given that a sizable proportion of the electorate is heartily sick of hearing about Brexit. They may well feel differently once the worst consequences of Brexit start to bite, but that won’t be immediate. In the meantime, as a political force that is unashamedly pro-European, the LibDems need to work out a strategy in which timing will be crucial, taking account of circumstances and the public mood, but with the very clear ultimate goal of the UK rejoining the EU. As speaker after speaker today acknowledged, Britain should be at the heart of Europe and LibDems are, in the main, passionate Europeans. So the motion that passed comfortably today — with an amendment which removed any ambiguity about whether EU membership was the ultimate goal (some media coverage having suggested otherwise) — puts down a marker for what promises to be a long of assiduous campaign to reclaim our place in the European family, meanwhile holding the Government to account for its mishandling of not just the Brexit transition but COVID-19 and so much else. We are in this for the long haul, but the ultimate destination is clear.

Layla Moran Wows the LibDems’ Virtual Conference

Layla Moran

Layla Moran, MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, may not have won the recent LibDem leadership contest but she absolutely bowled over the Party’s autumn conference earlier this evening with an outstanding keynote speech — all the more remarkable given that this was a virtual event, so none of the more than 1000 people listening could physically cheer her on. For me, her speech proved two things. First, Sir Ed Davey, the new Leader, was absolutely right to give her the Foreign Affairs and International Development brief. She admitted a certain nostalgia for the education portfolio that she had had to surrender, given her years as a teacher, but she can surely make compassionate internationalism her own and the signature tune of the Liberal Democrats. The second thing I gained from her speech was that the Party has absolutely not lost its mojo, in contrast to what some parts of the media and social media have been saying. This was a woman talking with principle and passion, whether it was about China’s oppression of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang or the years of famine in Ethiopia (where she spent part of her childhood). This was full-blooded Liberalism, shamelessly trumpeted, from Layla’s opening declaration “I am a citizen of the world!” to her damnation of Boris Johnson’s government for breaking international law and downgrading the Department for International Development. She even boldly suggested that the UK should be giving 1% of GDP as development assistance, not contemplating cutting it. Like Ed Davey, she is a passionate European; don’t believe those media reports that the Liberal Democrats have jettisoned their belief that Britain would be better off in the EU again, when that is possible. That should become clear from tomorrow’s Europe debate. Some people commented during Layla’s speech today that it was a pity that Ed had not chosen Layla as Deputy Leader, but I don’t agree. Daisy Cooper. MP for St Albans and spokesperson on Culture, Media and Sport, is a formidable force of nature herself. So this is by no means a two-person show. Moreover, other women stars include Christine Jardine and Wendy Chamberlain. What a paltry crew Boris Johnson’s front bench ladies look in comparison!

The LibDem Conference Goes Virtual

Happening Now!

The Liberal Democrats’ Autumn Conference got underway this afternoon and will run through till Monday. It was originally scheduled to take place in Brighton — always a favourite venue — but COVID-19 meant it had to go online. Unlike Labour’s conference last week, when members were merely able to watch what their political leaders had to say, the LibDems have a fully participatory format, with the usual diverse menu of policy motion debates, briefings, Q&As and set-piece speeches, fringe meetings and even an exhibition. More than 3000 members have signed up for this conference and well over 1000 were online this afternoon, despite it being a working day. The Party HQ in Westminster has been transformed into a virtual conference venue, as professionally sleek and slick as a TV studios. Congratulations to Geoff Payne, Conference Committee Chair, and his team. Some key speakers and session chairs are physically present there, whereas everyone else is coming in via video link. The Hopin platform is remarkable easy to use and effective. There is a wide range of topics that will help formulate new party policy — in the Liberal Democrats, Conference is sovereign — and given my European and international interests I shall in particular be focussing on sessions on the World After COVID, Hong Kong and Europe. The Europe motion, on Sunday afternoon, is likely to provoke the liveliest debate and should reassert the LibDems as the natural home for pro-Europeans. Contrary to some media interpretations of what the Party’s stance on the EU has become since Ed Davey became Leader, LibDems still believe that Britain was better off as a member of the European Union and even though rejoining is unlikely to be on the agenda in the immediate future it definitely remains an aspiration. In the meantime, the Party will argue for the closest possible relationship with the EU27 and will hold the Brexiteer Conservative government to account.

Henry Hemming at the Authors’ Club

Henry Hemming: Our Man in New York

The Authors’ Club convened an online Literary Lunch today to hear Henry Hemming talk about his book Our Man in New York (Quercus, £9.99), in conversation with C. J. Schüler. Perhaps best known for his biography of Maxwell Knight — MI5’s “M” — Hemming gave us a taste of the extraordinary exploits of Canadian-born William “Bill” Stephenson, who was sent out to New York by Britain’s MI6 in the early part of the Second World War to lure the United States out of its isolationism and to join the European Allies in fighting Nazism. Stephenson and the team that was built up in great secrecy had important adversaries in the form of the superstar aviator Charles Lindbergh and the America First movement (sounds familiar?) but with sufficient resources and a wicked imagination they were able to turn opinions round in Congress. Of course, Pearl Harbour ultimately helped. But so did fake news — disinformation pumped out by the undercover team, including a map allegedly showing German plans to colonise South America — very much still the United States’ backyard. One will need to read the book to learn many of the complex details of the story, but one intriguing, tangential anecdote that Hemming shared at today’s event was that Bill Stephenson apparently rescued Hemming’s then three-year-old father from a large pond after he had gone missing. Otherwise that child would never have grown up to be the explorer and former Director of the Royal Geographical Society, John Hemming. And we would have been deprived of his talented progeny.

YouTube link to the recorded event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfWQ1giYtLg

Society of Authors’ Management Committee Election

Full members of the Society of Authors — the main UK writers’ trade union — will find inside the autumn issue of The Author ballot papers for electing new members of the Management Committee. I have put my name forward, as I believe it is vital that the Society, in collaboration with sister organisations, ups its game in fighting for authors’ rights and fair remuneration. The sector has been under great pressure for a number of reasons, including the move of much media to online platforms and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Below is my candidate biography. Voting closes on 28 October.

JONATHAN FRYER
Writing has been at the heart of my life
since I was a boy, producing stories for
the school newspaper and magazine
then heading off to the Vietnam War
at age 18 as a cub reporter for the
Manchester Evening News. I got my first
book contract straight after university –
for a history of the Great Wall of China
– and since then have produced 14 more
non-fiction titles (one self-published,
a childhood memoir). Only briefly was
it possible to live from book advances,
which have steadily declined, so for 20 years I wrote current
affairs scripts for BBC World Service radio and still contribute
occasionally to Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent.
Like many authors I often sing for my supper, giving talks
to National Trust branches, women’s clubs and the like. I am
also a regular ‘talking head’ on several Middle Eastern TV
channels, commenting on political developments in the UK
and the Middle East/North Africa.
For several years I was on the Executive of English PEN,
notably working on its Writers in Prison Committee, and
was a Non-Executive Director of the Authors’ Licensing and
Collecting Society (ALCS) between 2014-2019. I am currently
on ALCS’s Advocacy Group, championing authors’ rights in
Britain, Europe and the wider world. I have been a member
of the Society of Authors since moving back to Britain in
the 1980s after a period based in Brussels. I know how
invaluable the work of the SoA is, not least in advising on
contracts, demanding that writers be paid appropriately for
content and performances, as well as, in my particular case,
successfully extracting one from a tricky legal situation.
Apart from a lucky few, most writers have seen their
incomes decline in recent years, which has made all of us
multi-taskers. We all have to promote our works, including
online and through social media. Personally, I find Twitter
(@jonathanfryer) invaluable. But these virtual platforms
also offer a brilliant tool to further writers’ solidarity and
to raise public and political consciousness about key issues
such as copyright, PLR and fair remuneration. These will be
under renewed pressure because of the double whammy
of Brexit and COVID-19. So the lobbying work of the SoA,
alongside that of sister organisations, will be increasingly
important. That is the major reason I am seeking election to
the Management Committee. Those partnerships will be vital
in supporting not only the well-being of authors but also the
value of literature and literacy, economically and spiritually.
(Nominated by Anne Sebba and Martyn Bond)

MBS

When Mohammed bin Salman was made Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince in June 2017 it was if a tsunami had swept away all the assumptions about the Desert Kingdom, after decades in which elderly sons of King Abdulaziz Al Saud (1875-1953) were promoted to the top post one after another. Suddenly, there was a generation switch apparently underway, as the current King, Salman, elbowed aside his earlier chosen successor, Muhammad bin Nayef, and installed his own 32-year-old son, familiarly known as MBS. This larger than life character exploded into prominence on the international stage — largely unknown, as unlike many members of the Saudi elite he had never studied in the United States or Great Britain. A massive public relations campaign was launched, on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as in the Arab world, to proclaim this vigorous new leader with a dramatic reform programme — Vision 2030 — which would revolutionise the country, under his father’s patronage, not just by allowing women to drive or cinemas to open but also to create a futuristic new megacity on the Red Sea. World leaders, not least US President Donald Trump were won over. But when the critical Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in autumn 2018, Turkish prosecutors pointed the finger of ultimate blame at MBS, even if he was not among the more than a dozen men tried in absentia for the crime. In the eyes of some foreign governments MBS had gone from hero to zero overnight, whereas others — including the White House in Washington — decided he was just too important to chastise publicly, either for instigating Khashoggi’s murder (which he strongly denies) or indeed for promulgating a devastating war in Yemen that has laid that poor land waste since 2015. Given how Mr Trump, in particular, loathes Iran a fellow Iran-bater like MBS is an obvious friend to have, on the Churchillian basis of the enemy of mine enemy is my friend. Besides, recent “peace deals” between Israel and two small Gulf States have drawn a lot of the attention away from other matters. Not that Saudi Arabia has yet indicated it will follow suit in embracing the Jewish state; that really would make the country’s conservative religious hierarchy choke on their breakfast.

Donald Trump with MBS

So who is this man MBS sho has captured all the attention? A biography was obviously needed and if one wanted to avoid hagiography then the New York Times’s Middle East correspondent Ben Hubbard was probably the best person to write it. The result is MBS — The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman (William Collins, £20). Though based in Beirut, Arabic-speaking Hubbard has been to Saudi Arabia multiple times and is no sycophant. Whether he will ever be allowed back after publishing this book is perhaps doubtful. He is strong on details about the ousting of Muhammad bin Nayef and the imprisonment of many of the country’s leading figures in the Ritz Carlton Hotel — including some princes — to shake them down for money and expose their alleged corruption. “Corruption” is of course a loaded term in a culture in which “commission” for highly places personalities on deals can run into the millions. But few people could consider themselves safe. Even MBS’s mother seems to have been put under house arrest at one stage, though that story is far from clear. MBS himself naturally has access to billions, and is not averse to super-yachts and other trappings of great wealth. Nor perhaps to the power over life and death. Executions have actually gone up in number since he became Crown Prince and torture is routinely employed against those who upset the powers that be, as Hubbard recounts. But MBS has managed to keep his own private life very private indeed. One of the few intimate details Hubbard unearths is the prince’s taste for fast food, which has doubtless contributed to his impressive girth. Perhaps inevitably, Hubbard’s book therefore tells one a great deal about MBS has done, but very little about what he is really like as a man, other than being super-ambitious. The author does not really speculate about whether the Crown Prince will indeed make it to become King. The assumption is that he will, of course, but given the factions within the Kingdom’s vast ranks of princes who knows how it will all turn out in the end.

Lisboa Deserta

For anyone wanting to understand how COVID-19 is affecting European economies, come to Lisbon. This is usually peak season for older travellers catching the last of the summer sun, with children back at school. But the city is largely deserted. Of course it didn’t help that Britain suddenly added Portugal to its quarantine list last week. Brits are normally the mainstay of Portugal’s tourist industry, but many of those who were here left early, to escape the guillotine, and others who were due to come on holiday cancelled. I shall just grin and bear it. But it is really bizarre, with Lisbon almost like a ghost-town in the evening. Even the locals are staying home. Hotels are three-quarters empty, restaurants more so (and some have already closed down). The Portuguese as ever are welcoming, but I understand why so many have a worried look on their face. If this is how things are now, whatever is it going to be like when the colder months arrive and coronavirus cases across Europe possibly surge?

Memories of Murder *****

Song Kang-Ho and Kim Sang-Kyung

This afternoon I went to the cinema for the first time since lockdown — to the Picturehouse Central in London, to see the re-release of Bong Joon-Ho’s 2003 dark Memories of Murder, remastered. It has sometimes been described as a “crime thriller”, but that label does not really do it justice, as it is basically sui generis (as one might expect from the director of Parasite, which I raved about when I saw it in Brazil at the end of last year, long before it’s golden trail to the Oscars). The core of Memories of Murder is a real-life case of a serial killer in a rural community in South Korea in the 1980s (actually, there were more murders in the real killer’s case than in the film). The victims were all attractive young women whom he leapt on in secluded spots on rainy nights, raping them and fetishizing their underwear in his gruesome actions, as well as introducing some pretty strange objects into their vaginas. By now it will be clear that this is not a tale for the faint-hearted, even more so because the local police are brutal idiots who are happy to use torture in interrogation if this leads to a speedy conviction. Most of the film is set in 1986, after the death of dictator Park Chung-Hee but still during a period when many in the Korean security services were used to employing strong-arm tactics. A more enlightened young detective brought in from Seoul to assist the incompetent local team gradually has his own scruples swept aside as the horror of the murders unfolds. But this being a Bong Joon-Ho film the gritty main action narrative (with imaginative and atmospheric cinematography from Kim Hyeong-Gu) is punctuated with bursts of riotous black humour. The central character, the roly-poly detective Park (Song Kang-Ho, the father of the cuckoo family in Parasite), somehow makes one feel sorry for him, despite his stubbornness and stupidity. And the sting in the tail at the end of the film is as much of a jolt to him as it is to the audience.

Why I Am Boycotting “Mulan”

The blockbuster action movie Mulan has just been released on Disney’s streaming platform and will roll out to cinemas across Asia and round the world over the coming months. It’s a remake of the rather cutesy 1998 animated version of the story of a young female warrior who fights in defence of the Khan of the Northern Wei dynasty in Xinjiang, though in the new film she is serving the Emperor of China instead. Some of the film was indeed shot in Xinjiang, and those viewers who stay long enough to watch the credits at the end may be surprised to note the thanks given to the public security bureau in Turpan and a range of Chinese government entities, including four propaganda departments. This has raised the hackles of campaigners for human rights of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang where an estimated one million locals have been incarcerated in “re-education” camps and what has been aptly described as cultural genocide is being carried out against Muslims, while more and more Han Chinese immigrate into the area. To make matters worse, the star of the new film, Liu Yifei, recently posted on the Chinese social media platform Weibo praise for Hong Kong’s police cracking down on pro-democracy demonstrators. Small wonder that some Hong Kong activists, as well as Uyghur campaigners, including in the Diapora, are calling for a boycott of Mulan. This is something I am happy to support. I have travelled widely in Xinjiang and am appalled at the way local culture is being stifled. To watch what is essentially a Chinese propaganda movie, served up by Disney, would only be adding insult to injury.