REGAINING OUR SENSE OF PERSPECTIVE

One consequence of this extended lockdown is to make us lose our perspective. We’re like someone in the Truman Show (the 1998 film about a TV reality show) or, worse, we’re in Ambridge and part of the Archers – “an everyday story of country folk” as it was cosily described.

Being stuck in the same place with nothing to disrupt one’s sense of time, space or thought makes us very short-sighted. Giles Coren, restaurant critic and columnist, for once got it right when he described his strange feeling of being out-of-sorts with a return to freedom. 

We are all, to a greater or lesser extent, undergoing Stockholm Syndrome – becoming  enamoured of our captors and place of captivity. Hence the high percentage of voters who want the lockdown to continue and why Frau Obergruppenführer Sturgeon has her subdued subjects daily enthralled in Scotland.

Our world has shrunk. Shrunk through Brexit. Shrunk through a lack of travel, of novelty and through the media we consume. The lack of perspective extends to a tendency to embrace conspiracy theories.

A friend told me, Britain was becoming like the Third Reich in 1933 -progressively eliminating all opposition and creating nationalist symbols – like a new Royal Yacht and a new school song. 

(By the way here are the lyrics of that song:

“We are Britain and we have one dream.
To unite all people in one great team.
Strong Britain. Great Nation. Strong Britain. Great Nation.” 

Dear heavens. This must be a joke foisted on us by the Daily Express.)

But the biggest joke happened on Friday with that picture of the Handcock snog in the Sun. How did the Sun get the picture, how much money changed hands and what sort of security exists in government following the Cummings exposures and now this? Do I care about the intemperate, hypocritical Matt’s behaviour? Since he broke his own rules on social distancing, yes. Henry Kissinger said “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac” Hancock proves that point I guess.  He’s in company with Lloyd George, John Profumo, John Major, David Mellor, John Prescott and many others. Resign? Yes, he should have resigned immediately instead of prevaricating. He was a distraction. But is no more. Let’s move on and regain a sense of perspective.

I read this misquote from Mark Twain in Patrick Kidd’s piece in the Times (most of Mark Twain’s sayings are made up apparently) that politicians were like nappies. They should be changed frequently and for the same reason.

Our perspective on one big issue has been changed by Covid. Many people have got closer to nature, to birdsong and to the green of our country. The climate change agenda has moved on hugely over the past year or so.

But the big issues we now face are what our strategy should be post-Brexit. Surely not to act as playground bully or try to be master of the universe – because we’re not. We’re moderately important economically but it’s time we became the voice of reason and perspective not playing gunboat diplomacy in the Black Sea.

Restoring proper conversation, listening and thinking and being considered and courteous sits more happily than sabre rattling. Good relations with China, especially China and the EU, America and Russia are what we should be concentrating on. 

I’ve heard lots of nonsense over the past weeks from politicians who should know better. We have a bigger role to play than the Sun, Express or social media – what a pernicious force for mischief that is. Let’s be civilised, sensible, kind and try to gain a real sense of perspective.

WHY ARE OUR SUPPLY CHAINS QUITE SO COMPLEX?

For years guided by MBAs and McKinsey we’ve been persuaded to “think global,” construct complex supply chains, offshore production and cut cost. Our world we believed was driven by price and the need to be lowest cost producer. Which was fine when globalisation was the thing and Asia was to the place to get things made.

Covid has changed a lot of things not least the increasing belief driven by the vaccine contretemps with the EU and post Brexit complications that domestic production is the safest strategy for many industries.

Currently my underpants come from Bangladesh, my jacket and my socks from China, my sweater from Cambodia and my T-shirt from America. Over 50% of what I eat and drink comes from outside the UK – from Holland, France, Peru and Spain.

This is not the ranting of a xenophobe. If we’ve learnt nothing else over the past 14 months its been that the old rules don’t apply. The rebellion started with “America First” and then the bizarre decision to exit the EU. No more frictionless travel. No more working across the EU using the business lingua franca – English – to do business. Two years ago I visited seven different EU countries in as many weeks in co-ordinating a project. That won’t happen again. 

Now perhaps for the first time I’ve begun to wonder about whether I’d want to remain in the EU after the shabby performance of Ursula Van Der Leyen over the EU’s failed procurement of vaccine. I’ve been shocked that the EU, rule maker and follower of rules is now a rulebreaker, with member countries off doing their own thing. The irony of their demanding more Astra Zeneca vaccine even as they withdrew permission for its use was eye-wateringly comic.

In a crisis we retreat to localism. The Covid crisis will change many things but the most significant thing will be the pressure to grow and make our own. Small businesses will be created doing what previously bankrupted businesses did until globalisation became the hot, new thing. 

Except there‘ll be a difference. These new businesses will be better run, with electric speed delivery, concern for climate change and with brilliant customer service. We bought a new car recently . The whole process took less than a week. It used to take forever. Thanks to Amazon and the growth of online our expectations have been transformed. Old fashioned standards are dead. Our world is a better place in which (blame it on the ‘elf and safety woke-culture’ in fact) workplace deaths and injuries have plummeted in the past few years.

Our ability to transform our economy  will be driven by the astonishingly interventionalist strategies of the least conservative government we’ve ever had. Once they realised that people must be paid when, through no fault of their own, they can’t work, then the realisation that inspiring and incentivising new businesses that usefully employ people makes economic sense, can’t be far behind.

But the small is beautiful argument always seemed weird to me especially when small as in pubs, shops and roads often meant rotten and inefficient. Equally the argument for scale falls on stony ground. The NHS we’ve been proudly told is globally the biggest employer after the Indian Rail Service and the Chinese Army. Why is that good?

If we want to stop just being a “nation of shopkeepers” as Napoleon scornfully described us we need to start being producers as well. We’re actually rather good at it. Films, gaming, pharmaceuticals, software, cars and shoes – yes, my shoes are all made in Britain.

  

HOW DO YOU FEEL?

Everyone I know is wandering around saying they’re  miserable, weary and off-colour. So it was surprising to discover we’d shot up the league table in a recent global “Happiness Index.”  It isn’t as though this was after we’d beaten the Czech Republic 5-0 with a team of young stars which  cheered me up.

But then I read the Sunday Times and the political analyses and I got miserable again. I called a friend who’d been a senior civil servant and he patiently explained “You must understand that politicians are not like us. They don’t think or behave like us.”

Well if these blogs I write are going to have any value at all (and you must realise I intend them to have the same effect on you as a large, exceedingly cold dry martini) then I had to find some cheerful ingredients. This means this’ll be a very short piece or something strange will have occurred like me drinking dry martini. Slurp! … we are lucky to be alive in “sush” times. 

First I read that many Germans think they are watching real democracy at play in the UK right now. Profound out-in-the-open debate. Unashamed arguing about who, what and why we are as a country. Sacred cows are lying slaughtered beside our potholed roads. Why can’t everyone have a voice rather than being muffled by the EU? Well that’s an amusing take.

Then there’s the Danny Devito of Westminster,  John Bercow. Throughout the world he’s becoming a rock star. In Germany (again) he’s been given Wagnerian status (that’s saying something.) They claim he doesn’t say or even shout “ORDER!” He sings it. After this is over Little John will be the highest paid one-man show ever on the global stage.

Jacinda Ardern PM in New Zealand with whom everyone has fallen in love not least because unlike nearly all politicians she is like us and she thinks and behaves like we wish they all would. She’s done more to change global gun laws than anyone else has done by reading the timing right and just saying “banned”. She really has put New Zealand on a new thought-leading map.

And of course it’s Spring.  A week ago there was an article about Spring by Caitlin Moran that made me roar with laughter – that moment of levity didn’t last too long (obviously). She said it’s the best of all seasons not least because it’s fresh, exciting and comic. Things grow where they shouldn’t and at an enormous rate. I thought about Keats and his eulogy of Autumn. How dare he not write one about Spring instead of leaving it to Wordsworth.

Here is Wordsworth lounging about as poets do “in pensive mood” recalling those daffodils

“And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.”

But it’s their boisterousness I love. Like a rowdy football crowd shouting “Yellow. Yellow. Yellow.”

 There you are then. Another injection to the Happiness Index- it’s zooming on up. Hurrah!

TIME TO GET ANGRY

Angry? That doesn’t begin to describe how most of us are feeling. We are not close to doing a deal with the EU - will probably fail to do so -  and we’re strategically at odds with each other as to what we even want Britain to be like. To help us we have a vile cocktail of brexiteers, remainers, alt-righters, Marxists, Liberals, pundits, EU bureaucrats, Merkel, Macron, the rest of the 27 - several of whom are imploding politically.

It’s like being on US Airways 1549 - no engines, too low, New York City below, and a crash landing in the Hudson our best option. But no one is flying the plane let alone our having a Sully on the flight deck.

We have to start by asking what we are, where we are, what we’re striving for, how we can achieve it, how long that will take and what legacy we want to leave. Let’s ignore (as a given) that this is a mess, a debacle and a cock-up. Like it or not the referendum gave us this hand of cards (like Northern Ireland being out of the World Cup through a mistaken penalty - everyone agrees it was an error - but they are out of the World Cup and we are out of the EU.)

Forget Lord Kerr, author of Article 50, who’s popped up 18 months after the referendum saying “it’s not irrevocable” making the remain-ideologues believe Kerr, prayer and procrastination may save us. They won’t; so move on.

How do we as an independent entity make our lives happy, lucrative and fun? Let’s focus on the long list of what we are great at: from innovation (world number 1 in patents) to the arts to finance to technology to tourism to lots more. Currently business is waiting for the politicians. It needs to be more pro-active. I am not advocating addlebrained Boris euphoria - “jolly good country Britain yeeha!” We need a dose of rational self-belief and a plan to make the most of where we excel.

In a world as messy and conflicted as this, working within the straitjackets of existing party “alliances”, behaving as though everything’s normal, is ridiculous. We need a new party, like they have in France, where the rules are re-written. The talent that will solve our problem does not sit on either front bench right now but sits everywhere. Imagine Ruth Davidson, Hillary Benn, David Miliband, Yvette Cooper, Jesse Norman, Tom Tugendhat and a few others working together and you get the idea of what good government might look like. Not like this…

Have I turned into a brexiteer? No but almost anything’s better than being a wait-and-see-er. We can’t go on like this; we can’t allow ourselves to drift into disaster; our political parties are past their sell-by date and our respect and confidence. Our grandchildren born and unborn deserve better.

Don’t just be angry; do something. E-mail your MP constantly. Write to no.10; be a nuisance.

WHAT SORT OF WORLD DO WE REALLY WANT?

Aren’t we currently like sheep sleepwalking uncomplainingly into an apocalyptic abattoir? It wasn’t just Brexit, Syria and North Korea that made me ask this. It was a two part BBC2 documentary programme called “The Secrets of Silicon Valley.”

In it Alan Kay, a onetime famous American Computer Scientist, was quoted:

“To predict the future we shall have to invent it”

But who are “we”? Not me for sure. On the basis of these documentaries by Jamie Bartlett the “we” are a pretty nasty bunch of people. I’m not sure that I want to have lunch with any of them,  nor have them meet my nearest and dearest. The world they want in the name of their presumed, unstoppable progress is dystopian. Yet when they’re challenged they just get angry. The angriest of those interviewed was Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator, described by Fast Company as “the world’s most powerful start-up incubator”.

Companies they’ve favoured with support and investment include Dropbox, Airbnb and Reddit. But as I listened to Sam talking to Jamie Harding, British tech writer and journalist, my skin froze. Even to question the consequences of the tech revolution led to being called a “progress denier” and opponent of what ordinary people want. Apparently we all want to be extracted from our work and paid a basic wage for doing nothing because, if you leave it to Sam, there’ll be no work, as we know it, for anyone to do.

Have I been tough on poor Sam? Line him up with the others on my list of “wrong ‘uns”. The late Steve Jobs (founder of Apple), Travis Kalanick (founder of Uber), Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook), Steve Bezos (founder of Amazon), Larry Page and Sergey Brin (founders of Google) and a Policy Head of Airbnb Chris Lehane (below) who gloried by the title “the Master of Disaster” when he worked for Bill Clinton.

These are self-styled “masters of the universe”, above the law (in their own minds and increasingly in ours). They claim to be different from the big, bad, old oil, pharmaceutical and manufacturing companies and the banks. They claim they are intent on making this world better and fairer. But the Guardian, although impressed by the TV documentary, asks this question:

“Are these “idealists” good guys who are challenging the old order or are they really tax-minimising corporations that threaten our future?”

How about the latter?

Google are facing a €2.4 billion EU fine for abusing their dominance as search engine owners giving illegal advantage to their own comparison-shopping service. All the US tech giants and others like Starbucks are alleged to owe a potential further €70 billion in extra-tax in the EU. In their own backyard, Santa Clara County, there’s a $60 billion rates tax-dispute with the tech giants.

Well I’m not sure that I want this modern Mafia inventing our future and shaping our world. We can do better than that.

In the end just being clever with algorithms isn’t enough.

WHAT IF WE JUST DID NOTHING?

When “Management by Objectives” was in vogue, a colleague suggested that “Management by Lethargy” might serve us better. He argued that while we rushed around like busy fools, in the long run nothing changed.

Phil Angelides, who was Chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in America, has argued strongly that guilty bankers be charged. But ironically, he notes, we seem to have witnessed “Immaculate corruption” whereby no human being can be held accountable. The Banking Crisis was an act of God.
What is the point of doing anything if events turn out as they must do by some force of destiny? “Que sera sera”, sang Doris Day in the film “The Man Who Knew Too Much.” Increasingly, however, most men know far too little.

Economists, forecasters, politicians and journalists all seem stumped and, despite occasional displays of great certainty, experts keep on dropping the ball. Bobby Rao, one time Strategy Director at Vodafone and now a founding partner at Hermes Growth Partners, said presciently a few years back “no one knows where the ball is now.”

This is not a time for useless energy except insofar as being alert so when that ball pops into sight we can thwack it. So has life been reduced to Whac-A-Mole?

Maybe for some it has. Stephen Leacock the Canadian writer and economist wrote this in 1911 in “Gertrude the Governess” one of his nonsense novels: “Lord Ronald said nothing; he flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.”

He could have been writing about the Brexit crowd. On Friday at Westminster Hall they announced to tumultuous applause that they had a new, important recruit….  George Galloway.  Ah yes, that Churchillian figure….

Yet what makes democracy so special is it reflects the will (or the idiosyncrasy) of the people - hence the Trump, Sanders, Bloomberg (if he stands) story; hence the Corbyn story: hence Le Pen and all the rest.
But what I find strange about the burning desire to “do something …anything about Europe” is what the alternative might be including, maybe, destroying the EU? Most in the democratic west disliked Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi yet what’s succeeded them is almost certainly worse.

After a month or so trekking around meetings in Europe with intelligent businessmen I found none to whom the dead hand of the EU was seen as a reality let alone a problem. As part of Europe we are “torchbearers of the age of reason” in an unstable world - thank you Matthew Parris that was nicely put.

So not management by lethargy but how about management by reason, thought and a feeling for what we should be leaving our grandchildren?  The good things Europe offers not the Euro-myth of straight bananas.

Things like European Football; cheap, easy travel; being an important part of the world’s largest market and of a congress of civilisation.

I remember pre-EU. Our world is a better one now.

WHY I WANT TO REMAIN BEING EUROPEAN

I’ve just been to Lisbon. I was blown away by how clean, organised and sophisticated it was. The sublimely warm and sunny weather helped. This was one of those basket case economies that after 2008 looked like bringing the EU down. Now exports are up, tourism is up and Portugal like Ireland is on a convincing road to recovery and growth.

My love affair with Europe grows. The thought of Brexit seems as insane as contemplating  suicide. What possible sense does resigning from the largest economy and the most exciting culture in the world make? The arguments that the petty bureaucracy of the EU is stifling may be fair but disliking our own HMRC would be a piffling reason for emigrating.

What I love about Europe is that it works. It is so civilised, peaceful and sensible. The Brexit politicians all seem so dreary, aggressive and unambitious. The stay-Ins, for their part, seem inhibited, and too embarrassed to say what they really feel.

Daniel Kahneman’s book “Thinking fast and slow” nailed the realities of decision making…that it was the intuitive System One part of our brains that called all the shots. It makes little sense to seek a list of whys and why-nots for most of us. We are either “Little Englanders” or we are Europeans/Global citizens in our gut. Maybe I should blame my parents who lived the first 15 years of their marriage in Spain for the way I intuitively lean.

It was in Portugal that I read Jean-Claude Piris (he sounds suspiciously foreign or, worse, French the Brexits might say). He used to be Director General Legal Services EU and has written a book called “If the UK Votes to Leave”.

It’s chilling stuff. Leaving the EU is not like resigning from a job or getting a divorce. It will take years of negotiation and the way the EU works they won’t make it easy for us. Our national aircraft will, as it were, be grounded for a very long time.

Our lawyers will have a field day or rather a field year or five redrafting legislation. Our 2million countrymen living in the EU may have a rather unpleasant time especially as Brexit would be accompanied by Britain taking repressive attitudes to the Eastern Europeans. Trade relations with the EU would not just carry on as normal…everything would slow down. Think it’s a bureaucratic morass now? You just wait.

But there’s all the rest of the world to trade with.

Well it’s actually not that simple. Many of our trade relationships are done through the EU so we’d have to redevelop those from a somewhat weaker position.  It’s no use comparing our position to Canada, Australia or Switzerland. By leaving the EU we’d be fundamentally changing the status quo.
Whichever way Brexit would be a very long and bloody mess.

And like Millwall FC no one would like us. But unlike Millwall I, and hopefully a majority of Britons, would very much care about that.

HOW CAN HUMAN BEINGS BE SO UNKIND?

I was walking back from Waitrose festooned with bags of balsamic vinegar, olives, pretzels, hummus and wine - all those essentials in my life when a guy said “can you spare me some money?” I gestured at my hands trapped by the bags and he smiled and said “sure”. He was certainly civilised and on his uppers. At least I gave him eye contact, at least I tried but my failure to slip him a few quid has been  making me feel lousy ever since. Why are so many people down on those who are already down about as far as they can get?

I’ve heard people saying about the Syrian and Libyan refugees  that in their midst are terrorists using the cover of human misery to sneak to our shores and blow us up.  Most of the people fleeing are women and children with no credible other option than to make a risky and expensive sea crossing. Maybe surprisingly it was Jeremy Clarkson who compared the refugees with a neighbour whose house was on fire. Do you shrug and say “not my problem mate” or help put it out and put them up until things are sorted.

Which brings me to Greece.

The last time I took a view on Greece I was heavily criticised for being soft on debt and soft on the causes of debt. They must be punished. It’s the only thing they understand.

If the ”they” are the ordinary population of Greece and not the oligarchy I couldn’t disagree more. The sheer unkindness of the EU, IMF and ECB has made me uneasy about the whole ethos of the EU. Do we really want to remain part of such a beastly cadre? All my strict attitudes about good governance and prudence are blown out of the water by a swift study of the Greek situation. It’s the sort of thing that Dickens would have written brilliantly about. We need that sort of passion now.

The reality is the debt mountain was not built by the average Greek. It was created by the “generosity” of the EU and the banks and the smiling corrupt barons at the top of Greece.

The trouble now is, as some are saying, “we might just as well vote “no” and preserve a bit of dignity; we have nothing left to lose except that now.”

I feel as though I need to fly to a Greek island and throw a party for them. I love the Greeks and I have done since 1964 when I first went there. They are generous, good humoured and mischievous. I love the scenery, climate and the food. I love their swagger and sense of pride. I love their appetite for life.

I loathe what the Troika has done and we as passive spectators are doing in letting this being quenched.
Whatever they vote on Sunday we have a collective responsibility to be a lot kinder to them than we have been so far.

UPDATE:  60% + saying ”no”….amazing. Wish Greece well

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM IS FOREIGN

The elephant of course is the EU which, having been heavily exercised in the Spring, now appears to have bored politicians, The Tories have sprinted off on their holidays in fine spirits after seeing DC beat up Ed Miliband in the Commons and then being fed burgers at No. 10. Quite simply elephants have stopped being important.

Yet an “in-out” referendum will determine our grandchildren’s lives. And the debate, in so far as there has been one or ever is one in the political forum, is neither particularly rational or thoughtful.

It’s clouded with prejudice, short termism and narrow self-interest. Too much bluster, not enough calculation.

Even Matthew Parrish, not unknown for saying what he thinks, confesses he just doesn’t know what to think when it comes to Europe.

We start from the fact that many of us simply don’t seem to like foreigners at all. It’s in our DNA. And the Europeans are the most convenient to dislike.  And then we seem short of the skills which we used to have and which inspired that board game “Diplomacy”. I’ve been watching the “White Queen” on BBC TV and listening to Philippa Gregory and others on the Wars of the Roses and the purposeful way the major players of that time worked out how to secure advantage.

Give Margaret Beauford, Elizabeth Woodville or, a few years later, Thomas Cromwell the situation we face and they’d come up with a somewhat more creative solution than one involving taking your bat and just leaving the game. (Machiavelli from about the same era would have loved it too.)

All our competitors have been seriously weakened by recent events, particularly France, but also Spain and Italy and even Germany. Meanwhile Britain stands in reasonable stead with  an economy on the upturn and  reputational kudos through a good Olympics, recent great sporting successes, London being acknowledged the capital city of the world as is our status as the global arts centre.

Weak competitors mean it’s time to advance not to retreat.

If we choose we can be a real lead player inside Europe helping Germany re-construct it. Our 15th and 16th century strategy role models would unblinkingly have seen the opportunity of advancing Britain by such a powerful alliance.

When it comes to being rational I have to imagine that the vast majority of businessmen who want us firmly in the centre of the EU represent left brain thinking. Why would they say this if they couldn’t see how important it was?

(Incidentally I thought a potent downside of separatism was well expressed by a top Scot who confided that wealth and talent would flood out of Scotland if independence were to be voted in there.)  And it’s not just the world of business. Ask America or Japan (and probably China and India too) and they’re mystified why we aren’t striding up to the Board Table as the player to replace the role the waning and woeful France once had.

Britain at 1% of global population isn’t a great world power any more but it’s a great European power.

That’s where we can exert real influence and where we’re needed.

Those who disagree probably take a similar view of social media…they don’t like it, understand it or even want it. They say they’ll ignore it and that it’s not that important. Yet 93% of business use it in their marketing and, like it or not, Facebook, were it a country, would in terms of population be the third largest in the world.

The elephant can’t be ignored.

The debate may be tough and nasty.

But a bit of a thoughtful punch up is better than potentially acceding to a generation or so of isolation and decline, isn’t it?

www.colourfulthinkers.com

SPLENDID ISOLATION

Presumably this shows why the debate in Brussels was so important….incidentally Paris came 24th
 The top twenty financial centres in the latest index (GFCI 10) which was published in September 2011 are:

	GFCI 10 Rank	GFCI 10 Rating	GFCI 9 Rank	GFCI 9 Rating	Change in Rank	Change in Rating
London	1	774	1	775	-	-1
New York	2	773	2	769	-	+4
Hong Kong	3	770	3	759	-	+11
Singapore	4	735	4	722	-	+13
Shanghai	5	724	5	694	-	+30
Tokyo	6	695	5	694	+1	+1
Chicago	7	692	7	673	-	+19
Zurich	8	686	8	665	-	+21
San Francisco	9	681	13	655	-4	+26
Toronto	10	680	10	658	-	+22
Seoul	11	679	16	651	-5	+28
Boston	12	678	12	656	-	+22
Geneva	13	672	9	659	+4	+13
Washington DC	14	670	17	650	-3	+20
Sydney	15	669	10	658	+5	+11
Frankfurt	16	667	14	654	+2	+13
Vancouver	17	661	22	626	-5	+35
Melbourne	18	656	24	621	-6	+35
Beijing	19	655	17	650	+2	+5
Montreal	20	652	26	615	-6	+37

HOW SPLENDID IS ISOLATION?

We all get a warm feeling being elected to a club or being picked to play in a cricket or football team. It’s good being wanted. Winning the struggle to get a good job because they prefer you to the other guys or quite simply being a popular person matters.

Don’t be embarrassed.

We all want to be liked.

So what happened in Brussels last week was very uncomfortable. We were cast out. Like Judas. We were the lonely 1 out of 27 - although I do wish that David Cameron had swaggered more instead of looking apologetic and sorry for himself. He needed to look as though he was right and they were wrong which for month after month they have been.

Trouble is it keeps on happening to us. A few months ago it was FIFA kicking dust in our face with Sebb Blatter asserting his corrupt right to rule and now this.

But the 5th biggest economy in the world is Germany, followed at joint 6th by the UK and trailed by France at 9th and Italy at 10th. Yes we are that important.

So the real tragedy here is for the EU who, in not wooing and, yes, making concessions to the UK, the second biggest economy in greater Europe, and thereby persuading us  to play a big front of stage part in solving the Euro-crisis, has now almost certainly led to the crash of their doomed currency. Especially as France who seemed pretty pleased about (as they saw it) seeing off Britain, are rumoured to be likely to lose their triple “A” credit rating this week.

It’s important to realise that Europe contrived to exclude us not vice versa.

You will gather I am not an entire fan of France but to be fair their President has just four more months before elections that look likely to unseat him and he’s tried to play the “see how I beat Britain” card as a desperate political stratagem.

But it still feels lonely and rancorous for us today. It’s not nice being blamed and being told, as Paddy Ashdown did, that forty years of foreign policy had gone down the plughole in a single night and being told off by the Lithuanian Prime Minister.

But how isolated will we be in the end?

The last words on that go to Terry Smith CEO of Tullett Prebon the broker…
“…as isolated as somebody who refused to join the Titanic just before it sailed”.

WHO'S IN CHARGE?

“For the first time the consumer is boss, which is fascinatingly, frightening, scary and terrifying because everything we used to do, everything we used to know, will no longer work.”That was what Kevin Roberts of Saatchi said.

And then there’s the story of investors in the early days of the web demanding to be told who the CEO of the internet was – “there must be a CEO. Who is it? Why’s he hiding?”

If someone isn’t in charge we get worried.

As children it’s our parents and our teachers who are in charge and those incorruptible authorities…”I’ll call the police and they’ll take you away.” My grandsons think the police are quite wonderful…they’ll learn.
Journalists used to call the Prime Minister “Sir” – he was seen to be in charge. And he wouldn’t have dreamed of going to Tuscany for a holiday – why do they do that?

And now?

This dilemma certainly distressed pundits on the Today Programme recently as they demanded to know who was in charge of the EU.

The answer is everyone and no one.

The accepted wisdom is “let the markets decide.”

And yet we know a thought becomes a  rumour becomes gossip becomes an urban myth becomes fact now in a blink. The marketplace rather than the market decides sitting round the metaphorical well in the town square on the web.

No amount of leadership beats that crowd.

We live today in a state of perpetual intellectual riot.

Decisions are made by focus groups “they don’t like your voice Ed…fix it”; “they don’t like immigrants Dave get them outta here” or they aren’t made at all until enough money, opinion or noise makes something happen because…”the public is expressing outrage.”

Liberal democracy is a wonderful thing but it has a downside. Loonies like the Tea Party and the Norwegian Breivik get to express themselves and begin to think they can actually be in charge.

The world it seems is managed by market-confidence yet politicians would clearly not even pass GCSE in psychology (were it an optional subject) if they believe you can preach “austerity” and expect your voters to rush out shopping, simultaneously.

In the end Kevin Roberts is right but as we know in marketing, consumers don’t really know what they want until they get it.

Everyone’s waiting for someone else to make a move.

Anyone who’d like to be in charge this week, just call.  Otherwise leave it the experts (again).