THE writer HG Wells once described human history as a race between education and catastrophe, a remark that remains as worryingly true in our age as it was in his.
Obviously if we are to learn anything useful from our past we have to get the basic facts right but were you trying to do so, my advice would be not to rely on a modern Tory for guidance, and – on this past week’s evidence – particularly not Douglas Ross or “Lord” David Frost.
Ross, undertaking the political contortions required for him to welcome Johnson to Scotland having categorically and completely disowned him just weeks ago, claimed that changing the Prime Minister during an international crisis was always dangerously irresponsible and therefore something a Tory would never do.
Unlike the Tories who brought down Chamberlain in May 1940 as the Germans started to invade France or the Tories who helped to remove Asquith in 1916, in the depths of the First World War.
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Not forgetting of course the Tories that dumped Margaret Thatcher during the crucial build-up to the Gulf War, when UK troops were actually on the ground in the Middle East, or the Tories who heaved a sigh of relief when Eden resigned as prime minister because of ill-health whilst the Suez crisis was still not concluded.
Ross’s strange position appears to be that having a proven liar, who is at the very least under suspicion for having been far too close to Russian money and influence, is – in some unexplained way – better to have in the pivotal and crucial role of prime minster in times of peril than anyone else in his or any other party
Yet this is mere amateur revisionism compared to what was in a lecture given by “Lord” Frost, the former Brexit negotiator, in Zurich on Tuesday.
Back in October 2017 I was also fortunate enough to deliver a lecture at Zurich University and spent a wonderful autumn day in what is a beautiful city. I hope however that what I said bore more relation to the facts of Brexit that Frost’s contribution.
Frost contended that we shouldn’t judge Brexit on short-term economic grounds but rather by what he called “freedoms”. He also blamed the EU for the bitterness that characterised the negotiations and risibly asserted that Brexiteers never wished to see the EU collapse.
Virtually all of that, and indeed most of the rest of the speech, can be directly contradicted by historic fact and political reality but Frost’s tone is as revealing as the content. It reeks of British exceptionalism and of the UK patronisingly doing a favour to the remaining 27 EU members.
This is particularly evident in the section on the Northern Ireland Protocol, in which he suggests compromising on youth travel and UK involvement in some European defence activities in order to get a deal, as if these are generous concessions instead of being things that the UK now needs – Frost himself having completely messed up the negotiations for them first time round.
There is more of the same in his analysis of what the Tories must offer at a future UK General Election – which seems to be even more Brexit-related chaos, including a return to the hoary old chestnut of “trading on WTO terms”, as if farming and fishing haven’t suffered enough.
Yet Frost’s bizarre assertions go even further. When dealing grandly with what he calls “the behaviour of the West in recent years” in connection with the current crisis in Ukraine, he suddenly alleges – and I quote – that “In appeasing Greta Thunberg, we very nearly gave a free pass to Vladimir Putin”.
I think most people will accept that it is extraordinary, offensive and just plain wrong to compare a crusading Swedish schoolgirl to a murderous dictator in this way.
What it reveals however is that Frost, who at the time of his resignation deliberately aligned himself with those who oppose lockdown restrictions (and he made that point again in Zurich), and having attempted to re-write his own lamentable Brexit history, is now spinning off into the right-wing political fringe, articulating an extremist’s charter. On a whole range of issues, including the characterisation of the universally accepted global environmental threat as some sort of trendy “woke” concern that should be ignored.
Yet scarily what Frost is smugly declaring from the hard right is actually – in terms of oil and gas – the same case that is being put by the Scottish Tories.
Let’s just, their siren voices urge, open up more wells and we can return to the life we want to lead.
“Lord” Frost’s Brexit delusions are plain to see, not least because the suffering and loss that they have wrought lies all around us. Clearing up that mess will be a hard job, but taking the road to Scottish independence within the EU is the way to tackle it.
Delusions about the climate are harder nuts to crack, particularly in the midst of an emerging energy panic. We must continue to assert that a continuing addiction to fossil fuels and environmental degradation will kill our planet and ourselves if we don’t recognise the urgency of the matter and act accordingly.
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The political and military crisis we face should actually spur us to even greater efforts in devising and implementing the policies which must green and clean where we live. That is the Manhattan project of our time, one that will lead not to mass destruction but to the recreation of a world in which those who come after us can live in harmony with their surroundings and, hopefully, in peace with their neighbours.
History has been rewritten far too often by people like “Lord” Frost and Douglas Ross, entirely in their own interests.
In that race between education and catastrophe the future of the human race now depends of ensuring that education wins.
That means facing up to facts, not rejecting them.
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