It ain’t gonna happen soon . . .

The almost endless stream of news stories and articles about Trump, to say nothing of the streams of tweets from Trump, about Trump, in support of Trump, against Trump, makes for depressing reading but there is an appalling fascination in it all.

And then there are the questions. Why are the Republicans so spineless? What are the so-called Grown-Ups in the White House doing? When will the Democrats get their act together? Will Trump be impeached? Will he jump before he is pushed? What is happening to democracy in the US?

My take on it all is this.

The Republicans are doing nothing – because they are secretly hoping that Trump will blow up (possibly entirely the wrong term) before the Midterms next year, allowing Pence to step into his shoes, steady the Republican ship, and prepare for 2020. Two years is a long time in politics.

The Democrats are doing nothing – partly because they are still looking for a candidate who has a chance of success in 2020, and partly because they would like Trump to remain in the White House for as long as possible, to deny Pence any opportunity to fight 2020 as a sitting President. They also believe that the more egregious Trump’s behaviour is, the more likely that the Republicans will find themselves mired in the failure of his presidency.

The Grown-Ups in the White House are doing nothing – because of who are they are: generals, placemen, and family. The family will stick with Trump as there is no alternative; the placemen will stick with Trump as they owe Trump their position and won’t survive his departure; and the generals are the generals. For them, the habit of following orders is very deeply ingrained.

But the political calculations for both Republicans and Democrats are difficult. If the Republicans leave it too long they may find themselves stuck with Trump as their candidate in 2020, against a candidate who will be a lot harder to beat than Hillary. Equally, if the Democrats do nothing, they may find the Republicans move early, get Pence into the White House, and then they will have to unseat a sitting President.

And as for the Grown-Ups? It is probably already too late for them to do anything. They accepted the ride and the hand cart is gathering pace.

And all we can do is sit and wait and watch the reputation of the US get trashed.

Something nasty . . .

For a politician – of any age and any party – there is a narrow line to tread between national treasure and embarrassing elderly relative.

Think Ed Balls.

It may be a little premature to call him a NT but he is staking his claim. First “Ed Balls Day” on twitter, then Gangnam style on Strictly and now his recent Dream Dinner Party on Radio 4 and underpinning all this froth, listen to him talking about his stammer.

But the last few days have also seen a couple of the elderly relatives escape their minders.

First up the moist eyed wet lipped Michael Howard, attempting to conjure the shade of the Blessed Margaret with an ill-concealed warning to Spain (or as he probably sees them, Johnny Dago). Or perhaps he had just misread the Lynton Crosby playbook on dead cats.

And not to be outdone, we now have Labour’s own elderly uncle, Ken Livingstone, bleating that he was “just stating the truth” – something to which I fear he may be a stranger.

“Weary, pissed-off and despairing”

So says one senior Labour party official, reported by George Parker in the FT this morning, describing how people are feeling in the party.

I have news for this anonymous Labour loyalist. His words describe exactly how most of us in the country feel about Gordon Brown, and the shambles over which he is presiding. You cannot get more out of touch with reality than Brown’s repeated insistence that he is the best man to lead Britain. On current form he couldn’t lead us out of a paper bag.

Liberal? Don’t make me laugh

If there is any truth in Stephen Pollard’s post in Spectator.co.uk, EXCLUSIVE: Baroness Tonge and Terrorists, and there is no reason to believe that what he says is other than the truth ~ after all, she already has form ~ then not only should Nick Clegg immediately remove the LibDem whip from Baroness Tonge, but she should consider whether there is any place for her in the public life of this country. On reflection, she may consider that there is not, and spare us any further anger.

What are universities for?

With two through university and in the world of work, two going through and one trying to decide if and when, universities and university life are much in our minds.

I read Jonathan Bate’s article, The wrong idea of a university, in the first edition of Standpoint, shortly before a recent event, where much was made, by the speakers from our university hosts, of the need to retain graduates in the region and to grow and encourage entrepreneurs. Bate writes,

With Gordon Brown’s restructuring of government departments, higher education is now under the control of the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills (“DIUS”). We no longer have a Department for Education in this country. The idea of a university as “a place of teaching universal knowledge” — Cardinal Newman’s phrase — has, it seems, no relevance in Brown’s Britain. Higher education must now justify itself in terms of the “innovation and skills agenda”. Crudely put, academic research must pay its way by generating real returns in the wider economy. The Research Councils’ big new idea, driven by DIUS, is “knowledge transfer”. This is defined as “improving exploitation of the research base to meet national economic and public service objectives” to be achieved by means of “people and knowledge flow” together with “commercialisation, including Intellectual Property exploitation and entrepreneurial activities”.

Fine sounding words from DIUS but deep down, like so much else from this government, absolutely meaningless. One of Bate’s conclusions in his hard copy article (but strangely missing from the website one) is that,

Higher education has been hijacked by the quangocracy: teaching is neglected, research is distorted by bogus assessment methods, and trust in professional judgement is gone.