Engerland?

The Arsenal midfielder Jack Wilshere has spoken out against footballers not born in England playing for the national team.

The comments come after speculation that England might select Manchester United's eighteen year old winger Adnan Januzaj in the future. Januzaj, born in Brussels to Kosavar parents, is also eligible to play for Albania, Belgium and Serbia. There has been a similar debate in Test cricket where South Africans play for England, Pakistanis for South Africa and Australia etc.

I don't have a problem with sportsmen representing the country they live in rather than the one they were born in, especially when they or their parents have fled their homes because of war or violence. In football, South Americans played for Italy in the 30's, helping them to win their first World Cup, and in the 60's Real Madrid's Ferenc Puskas from Hungary and Alfredo Di Stefano from Argentina both played for Spain.

A right Royal do

Ahead of the Diamond Jubilee weekend, republicans like myself are having to withstand the tide of royalist propaganda and merchandise rolling over us.

I can understand the royalist hoopla on a number of levels: people who don't really care about the Jubilee but see it as an opportunity for a party; those who see it as a community thing that it would be churlish not to take part it; the idea that royalty is part of Britain's national identity in the same way as football, a cup of tea or a pint of beer. The Royal Family has also become a soap opera, its members part of a hollow celebrity culture. For shops and other businesses, the Jubilee is simply a means to increase sales, no different from the World Cup or X Factor.

What I really can't understand are the royalist fanatics who plaster every inch of their homes in tat and, like the cafe owner in County Durham, have no time for republican dissent.  That kind of delusion is on a par with people who think they're Napoleon.

Ain't that good news?

Imagine you went to the factory where you worked one day and the boss told you that it might be closing. You'd be understandbly concerned. If, after a few months of uncertainty, the boss told you that it wouldn't be closing but he'd be cutting your pay and other conditions, you might be relieved to still have a job but hardly feel like cracking open the champagne.

That's exactly what's happened at the Vauxhall car plant in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire. But politicians from all the main parties have been falling over themselves to hail the decision by General Motors to build its new Astra there in return fot the workers and their union Unite agreeing to a four year pay deal, starting with a two year pay freeze, and more "flexibility" over shift patterns and other conditions as a "victory for Britain".

The other factory in the running to build the new Astra was the Opel plant in Bochum, Germany, now threatened with closure. Presumably the workers there weren't cheap or "flexible" enough. Clearly General Motors had already decided to close a factory in Europe and used the opportunity to play off British and German workers and cut the pay and conditions at the one that they kept open. I'm sure they'd claim that it was necessary to do so in order to keep the factory open but I doubt very much that GM's top executives or shareholders are taking cuts to their pay or dividends.

All this underlines the need for trade union co-operation and solidarity across Europe. Imagine what would have happened if the workers in Britain and Germany had told GM that they weren't prepared to swap their pay and conditions for their jobs and would strike if it shut either factory.

Battling for Britain?

I watched Chelsea's Champions League match against Barcelona in a pub in Manchester last night. Most people seemed to be supporting the Catalans, as I was.

There are a number of reasons for this - Manchester-London rivalry, the contrast between Chelsea's billionaire Russian backer Roman Abramovich and fan-owned Barca and, probably most importantly, the style of football the Spanish champions play - but it prompts the question: does anyone still support a team in a European competition just because they're British?

Fighting over the Falklands

Not being an Argentinean nationalist, I find it hard to understand the fervour of their territorial claim to the Falklands. Neither do I get Argentina's objection to the Royal Navy sending a ship or the RAF one of its officers (Flt Lt Wales) to tour the South Atlantic. Argentina and Britain's contest over the islands is about economic and strategic control of the area, irrespective of the flag waving on both sides. 

The Argentinian government is planning to refer the dispute to the United Nations and the Argentinan Football Association has renamed its First Division after the General Belgrano, the warship sunk by the Royal Navy in the 1982 conflict that followed Argentina's invasion of the islands. (I have also never understood the objection to the Royal Navy sinking an enemy ship in a war, whether you supported that war or not).

The chances of another war over the Falklands are slim, not least because Britain is too tied up militarily in Afghanistan to deploy a Task Force to retake them. The Argentinian government's sabre-rattling is also a matter of winning votes, just as the military junta tried to shore up its rule by invading in 1982.

Many people who support self-determination seem to have a blind spot over the Falklands. They may be Godforsaken, windswept islands where sheep outnumber the people but there is little doubt that their inhabitants want to remain part of Britain. That ultimately is what matters, not spurious stuff about the continuity of the Argentinian state with the Spanish Empire or who occupied the islands first.

Go Your Own Way

The debate on Scottish independence includes an argument over whether Scotland can unilaterally decide to leave the union or whether it needs the agreement of the United Kingdom parliament at Westminster to do so.

I'm not expert enough to give an opinion on the legal and constitutional aspects but it seems to me that historically secession only really works where it is agreed on both sides.  There is a long list of states which have unilaterally seceeded sparking conflicts, armed or otherwise: the Confederate States of America, Bangladesh, Yugoslavia, Rhodesia. 

I'm not saying that countries should obtain the permission of the states they are unwilling to be part of any longer before they secede.  Ireland clearly had a right to take up arms in in the 1919 War of Independence that led to the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921 and the secession of 26 counties as the Irish Free State.  But it would obviously have been better if Britain had agreed - and it clearly wasn't going to without a fight - to respect the will of the majority of the Irish people as expressed by Dáil Éireann's Declaration of Independence and let Ireland secede from the United Kingdom.

The chances of an armed conflict if Scotland holds a referendum and declares itself independent without the go-ahead of Westminster are slim but there would presumably be diplomatic and financial repercussions.  The best model for separation (something I still think is unnecessary and unlikely to happen) would be the so-called Velvet Divorce of 1993 in which Czechoslovakia agreed to split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.