Porter’s Pensées

(Sorry to be away so long.)

Racial prejudice is not ‘natural’. If it were we would expect children to have it from birth. Masses of research, however, establishes that this is not so. So does the experience of most of us who have observed young children at play together outdoors. It’s as if they don’t even see racial differences, but only their common childishness. Racism is acquired, in later life, and through other forces acting on us: parents, school, the media, and a host of other influences; analysed for example here: https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/how-children-acquire-racial-biases/.

I was lucky to escape most of these when I was young, growing up in a part of Essex (now Greater London) where I never remember seeing a black or brown face, or being exposed to (for instance) the BUF’s racist propaganda. The only ‘alien’ I knew at school was a single (white) American. The same was true at university, although I did become acquainted there – but only at second hand – with racism; through my participation, at a distance, in the movement against apartheid in South Africa.

That was until I became a post-graduate student, working on British imperial history, in a college and university community that largely consisted of ‘black’, brown and other-coloured foreigners; most of whom of course originally came from countries that used to be – many still were – colonies of Britain: Africa and the Indian sub-continent in particular. Some of them became close friends; one of them – who sadly died recently – the Best Man at my wedding. Our social circle was hugely ‘multi-racial’, and, I felt, all the better, closer and certainly more interesting for it.

Of course we were all ‘intellectuals’, which was what melded us together; in much the same way as their common identity as ‘children’ unites the young kids we see playing together multi-racially in school yards. This undoubtedly made a difference. But shouldn’t that apply equally to middle and working-class people in our British towns and cities, doing the same jobs and facing the same problems as their ‘white’ neighbours?

I recently heard and read of a number of communities in and around London –  Peckham, to name one – where years of immigration had had this outcome, with the effect of reducing the appeal of ‘nativists’ like Nigel Farage, and the parties he leads or has led. Indeed I understand – although I must check this – that the British constituencies that have scored lowest for parties like Farage’s are some of those that have the highest proportion of immigrants; and vice-versa: the constituencies that are most anti-immigration were those that haven’t experienced it themselves. If so, then the best way to counter racism may be to let more (selected?) immigrants in.

And by God, we’ll need them soon, if the ‘native’ birth-rate continues falling as it has been doing in recent years.  In Sweden too, incidentally: https://nordictimes.com/the-nordics/sweden/grim-figures-swedish-birth-rates-reach-new-record-lows/. Kajsa is currently helping to organise a movement here with the slogan utan invandrarer stanner Sverige (‘without immigrants Sweden stops’). Britain – and perhaps the USA – might do worse than adopt a version of that. So far in Britain, Scotland is the only country that seems to be taking this to heart, with immigrants actually welcomed there (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2484nmm2e3o).

In any case, Britain has always been a multicultural society, as we should know. (See chapter 1 of my British Imperial: What the Empire Wasn’t, 2016.) It’s one of her glowing virtues, and great advantages.

I’m no Royalist – as anyone on the Left who wants to compliment King Charles III over his speech to Congress yesterday clearly needs to establish – but, yes, I too thought it showed a masterful ability to navigate the choppy waters he was confronted with, in spite of the present situation of Anglo-American relations, and especially in the face of the Mad King Donald. (Was he there?) Sailing between the Scylla of flattering our most powerful one-time ally, and the Charybdis of telling him what we Brits really think of him – viz that moment in Love Actually – Charles managed, albeit in ways that were probably too clever and subtle for Trump to understand, to remind him of the British-origin values that had inspired the Founding Fathers 250 years ago, and which Trump is presently demolishing; without Charles’s ship foundering, and maybe – just maybe – to some good effect. (We’ll not know for some time.) In any case, I’m uncharacteristically proud of him.

The event also boosted my support for the institution of ‘Constitutional Monarchy’: figurehead Kings, Queens and unelected Presidents; who stand above everyday politics, but can remind people of their nations’ underlying values, even when those values slowly change. Most current European monarchies are like that, including the two – the UK and Sweden – that I’ve sworn allegiance to. So, of course, is Canada, sharing one of those monarchies with us Brits, and demonstrably more faithful to its liberal and democratic values (forget the class system for a moment) than is the present-day USA. Mark Carney, of course, is a Canadian.

We often complain about ‘career politicians’; by whom is meant those who have had no other careers before becoming politicians, and so have little experience of what might be called the ‘real life’ of those they are supposed to be representing. Sir Keir Starmer is definitely not one of those, having pursued a long and highly distinguished career outside politics, before campaigning for a UK Parliamentary seat in 2015, and rising to Prime Minister last year. People are now saying that however good Starmer may have been as a lawyer, he lacks the political skills that might have enabled him to avoid the trouble he finds himself in today, if he had pursued a more ‘career politician’ route earlier on. It’s Starmer’s political judgment that reckoned to be at fault: either in appointing Peter Mandelson as UK Ambassador to Washington in the first place in view of the latter’s friendship with the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein; or for his sacking the Permanent Head of the Foreign Office Sir ‘Olly’ Robins for (apparently) not alerting him to Mandelson’s (marginally) failed vetting, on other grounds, when it was later revealed.

I have to admit that when Starmer made this appointment originally, I was one (of many) who thought it was a brilliant wheeze; unusually for the generally solid and grey Sir Keir, giving him a bit of the necessary chutzpah that he otherwise lacked. Mandelson was notoriously oily and snakelike (he had been sacked from two earlier government posts); but wasn’t that just what was required in the snake-pit which is Trump’s Washington currently? But of course that all fell apart after the Epstein revelations; and Starmer was landed with the fallout.

A shame, in view of all the good he seems to be doing on the international front. Will he survive? I imagine so, in the shortish term at least. A problem for the Labour Party is that it hasn’t got an obvious successor. Angela Raynor? Andy Burnham, the well-regarded Mayor of Manchester? But he’s not even got a Parliamentary seat. Health Secretary Wes Streeting, much in the public eye just now? Maybe. Bring back Corbyn? No chance, of course. – But can I suggest another former loser:

Ed Miliband. I thought he was unlucky in his first go as Labour leader. (He’s the one in the middle.)

I imagine that Donald Trump will go down as the worst President in American history (any other candidates?); except by those who believe that his – yes – considerable achievements will put him up there among the Gods. He’s already sending out pictures on Truth Social of himself as a latter-day Jesus, which haven’t gone down too well, even (or especially) with Christians. (See https://theconversation.com/was-trumps-so-called-jesus-image-blasphemy-a-religious-expert-explains-280603.) This religious theme is being repeated by his Vice-President JD Vance, and by his ‘Secretary for War’ and crusader pour nos jours Pete Hegseth, surely the craziest of the lot  (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/pete-hegseth-iran-war-religion-b2951602.html); in ways that for us normal people, even the moderately religious among us, must seem dangerous, mad, and even eschatological.

About his achievements there can be little disagreement, although some people (myself included) must doubt whether they are his alone. His two successful elections, his hold over his loyal MAGA base, his wars of choice, his use of his ‘executive powers’ to ride roughshod over the American Constitution (at least until the Supreme Court brings him to heel), his tariffs, his brutal response to the ‘problem’ of immigration, his taming of the most prestigious universities, the successes of his ‘wars on woke’, his radical realignment of the US’s place in the world – and indeed the damage he has done to his country’s moral reputation among the remaining democracies; – all these, achieved (most of them) in the space of only one and a half presidential terms, when considered together, could even be considered ‘miraculous’; as I’m sure many of his ‘Christian nationalist’ followers do consider them.

Of course there’s some time to go before we’ll know how many of these remarkable achievements last, and will permanently refashion the whole nation into the God-fearing property-developer’s autocracy that seems to be Trump’s ultimate vision of it. And in the meanwhile we have the new Pope Leo XIV – a rather better reader of ‘miracles’ than Trump, surely – to rule upon their morality, at least. Plus, of course, we’ll have historians and social scientists to describe the broader context to all these events, which might well undermine Trump’s personal credit (or whatever) for them; and, of course, God’s. We can only wait and see.

Of course the suggestion that Israel was behind Trump’s attack on Iran fits in with a venerable anti-Semitic trope – the one that attributes all the world’s wars to ‘the Jews’ – and is likely therefore to encourage accusations of Judenhetze against anyone who voices it. We sympathetic but still critical philo-Semites have become used to that over the past few years, whenever for example we raise the issue of Palestine. But this ‘weaponisation’ of anti-Semitism (see Asa Winstanley’s 2023 book of that title) should not discourage us from pointing out Israel’s – or its leaders’ – crimes when we think we see them. The latest of those crimes is the IDF’s murderous bombing of Lebanon over Easter, at the very moment when a cease-fire was agreed in the US-Israeli/Iran war, which had been widely assumed to cover the Israel/Lebanon conflict too.

The evidence that it was Netanyahu who dragged Trump into the war ‘by the nose’ is not conclusive, and won’t be until historians are given access to the diplomatic records in many years’ time. But enough has already been revealed to back up this case, including some fairly authoritative press reports (e.g. https://www.irishtimes.com/world/us/2026/04/10/from-netanyahus-persuasion-to-vances-concerns-how-trump-took-the-us-to-war-with-iran/; and https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/iran-war-israel-trump-netanyahu-peace-unlikely). To this we might add that Israel’s motives for the war are far more understandable – they’re to defend the state of Israel from a close hostile neighbour – than are America’s. To which might be added the consideration that the Jewish religion – judging by the Old Testament (or by my reading of it) – is more open to extreme violence in the cause of Judaism, than is the New Testament (or at least the four Gospels) in the cause of Christianity. That’s not to say that all Christians are or have ever been loyal to the pacifism implied in the Gospels (at least, again, by my reading of them); as is evidenced by the religious wars of the Middle Ages, especially the Crusades, and the tribal and faux Christianity that inspires the actions of so-called ‘Christian Nationalists’ like Pete Hegseth – now self-styled ‘Minister of War’ – in the USA. Hence the present row between the American President and the American Pope; on this issue Leo being, obviously, the more Christian of the two.

PS. If Trump is as good at ‘The Art of the Deal’ as he boasts he is – it was his major electoral selling point – why hasn’t he conducted the negotiations with Iran and Lebanon personally, instead of leaving them to numpties, who have clearly failed? Was it because he knew they would fail, and wanted to avoid the opprobrium?

A lot of people are asking this now. It could be grounds for his removal from office. Personally, I can see a certain perverse logic in his statements and actions up to now, and even a fairly sane explanation for them in ‘late-stage capitalist’ terms. But his war against Iran hardly seems consistent with this, looking as it does like being a disaster in so many ways, even if he ‘wins’ it, or can present it as a win; and accompanied as it is by a rhetoric which is certainly undiplomatic, and appears extreme, wild and possibly counter-productive. ‘Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP’. A little later he warned that Iran’s millennia-old ‘civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again’ unless Tehran capitulates. It would be bombed ‘back to the stone age’.

I don’t imagine that Trump has the slightest appreciation of the glorious achievements of the Persians in pre-Roman times, never – by all accounts – having read a book, even his own; but he probably wouldn’t be deterred by that in any event. He’s the very embodiment of a xenophobic idiot, self-obsessed, possessed by irrational hatreds, and probably insecure personally; who under any other political system, and in almost any other age, would have been kept safely away from high political office. Americans will have their work cut out to further amend their much admired Constitution – whose separation of powers was supposed to prevent this kind of thing – in order to ensure that someone like Trump can’t rise to the top again.

Whether this makes him ‘mad’ is a question for the medical and psychological experts. But ‘unbalanced’, certainly.

We have about four hours to go before we know whether he has indeed blown Iran back to prehistoric times. It’s 10.30 p.m. now in Sweden (4.30 p.m. in Washington DC). I won’t be waiting up.

That date this year will mark the 250^th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence – as every educated American knows. That is, apart from today’s American President; who has a copy of it hanging in his Oval Office, but seems entirely ignorant of what it means. (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrIw2tmzMFE.)

This now seems ironic, in view of Trump’s current one-man rule – by ‘executive order’ – which transgresses so many of the principles we have learned to associate with American constitutional democracy; with the object – in effect – of returning the country to the pre-1776 age of ‘Kings’. (Actually George III wasn’t a ‘king’ in this sense. But let that pass.) This is what all the impressive anti-Trump – ‘No Kings’ – demonstrations going on in the US just now are warning of, and with good reason. Trump’s undermining of Congress, the Judiciary, universities, the armed forces, the history taught in schools, America’s immigration rules (remember ‘send me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free’?!), even ‘truth’ itself, and now her electoral practices (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/31/us/politics/trump-mail-in-ballots-voting-executive-order.html) – are clearly heading the country in an authoritarian, almost Orwellian, direction; often by quasi-fascistic means.

When (or if?) King Charles III visits the USA later this year – the date chosen, I imagine, in recognition of the anniversary – most of his ‘subjects’ in Britain and the Commonwealth are hoping that he will refer to this significant counter-revolution that Trump is currently effecting in American policy and identity, at least as critically as the conventions of diplomacy allow.

The Sweden Democrat Party (Sverigedemokraterna), far to the political Right, vigorously anti-immigration, and until recently publicly cold-shouldered by all the other parties, has now been allowed into the Centre-Right coalition government, with its leader, Jimmie Åkesson, landing the post of Minister for Migration – of all things. Kajsa is helping to arrange a meeting/demonstration in Stockholm soon, with the slogan Utan invandrare stannar Sverige (without immigrants Sweden stops). Perhaps the UK and the USA could adopt a version of that.

(To declare an interest: I of course am an immigrant here too.)

NATO is a defensive alliance, not an offensive one. Trump should be aware of that, before chiding the other NATO nations for not supporting his war of choice against Iran.

I’ve just turned 85; about 35 years longer than I ever imagined, based on the fact – irrelevant of course – that my father died in his fifties. I’ve been going through obituaries in Dagens Nyheter to see what age most of the people celebrated there were when they died. The answer turns out to be an extraordinary cluster around the mid-eighties for men – that is, for Swedish men. (A bit more for women.) Of course Swedes are generally healthier than Brits, and I’ve been a Brit for most of my life, and only dual-Swedish for about seven years of it; so that mid-80s average probably doesn’t apply to me. But in any case I must be due to die quite soon. Various little infirmities, and drops in appetite, confirm that. I’m also aware that I’m not writing as well as I used to. The poor old body and brain are wearing out.

I’m not at all worried by the prospect of death; only of dying – the process. ‘Libera me, Domine’ (from Fauré’s Requiem) is one of the pieces I’d like to be played at my funeral. I’ve always found living rather stressful, despite all the privileges I’ve had; which make me feel guilty for not appreciating them more. And I’m fascinated to know what – if anything – is to come. I’d like to believe in a Hell, for people like Trump and Farage; but it seems rather mean and petty – you might even say ‘Trumpian’ – to think like that. My own two guesses about any afterlife are (a) that we simply repeat our same lives over again without realising it, which in my case would be Hell; or alternatively (b) a tour, in spirit, of the universe, like the one described in Olaf Stapleton’s great 1937 Sci-Fi novel Star Maker. That would satisfy my thirst for knowledge. If, that is, we retain the same thirsts after death.

I’m sorry for this personal and rather maudlin post; but it is coming up to Easter, which even for a lapsed Christian like me encourages such thoughts. I hope to be back to life, and to present-day politics, soon. In the meantime, we’ve the Easter day roast lamb to prepare, and Easter eggs for the grand- (and bonus-) kids.