Porter’s Pensées

It’s almost as if – and I’m sure this has occurred to many others – the Conservatives over the past 5-6 years deliberately fucked things up, in order to leave their successors with the unpopular task of clearing up their mess. That – if it’s to be done within conventional fiscal rules – will be bound to require either higher taxation or lower public spending, which people won’t like; or else a revolutionary third way, which hasn’t yet been spelled out, and in any case would probably take too long to be effective soon enough.

This is the awkward dilemma that Starmer and Reeves are presently faced with, and accounts for the political difficulties – over the winter fuel allowance for pensioners – that they currently find themselves in. Luckily for them, the government has an enormous cushion of votes in the House of Commons to protect it against any substantial challenge there; which is why I imagine Reeves won’t ‘U-turn’ on this any time soon. Of course I may be wrong – no doubt we’ll find out shortly – but if so it will leave her open to a new charge, of weakness. You can’t win, in this present-day tabloid headline-dominated political world. And in the meantime you have your next electorate becoming alienated from Labour; and all the latters’ fault.

Where however do the Tories go from here? Leaving a pile of dog dirt on the carpet of the Palace of Westminster may be a clever ruse in the short run; but it will hardly do as long-term strategy. In the long term of course the winter fuel allowance may well have been forgotten, which Labour is probably relying on: ‘get the bad news out early’; but then the clownish stupidities of the last Tory governments will probably also have faded from voters’ memories. In which case the Conservatives might have a chance to rebuild; but on what foundations?

There are two main possibilities. The first is to return to the old Tory principles of ‘moderation’: sensible, middle-of the road economically (I’m talking about perceptions here), reliable fiscally, liberal socially, competent, un-ideological, and ‘conservative’ in its literal sense; in other words cuddly, like that lovely Ken Clarke, bless him. (How he’s missed!) The problem with this is that is that Labour might very well have taken hold of that ground from the Tories, under its more cuddly leaders by then. (That’s why it was so wise to get rid of the very un-cuddly Corbyn, however right he was about almost everything.)

The other road will be to veer off to the ideological Right, and become a proto-Fascist party in effect. That’s what the Tories who are most prominent today – that is, shout the loudest – seem to be aiming for. And it’s certainly the route already chosen by Farage, ‘Reform’, and their ‘populist’ following; which is another factor that might push the Tories in that direction – simply out of fear of being displaced by them. Far-Rightism at least presents a clear alternative to Labour, with very easily-defined policies, spelled out recently by those two Tory monsters Priti Patel and Suella Braverman, and clearly appealing to the baser instincts of (some) Britons. And of course it has wider European and Global support, from Trumpism to the AfD, which must give it even more purchase, and confidence. This is the great danger – for us British social liberals – in the near future; which it will require a great effort by reasonable and moderate Tories, if there are any left, to counter.

It will also require enormous skill and judgment on the part of the new Labour government, to succeed in a way that makes this Right-wing ‘turn’ less attractive to the coming generation of voters. Tax or welfare cuts won’t do it, leaving the country in much the same state. In short, it may need a social revolution, of the kind that enabled Labour to succeed so brilliantly after World War II. How this is to be achieved without a war to help it, with powerful press magnates opposed to it, and in the face of the fuck-up the Tories have – deliberately? – bequeathed to Labour, is the great (domestic) issue of our day.

My ideal solution, as a Lefty, would be to undo most of the traces of ‘Thatcherism’, which lie at the bottom of all this. But whether the capitalist tiger Thatcher rode so effectively in the ’eighties, and is still there growling away in the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, will allow Starmer to even start on this must be doubtful. That’s what is at the root of most of our present woes. Mere cunning – more dollops of dog dirt – will not get over it.

I’ve always thought it ridiculous that Zionist Jews should rest their ultimate claim to Palestine/Israel on the commands of a mythical being in the sky, as recounted in an old magic book. But I never doubted that those were the words attributed to Him. That is, until the other day; when I read this piece by (the Jewish) Naomi Wolf. It’s getting wide circulation now, so you will likely have come across it already; but in case not, here it is.

Okay, so I was challenged below: “Read the Bible! God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people.” So….I may get crucified for this but I have started to say it — most recently (terrified, trembling) to warm welcome in a synagogue in LA: Actually if you read Genesis Exodus and Deuteronomy in Hebrew — as I do — you see that God did not “give” Israel to the Jews/Israelites. We as Jews are raised with the creed that “God gave us the land of Israel” in Genesis — and that ethnically ‘we are the chosen people.” But actually — and I could not believe my eyes when I saw this, I checked my reading with major scholars and they confirmed it — actually God’s “covenant” in Genesis, Exodus and Deuteronomy with the Jewish people is NOT ABOUT AN ETHNICITY AND NOT ABOUT A CONTRACT. IT IS ABOUT A WAY OF BEHAVING.

Again and again in the “covenant” language He never says: “I will give you, ethnic Israelites, the land of Israel.” Rather He says something far more radical – far more subversive — far more Godlike in my view. He says: IF you visit those imprisoned…act mercifully to the widow and the orphan…welcome the stranger in your midst…tend the sick…do justice and love mercy ….and perform various other tasks…THEN YOU WILL BE MY PEOPLE AND THIS LAND WILL BE YOUR LAND. So “my people” is not ethnic — it is transactional. We are God’s people not by birth but by a way of behaving, that is ethical, kind and just. And we STOP being “God’s people” when we are not ethical, kind and just. And ANYONE who is ethical, kind and just is, according to God in Genesis, “God’s people.” And the “contract” to “give” us Israel is conditional — we can live in God’s land IF we are “God’s people” in this way — just, merciful, compassionate. AND — it never ever says, it is ONLY your land. Even when passages spell out geographical “boundaries” as if God does such a thing, it never says this is exclusively your land. It never says I will give this land JUST to you. Remember these were homeless nomads who had left slavery in Egypt and were wandering around in the desert; at most these passages say, settle here, but they do not say, settle here exclusively. Indeed again and again it talks about welcoming “zarim” — translated as “strangers” but can also be translated as “people/tribes who are not you” — in your midst. Blew my mind, hope it blows yours.

Now, I’m no Biblical scholar, although I have read the Bible (nearly all of it; we had to at school); and I’m approaching Wolf’s reading from the perspective of the ‘Four Gospels’ Christianity I was brought up with in my youth. But from a moral point of view, and also a historico-textual one, hers seems to me to be far more convincing, and even – may I say? – ‘Jewish’, than the version we are told legitimizes present-day Israel, and its un-Christian, and possibly un-Abrahamic, policies in the West Bank and Gaza.

There are, I’m sure, many other Jews who would go along with this, including some Rabbis. You don’t need to be ‘anti-semitic’ to share Wolf’s reading of what we call the Old Testament. Indeed, that reading would likely make you more pro-Jewish, or more comfortable as a Jew, if you were one already. And this is especially true for critical scholars like me, who endeavour to base our conclusions on careful analyses of available written and other evidence, viewed in context; which is what Naomi Wolf appears to have done here. Or is she wrong on this?

In Sweden criminal gangs are recruiting children to carry out their most heinous crimes, including even murder. Some of the reasons for this are spelled out in this recent statement by the Swedish police: https://polisen.se/en/victims-of-crime/are-you-worried-that-your-child-will-be-lured-into-crime/. Children have various legal protections that adults do not have; they’re easily seduced and influenced; and they’re better at using modern technology, if that’s what the crime involves. Some of these gangs are now apparently sending kids down into Denmark to do their dastardly and sometimes murderous deeds there. The Danes are not happy, understandably.

This is obviously not a unique or novel phenomenon. (Shades of Fagin and the Artful Dodger. And of the kids in my favourite Cagney movie: Each Dawn I Die.) But how common is it now, I wonder, outside Scandinavia?

As an immigrant here in Sweden – you might even say a refugee – but needing to return to the UK occasionally, I’ve recently become alarmed by the rapidly rising costs of air and rail travel there, even by ‘cheap’ airlines or with the benefit of Euro-railcards. A projected trip at the end of this month (including rail travel in England, grossly over-priced) is likely to set me back about £300. And then the same amount, I guess, to return.

In view of this I’m tempted to switch my political support to the far-Right Sweden Democrats, who are offering money to unwanted foreigners to enable them to return ‘home’. (See https://www.thelocal.se/20240819/sweden-democrats-push-to-overrule-inquiry-on-re-emigration-grants/.) I seem to remember Enoch Powell’s floating much the same idea for Britain in the 1960s. Did anything come of it? I doubt whether it will work in Sweden, either. But then you never can tell, these crazy days.

Of course it would make no sense my taking the money and buying a ticket to Blighty with it, if I weren’t allowed back. On the other hand, could they stop me re-entering Sweden with a Swedish passport (which I have)? And then my re-applying for the grant for another trip? I imagine that even the racists in the Sverigedemokraterna will have thought of that.

Could what we’re experiencing today in Britain – the economic and social problems, ludicrous governments, right-wing extremism, culture wars, riots and general anomie – be a sign or symptom, or even an effect, of what ex-US Secretary of State Dean Acheson famously described in 1962 as Britain’s having ‘lost an Empire, but not yet found a rôle’?

Despite Conservative objections, that did not seem implausible at the time. A little early, perhaps: Britain still had a fair number of colonies to get rid of in 1962, and a pretty extensive ‘informal’ empire – money and influence – parts of which have managed to survive, albeit much attenuated, until today. All the same, once India had gone, then much of Africa, and following the Suez débacle in 1956, the writing was clearly – to everyone save a few deluded ‘Empire Loyalists’ – ‘on the wall’. This was obvious to most of us Brits then, and even more so to our ‘cousins’, like Acheson, across the water.

I don’t want to quarrel with this. Indeed, I’d put the effective loss of Britain’s ‘formal’ empire even earlier – see my The Lion’s Share. And the seeping away of the trappings of empire after the Second World War did leave spaces that needed to be filled by something. Empire Loyalists saw that ‘something’ as a revival – somehow – of the old Empire. Rhodesia – now Zimbabwe – was their final redoubt, which fell of course in 1980. The Falklands didn’t fall, but were hardly the foundation you could rebuild an Empire on. (They had always been marginal to British imperial power in any case.) The ‘Commonwealth’, which survived the breakup of the Empire, was another possible focus for post-imperial loyalty; but a rather too liberal, ‘multi-cultural’, weak and disobedient one for the Empire Loyalists and pro-Rhodesians to feel comfortable with. Much later on this vestigial ‘imperialism’ could also be said to be manifested in the Brexiteers’ ideas of a ‘global Britain’, the ‘Anglosphere’, post-European trade deals with former colonies, and the like.

But there were alternative ‘rôles’ on offer. One was for Britain to ally more closely with the USA. This was one of the earliest solutions offered, by people who as early as the 1890s saw the way things were going, including most notably the arch-imperialist Cecil Rhodes. The second – anathema to the likes of him – was for Britain to assert, or re-assert, her influence in the evolving (under a succession of different names) European Union. This of course was what eventually came to pass, when the Conservative government of Edward Heath finally negotiated Britain’s adhesion to it in 1973. That could have bestowed on Britain a new replacement ‘rôle’; and arguably did.

But not, of course, to the liking of those Britons who hankered after a more ‘independent’ and by implication ‘powerful’ rôle for their country; or – more importantly – of those who didn’t really care one way or another about what ‘rôle’ Britain should play in the world, but were willing to go along with the Brexiteers’ false argument that her ‘subservient’ one within the EU, and tracing this back, her loss of empire, were at the root of all their domestic woes.

So, in the event Britain has tried out two new putative national roles for herself since the loss of her formal empire. The first was the European one; the second the anti-European one, which seems to be fed with memories of what the old imperial role is supposed to have meant for her. Both have pretty well failed, rôle-wise; and it is this that could be said to confirm Acheson’s view: that Britain had no idea what she should do once the Empire had gone. In other words, we have still not ‘found a role’.

I say ‘we’; but the truth is that only a tiny minority of us Brits really cares a fig about our ‘role’. Most of us – apart from politicians and historians – are almost entirely indifferent about what part our nation plays and played in the world, until that ‘part’ is falsely tied in with more social and individual concerns, like today. I think I demonstrated this in my The Absent-Minded Imperialists; although I should point out in fairness that the reading presented there is controversial. Most people didn’t care about the Empire; and so hardly cared about it when it had gone. So the implication of Acheson’s claim – that it was important to them – is misleading.

In any case, ‘rôles’ can be established in other ways than by crudely political and military – ‘imperial’ – means. Cultural is one. Social is another. Economic is a third – although that way colonialism can lie. Moral is another. (The Dalai Llama has no battalions.) In the broader picture, power, control and empire are arguably less admirable and desirable than these, and many others. ‘We used to have an empire’, as Brexiteer mobs are sometimes heard shouting. – So what? We still have (or had) Shakespeare, Turner, some wonderful mediaeval cathedrals, our language, our universities, and the NHS. Empires never last for ever. Some of these might.

My first great literary (if you can call it that) enthusiasm was Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future. He was the comic-strip space hero of the Eagle’s front page in the early 1950s; in retrospect rather less science-fictiony than we thought at the time – the science all wrong, with for example the planet Venus more verdant than we now know it is in reality; and everything about it more redolent of the Second World War than of any imaginable future: Dan with his fat Lancastrian batman Digby, spaceships looking like Lancaster bombers minus their wings, and so on, and lots of chivalry – but in spite of all this sparking in me a life-long interest in science fiction, and in the questions about ‘life, the universe and everything’ that later more cerebral versions of this genre explored. The art work (by Frank Hampson) was superb too.

I’ve referenced Dan Dare before: https://bernardjporter.com/2021/05/28/dominic-mekon/. That post compared Dominic Cummings – remember him? – to the arch-villain of the strip, the Mekon. He (or it) was the tyrannical leader of the ‘Treens’ of Venus, with a huge green head and a tiny body. The head was the clue. It contained the pure science which was the Mekon’s means of controlling his subjects, but without room to take in what Dan regarded as more human (or ‘British’) characteristics; such as empathy, charity, and simple decency. He (it) was obviously part of the ‘evil genius’ tradition in stories and novels that went back for decades; probably as far as the hyper-fictional ‘Satan’.

Elon Musk’s head is not as big as the Mekon’s; but his ambition appears to be comparable. In common with most people, I first associated him with electric cars and spaceships, which did not seem to be bad things in themselves – indeed, the opposite if you were brought up on Dan Dare. But then I learned of his takeover of Twitter, which as a modern technology dum-dum I knew little about then, and still do. (My only contact with this field is the present one: Facebook.) But now that I know what Musk can do with his immense riches and power, and arguably has done already through his liberation of Twitter from almost any sort of ethical moderation, with results we saw in the riots that took place in England a week ago: fake ‘tweets’ empowering far-Rightists and provoking them to attack immigrants and Muslims; and with what I’ve since learned about his background (South Africa), his own far-Right leanings, and from the testimony of his transgender daughter: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musk-transgender-daughter-vivian-wilson-interview-rcna163665; I’m now fully aware of the danger he poses. In this regard he can be seen as the digital-age successor to that other media Satan, Rupert Murdoch. Isn’t it interesting – and maybe significant – that both these men originally came from ex-British colonies:  ‘The Empire Strikes Back’? (That of course was bound to occur to me, as an Imperial historian.)

Obviously we shouldn’t allow billionaires to dominate our national discourse in this way. But that’s what happens when you give a privileged ‘freedom’ to capitalist speech.

*

Incidentally, I still return to Dan Dare occasionally, in the bound facsimiles published by Titan Comics over the last ten years. I recently acquired The Earth Stealers, reproducing issues from June 1961 to March 1962, which was a few years after I had stopped subscribing to the original. The quality had declined by then – no Frank Hampson, for a start – but I was intrigued to find a story-line based on Dan’s returning to a future earth via a time-warp, and witnessing the near-destruction of the Earth by global warming, graphically illustrated with images of the Houses of Parliament burning, and so on. That looks quite prophetic for its time (16 December 1961). – If I can find a way to, I may post a few frames of it later. (I haven’t yet got to the end of the story, so I can’t tell you whether Dan saves the earth yet again; or whether the Mekon is involved.)

Thank God (or whomever) for last night. No neo-Fascist riots in Britain, although they had been widely predicted. Instead, huge friendly pro-immigrant crowds, with music and dancing, but no reported violence, and the few neo-Nazis who did show up having to be safeguarded – probably unnecessarily – by the police they’d been hurling bricks at the weekend before.

Maybe it was the police presence that deterred the ultras. (They’re not really very brave. ‘Tommy Robinson’ was apparently hiding away on holiday in Cyprus. Is that true?) Or – more likely in my view – it may be that the counter-demonstrations represented the country rather better than the Far Rightists, despite the latters’ claims to be ‘speaking for Britain’, and the noise they (usually) make.

That’s the case I was trying to argue in my Britain’s Contested History. It’s difficult to define ‘Britishness’, and not very useful, I think; but ‘toleration’ must be there somewhere, as one of our best – if not universal, or exclusive – traits. Which is why Theresa May’s evocation of Britain’s ‘Hostile Environment’ in 2012, as a way of deterring immigrants, could be seen as deeply ‘unpatriotic’; and can also be regarded as the foundation stone – built on afterwards by two other vile women: Priti Patel and Suella Braverman – of the minority racist nationalism we saw in English city centres before last night.

Observing all this from a thousand miles away, I feel just a little bit better now.

Universities in Britain – especially the newer ones – are often ridiculed for offering degree courses in so-called ‘Mickey Mouse’ subjects, in order to attract a wider range of punters. As an ex-university teacher of a more ‘traditional’ and – I would say – rigorous subject, I would go along with some of this criticism.

But then what about the Olympic Games in recent years? A few decades ago it was just Athletics. (A few millennia ago the Games included Poetry; but we’ll leave that aside for the moment.) Now we have Beach Volleyball, Ping-Pong, Shooting, Synchronised Swimming, Swimming Backwards (why not Running Backwards?), Walking whilst Wobbling your Bottom, Horses Doing Funny Walks… and, for pity’s sake, as I learn today: Skateboarding.

Skateboarding! Whatever will come next? Marbles? Conkers? Hopping on One Leg? Crazy Golf? Darts? Snakes and Ladders? – Even I might stand a chance with some of these, as (at 83) one of the least athletic people on earth. But the Olympics have already been devalued enough.

Maybe there could be an alternative or ancillary Olympic Games, like there is for athletes with disabilities (Paralympians); but this time for kids, and taking in the kids’ sports. Or, alternatively, bring the original Greek Olympics back; with the Poetry contest included, of course.

But this really is trivial, by the side of Gaza, Ukraine, and the riots in England. Sorry.

It looks as if I returned from England just in time. According to Elon Musk, ‘civil war is inevitable’ there now, after the riots of the last weekend. Wouldn’t that be great for Musk’s newly-acquired social media site ‘X’ (formerly ‘Twitter’) – all that enhanced traffic, the hatred, the threats, the lies, and the dollars flooding in?

If this isn’t an incitement to civil war, I don’t know what is. One best way to encourage an event is to persuade people that it’s bound to happen anyway. That’s what Enoch Powell tried to do fifty years ago – ‘rivers of blood’, and all that. In that case it didn’t quite happen, fortunately. Hopefully we can staunch the stream today.

Obviously not all the rioters can be accurately characterised as ‘Far Right’ or – more recently – as ‘terrorists’. The Far Right has a political agenda, or a number of them, which can be defined and spelled out; most of our recent rioters however, judging from their posts on social media, can’t even spell. They really do seem to be ‘mindless hooligans’, motivated by the process – getting into fights and smashing things – rather than by any recognisable ‘cause’. When they’re asked to justify their actions in terms of ‘causes’, they display a degree of ignorance and irrationality which is astounding, and easy for thinking people to demolish. (James O’Brien on LBC Radio is good at this.) We can perhaps blame ‘toxic masculinity’ for this, with most rioters being men and boys; which may well indicate a genetic condition – testosterone and all that – imbuing males from birth with hatred and a proclivity for violence. (Not me, of course.) But I have no expertise in this field. (Kajsa, who is an expert, tells me no. It’s conditioning.)

Of course, many of the rioters have genuine grievances; but not against the targets that they’re putting the blame on today: asylum seekers, refugee hotels, Moslems, foreign-looking people generally, the out-of-touch ‘intelligentsia’, the police, Greggs pastry shops, ‘wokeism’, and so on. The real sources of their resentments are broader and deeper: gross inequality, welfare cuts, inadequate education, undirected migration, consumer culture perhaps, an electoral system that they will feel – reasonably – doesn’t adequately represent them; and a vile popular press exploiting all this and diverting it into avenues that leave the real culprits in the clear.

That’s where the ‘Far Right’ enters the picture. Theirs is the political agenda, or agendas, that make it worthwhile manipulating these movements of vague ‘protest’ for their own end; which is a more ‘Rightist’ form of government, that any historian of modern Britain and/or Europe would recognise as being authoritarian, liberal economically but not in other ways, and at least proto-Fascist, if not the whole hog. Certain foreign agents may well be involved here too; in particular Putin’s deeply illiberal Russia.

If a new ‘English civil war’ is brewing, then this will be one of its agencies. It already has a kind of pre-echo in the so-called ‘culture wars’, which are even now dividing people sharply, and might – who knows – morph into armed rebellion. Jonathan Swift’s Big Enders and Little Enders come to mind, as a war borne of a triviality.

But Musk has probably been misled by his own Lilliputian social media. Civil War? That’s a very big claim.

The Swedish Foreign Office, incidentally, today recommends that if Swedes want to travel to England, they should avoid large crowds. I don’t suppose that this advice has been given before, at least since World War II.

Immigration is a problem just now in England mainly because people think it is. Which is not to say that there aren’t genuinely problematic aspects to it – housing the refugees, for example; accommodating them safely in the meantime; adjudicating their claims to asylum quickly; rescuing them from drowning in la manche in some cases; rooting out the evil people exploiting them – but only that the major political problem surrounding immigration is the hostility shown by some settled Britons towards it, manifested in the riots that have been smashing up mainly northern English cities this past weekend, including my own.

How many of these anti-immigrant protesters there are is difficult to tell: clearly several thousands overall, probably millions; but in most cases their ‘demonstrations’ are reported to have been met with much larger ones defending the refugees, despite the antis’ claiming to represent the ‘British people’ in this regard. ‘Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here’ was the dominant chant heard in Hull’s Victoria Square on Saturday. The pride that local residents are taking in clearing up the messes that the rioters leave behind them – smashed windows, looted shops, burned-out cars – may also be testimony to this. But of course it’s hard to know. And the anti-immigrants are noisier, and more violent.

In fact, of course, immigrants of all kinds are and always have been a net bonus to British society, as several surveys of their medium-term economic impact have shown: paying taxes, providing much-needed labour, especially to the National Health Service, and – albeit not a directly economic benefit, this – enriching British culture greatly. They usually ‘integrate’ well, if not homogenously, although that might take a few years; and very often get on famously with ‘native’ Brits. (Especially in Scotland, apparently, where you don’t find the same degree of anti-alien feeling.) But they do need government or local government policies positively directed to settling and integrating them: educating them, teaching them English (or Welsh), housing them suitably; and avoiding, if possible, their living in ‘ghettoes’, divorced from the rest of English society.

Or ‘societies’, I should have written; because one of the truly distinctive things about Britain is how essentially ‘multi-cultural’ she has always been. This is why when asked to define or characterise ‘Englishness’ English people are usually lost for words, or else resort to vague generalities and trivialities, like respect for the law (difficult to recognise in the case of this weekend’s rioters), or the monarchy, cricket and queuing for buses. Britain is of course – and was even before the new immigrants arrived – a mix of several national and regional cultures, overlaid by other religious and class ones; which have always jostled for primacy without any one of them winning out. If there is an ‘alien’ culture threatening a broader English identity today, I could make out a case for its being the upper-class one encouraged in the ‘Public’ schools, and exemplified by Boris, Cameron and their ilk, living in their ghettoes, in the Cotswolds and elsewhere;  which most working and lower-middle class people in Britain wouldn’t recognise as part of their ‘national identity’ at all.  As one slogan put it recently: ‘It’s not the Estonians you need to fear; it’s the Etonians’. That’s where the main fault-line lies in British society, and always has; not the one between British-born, and foreign.

There’s much for a government to do here, but not by imprisoning them in disused military camps, or dumping them in the middle of Africa. Sweden, with a similar problem a few years ago, and a similar far-right movement born in reaction to it, has chosen more moderate and constructive ways, with some (although not complete) success. Governments could also meet the argument that refugees were ‘costing’ the country too much by providing adequate services – especially medical, educational and housing – for all their citizens. That should also tackle the wider popular frustrations that clearly fuel the far Right movement generally. The other thing that needs to be done is to bear down in some way on the propaganda, by politicians like Nigel Farage, and in the popular print press and on social media, and the lies that are pushed out to – for example – tar innocent asylum-seekers, especially Moslems, with being criminals, terrorists and paedophiles. That’s one of the most dangerous aspects of this whole affair. It’s almost as if the far Right wants to prolong these frustrations in order to provoke and justify an even further Right – genuinely Fascist – government in Britain.

Interestingly, Swedish TV News programmes have put Britain’s weekend riots at the top of their running order over the last two days. So Europe is noticing.