Porter’s Pensées

Well, we lost, narrowly, but to a marginally better Italian team. I wasn’t as upset as I thought I’d be; but that was because it was a pretty good game, with none of the refereeing controversies that often accompany these matches; and – secondly – because I thought the lads had won the more important contest: of decency, against racism and the other characteristics of the ‘populist’ Right. A young, refreshingly multi-racial and brilliantly skilled team, many with social consciences which had impacted on politics – Marcus Rashford’s campaign for free meals for poor schoolchildren during the pandemic, for example – and insisting on ‘taking the knee’ (against racism) against the advice and indeed scorn of the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary, had progressed further in an international competition than any team since 1966. That must be good, I thought, as I retired, untroubled, to bed.

But then came the morn, and disillusionment. Apparently the fact that the three players who failed to score in the crucial penalty shoot-out at the end were black  ignited racism again. The social media were filled with vile attacks on them. A Conservative MP and a Right-wing comedian made the point that if Rashford had spent more time on his football skills than on politics England might have won. Italian fans were brutally attacked outside the ground. Which of course undid much of the good the players and their manager seemed to have achieved prior to the game. I’ve begun to despair; not for the first time, I have to say. (And to be glad that I’m now a demi-Swede.)

I’m still not convinced that England is a predominantly racist society. A few hooligans running amok can seem an awful lot. The problem now seems to be that – like Trumpists in America – they now feel they are encouraged by their ‘betters’, especially Boris, whose racist remarks in the past are by now notorious; and the sheerly evil – there’s no other word for it – Priti Patel, with her demented campaign against immigrants. Her latest move on this front, by the way, is to make it an indictable crime for captains of British ships to rescue refugees who find themselves in mortal danger on the high seas. That of course would contravene not only British and European laws but also the long-established international  Law of the Seas. This comes after Patel’s passage through the Commons of her Bill to outlaw many kinds of protest, including loud and annoying ones. The football rather distracted attention from that. And of course there’s much more where that came from: festering in the rancid minds of this present bunch of ministers. We really are going to wake up one morning to find ourselves living in an authoritarian, even ‘fascist’, state. That might have happened, of course, even if England had won the penalty shoot-out. Indeed, that could have made the people happier, and so more accepting of their fate.

I understand that England fans also attacked Pizzerias. One Italian had anticipated that – rather amusingly, I think: https://www.facebook.com/gregosh.mc/videos/844395033144239.

Oh well, there’s still the World Cup to look forward to, next year.  

The general consensus here (in Sweden) is that England were lucky to beat Denmark, and that the penalty was a dodgy one, to say the least. I have to say I agree, reluctantly. I’m also troubled by the way Johnson and his minions are seeking to exploit England’s success (so far) politically; especially Boris himself and the awful Priti Patel, after her sneering at the team’s ‘taking the knee’. I can feel the vomit rising…

Which is a shame, in view of Southgate’s and the whole team’s conduct off the field. They really are an example to us all. I’d like to wish them all the best on Sunday. But then I think of the behaviour of the England supporters – booing the Danish national anthem, shining a laser beam into the Danish goalkeeper’s eyes as he’s facing the penalty – and of our (i.e. Britain’s) deplorable government; and half-wish that Italy wins on Sunday. Which would be unfair to the team. (Most of it composed, as has been pointed out repeatedly, of the sons and grandsons of immigrants.)

I’ll be watching it from here in Värmland, where we’re on holiday just now. The pandemic meant we couldn’t do our usual European tour. But this really is a gorgeous part of the country. Hills, forests and lakes, mainly; plus a huge population of elks – 30,000, Kajsa tells me – though we’ve not seen one yet. Apparently they only come out at night. A bit like Priti, I imagine.

Bloomsbury Press’s four ‘Readers’ all think my new project – A Patriotic History of Modern Britain – is good and ‘timely’, so you may see it out early next year. It won’t of course be ‘patriotic’ in the usual sense; the word in the title is meant to fool ‘patriots’ into buying it. And then to school them in what true ‘patriotism’ should consist of: i.e. wanting to make your country better. Bloomsbury by the way are good to work with, unlike a number of publishers I’ve entrusted my babies to. They tell me the hardback will be £20. So save your pennies up.

I’ll be finishing it after our holiday in Värmland (on the Norwegian border). We’re off on Monday, after the England-Ukraine game. I feel sorry for Sweden, by the way, who played out of their skins last night, but lost in the final seconds of extra time, so dashing my hopes of a quarter-final match between my two nationalities. But that might have tested my own dual ‘patriotisms’.

This looks like a fair summary to me.

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/2021/06/meaning-resignation-swedish-prime-minister-stefan-l-fven

It is well known that one of the most reliable markers for distinguishing between Brexiters and Remainers in 2016 was their levels of education. That’s a more diplomatic way of putting it, than by referring to levels of ‘intelligence’. The better (or longer) educated you were – unless it was at Eton – the more likely you were to have voted to stay in the EU. It was mainly the un- and public school-educated who voted the other way. (Not all, of course.) 

Which had a crucial effect on Britain’s politics in the months thereafter. In brief, it meant that when Johnson came to form his new government in 2019, with only Brexiters or turncoats to choose from, most of the more highly-educated and experienced members of the Conservative Party were lost to him, driven out by him in many cases; leaving only youngish, unprincipled and probably stupid Brexit-loyalists to choose from. Which is why we got Matt Hancock, Gavin Williamson, Priti Patel and the rest of that ‘fucking useless’ crew (Johnson’s words, applied to Hancock, according to Cummings), plus of course Boris himself, to bugger just about everything up in the last year or so; including Brexit itself and the pandemic.   

But of course that thought merely makes me an ‘élitist’.

A picture of the Queen in every home; and now this, recommended by the Government to be sung in primary schools:

‘One Nation’? No; Britain is four nations, as every Scottish and Welsh and Northern Irish person will tell you. ‘Great nation’? No; or at least, not particularly ‘great’, and much less so now by almost any criteria (not only military) than she used to be. 

Actually, there are some admirable sentiments in that song – tolerance, diversity and so on – but most of them sitting rather uncomfortably with the reality of life in Britain today – at least, as I observe it from afar; the ‘hostile environment’, and so on. And the whole idea of making children sing ‘patriotic’ songs in their schools must strike most Britons as being quite fundamentally un-British. It’s the sort of thing the Americans do. And apart from them, authoritarian countries, uneasy about the loyalties of their citizens otherwise. It’s a very Borissy thing; a substitute for proper political thinking, and a diversion from the incompetence and sheer reactionary devilry of his government.

My forthcoming Patriot’s History of Modern Britain should put them right about all that ‘patriotic’ stuff. If it ever appears, that is; I’m still waiting to hear from my publisher.

But it’s Midsommarafton, and I have to leave off now to dance around a phallic symbol, while pretending to be a frog, with lots of other Swedes. Maybe Boris could introduce something like it to Britain. He would make a pretty good phallus himself. And Nigel Farage could be one of the frogs.

So far as I understand, and I’m open to correction by Swedish friends, the extraordinary events in the Swedish Parliament just an hour ago – PM Löfven losing a vote of confidence initiated by an unholy alliance between the far-Left Vänster party and the far-Right Sverigedemokraterna – came about because of the Centre-Left coalition’s proposal to end rent and price controls for housing, which have long been an essential part of the ‘Swedish model’. Left and Right both want to stop that. This of course reminds me of the Thatcher ‘reforms’ of the 1980s, which have done such damage to the British housing market subsequently. Here’s one angle on them:

That’s where Sweden might be heading. I’ve warned them….!

Löfven now, as I understand it, has two options. Either he resigns as PM, to be replaced by someone else. Or he calls an extraordinary General Election. If he did that, incidentally, it wouldn’t – unlike in the UK – displace the ‘normal’ election, due in 2022. The situation is full of uncertainties, and even of perils. I’ll let you know how it goes. (Sweden tends to be under-reported in foreign media.)

I’m disappointed that the press analysis of the Conservatives’ massive defeat at the hands of the Lib-Dems in the recent Chesham and Amersham by-election explains it purely and simply in terms of the comfortable middle classes’ concerns about local property prices. I’d rather hoped that it might have something to do with Brexit, Johnson, the authoritarian turn of his government, his Covid-19 response, and his general silliness. The good folk of Chesham and Amersham are after all more likely to be well educated than the Northerners who voted the other way in the by-election before this: enough to be able to ‘see through’ Boris; and for that reason will have voted for a party – the only one, I think – which is unambiguously against Brexit, and also – its other advantage – not tarred with ‘socialism’, which is always likely to frighten the horses in Buckinghamshire. One of the major dividers in the 2016 Brexit referendum, apart from age (oldies pro, youngsters anti), was by education, with the university-educated more likely to have voted ‘Remain’. (Unless of course they were only educated in the ‘Classics’.) I was hoping that this might have been reflected in this latest election, with intelligence – or at least education – overcoming the age and class factors. But apparently not. All the Amershamers were concerned about was their own NIMBY self-interest. That is, if the commentators are right.

I’ve been rather remiss at blogging recently; mainly because I’m trying to finish my Patriot’s History of Britain, and because I’ve been a little ‘under the weather’. I’m surprised anyone isn’t, in view of what’s going on in the UK. But I was sort of cheered this morning by an invitation sent out to old members of my Cambridge college to stay there during the summer for £57 a night (no meals. Or ‘bedmakers’, I presume!). It’s because in the pandemic season they’ve got no conferences to take the rooms. I have conflicting emotions about Cambridge: detesting the upper-middle class and deeply sexist culture there, which ultimately led me to resign my Fellowship; but having enjoyed it tremendously as an undergraduate: not only the study, but the social life, and the Cambridge dramatics, which I was involved in. In fact, looking back, I regard it as the high point of my life. I often dream about it, from all these miles away. (‘Varsity’ in my day, of course. ‘Uni’ was plebeian.)

So I may do this, perhaps in August, during the trip I have to make to the UK anyway to check references for the book. I’m hoping that by then travel restrictions will have been relaxed sufficiently for me to fly there without quarantining (I’ve had the vaxes), and to fly back to Sweden afterwards. I don’t want to be stuck in Boris’s Britain for longer than is necessary.

Here’s a pic of my college’s ‘Old Court’ (1340s). You can just see my old room in the shadows on the right – ground floor. Above it is the roof of the Cavendish Lab, where I’m told the atom was split.

Proper blogging to resume soon, I hope.  

Dominic Cummings really does look like the evil Mekon, as I suggested last year: https://bernardjporter.com/2020/02/13/journey-to-mekonta/. For those not brought up on the Eagle comic in the 1950s, the Mekon was the leader of the ‘Treens’ of the planet Venus – tall green men wrapped in copper hoops, and presumably women too, though we never see them – and the mortal enemy of ‘Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future’. This was all set in the 1990s – forty years in the future to the Eagle then.

God I loved the Eagle! And I’ve just bought a reprint of the first Dan Dare series – the Venusian one – to recapture my boyhood in my old age. The Mekon is introduced in the 30th issue, of 3 November 1950. He (or he may be an ‘it’) is a fantastically intelligent creature, with a huge brain, who worships only ‘science’, and despises human feelings, emotion and sympathy. 

Isn’t Cummings a bit like that? He certainly sounds a bit inhuman, and technocratic. And also somewhat Saturnine (yes, wrong planet, I know). I’m not however totally convinced about the intelligence that everyone attributes to him. He’s bright, certainly, but his main intellectual power seems to stem from the fact that he’s unwilling to be fettered by morality. Hence his altering one of his past blogs on one occasion to give the impression that he foresaw Covid-19 before everyone else. And if he’s so smart, why did he work so hard and effectively to get Johnson into power when – as he says now – Johnson clearly wasn’t up to it?

My characterisation of Cummings is that he is bright but has no depth. Just as Johnson is funny but has no depth. Life is not just numbers, algorithms, sheer logic, technology, intelligence, efficiency. Nor is it a game you learn at Eton. It has layers too. Cummings only sees the surface of things, and Johnson the fun side. Dan Dare, thou shouldst be living at this hour. You’d sort them out!