Porter’s Pensées

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/capitalism-teaching-school-racism-violence-democracy-gavin-williamson-b625480.html?fbclid=IwAR2AJ_Aab9AsivhkR9pKqicRjcwgjggLFZOn-OYBucrT2h8BWw4F18S6NN8

The thing about capitalism – well, one of the things, at any rate – is that it works in good times, or may seem to, but never in bad. In both the world wars of the twentieth century the British state had to resort to interventionist measures, like popular mobilisation and state-directed industrial production, in order to fit it for the fray. Until then it did badly. In the present Coronavirus crisis the countries that appear to have coped worst are those with the most neoliberal governments, namely Britain and the USA. In Britain the failures of capitalism have been shown up in a dozen ways, from the deficiencies in ‘outsourcing’ vital necessities like testing for the virus and the manufacture of PPE to private companies, to the capitalist-derived individualist ethic that lies behind all those right-wing demonstrations against lockdowns, social distancing and the wearing of face-masks. 

It didn’t need to be like this. Nick Cohen (whom I don’t always agree with) published this account of the situation in my adopted country of Sweden in today’s Observer: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/26/welcome-to-libertarian-covid-fantasy-land-thats-sweden-to-you-and-me.  That rings pretty true to me. Despite the damage that has been done by the global capitalist behemoth to the ‘Swedish model’ in recent years, that country still retains much of the socialist and egalitarian ethos that used to make it admired by British social democrats, and loathed (because of its success) by the American Right. Sweden’s far more generous Welfare State put it in a good position to withstand the crisis both medically and economically; at least in relative terms, and up to now. 

So, Stockholm today looks normal, with scarcely anyone needing to wear a mask. The shops, cafes and cinemas are open, and we have a trusted public scientist to keep us honestly abreast of events. I feel far safer here than I did in the UK at the beginning of the pandemic (although, to be fair, I am living pretty isolated on an island an hour’s boat-ride from the city itself). Sweden’s underlying communitarianism has kept its people at least a little bit safer, and certainly saner, than the countries where ‘grab what you can, and the devil take the hindmost’ is the rule.

The last time we in Britain were forced by an existential crisis to make this switch from capitalism to socialism, in 1945, the transformation lasted for perhaps twenty or thirty years. The new post-war electorate, comprised largely of still serving soldiers and their families, determined that it was not prepared to return to free market anarchy again. Hence our post-war welfare state, nationalisation of key industries, and the rest. All that was wrested from the capitalists by the Left. Never let a good crisis go to waste! At the beginning of the current crisis I half-wished that something similar might happen after it, with people coming to realise the structural flaws in our post-post-war society (after Thatcher’s counter-revolution) that had made the coronavirus situation so much worse. That would be some comfort, almost making the coronavirus worth suffering; just as the welfare state had been a consolation to us after the horrors of the War and the Great Depression years.

Here we have yet another Old Etonian fucking us all up: https://www.ft.com/content/572cac01-008f-4f71-8800-ac1d838c1561?fbclid=IwAR27oPVt__xhUJGLuWJxz_t7umPqMs_Orr27tkBdVk4fc1BOnQfbtvqXYD8. – Nix, of course, was the boss of Cambridge Analytica, which was involved subvertly in the manipulation of votes in the Brexit referendum, and in the subsequent British and American elections.

Of course where we are today is not only – or even mainly – Eton’s fault. But it raises the question: when on earth are we going either to abolish or to nationalise this over-privileged institution? It’s been a drag on the whole country now for nigh-on 600 years. Nix is an unusual example of the Eton breed – he understands numbers, for a start, and seems to be more cunning – but his upper-class amorality is pretty typical. Unfortunately this current judgment on him has come four years too late to undo the harm that Cambridge Analytica has done, and probably too late to serve as a warning for the future. ‘Floreat Etona’, indeed.

I recall John Betjeman’s famous poem: ‘Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!’ Eton is not far from Slough. Perhaps a few of those friendly bombs could be diverted.

PS. Look Alexander Nix up in Wiki. Another example, together with Murdoch et alia, of the ‘Empire Strikes Back’ syndrome.

Are Conservatives and Republicans aware of how essentially Marxist they are? Marx taught that the underlying dynamic of capitalism would eventually destroy it from within, even if it wasn’t opposed from without. In the meantime it would grow more and more socially oppressive, until (he hoped) it would trigger the workers’ revolution that would replace it.

Late capitalism therefore, which is where we are at now, is exactly the stage we should be at according to his schematic. Over the last century or so it has been temporarily delayed by devices like social democracy, the welfare state, ‘New Deals’, imperialism and wars, but none of these can put off the evil day for ever. Even social democrats, who have been the true ‘anti-Marxists’ up to now, cannot cheat history. The genuine Marxists – a.k.a. the capitalist class – are bound to win. – Until, that is, ‘the Revolution’ and the establishment of a genuine communist society; which, however, Karl was always a bit hazy about. (How can we know, when ‘history’ hasn’t reached there yet?)

That we are presently at this late Marxist-capitalist stage should be obvious to anyone looking around them. In Britain it’s half hidden by the faux-aristocratic clownishness of our leaders, but is still to be seen in the privatisation of public assets, including the media, and of ‘democracy’ itself; in capitalist ‘austerity’ allied to the boom in private wealth; in the theft of the ‘people’s game’ (soccer) from the people themselves by rich international capitalists (sorry; that’s a sore point with me); in the decline of – I would say – any sort of morality that doesn’t serve a commercial purpose; and in the diminution of the social sphere generally. In the USA the Marxist takeover should be much easier to make out, in the figure of its President (for now): a cheating and amoral property developer who almost personifies the excesses and the evils of late-stage capitalism pur. There’s no disguise here; no Old Etonian – or even Yale/Harvard – polish to obscure the atrociousness. What you see is what you get. Trump hardly represents America – or at any rate the America I know and admire. But he’s the image of the stage of economic, social and moral development that America has reached and that Marx foresaw; the quintessential Marxist, in other words. He might not like that.

PS. I hope Marx was wrong. I’ve too much to lose in a revolution.

Not mine, but I wish it were. I found this, originally by Mike Carter, posted on Facebook by my old friend Miriam Margolyes. Bang on.

“The United Kingdom has fallen. There has been a right wing coup in this country… . And nobody noticed. We did not notice because it was years in the making. We did not notice because when it came, it came in a blonde wig and a mask of buffoonery. We did not notice because it lied to us and hid its true intent. We did not notice because the foreign manipulation was hidden from us and continues to be hidden from us. We did not notice, because the lies when they were discovered were hidden by more lies, until lack of truth became normal and acceptable. We didn’t notice because it appealed to our basest nature. It cried racist, it cried xenophobe, it falsified a threat to our way of life and blamed others. We did not notice because we accepted all the promises and lies and now we cannot admit to our gullibility.

Make no mistake it has been moving steadily and stealthily. Have you not noticed how Parliament has been emasculated and how decisions are now taken by a few in a closed room? Have you noticed how the judiciary is being sidelined? Have you noticed how the media are controlled & access to news is restricted? The BBC merely mouths faceless government sources and the papers howl racist xenophobic and government-fed lies? Have you noticed how the police, under cover of COVID, are being encouraged gradually to interfere more and more in our lives? Have you noticed how we are being encouraged to report ‘unsocial behaviour’ in our neighbour’s? Have you noticed how the impartial Civil Service is being packed with yes men and government cronies? Committee after committee is rigged with government-friendly sympathisers. Even now a review of the Armed Services is underway. Have you noticed how every means of objection or complaint is being stealthily closed? Have you noticed the intention to lower food standards, animal & environmental standards and abandon the guarantees of our basic human rights? Have you noticed how measures trumpeted as keeping foreigners out, actually make it harder for US to leave?

Finally have you noticed how the government is engineering circumstances under which everyone’s lives will be so much harder and under which we will have so much more to worry about than complain about our government? Meanwhile the rape and asset-stripping of the country has already begun, with million-pound contracts awarded to cronies with no apparent expertise, siphoning money from the public purse to the private pocket and delivering nothing. It may already be too late but surely the time has come to cry enough! To stand up against the lies, the manipulation, the takeover of our Society. This government does not govern for the people; this government is governing for itself. It has become an enemy of the people, its actions are treasonous. Surely it is time to demand better, time to TAKE BACK CONTROL.” – (From Mike Carter.)

Do we need to give up on democracy? There’s no doubt that democracy as we have it in Britain and America these days is looking pretty threadbare. But then these might not be the ideal conditions for it. 

In order to work well democracy requires two things: first an educated and knowledgeable electorate, and second elected rulers who are decent and honest with the people. Binding these desiderata together are two more: a reliable machinery for translating the wishes of that electorate into power; and secondly respect, each side for the other. Today none of these conditions exists in either of our two countries. It’s partly the fault of the mechanisms, chiefly ‘first past the post’. But much more serious are the ignorance of our respective electorates, too easily manipulated by propaganda; and the bad faith of our rulers, too willing to use those powers of manipulation – in Britain the press, in America attacks on the press – to mislead their electorates. Trump, Johnson and the far cleverer men behind them are adept at ‘gaming’ what passes as ‘democracy’ in their respective countries in this way; to what end can be debated, but probably involving capitalism in some way. 

This is relatively new, at least to this degree, and certainly in Britain’s case; and is the reason why Britain is falling apart just now. From the point of view of the manipulators the ‘game’ seems to be working famously; but at the expense of a display of governmental incompetence, lying and even blatant corruption which at any other period in our history, surely, would have sunk this government, and delegitimised British ‘democracy’. From which the only recourse would be either a new authoritarian dispensation (’fascism’), or revolution, or – of course – both together. It’s difficult to see liberal or social democracy, even in the very imperfect form it takes in both our countries now, remaining unscathed through this crisis.

It might be able to if an effective broad-based opposition could be marshalled against the present (British) government. It’s astonishing that the grotesque mistakes that Johnson and his inadequate ministers are presently making all along the line, in respect of both the Coronavirus and Brexit, are not arousing more anger – or more public manifestations of anger – among the general public; none of whom can be impressed with the government’s response to the virus, and very few of whom want the kind of Brexit settlement that the dominant Right-wing clique in the governing party looks like foisting on them. There must be a majority in the country against all this – indeed, undoubtedly was at the last election, judging by the ‘popular vote’ (as in the USA) – and yet this more reliably ‘democratic’ opinion has no purchase at all. Boris doesn’t need to take any notice of it. That may be the crucial lesson that Dominic Cummings has taught him, exemplified by Trump and Putin: that you can get away with almost anything, whatever past historical experience and maybe your conscience tell you. You don’t need to be honest and decent in order to win. And if ‘winning’ is your only purpose in life, lying and corruption are what you have to do.

How to counter this? Political education for a start – but not in the sense in which it’s taken in totalitarian regimes. The liberation of the media – especially the British newspapers – from their thraldom to tax-dodging right-wing capitalists would be an immense help. Voting reform would be another. That will be for a start. But it’s difficult to see it all coming. People aren’t interested. For the moment we may have to depend on a significant number of Conservative MPs’ being revealed as rapists or paedophiles to turn the tide. That’s something the great British public does care about.

(Purely incidentally, where is Mark Francois?)

Boris Johnson’s admiration for Trump is pretty well-known (see https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/05/boris-johnson-is-fascinated-by-donald-trump-says-ex-diplomat-lord-darroch); and probably arises largely from his observation of how much Trump is able to get away with: his functioning political amorality, in other words. Johnson clearly doesn’t have a genuinely democratic bone in his body, and is only interested in how he can manipulate democracy for his own ends. This is where Dominic Cummings comes in, as the clever bloke who can provide him with the tools with which to do just that: lies, simplistic slogans, propaganda, Cambridge Analytica and all the rest. (Actually, in my view none of this is particularly ‘clever’. We’ve all thought of it. The difference now is Cummings’s willingness to make use of it.)

One of the notable features of these extraordinary times in Britain is the extent to which Boris can make a hash of everything, yet still remain Prime Minister, with his dutiful MPs falling into place behind him even when he acts illegally. His recent determination to flout international law is only the latest example of this. At any other time in our history the thrashing he got at the hands of Ed Miliband in Parliament the other day – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG71rhV9ocI – would have spelled the political end of him. But a Commons majority of 80, achieved by means of a brutal purge of his moderates and then a basically dishonest general election, helped on by a proto-Fascist press and a woefully amoral ‘Israel lobby’, now enables him to do whatever he (or Cummings) bloody well likes. 

What they want ultimately may include a closer relationship with the USA than most of us more liberal-minded Brits would prefer (food standards, and the like). That may be the only way out of the Brexit mess that the fanatical anti-Europeans seem to have landed us in today. It goes without saying that the ‘hard’ Brexit that may be Britain’s only choice at the end of this year was not what most Britons voted for in 2016. The issue was presented then as one between the status quo so far as the EU was concerned – the ‘remain’ side – and simply a looser connexion, probably involving Britain’s continued participation in a European customs union: ‘the easiest negotiation in history’, as it was advertised. Very few people apart from a minority of fanatical xenophobes or nostalgic imperialists voted for a totally clean break, involving higher food prices, queues of lorries at Dover, a shortage of medicines, visas for holidaying on the Costa del Sol, no-one to pick our fruit, hospitals stripped of their foreign doctors and nurses, opting out of human rights legislation, Britain’s reputation plummeting, and all the rest of it. Let alone the draft of authoritarian domestic measures that could well come in the train of all this, judging by hints dropped in recent months by Cummings, Michael Gove, Priti Patel and the rest of the proto-fascist Tory vanguard. If this whole thing were a plot engineered by a small group of tax-dodging capitalists, or American neoconservatives, or Marxist-Leninists, or Putin’s mafia, or shape-shifting Royals, or ‘the Jews’, then one could only say that they’ve done a pretty good job so far. But of course it isn’t. Not as a formal ‘conspiracy’, at any rate.

All this, however, is dragging Britain away from her European neighbours and closer to Trump’s America, in a way that – to don my Imperial Historian’s hat once again – was anticipated in imperial times. Cecil Rhodes – the target of the ‘Rhodes Must Go’ movements in Oxford and Cape Town in recent years – is best remembered as almost the archetypal capitalist imperialist of the later 19^th century, and of course the man who founded the colony that used to be known as ‘Rhodesia’ (now Zimbabwe and Zambia). But he was also a very far-seeing pragmatist, who towards the end of his life worried greatly, and quite reasonably, about the capacity of little Britain to shoulder alone the weight of her enormous empire in a near-future of world-domination by far larger powers, like the USA, whose future ‘greatness’ was almost universally anticipated at the time.  Rudyard Kipling’s famous ‘Take Up the White Man’s Burden’ poem (1902), addressed to the Americans, reflected the same anxiety, and a similar solution. Rhodes’s vision was of of a new Anglo-American empire, based on the racial affinity (as he saw it) of all of it – all, that is, the ‘white’ bits – with the USA returning to the British fold again, and eventually running the whole thing from Washington. Thirty-two out of his fifty-eight ‘imperial’ Rhodes Scholarships for study at Oxford University were allocated to American students with this in view. After Rhodes’s death a secret society was set up to further advance co-operation between the two nations with this kind of merger in mind. Several members of successive American ‘establishments’ have been Rhodes Scholars, including President Bill Clinton. That has sparked conspiracy theories in the USA that Anglo-American relations have been subvertly run by the British ‘establishment’ ever since World War I (google ‘Carroll Quigley’); and in Britain that the same applied, but the other way around. In the light of international developments since 1945 the latter sounds more plausible, but without requiring an underlying ‘conspiracy’ to explain it. But in any case, the idea that Britain could become, if not an American colony, at least a minor partner in an Anglophone empire run from Washington, is not new. The American-born Boris Johnson may have heard of it.

But probably not. I don’t get the impression that Johnson has any long-term vision or objective, apart from becoming ‘world king’. Which is probably why he and Cummings need each other: Boris because he’s superficial and essentially stupid, and Cummings because that makes him the perfect vehicle for his bile.

We went into the city (Stockholm) last weekend – our first trip in for a month from virtual isolation on our island. (I say ‘our’ island, but of course only a bit of it is literally ours.) The ostensible reason for the trip was to have Harriet – the dog – put down, or ‘taken away’, as they say here. She was looking very ill, found it difficult to walk, and was hardly eating; clearly not enjoying even the pleasant doggy life we give her. I was alerted to this by the fact that she didn’t leap up and lick me all over when I arrived from Britain at the end of July. 

So we took her along to the vet, who persuaded us that it wasn’t time yet. In the meantime she had suddenly got more lively, as if she’d been malingering before but now realised the danger she was in. Can they smell the fatal needle? Her only problems, said the vet, were old age and arthritis. It was our choice; but on their own these weren’t serious enough to end her life. – I was a bit relieved, as I suffer from the same two things.

What struck me about Stockholm was that no-one – no-one– was wearing a mask. I had plenty with me, brought from Britain; but if I’d put one on I’d have felt an idiot. I have no idea whether the much remarked-upon ‘Swedish way’ with the Coronavirus is better or worse than Britain’s – better in some respects, I would imagine, but worse for Oldies. The verdict on that, I guess, will have to wait. What does impress me, however, is the calm rational way the chap in charge of Sweden’s approach, an epidemiologist called Anders Tegnell (pic below), is explaining it to the public; and, in particular, communicating his uncertainty about it, and admitting to the inevitable mistakes. That’s because he’s a scientist. True scientists can’t afford to be as confident as politicians; it’s an essential aspect of the ‘scientific method’ to doubt. I find that far more reassuring than Boris’s bluster, even when Dr Tegnell turns out to be wrong. 

In the meantime Harriet has gone back to malingering. A thought: perhaps she has coronavirus? Animals can get it too. Especially old ones.

My new edition of The Lion’s Share, now in the press and due out on the 23^rdof this month, has a chapter on the legacy of the Empire to Britain. That barely mentions Rupert Murdoch, who must be one of the ex-Empire’s most malevolent influences on our (British) way of life and politics over the past fifty years; that is, since he was taken under her wing by Thatcher and then appeased by Blair. I wonder if I can add something about this to the final set of proofs? If you want an example of the ‘Empire Striking Back’, this must be it.

Australia’s malevolent influence on us may not end with Murdoch. We learn today – if the report can be trusted – that Tony Abbott, perhaps Australia’s most controversial ex-prime minister, has been appointed to the Board entrusted with organising Britain’s post-Brexit trade, in the face of widespread opposition to him on the grounds of his known views on other matters. Those views were famously challenged by another Aussie PM in 2012:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2012/oct/09/australia-pm-gillard-misogynist-video;

and then by a refreshingly forceful Sky News interviewer just a few days ago:

https://news.sky.com/story/tony-abbott-matt-hancock-defends-misogynist-ex-australia-pm-over-possible-trade-role-12062211.

For any self-respecting liberal or progressive, Abbott ought to be the worst person in the world to represent the ‘mother country’ in any role at all. But then of course liberals and progressives aren’t the forces they used to be in Britain just a few years ago. Abbott’s reactionary views are now in the ascendant; not numerically, perhaps, but by virtue of the power now acquired – partly through subterfuge, I would say – by the Far Right. This period in our history, with a government majority in the Commons of 80+ and another general election as much as four years away, is clearly the best time for Cummings and his puppets to inflict all kinds of reactionary shocks on us, politically, constitutionally, culturally, and even in the realm of humour – with ‘left-wing’ comedians now being officially targeted by the boss of the BBC. What I used to call ‘The Great Reaction’ when it started under Thatcher is coming to a head. No wonder many are now fearing ‘Fascism’; which of course can come in many guises.

Boris Johnson is an admirer of the old British Empire, of which Australia used to be a part, and is ambitious to revive it – or the ‘white’ part of it, anyway – in some form or another. This may be one explanation for his recruitment of Abbott, in addition to the latter’s politically incorrect views. It so happens that Australia is one of my favourite countries, and the one I was happiest living in. But I do resent its shipping these people over to us, when we have plenty of villains of our own. Is it our fault, for what we did to them all those years ago? Murdoch’s father, for example, was turned against Britain by the appalling conduct of her generals at Gallipoli – the campaign that first enshrined Australia’s national day. Now the Aussies are retaliating; flinging our 19^th-century attitudes back in our faces. 

Eton College has furnished us (the British) with twenty prime ministers. Two of them have been pretty good, on the whole – Gladstone and the 3^rd Marquess of Salisbury. Most of the rest have been rubbish. 

One of the most rubbish was the 5^th Earl of Rosebery, prime minister from March 1894 to June 1895. He was a ‘Liberal Imperialist’, but also projected himself as a social reformer. He had ‘charisma’, and a – sometimes confusing – way with words. His ambition was always to be prime minster; but before that he served as Chairman of the new London County Council, and then as a not very distinguished Foreign Secretary. When he eventually became PM – succeeding Gladstone – he turned out to be hopeless. Contemporaries said that this was because he didn’t put the work into it. As one of them put it: he wanted the accolade without the effort – ‘the palm without the dust’. 

Remind you of anyone?