Porter’s Pensées

We can’t tell how this will turn out. The best predictions are usually made on the basis of recent history. But that won’t work here. In the long ongoing historical struggle between self and society – a.k.a.Tory and Labour, or neoliberalism and democratic socialism, or (perhaps) Republican and Democrat – the great coronavirus crisis obviously interrupts the dominant narrative, with ‘emergency’ measures needing to be taken which bear little relationship to what has gone before. But when (if?) it’s all over, who knows? Will it be like World War I, after which life in Britain returned to ‘normal’; or World War II, when people learned the lessons of pre-crisis failures to use the new state agencies to strengthen peace-time society (see my last post); or a third alternative, with people choosing ‘strong leadership’ to guide them out of the national and global devastation that the crisis may have caused? At present few people are looking beyond coronavirus, understandably.

Still, we need to keep an eye open for some of the longer-term implications of any emergency legislation that might be brought in over the next few months. Without necessarily subscribing to the conspiracy theory that regards the disease as having been deliberately nurtured in order to provide a cover for other measures (Right- and Left-wing plots have both been suspected by crazies in the USA), it could well be that politically-motivated individuals could try to use  it for that purpose. I’m thinking here, of course, of men like Dominic Cummings; but we shouldn’t dismiss the notion that there may be plotters like him on the Left.

For example: we know full well that Cummings, Johnson and most Brexiters have become impatient with the restrictions that Parliament and the courts have tried to impose on the Executive in recent months. The last Tory manifesto promised – albeit vaguely – a revision of the whole British constitution in the light of this, in order to strengthen Boris’s and his lickspittle cabinet’s powers. What if MPs were suddenly induced to ‘self-isolate’ themselves from the virus, suspending Parliament, so leaving the present government temporarily unaccountable, and Boris (and Dominic) free to do their worst? All kinds of measures could then be taken which could leave long-lasting repercussions, quite beyond what might be necessary to ‘fight’ the virus, but hidden from attention by this great scare.

There are precedents for this. One that I’ve written about was the Official Secrets Act of 1911: on the surface a measure simply to counter German espionage, but with powers ranging far more widely and permanently than that, and passed by a panic-stricken and uncritical Parliament in a single day. Some of the consequences of that you can read about in my Plots and Paranoia. We need to be vigilant over this kind of thing over the next few months. The virus seems all-consuming at present. (Doesn’t it make all those years of debate over Brexit seem trivial and stupid?) The measures that are about to be enacted to combat it may be necessary. But we need to look in the cracks and shadows of them, to ensure that they don’t hold other future dangers, and opportunities for Machiavels to do their worst.

PS. (March 20): this is precisely what I’m nervous of: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/19/the-guardian-view-on-the-coronavirus-bill-strengthen-the-sunset-clause.

‘This is not the time for ideology’, said Rishi Sunak, the UK’s new Chancellor of the Exchequer, at the Number Ten press conference this afternoon. He meant of course ‘free market’, or ‘laissez-faire’, ideology, of the kind that lay behind Osborne’s ‘austerity’ regime of the previous decade. That’s very welcome, of course, and undeniably necessary at this critical time. To an oldie like me, however, it’s interesting to hear neoliberalism being characterised as an ‘ideology’ at all. Conservatives in the past used to reserve the ‘i’-word for socialist beliefs, against which they stood their more sensible, ‘pragmatic’ approach to politics. Free markets were part of the ‘natural’ world, like the life-cycle of plants and the movements of the planets. State intervention in economics was unnatural, and so to be avoided.

The history of Britain over the past 200 years has seen the slow but growing dominance of the free market system, albeit unsteadily; with two or three brief interruptions, when the system has reverted to a more interventionist state. The major interruptions came after the two world wars, which clearly showed up the deficiencies of free marketism for warlike purposes, and got the people who had suffered at the hands of it in peacetime doubting the efficacy of it in their own domestic lives. After World War I (the ‘Great War’) this reaction flared up temporarily, but was then squashed by a resurgent capitalist class. After World War II, which itself came after a ‘Great Depression’, it took a stronger hold on the country, resulting in Britain’s major social revolution of modern times; which was the triumph of ‘social democracy’, and the creation of the Welfare State. That however only lasted for about thirty years, until Thatcher’s great counter-revolution reduced it to dust.

Those of us still faithful to the original revolution generally lost heart, which is the reason behind ‘Blairism’; or, if not, then hoped that the intrinsic flaws in the free market system might turn people against it eventually, provoking a reaction which might revive their social democratic dreams again. I hoped this might happen as a result of the Right-wing coup which went under the name of ‘Brexit’, which I expected to turn out so badly that it would ignite either a neo-fascist reaction, or a socialist one. I was patiently waiting for one of those, when the Coronavirus suddenly fell upon us.

Coronavirus is in many ways an equivalent of one of those earlier wars. In much the same way, it seems to have interrupted the broad imperative of history. In response to the crisis, an instinctively neoliberal Tory government is interfering with the ‘natural’ course of events to an extent undreamed of just two weeks ago, and probably in a way that a Labour government would also have done. For let’s be clear about this: the strict laissez-faire (or Malthusian) approach to the present situation would have been to let the disease take its course and cull ‘unproductive’ people – like us oldies – out, in order to allow the still vigorous parts of the population and of the economy to flourish to the benefit of all those who were left. (Johnson hinted at this early on.) That’s what happened in more ‘primitive’, ergo ‘natural’,  times, when scarcely anyone was permitted to live to the kind of age I am now.

It would be good if, after all this is over, people could reflect on its implications for our polity in more normal times. I imagine that the NHS will not be allowed to be decimated again in the way it was under Cameron and Osborne, with such cruel results today. Sunak is saying some quite Keynesian things now, which might take us at least half-way to a more social and collective form of democracy. After that, who knows? To my mind Johnson makes a very unconvincing Churchill, and I hope the deplorable rogue doesn’t get through the crisis with his reputation as unscathed as was his hero’s. (Can you see him on the back of a banknote?) But history has taken stranger twists.

Is this the end of civilisation as we know it? Or even of life on the planet? (OK; I’ve read too many Sci-Fi disaster novels. Take no notice.) Of course I have little idea of the probable outcome of the Coronavirus pandemic, having absolutely no expertise in this area. As a historian I could refer to earlier global pandemics, like the Black Death and Spanish Flu; but I’m not sure how relevant these are. And – as I heard another historian quoted the other day – ‘the future’s not my period’. So I can do no more than trust the experts, like everyone else has to: even our politicians, it now appears. It’s reassuring to see Boris at his press conferences flanked by proper medical scientists. And ditto Trump, at his second press conference yesterday, surrounded by some real experts; after his previous one had relied on CEOs of big businesses, like Walmart, to assure us how well capitalism was coping with the bug. And how much better the USA is dealing with it than all those pesky Europeans.

Personally I’m presently self-isolating, as an oldie with pulmonary problems. But that’s easy for me: able to work from home, and with Tesco delivering my food. Others aren’t so lucky; including Tesco’s delivery drivers: risking infection as they do at every house they call at. And of course medics – doctors and nurses – who are the real heroes of the hour. I imagine that, under Brexit, some of the foreign ones may have to return to Europe soon.

To cheer myself up I’ve been trying to think of some possible plusses from the present crisis (in the UK). I’ve not been able to come up with many. But here they are.

For the (political) Right:

Culling the elderly, the obese and smokers, who are the most vulnerable to the virus, so lightening the burden on our cash-strapped hospitals. (That has actually been suggested in Conservative circles.)

Enabling the blame for the inevitable post-Brexit economic recession to be put on the virus rather than on Brexit. (That too.)

Acting as a distraction for further right-wing government policies, like an assault on the BBC (the ‘dead cat’ strategy). Who will notice?

For the Left:

Culling of elderly Conservative and Brexit voters. Of course the advantage of that would only come with a new referendum and General Election among the still living.

Revealing the limitations of the policy of ‘austerity’, in leaving us unprepared for this kind of thing. E.g. NHS cuts. Casting doubt on the benefits of (late) capitalism in general. Revolution? No, but a return to Keynesianism at least. That seemed to be pre-figured in the (UK) budget on Wednesday.

Boosting egalitarianism. ‘We’re all in this together’: i.e. the rich are as vulnerable as the poor. – This was the effect of cholera in the 1840s. The governing classes didn’t bother about protecting the poor until the latter’s diseases spread to them too. Maybe the Coronovirus will get people thinking again about inequality.

As a result: the restoration of respect and support for social – that is government – intervention; and for previously much-maligned ‘experts’. Sowing doubts about the beneficence of capitalism in its modern form.

By killing so many it could diminish the labour market, so giving it greater bargaining power, and by that means raising wages. That’s what happened after the Black Death. The feudal lords’ resistance to this provoked the Peasants’ Revolt. On the other hand, most of the dead might not be economically active in any case; and mass deaths would also diminish consumption.

Finally, but perhaps unlikely, after his risible recent press conferences Trump could be finally shown up for the incompetent ass he is. The same for Boris, perhaps? Crises like this function as real tests of ‘leadership’. Trump obviously fails.

For us all:

Restrictions on travel, especially by air, will reduce the ‘carbon footprint’, so benefitting the planet.

People will have more time for useful and constructive activities, to replace going to football matches, concerts, and/or church. Time for the family, the allotment, reading, and individual soul searching.

Pushing boring Brexit off the news.

And it can’t do any harm for people to be reminded how fragile  their life on this planet is.

That’s all I can think of for the moment. And none of it will do much to compensate for the human suffering and huge economic disaster that Coronavirus is already wreaking in the world. Any more positive suggestions?

I don’t really think that Trump’s exemption of Britain and Ireland from his ban on flights from Europe is due to his having golf courses there. Or that Boris’s reluctance to take stronger action against the coronavirus pandemic has anything to do with the fact that, as it mainly seems to target oldies, it will save money on pensions and the NHS. Of course not! The trouble with Anglo-American politics today, however, is that you wouldn’t entirely put it past them. Have we ever had such untrustworthy leaders?

Lynton Crosby has excelled himself here. Remember, he’s Boris Johnson’s Australian political guru (the one before Dominic Cummings) who invented – or at any rate is associated with – the strategy of throwing a dead cat into the room to divert attention away from more difficult topics. Coronovirus may seem a rather drastic version of this wheeze, and I don’t think any of the current conspiracy theories surrounding the new plague has claimed it as a deliberate distraction on the part of Brexiters; but it could have this effect. At its simplest level, it means that any future damage to the British economy that could otherwise reasonably have been ascribed to Brexit can now be blamed on Covid-19. With one bound – or, rather, a shudder and a cough – Boris is free.

It may seem insensitive to be speculating about its effect on politics at this time when people are obviously more worried about their health and that of others, but as one of those in two of the most vulnerable groups I feel I’m entitled to. All those who have so far died of it in Britain were in their 70s, and with pulmonary problems. That’s me. But that has political implications too. If the virus is mainly targeting oldies, it could have a crucial effect on the electoral demography of the country. Brexit was only passed – narrowly, you’ll recall – because older people voted for it in significantly larger numbers than the young. Kill enough of that generation off – sparing me, hopefully – and the balance is reversed. By rights, we ought to run the Brexit referendum again, to reflect the views of the survivors. Otherwise we’ll be being ruled by corpses.

For myself, I’m self-isolating as much as I can. We over-70s are being advised to, even if we haven’t been diagnosed with the virus yet. Don’t go shopping, we’re told; get your children to do it for you. (Youngsters are less at risk.) Mine are in St Albans, Manchester and Melbourne, so that’s a big ask; but I’m OK with Tesco deliveries. I had to attend my doctors’ surgery yesterday – probably the unhealthiest place to be – but I sat at the back of the waiting room, the regulatory two metres away from anyone else. I have my local painter and decorator in just now; he seems OK, but I’m listening out for the slightest cough. My most serious problem is that Kajsa can’t join me from Stockholm – they’re advised not to travel, especially in planes, hothouses of infection – and she has the same vulnerabilities as I have. Likewise, I can’t go there. If we’re going to die, it would have been comforting to do so in each other’s arms.

It’s all feeling like the early stages of one of those SF disaster movies I’m so fond of. Maybe it will wipe us all out. Which I’m sure we deserve as a race. So long as our greatest artistic achievements are somehow preserved, to tell visiting aliens how we might have been.

But of course there’s nothing to fear. Donald has told us so. And Boris: ‘Take it on the chin.’ Actually, underneath all my mock panic, that’s how I feel. I’m not really as worried as this blog post may suggest. Not for myself, in any case. And that’s despite being told by the experts that if there aren’t enough medics to treat all the victims (after Tory cuts to the NHS, of course), they’ll concentrate on those who could still have some years of active life left. It would also have the effect of reducing the NHS’s elderly workload. There’s a certain logic to that.

Something to look forward to, as I languish in bed suffering from the coronavirus. I’m showing no signs of it yet, but one case has just been reported in Hull. A whole one! And I’m in an at-risk group twice over: elderly, and with pulmonary problems. I wouldn’t have thought of worrying, if it weren’t for all those government instructions not to panic. That obviously means there’s something to panic about.

Kajsa should be with me, but they’ve been advised in Sweden not to travel. (All those Swedes at Arlanda coming back from their winter holidays in Indo-China, or the Italian Alps.) I’m presently self-isolating, having bought in enough food to last me a month. After that I’ll get to work on the cat that keeps trespassing into my house. (Any advice on how to cook them?) But presently I’m OK. The hermit life has its upside. I can work undisturbed.

And look at these treats lying ahead for me: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/mar/03/nordic-noir-lets-the-light-in-at-last-scandinavian-tv! It won’t be the same without my own Scandi sitting next to me to watch them; but it will be some consolation.

Lovely interview with Jan Morris in today’s Observer. She’s 93. An amazing woman – born male, army officer, Times reporter, climbed Everest, best known as a travel writer, a Welsh nationalist, changed sex, wrote a book about it, Conundrum (I’m afraid I skipped the middle chapter, describing the operation); but originally known to me for her trilogy of books about the history of the British Empire, which I reviewed positively for its literary qualities – portraying the feelings surrounding the Empire from the point of view of the imperialists themselves, which needed to be done, even if we think those feelings were misplaced. It was around then that she wrote to me, on a postcard, about my Lion’s Share, which she said she (or it may still have been ‘he’ then) had started reading in the bath and had enjoyed so much she’d not been able to put it aside until the water had got cold. My most treasured review, albeit a private one! Here’s the link to the Observer piece:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/01/jan-morris-thinking-again-interview-youre-talking-to-someone-at-the-very-end-of-things.

Apart from that, I’ve been immersed in the bloody life of the Norwegian King Olaf I, about whom Elgar wrote his first extended choral work, which I’m to give a paper on to the Yorkshire branch of the Elgar Society later this year.

Hence no comments yet on the extraordinary political events taking place in Britain just now, in the course of our progress from democracy to authoritarianism. For isn’t that what the current Priti Patel incident is about? – Or about the coronavirus which is currently scaring Kajsa and me off flying to visit each other now, as we had planned. We’re both elderly, and with lung problems.

Back to Jan Morris: Conundrum was the book that first got me thinking about ‘gender’, and open to ideas about ‘gender fluidity’. Bless you, Jan.

The recent propaganda campaign against Labour’s and Corbyn’s alleged ‘anti-semitism’ will go down as the most despicable in recent British political history. (Certainly if I have anything to do with the writing of it!) Those responsible for it – the Conservative press, the British Board of Deputies, the Jewish Chronicle, anti-Corbyn Labour MPs – should all be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. So should those who swallowed their wicked libels without properly examining them, often simply on the grounds that ‘Jews felt vulnerable’ – of course they did, in the midst of all this propaganda – ‘so there must be something in it’. In fact there wasn’t. It was nearly all lies. The Jewish community in Britain, or its self-proclaimed leadership, has done no favours to itself, or even to Israel, by mounting this deceitful campaign, which must eventually rebound adversely on it. I can even see it provoking a genuine ‘anti-semitism’. And of course it has also done no favours to the wider community it lives amongst, as not merely a ‘tolerated’ but also a valued and admired minority; by contributing – in whatever small degree – to the defeat of the only party and leader in the land that promised political and social reform along genuine Judaeo-Christian lines.

The following comes from a radical left-wing paper, which might provoke distrust among some readers; but it’s the best of a number of analyses of this scandal that I’ve read recently:

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/02/labours-party-antisemitism-crisis-corbyn-sanders?fbclid=IwAR0pytLPEQtivUvwLrgojBVgF4WOwueZ1Q7mD2mYMSAqHfxA-Ifx44_LcTw.

Corbyn’s  conduct and demeanour in the wake of the tragedy of December has been as dignified as one would expect from him. One of his aims was to transform British politics and society away  from the lying and sheer malevolence that characterise the government that – with the marginal assistance, among others, of the ‘pro-Israel lobby’ – defeated him in December. His failure should not be counted against him; unless it’s merely in terms of tactics. He and his supporters could not – perhaps could not hope to – effectively counter the massive disinformation machine ranged against him. Perhaps they should have tried; as Blair did, for example, by reaching his Mephistophelian bargain with Rupert Murdoch. Is that now the only way that the Left can win?

I still admire Corbyn, and have no regrets about having supported him. In the upcoming Labour leadership election, however, I’ll be voting for Keir Starmer. As a key shadow minister under Corbyn he must have supported the policies the latter represented. And I’ve always thought that politicians ought to have pursued other careers before aspiring to positions where they can tell their compatriots how to pursue theirs. Starmer’s previous career was highly distinguished one, and in the public  service. (Hence the ‘Sir’.) For me that overshadows other serious desiderata, like having a woman as a Labour PM. We’ll see how the Right-wing Press will try it on with him. It may not find it quite as easy to ‘monster’ him as it did the terrorist-friendly/communist-spy/anti-semitic/bad dresser (etc.) Jeremy. But I’m sure they’ll find – or invent – something.

I’m still, by the way, waiting for a response from the Labour Party to my ‘I’m Spartacus’ letter (https://bernardjporter.com/2020/02/12/jewish-morality/). Will I be expelled, for expressing views like those alluded to in this post?

Conspiracy theories are – according to the comedian David Baddiel in his excellent TV programme on ‘Holocaust deniers’ the other evening – ‘how idiots get to feel like intellectuals’. I rather liked that! (All the more so because Baddiel didn’t try to drag Jeremy into it.)

I suppose it’s the originality of their thinking and the extent of their researches – often published at great length, and extensively footnoted – that make ‘conspiracy theorists’ feel they’re up there (here!) with the intellectuals. Unfortunately, without proper academic training, most of them, they don’t usually bring with them the critical balance that education, at its best, should provide. (Maybe the arch Holocaust-denier David Irving is an exception; but I understand that he dropped out of all his university courses, which weren’t in History in any case.)

An old ‘conspiracy’ has recently resurfaced in the Swedish news recently. Apparently the murderer of prime minister Olof Palme is to be authoritatively revealed shortly (https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2020/feb/14/who-killed-swedish-prime-minister-olof-palme?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other). That mystery has been surrounded by ‘conspiracy theories’ ever since the event itself 34 years ago, which weren’t quieted when a man was arrested and imprisoned for it in 1988, but then exonerated and released the following year. Suspicion has fallen on the South African secret services, the CIA, the Swedish security service itself, and a dozen other agencies. Palme was of course a prominent and effective critic of apartheid and of the Vietnam war, and a man who broke with his upper-class upbringing to become a social democrat. (So he was a class traitor.) He had powerful and undoubtedly ingenious enemies. Maybe we’ll find out soon whether any of the ‘conspiracy theories’ surrounding his murder have any basis in truth.

For the problem with dismissive comments like Baddiel’s, and of those who immediately dismiss all talk of ‘conspiracies’ as the ravings of disordered and uneducated minds, is that people do  ‘conspire’, at every level of society – that hardly needs to be demonstrated; I’ve done it – and at the highest level of politics. Baddiel himself shows how Nazis conspired to cover up the Holocaust at the end of the War. We saw plenty of conspiring during the recent Brexit referendum and the British General Election. (I’ve blogged about this before: https://bernardjporter.com/2018/02/03/conspiracy-theories/.) It would be beyond belief to think that politicians, newspapers and rich bastards didn’t indulge in this. And to dismiss such explanations by associating them with – for example – the Jewish blood libel, or David Icke’s claim that Prince Philip is a shape-shifting alien, is to unfairly cut off several avenues of quite legitimate enquiry. There are conspiracies and conspiracies. The question to be asked, in every case, is how effective  they are. For what it’s worth, vis-a-vis  the Palme murder my money’s on the South Africans. But we’ll have to wait and see.

By the way, David Irving went to my school, though I don’t remember him. I do hope he wasn’t taught by my – much revered – History masters. From my memories of the school more generally, however, that could be where he first learned about ‘conspiracies’.

Point number 1: democracy is not the most efficient form of government. Point number 2: that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Efficiency can breed tyranny.

One of the major insults I remember being used against the Nazis during and after the 1939-45 War was directed at ‘German efficiency’. It was not a compliment, but was supposed to portray the Germans as machine-like, and consequently inhuman. The post-war Soviet Union was painted in a similar way. That was also the Mekon’s great flaw in the comic strip I referenced in my last post, originally appearing just a few years after the end of the War, and clearly modelled on Hitler and his robotic, jack-booted followers. The Mekon had been created by ‘Science’, searching only for efficiency, irrespective of any higher morality. Years before that we had the common image of the ‘evil scientist’ in popular fiction, and of the soulless ‘advanced’ civilisations from other worlds that threatened planet Earth in all those wonderful early Sci-Fi films. That this boasted ‘efficiency’ wasn’t really so efficient in the long run, when confronted with humanity’s untidier and laxer qualities, was usually the moral of at any rate the more ‘feel-good’ of these stories. Dan Dare always came out on top (and then usually let the Mekon free, for fear of compromising his own humanity). ‘Mr Hitler’ was no match for Dad’s Army – the epitome of the Briton’s supposedly softer kind of heroism. In the end humanity triumphed over ‘efficiency’; as it was bound to do, perhaps because it left more room for questioning and adapting to things. If Mr Hitler and Mr Mekon had had a more sceptical side, they might have been more successful, ultimately, than they were.

The slogan that won our last UK election was ‘Get Brexit Done’. What that was, basically, was a cry of impatience against the inefficiency  of the British electoral system, which had allowed the European question to drag on for so long. That ‘inefficiency’, of course, was due to the necessity of Brexit’s being subject to the ‘checks and balances’ that are supposed to be central to the British constitution (as well as to the USA’s); but ‘efficiency’ has no call for obstacles like this. Hence Johnson’s desire to ‘reform’ the constitution in order to undermine them: the delaying power of the House of Lords, for example, and the ‘interference’ of the higher judiciary; both of which are on his ‘To Do’ list for the next year or two. On top of that we have a ‘Special Advisor’ to Number Ten – the Mekon look-alike – who appears to view everything through the lense of ‘efficiency’; and, for a very short period (yesterday, to be precise), another – the young and callow Andrew Sabisky – whose views on eugenics and compulsory birth-control for the plebs seem to mirror closely those of the super-efficient Nazis, who also elevated scientific – or pseudo-scientific – solutions above a more generous morality.

Efficiency’s OK in its place. I quite like Swedish buses, for example, always turning up exactly on time. And I wouldn’t want to be operated on by an inefficient surgeon. But it can also be cold, heartless and mentally constricting, when applied to an essentially complex field, like national policy; and also, of course, wrong.