Porter’s Pensées

Could Corbyn, or a Corbynist political programme, ever have won against the forces that were arrayed against them? They had a lot going for them: an enthusiastic political base, especially among the young and (marginally) among women; a popular manifesto, by most accounts; a pretty easy enemy to pick off; and a leader whose transparent honesty and decency by contrast with the notorious duplicity and amoralism of his Conservative rival should have worked in his favour. But none of this mattered in the end. Labour’s fresh young activists could not overcome the stale prejudices of the older generation (mine), who won the election for Johnson; the manifesto was scarcely discussed in the media; and the remorseless personal campaign against Corbyn in the overwhelmingly Right-wing and billionaire-owned press succeeded in neutralising any appeal to his decency by egregiously lying about his supposed lack of ‘patriotism’, his sympathy for terrorism, and – and this was the most wicked of the smears, put about by sections of the Jewish community, whom I’d always up till then considered as a Godly and ethical people – his alleged ‘antisemitism’. It was almost entirely due to this propaganda that his personal reputation became so horribly traduced during the course of the campaign, so that by the end of it he was named ‘on the doorstep’ as one of the reasons why many voters couldn’t vote Labour. Added to all this was the fact that, under Britain’s ‘first past the post’ electoral system, with the winner taking all even with a minority of the votes, it was scarcely a fair fight, or the result a true reflection of the opinions of the people. So Corbyn may have never stood a chance; and it’s unlikely that any alternative leader with similar policies to his (nationalisation and Palestine) could have done so either. Which is far more dispiriting to Leftists and progressives, than if it had been the ‘fault’ of just one man.

The dark forces arrayed against him (and us) have precedents in previous British history, but none as powerful, cunning and apparently co-ordinated as in 2019. Which inevitably raises questions about whether it was all planned or plotted, in a great hidden ‘conspiracy’ between all those vested interests. That’s a dangerous speculation, because it can too easily be dismissed as a conspiracy theory, which no respectable commentator – and especially not a historian – wants to be associated with. As someone who has taken a fleeting professional interest in these things in the past – the ‘Wilson Plot’, for example – I’m unwilling to credit ‘conspiratorial’ explanations of this kind; that is, if they imply secret cabals of people – or extra-terrestials, in some versions – pulling the strings of world events towards some diabolical end.

On the other hand, the comparatively small number of people involved in the propaganda operation against Corbyn – a few giant newspaper proprietors and editors, ex-public schoolboys, financial speculators, the new breed of clever IT people, right-wing Tory politicians, and the ‘Israel lobby’; most of them with similar backgrounds and members of the same London clubs – does make it natural to suspect that they plotted together in some sense; but probably not Guy Fawkes-like. In certain select circles this will have all been part of their normal, open conversation. They will have been encouraged and even aided by members of the American Alt-Right, and possibly – in a subtler way – by the Russians. The BBC hierarchy might have been involved, but only because it shared many of the same backgrounds and values as our select group. Lastly, it seems likely to me that the Secret Services were closely involved, for their own reasons: possibly because they really did think – as Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6, claimed publicly – that Corbyn posed a danger to national security. (See https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/24/former-mi6-chief-calls-jeremy-corbyn-danger-national-security/.) The spooks were almost certainly involved in the (anti-) Wilson plot of the 1960s and ’70s, and in the 1924 Zinoviev affair. So it would not be altogether surprising to see them here too. Some commentators are starting to lay some stress on this: for example https://www.mintpressnews.com/new-study-reveals-uk-intelligence-smear-campaign-against-jeremy-corbyn/263231/?fbclid=IwAR1DgT7gEAvwjBxwSfHD_NOPng9paEoz7LfwEKLFoSp9BYcBX-GJLrDlXeE#.Xf47s6blqaC.facebook. That’s hardly surprising, in the circumstances.

The main problem with ‘conspiracy theories’, however, is not so much that they can’t be proven, but that even when they can, it can’t be proven that they had the effects – the success – that is claimed for them. I think we can be pretty certain that there were a number of ‘conspiracies’ against the Labour Party in 2019, in a broad sense of the word; but not that these were decisive. Still, it’s important to know who were on the conspirators’ side; and about the anti-democratic powers – for example through the press, and Machiavels like Cummings – that they wielded. Perhaps next time we can find ways of countering them; hopefully without descending to their depths.

Labour’s main tactical error – among many lesser ones, I’m sure, like most of the other parties’, except perhaps the SNP – was to agree to a general election before  Brexit had been settled; either by voting Johnson’s ‘deal’ through – it was already halfway there, whatever Boris said about that nasty Parliament’s obstructing it – or by means of a second referendum. I imagine Labour was ‘dared’ into it by the prospect of the Conservatives and the press painting them as ‘chicken’ – or ‘frit’, to use Thatcher’s schoolgirl word – if they were seen to avoid it. The result however was to allow the election to be dominated by the issue of Brexit, and – so far as Labour was concerned – by many of its traditional voters’ deep resentment at its apparent equivocation on the issue. If Labour had either got its referendum in first, or  waited for Boris’s withdrawal bill to pass, the question would have been swept under the table before a general election fought on the issues that Labour wanted to fight it on could be called. The electoral situation then would have been entirely different.

I imagine that extreme ‘Remainers’ – like the Lib Dems – were partly responsible for this, elevating the EU issue above all others. That was self-defeating. As most people are now aware, the election hasn’t ‘Got Brexit Done’, as Boris pretended, because of the long negotiations that still need to be pursued in order to finalise Britain’s relationship with the rump EU. Those could  keep the UK within the – or a – European customs union, which is what Corbyn had proposed, and what he would have secured if he had been returned as prime minister. The Europhobe zealots wouldn’t have liked that, any more than the Europhiles, but they would have had to lump it. Then a new Labour government, which must  have come about in these circumstances – the Tories were just waiting to be skinned alive – could have turned to their manifesto promises, and started building the new, compassionate, internationalist, egalitarian and above all hopeful  nation that Corbyn seemed to promise to his young acolytes. As it is now, however the ultimate Brexit deal turns out, the Tories are left free afterwards to do their neoliberal pro-American worst to us.

I suspect that this was on Dominic Cummings’s mind all along. Brexit, being unfinished, could be ridden by the far Right to the sort of victory it  wanted. Europe was only a means to this end. He’s a cunning bastard. (‘Cunning’ implying not only ‘clever’, but also ‘unprincipled’.) I don’t think we’ve given him enough credit for that.

Labour’s manifesto was broadly popular. More than that, I felt it was absolutely necessary in order to rescue the country from the neoliberal pit into which it has fallen. It was also practical, ‘costed’, and not all at all ‘extreme’ by comparison with the past (the 1940s-‘60s, say), or with what is considered mainstream opinion in many European countries today. At the beginning of the campaign Corbyn was not the villain he came to be portrayed as at the end. That was the doing of – yes – the media, whose appalling treatment of him during the election – its monstrous lies and distortions – is recognised by everyone, even those who benefited from it.

Britain’s media is in fact the problem, although it sounds a snowflakey sort of excuse to say so. The Tories and their backers were, quite simply, less honest and principled than the opposition, and cleverer, in a Machiavellian way. Not more ‘intelligent’: that requires an entirely different mindset, obviously not taught at Eton. They had the best liars. Our side hardly lied at all. That’s confirmed by several objective studies. (See https://metro.co.uk/2019/12/10/investigation-finds-88-tory-ads-misleading-compared-0-labour-11651802/.) And it’s why we lost; together with the great tsunami of proto-fascist populism that is presently engulfing both Europe and the United States (the ‘last stage of capitalism’? It certainly looks like it); and of course the extremist pro-Israel ‘lobby’, with its weaponising of the Jews’ horrific sufferings under the Nazis to libel the gentle and tolerant Corbyn as an ‘anti-semite’. That really was the pits. I’m expecting any Jewish friends of mine to distance themselves from it if they still expect my friendship; just as Americans here in Britain feel – quite rightly – than they need to distance themselves from Trump. And as I’m expected, in Sweden, to make it clear that I don’t go along with Brexit.

I was hoping – though not with any great confidence – that Corbyn’s policies and character might raise the level of political debate in Britain to overcome these huge obstacles. That they didn’t, reflects worse on our present political environment than it does on him. His critics now say he should have – in effect – modified his line in order to pacify the Right-wing press, as Blair did, for example, by seeking out Rupert Murdoch to get the blessing of the Sun and the Times. That looked to me at the time to be giving in to blackmail, and it certainly didn’t have the effect of allowing Labour to pursue a radical (socialist) policy, but merely to perpetuate Thatcherism in a slightly softer form. In Corbyn’s case, can anyone seriously see him managing to placate the Press billionaires and the ‘pro-Israel lobby’, short of dumping his genuine social-democratic views and his support for the Palestinians? That he didn’t should add enormously to our respect for him. (As you can see, I’m still a fan.)

What to do now? Take a page from Dominic Cummings’s book, and resort to lies and dirty tricks just as his side have done from the 2016 referendum on? That might be acceptable to the very far Left, and I’m sure we social democrats could be clever enough; but it might clash with our sense of moral superiority (!). Set up barricades and try to launch a violent coup? I’ve toyed with this idea (https://bernardjporter.com/2019/12/12/what-to-do-if-we-lose/), but only to reject it, partly out of cowardice, and from my historical knowledge of how violent revolutions usually turn out. Merely replacing Labour’s leader won’t do it, and achieve anything like the results the Labour election manifesto promised.

In fact it will require, first of all, an overhaul of our whole political system; starting with our voting system (see https://bernardjporter.com/2016/02/29/first-past-the-post/), and the ownership of our press. That might make all the difference. After that would be the restoration and reinvigoration of ‘Civics’ teaching in schools; and, as I’ve advocated before, education in ‘Logic’ (see https://bernardjporter.com/2016/10/23/logic-lessons/). Abolishing the Public schools – or, short of that, insisting they’re subject to taxation – would probably help. Encouraging people to think and act socially rather than individualistically would be a great improvement, but I don’t know how that could be done. (In 1945 it required the shared experience of a war to do it. That’s a bit drastic.) Politicians could be sent over to Scandinavia to see how it’s done there, though they’d have to hurry – the Rightist tsunami is currently edging in that direction too. But the first two reforms – parliament and the press – are the most essential ones.

Johnson has promised a ‘commission’ to enquire into our constitution, such as it is: https://bernardjporter.com/2019/12/02/back-to-the-stuarts/. Everyone assumes that his purpose here is to strengthen the hands of the executive branch; but it’s possible that it could be hijacked by liberals and radicals to make the House of Commons more genuinely democratic. The press is in a bit of a crisis now, losing out in competition with ‘social media’. That might dilute its impact. (But then of course the social media present other problems.) And, beyond all this, there are signs that the Labour manifesto sowed some ideas that are catching on. Rail nationalisation is apparently popular. Parents are becoming desperate for better and cheaper child care. Students can see that their enormous debts could be lightened. People are becoming persuaded that ‘austerity’ was a choice, not an inevitability. The Tories are even now promising great things for the neglected North of England, to pay the Northern working classes back for supporting them. Scotland has been reinvigorated to push itself free from its dominant Tory neighbour. Ireland may come closer to unity after the Brexit split. Light has been shed on the sufferings of the Palestinians. The ‘toxicity’ of politics has been widely deplored. All these ideas came to the surface during the election, and as a result, in part, of the Labour manifesto. So all might not be lost. And if Labour keeps its nerve, we may see a social-democratic government yet. In which case Jeremy Corbyn could go down in history as its John the Baptist: ahead of his times, rather than behind them, as he is so often portrayed.

That shouldn’t be taken as a prediction. This latest demonstration of the ability of great wealth armed with diabolical means of propaganda to cheat its way back into power offers little real hope for us on the Left. And in any case it wouldn’t do much good for my generation, who are unlikely to be around to see the new dawn.

One of the ‘victors’ I left out of my post a couple of days ago (https://bernardjporter.com/2019/12/13/the-victors/) is that section of the British Jewish community that purported to regard Jeremy Corbyn as an existential threat to them; which was one of the most egregious lies of the whole Right-wing campaign. I was chary of mentioning this for fear of being labelled an ‘anti-semite’ myself. (That’s the way they work.) Right up to the last moment Tories like Gove were parroting the same slander. Of course there were many other Jews who tried to counter it, including my old thespian friend Miriam Margolyes; and it’s difficult to say what proportion of the blame (or credit) for the election result should be attributed to this factor. But it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. My hope is that it doesn’t engender a new and this time genuine anti-semitism among disappointed Labour supporters. It was a dangerous weapon for Jews and Rightists to employ.

If the ‘Israel Lobby’ was a winner, the Palestinian cause is obviously a loser. Corbyn was the first potential PM to espouse it. Hence the slander.

Katherine Viner, editor of the Guardian, tells us that when she woke up yesterday morning, she felt that Britain was ‘a different place’. It was the same for many of us. The country had suddenly flipped over to a condition that many sensed had long been coming, but with Boris Johnson’s overwhelming victory had finally become a reality. There seemed no way back.  All our modest hopes – for a return, no more, to the state of social decency that had been ours, roughly speaking, before Thatcher came on to the scene – had been smashed. The future looked grim; cut off from our best friends in Europe, and ridiculed mercilessly internationally; apart from by the USA and Russia, who adjudged that Brexit was in their own interests, and may have helped plot to achieve it, but were no real friends of ours. Freed at last from ‘Brussels bureaucracy’, we were now soft-bellied and vulnerable, open to be exploited by US capitalist imperialism. On all the ‘Brits in Europe’ and ‘Europeans in Britain’ Facebook sites I subscribe to, Britons were bitterly complaining of losing their European citizenship, and Europeans of being made to feel unwelcome for the first time in their British homes with their British families. The sense of pain expressed there is distressing to read. Brexit is incontrovertibly the most disastrous foreign policy decision Britain has ever made, even taking Suez and the Iraq War into consideration. No wonder we’re depressed. I couldn’t even look at a newspaper or watch a TV news programme for 24 hours after the event. If I do it now, I have to have a strong drink to hand.

Actually, it’s not primarily ‘Brexit’ itself that has got me down. We’ve still to learn how exactly that will turn out. Johnson’s winning slogan, ‘Get Brexit Done’, was one of his (or Dominic Cummings’s) many blatant lies. Negotiating trade arrangements to replace those we are losing will take months, if not years. It is difficult to believe that the result will be as ‘hard’ a Brexit as Johnson seemed to threaten originally, in view of the crippling harm it must do to the British economy, and – as some commentators have pointed out, trying to cheer us up, I imagine – the freedom his huge majority gives him to ignore the swivel-headed Europhobic ideologues who made so much trouble both for him and for Theresa May while the latter had only a few votes to play with. We might even be able to wheedle ourselves back into the Common Trading Area, which was of course Corbyn’s compromise. I’d go along with that.

There are two things that worry me far more. The first is the effect of the process  on our public life: the toxicity of the debate, the insults, the murder and rape threats, the anger, the xenophobia, the irreconcilable divisions… in sum, the sheer nastiness  that has been either created, or perhaps revealed, in our national character; fired by the unprecedented degree of sheer lying and cheating that was resorted to by (mainly) the Brexit side, and especially by Johnson himself; and the distrust in politics and politicians generally – ‘they’re all the same’ – that this seems to have given rise to.

Since the election this has been diverted into a rather unsalubrious blame game on the Left, targeting Corbyn in particular. As a probably naïve and old-fashioned admirer of Corbyn, I’ve been distressed at the criticism he’s getting now from members of his own party, after he’s bravely – even heroically, in my view – withstood three years of the most savage attacks from the Right-wing press, with a rare dignity. This filial tribute by his sons, though obviously not impartial, expresses my view: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/14/jeremy-corbyns-sons-condemn-despicable-attack-on-him-after-defeat. It’s unfair in the extreme, I think, to lay all the responsibility on his shoulders. The worst that can be said of him is that he is too ‘good’ for modern politics; from which I would infer the lesson that it’s our politics that must be changed – the press, for example: do British people realise how badly it compares with almost any other country’s, or with Britain’s own in the past? – and not the man. This must be possible. Other European countries – Sweden, for example – don’t have this problem. Until then it will take a long time, and a lot of effort, to restore trust and civility to our public life. It’s in this sense that Britain is now ‘a different place’ to me too.

My second worry is for what Johnson is going to do with his great majority in the future. He’ll have to pump money into the NHS – this will be a welcome effect of the Labour campaign – and into the police. But that won’t rule out further privatisation and Americanisation of the former; or the rest of the neoliberal agenda he and his and his wealthiest supporters are wedded to. And then there’s that ominous paragraph tucked into the end of the Tory election manifesto, promising a ‘reform’ of Britain’s parliamentary and judicial constitution (https://bernardjporter.com/2019/12/02/back-to-the-stuarts/), in order to further empower the Executive branch, which at the moment, of course, is him. That way, I believe, could  lie Fascism, albeit of a misleadingly cuddly, Borissy, kind.

Of course it’s a great victory for Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings, and for the spirit of Machiavelli hovering over their heads. It’s also a triumph for our Right-wing press, perhaps the least ‘free’ and fair in Europe; and for Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, both of whom were backing Boris for national reasons of their own. Lastly, because one of its effects is likely to be the continued onward march of unfettered Anglo-American capitalism, it could be said to bear out those Marxists who hold that capitalism cannot be reformed (a la Corbyn) but must be allowed to go on to self-destruction before it can be replaced. That, after all, is the main trend just now all over Europe, in the strange guise of ‘populism’, and taking on quasi-fascistic forms. Britain can’t, it seems, escape the grand imperative of history, any more than any other nation. In her particular case, Brexit is the horse her ultra-Right have ridden to their victory.

Just as in a ‘Khaki’ election, so here Brexit was used to override (or ‘trump’) every other issue. First it was the issue itself, albeit with Europe serving as a scapegoat for other concerns; then the time it was taking to settle it, which was inevitable in view of its complexities, but which Johnson blamed on Parliamentary ‘obstruction’, which enabled him to mount a ‘people versus Parliament’ campaign. ‘Get Brexit done’ was virtually his only appeal to the voters. Well, now perhaps it will be done; although most authorities believe that, with detailed trade negotiations to follow, there’s a long way to go yet.

What the election result can’t do is to ‘bring people together again’. For a start, the Scots will be even more determined to break away from a Union whose policy towards Europe doesn’t represent their democratic wish at all. Then the Northern Irish won’t be too pleased with Johnson’s arrangements for them. In England the 48% who originally voted for Brexit – it would almost certainly be more if the referendum were taken today – won’t rest content with a result largely achieved by lying and fraud. That spells years more angry division. Corbyn’s strategy might have healed our wounds. But that’s out of the window now.

On my way to vote this morning I was buoyed by all the Labour posters in the windows of our professional middle-class inner suburb. The only non-Labour one was a solitary Green. (Bless their hearts!) But of course I’m worried about the country generally. And thinking about what we should do if Boris does get the overall majority he wants, and leads us into a bad Brexit: a quasi-colonial relationship with the USA; a sell-off of the NHS; a bonfire of all our other social services; abolition of the state-funded BBC and Channel 4 (the latter because it ridiculed him: shades of Donald Trump); the derision of most of our neighbours; and – last but emphatically not least – a brand-new constitutional settlement putting greater powers into the hands of the Executive – i.e. him – at the expense of the Legislature and Judiciary (see https://bernardjporter.com/2019/12/02/back-to-the-stuarts/). All this quite apart from my – widely shared – distrust of his morality, veracity and character.

My dilemma now is this. In view of all the blatant and unprecedented deceptions, illegalities and dirty tricks that have helped bring us to this point, will we Lefties, Remainers, liberals, and disillusioned old-fashioned Conservatives be justified in refusing to accept the result, and fighting back extra-parliamentarily?

But of course it’s not done and dusted yet (while the polls are still open). I’ll be watching the results come through tonight, hoping for a miracle. Apparently young voters are braving the driving rain in order to get out and vote. The country depends on them to bring it to its senses. Not my generation, which is the one that has let them down.

So far as I am personally concerned I always have Sweden to flee to. Or do I? On my last visit I learned that the Moderaten (Conservatives) are planning an electoral alliance with the Sverigedemokratera (Sweden’s equivalent to UKIP), whom they had spurned like lepers before. (Sorry, lepers.) In Britain, of course, the far Right has taken over the Conservative Party. That seems to be the dominant political trend of the time.

I don’t want to man the barricades (although – be warned – I did gain the rank of ‘Marksman’ in my school CCF). But Brexiters have threatened this, if the election goes the other way. Why should we keep to the rules when they don’t? (That by the way was Churchill’s excuse for bombing Dresden.)

Back in Blighty, and back to serious blogging soon. And aren’t these serious times? In the meanwhile I’m posting here a review of mine that has just been published in the Literary Review. Or, rather, my original version of it; the LR  edited a couple of things out, including my waspish reference to Cambridge High Tables.

*

David Reynolds, Island Stories. Britain and its History in the Age of Brexit.  294 pp., William Collins, 2019; £16.99.

Bernard Porter

It’s probably too much to hope that anyone on either side of the current ‘Brexit’ debate will have a proper grasp of the history which many of them claim backs up their positions on the issue. This is despite the fact that a number of the leading Brexiteers have themselves dabbled in British history, and even written books about it; most notably Boris Johnson with his fairly well-received The Churchill Factor. How One Man Made History (2014); and Jacob Rees-Mogg with The Victorians. Twelve Titans Who Forged Britain (2019), which was – it is fair to say – not so well received, at least by academic historians. (‘Clichéd’, ‘lazy’ and ‘mind-bogglingly banal’ were just three of the terms used to describe it.) The problem with those books goes beyond the actual history recounted in them, and is indicated by the subtitles of both, which imply a view of how history is ‘made’ which not many of today’s academic historians would share. Both regard history as essentially moulded by ‘great men’. Most commentators on Johnson’s book saw it as an effort to acquire at least a patina of Churchill’s ‘greatness’ for himself.  (His Churchill book has been called an ‘auto-biography’.) Very few academics, of course, can claim to be ‘great men’, even in the making, or would want to be; which may be one of the less reputable reasons why they were so rude about Johnson’s and Rees-Mogg’s trespassing into their territory.

Another is that they disagreed with the emphasis on Britain’s past national ‘greatness’ that these two authors clearly felt their ‘great men’ (and one great woman, Queen Victoria, in Rees-Mogg’s account) had created; so, no doubt, offering hope to Prime Minister Johnson that he could do the same. This scepticism over their country’s high status could be attributed to a simple lack of patriotism, such as one might expect of ‘liberal élitists’; but is also, David Reynolds would say, borne out by a proper reading of British history. By that he doesn’t mean a reading that over-emphasises its less admirable aspects – though these should certainly be given their place, in the interests of balance, fairness and truth – but one that acknowledges that Britain’s history has been highly complex – ‘this is a book about “stories”, plural’ – and was to a great extent beyond its own, and therefore even its ‘greatest’ men’s, control. ‘In reality,’ writes Reynolds,  ‘“we” have been “made” by empire, Europe and the world as much as the other way around’. This is crucial. And when it comes to what is generally acknowledged to have been the ‘Leave’ campaign’s most effective slogan – ‘Take Back Control’ – it must be salutary, at the very least.

The core of the book is built around four main themes, pursued across the last thousand years of British history. The first is the idea of ‘decline’, stemming of course from the notion of Britain’s former greatness, and possibly also feeding it retrospectively. (We must have declined from something.) Margaret Thatcher was particularly moved by this. ‘I can’t bearBritain in decline. I just can’t. We who either defeated or rescued half Europe, who kept Europe free, when otherwise it would be in chains. And look at us now!’ Hence her ambition to ‘make Great Britain great again.’ (Did Trump get this catchy slogan from her?) This has been the Right’s obsession ever since Britain’s ‘decline’ first began to be noticed around the time of the Boer War; and also – as Reynolds points out – some of the Left’s, although in a different guise. It is certainly one of the things feeding into Brexit. In the view of the Right it all came down to a lack of national ‘nerve’, or ‘leadership’ – in other words of ‘heroes’; like Churchill, to whom, as Reynolds puts it, ‘the heroic narrative has been sharpened down’ in recent years. Hence Johnson’s book, and his own pretensions.

In the following chapters on ‘Europe’, ‘Britain’ and ‘Empire’ Reynolds spikes most of these arguments: for Churchill’s dominating ‘greatness’, for example; for Britain’s achievements in World War II – forget the Battle of Britain, think Singapore; for the myth of Britain’s ‘splendid isolation’; for the notion that her imperialism was either a sign or a source of strength – ‘Looking back now,’ he writes, ‘the great British Empire seems like a bit of a con’ (how dismissive can you get? But he’s quite right); and for the idea that Thatcher really did anything to reverse Britain’s ‘decline’ in any meaningful sense. In fact it was her neoliberal economic policies that were largely responsible for the social divisions in Britain which were the real fuel for the Brexit vote – nothing at all to do with the European Union – so contributing to the final decline into national chaos that marks the country’s situation today.

In any case, whatever Britain’s ‘greatness’ really consisted of, it can’t be attributed to strength of individual ‘will’. Reynolds’s book is punctuated throughout with examples of the ways good (and bad) fortune mainly determined her progress during the years: from her literal insularity, through that ‘Protestant wind’ that scuttled the Spanish Armada, the fact that Europe’s internal squabbles left Britain the pick of the wider world to colonise freely in the nineteenth century, and her early industrial start. Without these slices of luck she could never have sustained her illusion of ‘greatness’, which was always artificial and fragile, and which renders the condition she is in now the normal one for a nation her size. Which means that it doesn’t need to be ‘explained’, and cannot hope to be reversed by returning to past glories, as Johnson appears to wish. Finally, it was only a ‘decline’ in relative terms. Those people (there can’t be many of them – it probably depends on what kinds of schools they went to) who bemoan the fact that Britain is not ‘top dog’ any more forget that although ‘other dogs are bigger… the British dog is now a lot fatter than a century ago.’ Which is the better measure of the nation’s good? If you think it’s her so-called ‘greatness’, Reynolds writes at one point, ‘this may not be the book for you.’

For those who believe that the great Brexit split really was over ‘Europe’, Reynolds supplies a brief history, over a thousand years, of Britain’s relations with her Continental neighbours which should at the very least disabuse them of the idea that she was never a ‘part’ of it.  Even ‘Britain’ itself  – Teresa May’s ‘beloved Union’ – has always been a smoke and mirrors thing; and was certainly not as ‘exceptional’ – in its ‘liberties’, for example – as British patriots like to claim. (Think Ireland, which seemed to take Brexiteers by surprised in the autumn of 2019; and the Scots Nats.)

‘Both sides’ in the Brexit debate, writes Reynolds, ‘tended to use “history” instrumentally’ – although, to be fair, nearly all his examples are taken from the ‘Brexit’ side. The ‘Remain’ camp mainly gets away with it lightly; apart from some possibly unfair (rather Cambridge High Table?) comments on Corbyn, whose views on the EU were, after all, rather more nuanced than most, which is usually what academic historians like. Reynolds’s main complaint against the Remainers is that they failed to make a sufficiently positive case for Europe, which could itself have been based on history. But it’s the Right who were guilty of actually distorting the historical record. For David Cameron, one of whose favourite books was apparently Henrietta Marshall’s Our Island Story. A Child’s History of England (1905), history ‘seemed to figure mostly as a reservoir for national pride’. For others ‘the past served as a repository of slick historical analogies’, or of ‘sound-bite warnings’, like Boris Johnson’s notorious citing of Hitler to warn of the dangers of the EU ‘superstate’. None of them used the past in what a professional or academic historian would regard as a proper way. ‘Johnson, of course, was a rhetorical showman, who understood the utility of history as entertainment.’ Which is probably why more people will read him than Reynolds; and why it’s such a shame that the ‘Remain’ side never had a popular rhetorician to compare with him.

This is a splendid book: a clear, well-written and highly stimulating account of the flaws in our understanding of our national past that bedevilled the great existential debate of 2016-19, and helped produce the result it did. We could have done with it two or three years ago. But then ‘real’ history, based on extensive reading, research and the wisdom of a true historian, takes a while to write.

The following comes towards the end of the current Conservative Party manifesto. Armando Ianucci has brought attention to it in a recent tweet. He thinks it’s alarming, as do I. It clearly arises out of Boris Johnson’s frustration at the very proper ‘checks and balances’ that Parliament and the Courts imposed on his recent efforts to drive his Brexit legislation through quickly, and without proper scrutiny; which of course is what led him to trigger the current election.

But its implications go far wider than that. It could empower the Executive over the other branches of our government to a degree unknown in peacetime Britain since the seventeenth century. It also fits in with the populist – ‘people against Parliament’ – narrative that Boris has being trying to push in the campaign. That way, of course, lies Fascism. Which is not to say, of course, that we’re anywhere near there yet; but it is well to be forewarned.

Here’s the passage (p. 48):

‘After Brexit we also need to look at the broader aspects of our constitution: the relationship between the Government, Parliament and the courts; the functioning of the Royal Prerogative; the role of the House of Lords; and access to justice for ordinary people. The ability of our security services to defend us against terrorism and organised crime is critical. We will update the Human Rights Act and administrative law to ensure that there is a proper balance between the rights of individuals, our vital national security and elective government. We will ensure that judicial review is available to protect the rights of the individuals against an overbearing state, while ensuring that it is not abused to conduct politics by another means or to create needless delays. In our first year we will set up a Constitution, Democracy & Rights Commission that will examine these issues in depth, and come up with proposals to restore trust in our institutions and in how our democracy operates.’

Back in Sweden, I’ve just completed my additional chapter for the sixth edition of The Lion’s Share. It’s called ‘Brexit and the Empire’. I thought of pre-posting it here, but it’s rather long. The publisher and I are hoping to get the book out at roughly the time that we leave the EU. If we don’t  ever leave, which is still possible, I’ll need to adapt it a bit, but not by much. It’s about the Brexit movement, rather than Brexit itself.

Otherwise, and on the great issue of the day, I’m feeling a little more cheerful than when I left England. The polls seem to be improving for Labour. Boris, now exposed in an unfamiliar (i.e. serious) role, is getting universal condemnation and scorn for his waffly, ignorant and mendacious TV interviews. Jeremy is looking more statespersonlike by contrast. Or is this simply the stuff I’m getting through Facebook, automatically selected to fit my prejudices?

In the face of criticism by correspondents, I’m still enamoured of Corbyn’s approach to Brexit. Why should he come down on one ‘side’ or the other, when (a) he’s anyway a critical  ‘European’ (like me); (b) there’s a compromise to be had, which (c) will be far more likely to ‘bring the country together’ than either of these two alternatives, and (d) is the most transparently ‘democratic’ of them all, simply because it gives the final say to an informed (this time) electorate?