Porter’s Pensées

It’s unusual, I think, for politicians to be undone by their personal failings. But that is what seems to be happening in the case of Boris Johnson. Yesterday Labour refused to be seduced into the General Election that Boris was offering it, simply on the grounds that they couldn’t trust  him, while Parliament is prorogued, not to go back on his word and reschedule it to a date more convenient for him – that is, before Parliament’s bill to prevent a ‘No-Deal Brexit’ has been passed into law.

Most prime ministers would have been trusted on this. Boris, however, is well-known to be a serial and congenital liar, both in his domestic life, once losing a position in Michael Howard’s shadow cabinet for denying an extra-marital affair, and in his professional life – as a journalist, sacked from two newspapers for lying in print. His lies and other acts of dishonesty and disloyalty are widely known, and have been reliably documented. Indeed, they almost seem to define him as a politician. (Other politicians have lied, of course, but not to his extent.) Johnson’s ‘base’ – of elderly party members – appears to have no problems with this; but it is known that his fellow Conservative MPs – including those 21, some highly distinguished, whom he sacked from the Party for voting against a bill of his – distrust him deeply. It could be this which, sooner or later, brings him down. If so he will have deserved it.

In this respect he resembles his great ally and champion Donald Trump, whose own habitual lying appears to have had rather less effect on his fortunes. Is that because the latter’s falsehoods are not so widely known about by his  base – as a result perhaps of the mistrust in the ‘Mainstream Media’ that Trump has engendered? Or are the British more shocked by dishonesty than Americans? Has it got something to do with the late stage that capitalism has reached in the USA, valuing ‘winning’ – by any means – over truth? Or is it – and this may be the likeliest reason – that we’ve not yet seen how credulous, forgiving or amoral the British electorate may be; which could be revealed in the days ahead.

Over the next month or so I’ll be looking closely at Boris, in connexion with the final chapter I’ve been commissioned to add to the new (6^th) edition of The Lion’s Share, which – in order to conform to the rest of its narrative – will be entitled ‘Brexit and the Empire’. If Brexit owes anything to memories of Britain’s imperial ‘greatness’, it will come out in the statements and writings of Johnson and his Old Etonian chum Rees-Mogg. I’ve written to the Head of History at Eton to ask about the History syllabuses (-bi?) they might have studied there – if, that is, they were taught about anything later and closer to home than Cicero. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, I’ve had no reply yet. I’ve even bought Boris’s novel  to read. Kajsa was a little surprised to read an email to me from Amazon, informing me that ‘your Seventy-Two Virgins have been delivered to a neighbour’ while I was away.

In the meantime, how refreshing it will be to see a politician brought down by his amorality!

What on earth was he thinking of? There he is, Jacob Rees-Mogg, just recently elevated to his first cabinet position, lounging languorously on the front bench during one of the most important Parliamentary debates in recent history yesterday, and so forming an image of upper-class arrogance, privilege and contempt for democracy that could be taken to typify this new government: which is headed, of course, by his Old Etonian chum Boris Johnson. Didn’t he realise that this was how the picture – reproduced in every paper this morning – would be interpreted? Doesn’t he care?

More on the substance of the present debates later. They’re still going on as I write –  Johnson still blustering and lying, and clearly preparing for the ‘People versus Parliament’ General Election which must come soon. He’s lost his majority in the Commons, and has chucked 21 of his own rebels out of the Conservative Party. He says he wants to renegotiate Brexit with the EU, but is showing no signs of doing so. His whole strategy seems to blame a likely ‘No Deal’ on – as well as the EU – Parliament, who are ‘cutting his negotiating legs from under him’, by legislating in advance against a No Deal. Yes, folks, it’s the old ‘stab in the back’ trick.

One of the most disquieting signs of our times is the recent poll, conducted by the prestigious and authoritative Hansard Society, showing that a majority of the British population has little faith in parliament or politicians, and would favour ‘a strong leader who breaks the rules’ to govern them: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/08/uk/hansard-strong-leader-brexit-poll-gbr-intl/index.html. I imagine that this is exactly what Boris Johnson and his Machiavellian adviser Dominic Cummings are relying on to see them through the present constitutional crisis in Britain, and explains the surge of support that welcomed Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament last week. A similar feeling in America must have contributed to the rise of Trump.

So far as Britain is concerned, the seeds of this were sown years ago, mainly by the Right-wing press, helped by political satirists and many MPs themselves – e.g. the expenses fiddlers – who have been undermining the respect we used to have for at least some politicians in days gone by. The ex-proto-Fascist Daily Mail was usually in the vanguard of this movement, joined now by the Express, the Telegraph and the Murdoch papers, which over the last three years have been ratcheting up their front-page attacks on the ‘traitors’ and ‘enemies of the state’ sitting in Parliament. For people who know very little of politics apart from these press headlines, all this must be having an effect. Politicians now are objects of hate, in an age when the feeling of hate is becoming so widespread in society.

Cummings is being presented as a psephological genius. I don’t see it. His insights into politics are not especially clever: anyone can see how propaganda can work and electorates manipulated. It’s just that most of us are too decent to want to go along with this. What distinguishes Cummings from the rest of us is not intelligence, but sheer amorality. He has already designed the next election, when it comes, as one to be fought between Parliament – or the ‘elite’, or ‘the Westminster bubble’ (boo!) – and the ‘People’ (hurrah!). It’s a well-known device, used successfully in the past by the likes of Hitler, Mussolini and Trump. All were ‘populist’ politicians. Which isn’t of course to imply any other comparison between these three and the Old Etonian Boris. (Although Hitler did, incidentally, have a great admiration for the British Public School.)

When I was at university the only British history we read was ‘constitutional history’, based (if I remember rightly) on JR Tanner’s books of British Constitutional Documents. It was legalistic, parliamentary, and meant to illustrate the formal progress of Britain from a monarchy to a (nominal) democracy. So it made us feel good about ourselves. Still, it was boring, and missed out vast aspects of history that I was far more interested in: social history; cultural history; foreign policy; and even (you may be surprised to learn) British imperial history. There was an optional course on that, entitled – tellingly – ‘The Expansion of Europe’; but that was only there for the dumber students, who couldn’t cope with the alternative ‘History of Political Philosophy’ option. Otherwise British Constitutional history was our basic, porridge course. I never imagined I’d find any use for it after my second undergraduate year.

All this current talk of ‘proroguing Parliament’ however, involving the Queen, creating new peers, legal challenges and the like, has suddenly given it a modern relevance. I’m now quite grateful for my early grounding in this dull fare. I know, vaguely but still better than most people, what the British ‘constitution’ consists of. Being ‘unwritten’, of course, it rests on precedents. Which means constitutional history. I don’t remember all of that, after 50-plus years; so I must look out my Tanner’s Constitutional Documents again. In any brought-up-to-date future edition the years 2016-19 will figure large. We are living through a key moment in our constitutional history.

I’ll be going to Turku in Finland next month, to deliver a conference paper on subversion and counter-subversion. Kajsa and I have decided to travel over there by ferry from Stockholm, rather than to fly. It will take 11 hours.

The ferry is popular because it sells duty-free liquor. That’s curious, as the route is surrounded by EU countries, and so strictly speaking EU taxation laws should operate. But half-way across lie the Åland islands, which are Finnish and so members of the EU, but with a special dispensation which exempts them from EU duties. Apparently most of our fellow passengers will be travelling for that reason alone; with the result that I’ve been warned of drunken behaviour on board by young Swedes and Finns. Well, it can’t be worse than the scenes in Green Street, Upton Park, when West Ham used to play there.

How interesting, however, that ‘Brussels’ permits this sort of exception! I believe there are several others like it. It rather upsets, doesn’t it, the Brexiteers’ portrayal of the EU as an authoritarian empire?

Great stuff that. Henry Newbolt just about caught the mood.

There’s a breathless hush in the Close tonight,                                                                             Ten to make and the match to win –
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,
But his Captain’s hand on his shoulder smote
“Play up! play up! and play the game!”

There’s no need to read the rest. It’s about a British soldier under fire in the desert, who is motivated by imagining he’s Eton’s number 11 batsman against Harrow. Jack Leach was the No.11 yesterday. But Ben Stokes, of course, is the hero. And yesterday epitomises why cricket is the greatest game ever invented.

If I’d been in England, I probably would have gone along. (Leeds isn’t far from Hull.) But I’m still in cricket-starved Sweden. So I missed it; with no-one even to share the moment with me. Kajsa’s ‘that’s nice, dear’ doesn’t really do it justice.

Back from hols next week, when serious blogging will be resumed.

From the Guardian. Frightening.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/16/the-myth-of-eurabia-how-a-far-right-conspiracy-theory-went-mainstream

Holidaying just now, with little opportunity to comment on Britain’s crazy political situation currently, and in any case with nothing much to say that hasn’t been better said by others. But I thought I’d re-post this on the Labour ‘anti-semitism’ controversy, providing some very useful in-depth context for the whole monstrous fraud.

https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/the-roots-of-the-new-antisemitism-narrative/?fbclid=IwAR0LZuz5qMv5tMvThozbMzQA63otVfN-az4lCLqM7vRrXbFMynFCTtYkqHU

The next election – due soon, surely? – is going to be very difficult for Labour, with its erstwhile comrades the Jews – or some of them – joining the capitalists, nationalists, Trumpites, proto-Fascists and just plain stupid (as well as decent Conservatives) on the other side. I hope their obstruction doesn’t rebound too damagingly on the reputation of Britain’s Jewish community. Otherwise we might see a genuine left-wing anti-semitism arising, in place of this manufactured one.

I’m beginning to warm to those Continental commentators – many of them here in Sweden – who believe that the UK, or at least the English part of it, has gone collectively mad. Electing Boris as our Prime Minister is one sure sign: except that he wasn’t of course ‘elected’ in any true sense of the word. The Monty Python-esque conduct of Jacob Rees-Mogg – ‘Member of Parliament for the Eighteenth Century’ – is another. There are rumours of Parliament’s being ‘prorogued’ in order to see a ‘No Deal’ Brexit through; followed by a General Election on the theme of ‘Parliament versus the People’. How much more ‘populist’ can you get? Dagens Nyheter recently published a piece by its (very good) London correspondent claiming that it might require the Queen to step in and stop all the nonsense: which sounds ridiculous, but is technically possible. Yesterday a Conservative MEP called for the Treason Act of 1372 to be extended to all those who profess loyalty to the European Union: https://www.businessinsider.com/conservative-mep-david-campbell-bannerman-british-people-eu-loyalty-tried-for-treason-brexit-2018-7?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=topbar&utm_term=desktop&referrer=facebook&fbclid=IwAR0XjPnAkghzwSimtYQeFcIfrPSLVVfdXT9Yqnp0hGZlIGyr8Ze18tpznFE&r=US&IR=T. ‘Patriots’, on the other hand, those who would no doubt avoid the new definition of treachery, are bad-mouthing immigrants in the streets. Then, on the edges of all this, there are the grotesque attacks on Corbyn from the Right-wing press and some in his own party – charges of spying for the Czechs and being an anti-semite, among others – which in cooler-headed times would never be credited by anyone. Where will it end? Many are now predicting a form of Fascism – a cuddly English sort – which is looking more and more likely as time goes by.

For my part, relatively secure as I am now with my new Swedish and consequently European citizenship, this seems all very sad, indeed tragic; a grotesque betrayal of the values of tolerance and compromise which used to cement my loyalty to my country of birth. I still believe that Corbyn’s way is the only one that could heal the present painful divisions in Britain: ‘Brino’, or Brexit in name only; out of the EU but still bound to it in every way possible short of formal membership, including remaining within the European common market and under the aegis of European law. That would be a generous compromise on my side. (Compromise because I’d prefer to stay in the EU.) Why won’t the Brexiteers meet us at that half-way point? Most of them will have voted in the 2016 Referendum for something close to this; having been repeatedly assured that their European trade would not be affected by Brexit. Scarcely any of them will have voted for the ‘clean break’ the present Brextremists are insisting on; an option that was never put to them. Nor, of course, did they vote for the shortages, the collapse of the pound, the flight of industry, their under-staffed hospitals and restrictions on travel that are already upon us; and the Götterdämmerung of ultimate Thatcherism that our neo-liberal leaders, and their American backers, are plotting as their next stage.

Back in Britain I can see myself being arrested under the 1372 Treason Act; or expelled from the Labour Party simply for demanding (in an earlier post: https://bernardjporter.com/2016/04/28/anti-semitism-and-labour/) evidence of anti-semitism there, like Chris Williamson was. This is no time for rational debate. To call it ‘mad’ is of course an opt-out. There are reasons for all this. I think I can glimpse some of them, but I need to organise them properly. A crisis of late-stage capitalism must I think be the root cause. But I’ll come back to this.

This – if you can get it up – is an excellent little lecture by a Yale philosopher about the origins of Fascism, given about a year ago as a warning to Americans, but updated here to include some Swedish examples; and clearly relevant in almost every detail to Boris’s Britain. Be afraid. Be very afraid.