Porter’s Pensées

Incidentally: on the question of the intrinsic weaknesses of the case for Brexit, it must be significant that the Sweden Democrats – roughly equivalent to our UKIP – are back-pedalling on their previous anti-Europeanism, after seeing what is happening in Britain: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-31/sweden-democrats-step-back-from-demanding-exit-from-the-eu. Brexiteers used to think that their example would encourage other European countries to pursue a similar nationalistic path. That doesn’t seem to be happening, here in Sweden.

PS: On the other hand (9 February), Kajsa tells me that their rationale for staying in may be to destroy the EU from inside.

All the arguments just now seem to be going the Remainers’ way. (See, for example, https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2019/02/brexiters-are-finally-being-forced-to.html?m=1&fbclid=IwAR1qcs2_hzB0GGJGW8V3jOFlGHCjHobVhRqYsASaKsOxoGEwzCN93oJc5wo.) Yet the polls don’t suggest that this is having much impact on the Brexiteers, or on public opinion generally. The difference in the figures is marginal, with only a slight shift to ‘Remain’; and remember how undependable the polls were before June 2016. If there were another referendum, therefore, there’s no guarantee that it would reverse the verdict of the original one, and certainly not enough to be more decisive than the 2% that separated the sides in 2016.

Even if ‘Remain’ won referendum #2 (or #3, if you count 1975), it wouldn’t be accepted by the Brexiteers, who would regard it as having been contrived by the ‘Establishment’ in order to override the real  verdict of the people, set in stone in June 2016. That’s because almost the whole debate now is centred not on the merits of the European case – we’ve heard scarcely anything about that from the ‘Leave’ side recently – but on how that vote should be regarded: as a genuine expression of the will of the country against its ‘elite’ oppressors, uniquely ‘democratic’, and hence sacred; or as corrupt (which it was), and therefore unreliable. ‘The People’ gave ‘the Establishment’ a bloody nose then, and have no desire at all to stick a plaster over it now. No ‘facts’ will deter them. Even pointing out how ‘elitist’ and divorced from ‘ordinary’ people the Brexit leaders really are – Boris? Nigel? Jacob? – doesn’t seem to be affecting that. And most people, being non-political in any thinking sense, and impatient of the current parliamentary farce, just want the whole thing finished and tied up, at almost any cost.

Worse: there are reports in all the papers about official preparations being made for ‘Brexit Day’ (March 29th) which bode ill for any kind of future, especially if the ‘people’s will’ is betrayed. Shops and especially hospitals are stockpiling goods and essential medicines; the Army has been alerted and is in training in case of civil disorder; and – just yesterday – it was reported that plans are under way to evacuate the Queen from London in that event: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6661457/Whitehall-plan-evacuate-Queen-Brexit-sparks-riots-streets-London.html. The Daily Mail prints that as a ‘scare story’, all part of the ‘Establishment’ plot against the ‘People’; but it is, in truth, scary enough.

This is serious. It has gone way beyond a civilised political debate about the benefits or otherwise of being in the European Union, and opened up a wound that has been festering in British society – nothing to do with Europe – for years. All of which needs to be taken into account when we pro-Europeans – or ‘Remoaners’ – consider practical ways out of this mess. The ideal one – abandon the whole Brexit project in the light of the facts, then settle back into Europe and try to reform it from within – is highly unlikely to calm things down. A ‘hard’, ‘no deal’ Brexit will cause untold distress to nearly everyone except the Brexit elitists (who have been able to squirrel their money abroad), and will inflame Remainers (like me). A ‘soft’ Brexit will never satisfy either the ideological Brexiteers, or the angry mob that followed them, and which wants to see more blood being spilled. ‘No Brexit’ will be portrayed by the likes of the Daily Mail and the Express  as a betrayal, tantamount to high treason, and will be the likeliest trigger for the civil war that the government and Buckingham Palace are making their contingency preparations for. In the light of all this – and not just of the main issue – we need to tread carefully.

Which brings me on – again – to Jeremy Corbyn. As Labour leader, Corbyn stands far closer to these domestic issues and repercussions than the Tories (or his critics) do. He is aware that his Northern constituencies are among those that have been most neglected and oppressed by governments in recent years, and so are most careless, or care-free, about lashing out at the ‘Establishment’ they hold to be responsible for this. He has been warned that supporting a new referendum would lose him votes there, and elsewhere, among people who otherwise might go along with his radical domestic agenda. He is accused of ‘lack of leadership’; but ‘natural’ Labour voters are not the sort that can be easily ‘led’. (I blame Thatcher for the elevation of the ‘Führerprinzip’ into British politics.) He’s a genuine democrat, following his Party Conference’s line. He is also lukewarm on the issue of Europe itself, as are many of us pro-Europeans (me included); and in any case – as I’ve pointed out before – doesn’t regard Britain’s relationship with Europe as the country’s most pressing problem today. That’s why he favours a general election before a referendum. That’s been presented as a selfish, ‘party first’ demand; but the reason why Corbyn wants a Labour government is to be able to radically overhaul British society and the economy for what he perceives to be their benefit. There’s no chance of a Tory government doing that. And it would eliminate many of the domestic grievances that underlay the Brexit vote in the first place. In addition to this, Corbyn is not wedded to the ‘red lines’ that stymied – or have done so far – Theresa May’s efforts to reach a deal with the EU: exit from the common trading area, for a start. His bargaining position would be significantly different; and, consequently, as many EU leaders have suggested, rather more likely to succeed.

The upshot would not be what any of us Remainers would ideally prefer, but might be far better than anything the Conservatives could achieve. It would also dampen down the civil unrest kindling that is piling up alarmingly now. Those who are impatient with Corbyn’s failure to lead the Remain charge may be losing sight of this. Of course I would much prefer Brexit to be dumped in Britain too; and for Corbyn to come out as my unambiguously European champion. But things may have gone too far for that. Corbyn’s plan, therefore, if I understand it right – and it has been pretty clear from his statements and speeches right from the beginning: it’s not at all true, as his enemies claim, that he hasn’t got one – is worth sticking with. For the time being, at least.

Back in Stockholm, where there’s at least 20 cm. of snow, but life goes on as normal. That’s socialism for you! – Has this got something to do with the fact that northerly countries are generally more socialist than southern ones? Scandinavia, Scotland, North Korea, Russia, the northern states of the USA, Canada…. They need some social democracy (or worse) in order to keep them warm? Some geopolitical academics must have touched on this. I seem to remember Toynbee did. – OK, too reductionist.

And the snow, being normal, hardly gets a mention in this morning’s Dagens Nyheter. As neither does Brexit; which is a great relief to me, just off the plane from our mad little Brexit-obsessed country. I’ll be commenting on this again later, mainly in defence – again – of Corbyn’s master strategy, as I see it. (More in hope…)

This is unanswerable. By a leading economist (one of Michael Gove’s ‘experts’). It’s thoroughly worth reading. I wish I’d written it.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/economy/2019/01/why-uk-cannot-see-brexit-utterly-utterly-stupid?fbclid=IwAR3iXPOUFA2YNVVnqj5dtjv0s40ojQadcKyyi4ilXdKkyjAud1iajF1qC6c.

It’s a nightmare, isn’t it? Nearly everyone abroad sees this clearly. But it’s hard for us British to see a way out of it. We’re being forced by a group of privileged ex-public school eccentrics, drunk on fantasies born of the old Empire and ‘how we won the war’, aided by rank corruption, and backed up by an ignorant, neglected, resentful and potentially violent mob, into an existential national change for the worse, which will impoverish most of us, materially and spiritually, and – which should be of more significance for the public school elite, who are already siphoning their own riches abroad, so that they won’t be materially affected – will enormously diminish Britain’s standing in the world, and has already reduced this ‘once proud nation’ (sic) to a laughing stock. Can’t they see this?

Anyhow: there are some interesting Parliamentary debates to watch on telly today, with MPs trying to dig the steely Theresa May out of the hole she’s made for herself. Then – for me – back to Sweden, and some relief from the mardröm, if only for a while.

Then there’ll be time for us to reflect on what it all signifies for our very imperfect ‘democracy’.

I’m feeling a little guilty about my suggestion in my last post that we try to appease the more red-necked Brexiteers by giving in to them to an extent (the ‘Norway option’). I was more affected than perhaps I should have been – indeed depressed, and even frightened – by the violence of their language on social media, and by their quite explicit warnings of mayhem, murder and even armed rebellion if the ‘élite’ don’t surrender to them. That, of course, is the response they’re looking for. But might it not be better, and more honourable, to call their bluff and get out of this mess in a more principled way?

If we had more time, beyond March 29, we might find ways of persuading them of the many errors of their ways, and of the hoax that has been played on them by the true ‘élite’: élite being one of their favourite hate-words. Put in this way, and without telling them they were stupid, which riles them, we might be able to re-package the ‘Remain’ case as a popular  one, against the ‘Establishment’. The current flight of British firms back into the EU-27, followed by loss of jobs, would materially bolster that. Which is as good reason as any for seeking to postpone Article 50.

Short of that, I’m much attracted by the following ‘Baldrick’ strategy, which is going viral on the internet just now.

Isn’t that quite brilliant? After all, when you ask them, hardly any Brexiteer can give you a single example of a way in which membership of the EU has worked or is likely to work to their personal detriment; apart from Boris’s lies (‘straight bananas’), which they could be disabused of, and ‘immigration’, which is a false flag. (Britain could have controlled immigration even when she was in the EU, but chose not to.) So, if we stay in, but don’t tell them, they won’t notice the difference. Indeed, they’ll even be fooled into thinking that they were right all along: ‘look, we’ve left the EU, and none of that “project fear” stuff has come about’; which might make them unbearably cocky but would also defuse any sense of resentment on their part, or on ours, the Remainers’. It’s the perfect solution. Or would be, if only the illusion could be sustained.

Every intelligent person – and it is partly a question of intelligence, however much Brexiteers may resent the imputation – now knows that the Brexit referendum was a cheat, with blatant lies, too many and too familiar to list, peddled on the ‘Leave’ side; criminal breaches of electoral law, shortly to be prosecuted in the courts (but too late, of course); Machiavellian new social media technologies employed to skew the vote; and the strong probability of foreign interference. In other words, it was at least marginally illegitimate. This, I predict, will be the aspect of it that will be highlighted in tomorrow’s history books. There’s also a general acceptance that the real villain of the piece was not any of the obvious and more clownish ones, like Boris and Nigel, but the smooth and polite Old Etonian David Cameron, who for internal Conservative party reasons decided to gamble the fate of his country on an over-simplistic democratic process that could not bear its weight. History may not be kind to him. In addition to all this, many people have also come round to the view – which was my original explanation, even before the vote was taken (see https://bernardjporter.com/2016/06/16/is-it-really-about-the-eu/), but is now widely accepted: not my doing, but because it has become obvious – that the ‘Brexit’ vote was in reality a cry of desperation by people who resented other features of modern British life, especially ‘austerity’, and simply wanted to ‘get at’ the ‘establishment’ or the ‘elite’ which they held responsible for their woes and disappointments. Hence, originally, the mess – almost comic, if it weren’t so serious – that we’re all in now.

The ‘intelligent’ solution, of course, would be for the country to be allowed a re-think, and a re-vote, on the issue of EU membership now that the implications of Brexit are far better known, and shorn of the illusions that clearly misled 52% of the people’s – those that is who bothered to vote – original decision. The single reason why that now seems unlikely is the irresponsible assurance Cameron gave that the outcome of the 2016 referendum would be set in stone and honoured come what may, which has become the Brexiteers’ main argument – no longer the merits of the case – for why it must be honoured now. Hence all the braying by the popular right-wing press about ‘traitors’ and the like; slogans like ‘leave means leave’, ‘you lost – get used to it’, and ‘what part of leave don’t you understand?’; the idea that is being put about that two referenda are somehow less ‘democratic’ than one; and the scarcely disguised threats of violence in the streets, even civil war, backed up by a resurgent ‘popular’ Right that has already caused the death of one good woman MP: and which is thought to be so potentially dangerous that Theresa May has already alerted the Army, including Reservists, to prepare for it. Again, all this has nothing essentially to do with Europe, which is simply the issue that has brought to a head decades of simmering national discontent.

This must be one reason why Jeremy Corbyn, whose Labour Party is more attuned to the feelings of its natural constituency in the more devastated parts of Britain than the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats can be, is reluctant to come out clearly in favour of either ‘Remain’ or a second referendum at this point; for which he is being widely criticized. The point is that if he did come over to ‘our’ (the Remainers’) side it would immediately put him on the side of the ‘elite’, and be seen as a betrayal. It might also lose Labour votes in its northern English constituencies. (This is quite apart from his genuine Euroscepticism.) And for Corbyn, as a democratic socialist first and foremost, the issue of Europe can’t be regarded as the crucial one for Britain, just as it wasn’t for most of those Brexit voters. In a way it’s an unfortunate and possibly damaging distraction.

Britain’s deepest problems currently are to do with Victorian degrees of poverty, homelessness, the underfunded NHS, her only semi-democratic electoral system, the public schools, poor industrial performance, burgeoning inequality, rising crime (especially knife-crime), the impact of ‘austerity’, a bought, lying and corrupt press – probably the worst and least truly ‘free’ in Europe; growing racism – even incipient fascism; and a host of other things that any solution to the ‘Brexit’ problem is unlikely to address. Either in or out of the EU, things are only likely to get worse.

Which is why I, enthusiastic ‘Remainer’ that I am, suggest that giving way to the ‘Leavers’ a little way – I’ve mooted the Norway option before – may be the only way out of the present impasse, if it can push the European issue back into the shadows, where it lay before 2016. We also – despite my opening sentence, which I hope none of them will read – need to lay off painting the Brexiteers as ignorant, even if they are: in order to avoid antagonising them even more. Then we can direct our attention to the underlying problems that gave rise to Brexit in the first place, with the possibility of a return to something like the social democracy that didn’t work out too badly for us before Thatcher came on to the scene. The first step would be a properly socialistic new government. Which is why Corbyn should not be condemned for putting this – a General Election – first. As well as hopefully delivering Britain from the terrible effects of late-stage capitalism, it might also solve our ‘European question’ along the way. Two birds, one stone.

Britain’s relative decline, diplomatically and economically, began as long ago as the third quarter of the nineteenth century; when she embarked on her policy of ‘imperialism’ in a desperate effort to reverse it. I realise this isn’t a conventional way of looking at it, certainly not Boris Johnson’s, for example; but I realise now that it’s been a theme running through all the books I’ve published on British imperial history, from 1968 to the present day.

The final stage of this decline – our ‘fall’, if you like – began with Margaret Thatcher, and is being presided over now by Theresa May; which must be a disappointment to those who felt that a female hand on the political tiller would undo all the harm that male leaders had done hitherto. Of course they’ll deny it in the case of Thatcher, whose whole purpose in life was to seek to arrest Britain’s decline by reasserting what she claimed were ‘Victorian values’, but in a way that in reality made her country the plaything of outside forces (in shorthand: ‘global capitalism’) which its governments could no longer control.

It’s a great shame, especially for the feminists among us, that these two women should have been so prominent in engineering Britain’s decline. Of course it wasn’t their fault really, but of the forces that were manipulating them, and the prime ministers that came between them; and was unlikely to have been due to their gender, which in both cases was hardly conventionally ‘feminine’ in any case. I still regret, hugely, that our first female prime minister couldn’t have been Labour’s Barbara Castle: a real female force for good (hopefully), in the mould of Boudicca. But we were landed with Maggie and T’resa; leaving it for another woman in the future to show what a girl can really do. Can anyone see her looming on the horizon? Emily? Andrea? Even the much abused Diane?….

I feel I should comment on the last few days’ major political events (in Britain), but really I have nothing new to add to the torrent of opinion and speculation that is engulfing us now. It was all so predictable – at least, after May’s attempt to prevent any debate on the terms of her ‘deal’ was stymied by the courts last year. The only thing that many of us couldn’t foresee is the extent of her dumb obstinacy; still insisting that her plan is basically the right one, after having been rejected in the Commons by 230 votes, and could get through with a few tweaks. She talks about consulting other parties in order to arrive at a ‘consensus’, but has made it clear – so far – that she won’t give an inch on any of her own ‘red lines’, including ruling out a ‘no deal’, which are there, of course, to appease the mad and (largely) Old Etonian Eurosceptics in her own party: who don’t want a deal at all, but for Britain to sail away into the glorious 19^thcentury on its own. That’s where a historian should come in – and many have already come in – to prick the illusion.

At one, very general, level, the problem is simple. Large swathes of Britain have been laid waste by successive governments’ austerity policies, without – their people feel – any recognition or sympathy by Tory or Tory-lite Labour governments, and no means of effectively conveying their discontent and desperation. That’s partly due to our electoral system. They never used to bother much about Europe, until the popular tabloid press, owned by billionaire tax exiles, persuaded them, for (usually nefarious) reasons of their own, that the EU – ‘Johnny Foreigner’ – was to blame for all their woes; which of course it wasn’t, but nonetheless made a convincing scapegoat. That’s what the Brexit vote was all about. It was the first great public issue on which people were asked their opinions directly, and so could channel this feeling powerfully. (It could have been almost any other issue. It was the timing that was crucial.) But neither Brexit itself, nor any ‘tweaking’ of it, will even touch the root causes of the people’s discontent, let alone the appalling manifestations of that discontent – abuse, thuggery, racism, even a murder – which the Brexit vote either gave rise to, or brought to the surface of Britain’s political discourse.

The rational solution, of course, would be for Britain to return to the European Union and use its considerable influence there, in alliance with other Leftish protesting groups,  to reform its admitted deficiencies. Most of us on the ‘Remain’ side would just love that. But that would only exacerbate people’s resentment of the ‘political establishment’, as we can see from the language employed by the tabloid press – ‘treachery’, ‘appeasement’, ‘enemies of the people’ and so on – which is almost bound to make any reasonable course of action, even short of ‘Remain’, and however rationally argued, out of the question. Which is why we’re in the dreadful position we’re in now. Jeremy Corbyn’s line, in fact, despite the current press monstering of him, to force an election so that a ‘softer’ Brexit, or even none at all, could be pursued in combination with radical social and economic policies directed at the underlying causes of the sense of abandon and neglect which fired the Brexit vote, is undoubtedly the best one. But can anyone imagine the Press lords, the Establishment, the secret State and Cambridge Analytica (or its like) ever permitting that? At the very least it’s going to be a long and bitter fight.

In the meantime I’m in a Swedish hospital; not on my own account, but accompanying Kajsa who is presently under the knife to repair a broken wrist. She slipped on the ice: or rather, ice covered with snow, slush and rain. It really is very treacherous out. I’ll be glad to get back to sunny England on Monday. That is, if they let me in after all the British political shenanigans of the last days, weeks, and indeed 2.5 years.

The ‘public’ schools really are a menace to modern British society, as this Guardian article, announcing a new book on the subject (yet another!), argues in some detail: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/jan/13/public-schools-david-kynaston-francis-green-engines-of-privilege. There’s nothing here – there may be in the book – about the kind of education offered in them, whose dangers the recent political prominence of two Old Etonians – Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg – must illustrate clearly; both of them being heavily involved in the Brexit movement, of course, as well as many more of its leaders, from the more ‘minor’ public schools. I’ve given talks at a number of them, coming away from which I always used to despair of their pupils’ narrow and privileged world views.

Here I must declare an interest, although it’s one that at least gives me some personal knowledge to base my views on. I went to one of those ‘minor’ schools, albeit as a day-boy, and on a scholarship from my local Education Committee. When that system – the ‘direct grant’ – ceased, Brentwood went full-private. It wasn’t a genuine Public school, though it claimed a 400-year history; for which reason, I imagine, it tried to ape Eton and the rest in many ways: ‘houses’, a school CCF, ‘praeposters’ (who were given the power to beat younger boys), a school song (very dreary), an emphasis on the (ancient) Classics, a ‘Prep’ school feeding into it, vast playing fields, retired sportsmen as games masters, school uniform, including ‘boaters’ in summer (we used to grow mustard and cress on the tops of them: there was no school rule against that, and rules ruled in that society), plenty of buggery (apparently: that was among the boarders), and clever skills in preparing its boys for the ‘great’ universities. That was how I got to Cambridge. My college was, I should say, 95% public school boys.

When I arrived in Cambridge, and realised how privileged I had been, and then later when I became a Fellow of my college, and was introduced to the mysteries of its admissions system, I tried to get that changed, and to persuade the admissions tutor to look for candidates in the State sector; only to be told, distastefully, that ‘we don’t want boys at Corpus from schools like that.’ One of the Senior Tutors of the time, Michael McCrum, went on to become Head Master (or is it ‘High’ Master?) of Eton. He was typical.

I don’t want to speak too badly either of my school, which had a couple of inspirational teachers (for me), or of my public school colleagues at Corpus, with whom I got on very well. They were a bit patronising, but I could take that. One of them – an Old Etonian, son and heir to a great brewing company – on learning that I was a Labour Party member (the only one in the college, I think), said to me: ‘I didn’t know you were Labour, Bernard. I think if I were in your shoes I’d be a socialist too.’ Bless his little silken socks.

So you may be able to understand my animus against the Public schools. But the main reason is the stupidity and arrogance of Boris and Jacob. Only a school like Eton could have produced clowns like these; and only a nation like Britain could have elevated them into positions where they could bring the whole nation down. As they look like doing this coming week. (But hopefully not.)

In principle I entirely agree that anyone seeking citizenship in a country, or even permanent residence, ought to learn that country’s language. I used to have my hair cut in Branford, Connecticut, by a man who had lived there for forty years and still only spoke Italian. He seemed to get along OK – there was a pizzeria along the road where he could socialize – but I wouldn’t recommend it. Bangladeshis in Bradford – even their wives – should speak English; Syrians in Syracuse should learn Italian; Glaswegians coming over the border to England should learn to talk so that we can understand them. (And vice-versa? I’m not sure.) You need to know the language in order to understand the culture you’re moving into: to become properly acclimatised, that is. Naturalisation requirements to this effect, as I understand are applied in most countries of the world, are perfectly reasonable.

Which is what worries me about a proposal by the recently-negotiated Swedish government coalition to make competence in the Swedish language a requirement for Swedish citizenship. I’ve applied for that, yet my Swedish language skills have barely got beyond ‘var är systembolaget?’ (‘Where is the State Liquor Store?) The language wasn’t a requirement when I sent my application in – only that I had lived here for more than five years, could support myself, had a Swedish sambo, and didn’t have a criminal record. I should have passed on all those criteria. I’m hoping that my lack of the language – which I admitted to on the form – isn’t nonetheless going to hold my application back. (It’s been two and a half years now since I applied – just after the Brexit vote.) So what are my excuses?

I have several, though none of them can alleviate the sense of guilt I still feel when talking in English to Swedes. (I think that should go in my favour.) I’ve always been bad at foreign languages, though I was taught three at school. Latin is still my best; then German, then French. But I only just scraped by in ‘O’-level in all of them. I took an interest in the structures of languages – it’s why I liked Latin best – but could never memorise the words. I wonder if that’s a common mental condition, with a Latin or Greek name? Whenever anyone speaks to me in French, German or Swedish, I immediately panic, even though on reflexion I realise I know the words. I attribute that to an occasion as an adolescent boy in a Paris shop when I asked for something in what I thought was perfect French from this gorgeously beautiful assistant, only for her to pretend she didn’t understand me. I blushed deeper than I ever have since. The memory of my embarrassment then comes back to me whenever I’m addressed by a foreigner, gorgeously beautiful or not.

So far as Swedish is concerned, I did try to learn it twenty years ago, at the government-run ‘SFI’ – svenska för invandrare – attending every weekday morning for two or three months, and enjoying it greatly; I even found I could joke in Swedish – ‘ah, Engelsk humor’, giggled the teacher – but then returning home at lunch to resume my writing of a book in English, which always threw me off. That’s one of my problems: I’ve never had to work in Swedish, which would have forced me to remember what I learned at SFI. My sambo Kajsa’s English is excellent; we’ve tried only talking Swedish at breakfast, for example, but it never seems to work. There’s only a few conversational places that ‘pass the butter’ (‘passera smöret’) will get you to – and I’ve just had to look that up on Google Translate.* Swedes generally, it seems to me, don’t like struggling with ‘Swenglish’, and are only too keen to show off their perfect English, so that’s where conversations that start off in Swedish – ‘var är systembolaget?’ – usually end. (‘Just up the road, where the green sign is. But it’s closed today.’) That’s enough on its own to deepen your sense of linguistic inferiority.

Quite apart from all that, I’m elderly (‘gammal’) , rather deaf (döv), and losing my memory – of English words as well as foreign ones. Sometimes I find the latter replacing the former in my memory cells, so that I can rarely remember what ‘vitlök’ is in English, for example (it’s ’garlic’), which is OK in a Swedish ICA-Konsum but not in Tescos back in the UK. Everyone who has experienced deafness knows that it mainly affects one’s hearing of vowels, which one’s brain then attaches the right consonants to; which is doubly difficult with unfamiliar foreign vowels. (Some Swedish ones are impossible for us Brits. I was told that the Swedes can use them only because they have a hole drilled in their top palates when they are new-born. New citizens are entitled to the same operation performed under anaesthetic.)

Is all this enough to excuse me? I love the sound of Swedish, and the way Swedes speak it – clearly, in the fronts of their mouths. I get pleasure from Swedish films even without subtitles, picking up a certain amount and letting the rest flow pleasurably over me. I can often get by with Swedish newspapers, but would love to be able read Strindberg in the original. (Then I might even get to like him.) I hate the fact that Kajsa can never talk entirely naturally with me. I hope I can become a bit Swedish without the språk. But that, ultimately, will rest with Migrationsverket.

*I’ve just learned it’s wrong. So much for Google Translate.