Porter’s Pensées

Here’s Kajsa’s and my contribution to the London Review of Books  feature on the ways the Continental press has reacted to Brexit. It’s one of about a dozen, to be published (slightly edited) in the first January issue of the LRB. It’s already on the web.

Swedes are going through their own political crisis just now, without a workable government in sight; but their press still finds time to marvel at the chaos that Britain’s shenanigans over Brexit presents to them, sometimes derisorily but more often in genuine puzzlement and sorrow. Sweden was a late recruit to the European enterprise, joining only in 1995 (on the basis of a 52% referendum vote), and its once dominant Social Democratic Party has always been ambivalent about membership. For the most part its doubts about the EU closely resembled Britain’s, and so made it a powerful ally of the latter’s while they were both members, which renders Britain’s imminent departure a matter of concern to the Swedes; but apparently without persuading many of them to follow suit. If anything Britain’s current experience has stiffened their resolve to stay – though some polls suggest that this could change. For the moment, however, the mainstream Swedish press is focussed not on this, but on the current process of Brexit: what is described as the ‘brexitdrama’ being played out in the House of Commons, and what it sees as the very British absurdities surrounding that. Boris especially is a genuine puzzle. There is no way, it has been pointed out to me many times, that someone like him could have any purchase in Swedish politics. Are we off our heads?

Few Swedes appear to be too worried about Brexit’s impact on the 7% of their trade that they do with Britain; but many are concerned politically for their British friends – Dagens Nyheter predicts a ‘brittisk tragedi’ – and for the ‘extremely precarious situation’ in which prime minister Stefan Löfven fears a British withdrawal will place the whole European project. Sweden’s Foreign Minister, Annika Soder, has made it plain that she would like to see Brexit overturned – ‘wouldn’t that be a good idea?’ Much is made of the extraordinary number of Britons suddenly applying for Swedish citizenship in order to keep hold of their European identity. More generally still, they are worried about the global rise of nationalism and populism that Brexit represents, and which currently affects Sweden too, with its anti-EU and anti-immigrant Sverigedemokraterna (SD) sharing much common ground with UKIP. They’re the ones calling for a ‘Swexit’ referendum of their own. One of the SD’s MEPs, Peter Lundgren – a dead ringer for the Rightist MEP Svend Åge Saltum in the Danish TV series Borgen – has recently held Britain up as a ‘beacon of light’ for Eurosceptics across the continent. But presently the SD – despite their 17.6% vote in the last election – are widely regarded as too osvenskt to play any part in government; which is one of the reasons for the present constitutional stalemate.

Being a Brit in Sweden can be embarrassing just now. We’re one of the Swedes’ favourite peoples: admired for our history and culture, and loved for the Engelskt humor that goes down so well here. Brexit fits better with the humour than with the history. Shocked they may be; but a diet of Monty Python and Fawlty Towers has made them not altogether surprised.

PS: It came too late to be included; but there’s nice piece in today’s Dagens Nyheter comparing the Brexit process to an Ingmar Bergman film plot.

This is wonderful, one of the best personal arguments against Brexit that I’ve seen, and justifiably savage about Theresa. I only wish she could read it – highly unlikely, I grant you. Nonetheless, it deserves the widest circulation.

http://markasftw.com/lithuanians-elected-me-because-im-british/

Now Theresa May is doing ‘the God thing’, just as Tony Blair used to:  https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-reveals-how-her-faith-in-god-makes-her-certain-she-is-doing-the-right-thing-a7442616.html. I don’t need to comment on the seeming hypocrisy of this, in view of her shared responsibility for the policy of ‘Austerity’, contributing to the deaths of nearly 600 ‘rough sleepers’ on the streets of London this past year; and her obsessive and draconian attitude towards immigrants and refugees both as Home Secretary and as Prime Minister – the ‘hostile environment’, ‘queue-jumping’, and all that. (‘Sorry Mary and Joseph; no room in the stable, either.’) Her dragging of Christianity into the picture in order to back up her Brexit policy does no favours to that religion, and is more likely, I would have thought, to turn people against it. It’s clear that May has little conception of the central message of the Christian Gospels – love, charity, poverty, ‘turn the other cheek’, and so on – despite having had a vicar as a father.

Incidentally, I’d love to know more about the Reverend Hubert Brasier and his teaching; but it’s difficult to find out much about him via Google. (There are conspiracy theories surrounding this: see https://bernardjporter.com/2018/08/21/sauce-for-the-gander/.) Not that the possible shortcomings of the father ought to be held against the daughter; but it would be interesting to know of the ethical environment in which she was brought up.

The main point about harnessing an ethical creed to a political policy, however, is that it can rarely tell us how right that policy may be. All it can do – hypocrisy aside – is to indicate a person’s motive in espousing it: whether he or she did it for reasons that were honourable to him or her. That’s a different thing entirely. Many of the greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by people who believed they were acting out of the best and most ‘genuine’ of motives. (This applies especially to my own field, of British imperial history.) What a faith in God can’t do is to give people judgment– make them certain they are ‘doing the right thing’, as Theresa May insists; and good judgment is far more important in politics than morality. That’s why we should always distrust our leaders when they claim they are doing things for good religious reasons; not only because they might not be (the hypocrites), but also because that’s scarcely relevant, and might actually be harmful, if it leads religious people astray. Look what happened to Blair.

Putin’s support for Brexit makes a lot of sense, though I’m surprised to see him expressing it so openly. The same applies to his alleged backing of Trump in the USA, and all those cunning Russian subterfuges – ‘official’ or not – that are alleged to have aided the Right in both countries over the last couple of years. Putin wants to see both America and Europe weakened. It’s old-fashioned ‘great power politics’ again.

A few years ago I floated the idea that the Soviets might have been instrumental in raising Thatcher to power in 1979. It might seem counter-intuitive; but it was based on the idea that true communism required capitalism to become more extreme and destructive before it could collapse, under the force of its own contradictions, thus allowing socialism to take its place. (Which may be what is happening now.) Social Democracy was an impediment to this. I made this suggestion, tongue in cheek (though a couple of reviewers thought I was being serious) at the end of the second edition of my Plots and Paranoia. Early on in this blog I posted a fictional account of what might have happened; it was going to be one of those ‘alternative history’ novels, but I gave up on it. Nonetheless, here it is (the opening chapter): https://bernardjporter.com/2016/01/31/the-thatcher-conspiracy/. The logic is spelled out there.

The communist Russians were skilled and experienced conspirators, as we all know, with the ex-KGB Putin having been well schooled in ‘dirty tricks’. I wouldn’t put it past even the post-communist Russians to be carrying on in the same way. The only thing militating against this theory is that Putin has admitted his backing for Brexit. A really skilful and devious plotter would have kept his cards closer to his chest.

I travelled to Manchester to fly to Stockholm on Friday, thanking my good luck that I’d have missed the Gatwick chaos. It turned out that I didn’t, entirely. My flight was three hours late, having been held up by the reorganisation of flight schedules that the Gatwick event had necessitated. We landed at Arlanda after 2 a.m. Never underestimate knock-on effects. Luckily airport security missed the drone I had packed in my suitcase: a Christmas present for one of my ‘bonus’ grandchildren. I hope she keeps it away from Arlanda.

Now for my Swedish Christmas (tomorrow – they have it early). Smoked cold mutton, raw herring, and ‘Johnssons Delight’: sliced potatoes au gratin without the gratin, cooked in cream with anchovies. I’ve promised Kajsa and myself a proper Christmas dinner afterwards: kalkon with all the trimmings, if I can find them, followed by plum pudding and drunken stupors. It’s what built the Empire.

God jul, everyone.

Excellent letter in yesterday’s Washington Post:

Letters to the Editor
December 19 at 5:26 PM

Every so often in European history there comes a ‘Year of Revolutions’, when progressive insurrections break out in several nations at once. 1848 was one such; 1917 another; 1968 a third – although that one has, I think, been rather over-egged. In between these Years of Revolution there have been periods of Reaction, again happening simultaneously  in several countries: the 1820s, 1930s, 1980s (Thatcher), and the present day. In both cases the coincidence between these great movements has been due partly to influences spreading from one country to another, and partly to general underlying causes, affecting them all. More parochial historians, of course, don’t realise this, but instead try to explain each revolution or reaction separately: the influence of Lenin in Russia, or of Thatcher in Britain, for example; so ignoring the broader common factors which could make more sense of each of them.

Today the ‘simultaneous’ spread of our latest period of Reaction is quite plain to see, expressed in the rise of ‘far Right’ and nationalist movements all over continental Europe, in Ukip and Brexit in Britain, and of course in Trumpery over the pond. Most of the common causes of these have also been fully examined and explained, from mass immigration to neo-liberal Austerity – or ‘late capitalism’, which is my personal favourite – and many variations of these. We’re living through one of the troughs in the long undulating graph of human progress (if you’re a ‘Progressive’, that is), with little sign yet of any upswing.

Another feature of these cyclical movements in European history, however, has been that each extreme moment also nurtures its own answer, or antithesis, or opposite, which then becomes the seed of the next great movement, or ‘Year Of…’, turning the graph in the other direction. That’s why ‘Reactionary’ movements are so called – they originate as reactions  to the ‘Progress’ that has gone before; but the word could equally well be applied to ‘Progressive’ or ‘Revolutionary’ movements that arise as ‘reactions’ (strictly speaking) to the Reactionaries. I think I can see signs of that today.

This is what gives me the tiniest bit of hope, currently. Trump has provoked a huge reaction against him, moral, feminist, democratic and even (in America!) socialist. Surely that will sink him soon? Even if not, it furnishes the template for a more ‘progressive’ form of US politics and of life. In France the neoliberal Macron is getting his come-uppance at the hands of the ‘yellow vests’ – though I’m not entirely clear how ‘progressive’ they are. The Left is on the rise in Sweden, as well as the nationalist Sverigedemokraterna Right. In Britain the current unprecedentedly incompetent Conservative government is clearly riding for a fall. (If it does fall, let’s hope it marks the end of the malign influence of Eton College on our politics. I think we ought to make an electoral law that forbids any Old Etonian from entering Parliament unless he’s George Orwell.) To take its place, it’s at least possible that we might get a Social Democratic government again, after all these years, if people can see through the bile that’s hurled at Jeremy Corbyn, and are drawn to his decent and intelligent form of politics, as a natural reaction (again) against the superficialities and lies of nowadays.

You never know. If we’re on the verge of a new ‘Year of Revolutions’ anything can happen. My study of history has, I’m afraid, made me a pessimist at heart – never one of those utopian socialists – but requiring just a sliver of light to keep me going. This is it. But then I remember AJP Taylor’s clever summing up of 1848: ‘the historical turning-point at which history failed to turn.’ 1968 was the same. Next year will likely be no different.

I’m back to Britain for a very short trip tomorrow. Last time I was there the streets were strewn with rough-sleepers. We need  a revolution. I’ll be looking – albeit not in great hope – for the signs.

For those who remember the ‘Wilson Plot’ – that is, the anti-(Harold) Wilson plot of the 1960s and ’70s – or have read about the ‘Zinoviev Letter’ affair of 1924, the following, from the summer of 2017, may set their antennae quivering.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/07/jeremy-corbyn-danger-nation-mi6-led-wouldnt-clear-security-vetting/?

Both those earlier conspiracies involved the British secret services, endeavouring to prevent or oust legitimately-elected Labour governments, on the grounds that they were spies or at the very least ‘assets’ of the Soviets. On both those occasions the right-wing press – especially the Daily Mail – played an important part. We saw in last year’s general election the Daily Mail repeating the same smears against Jeremy Corbyn; clearly advised by MI6, one of whose heads, Sir Richard Dearlove (now thankfully retired), is quoted here.

It’s reassuring in a way to see our modern spooks sticking so lovingly to their old prejudices; which, after the Wilson Plot was revealed and so thoroughly discredited in a number of books – Robin Ramsay’s and Stephen Dorril’s Smear (1992) being the best, and even films and TV dramatisations, like the excellent A Very British Coup (1988)  – it is difficult to believe will still have any purchase among the electorate. But you never know. There’s no smear like an old smear, whatever the fetid smell of decay coming off it.

The irony now, of course, is that it’s the political Right which is allegedly in the pay of the Russians. The Daily Mail doesn’t seem to have noticed.

When I was a small child many years ago, and I wanted to do something foolish and dangerous, one common response from the adults was: ‘let him do it. It’s the only way he’ll learn’. How many children got electrocuted/drowned/choked/poisoned/abducted that way I can’t guess. But it taught them a lesson.

I’m now wondering whether we shouldn’t apply the same advice to today’s Brexiteers. Let them have their full-Monty, no-deal, off the cliff-edge, ‘Brexit means Brexit’ Brexit, and see how they like it. Their leaders, of course, carefully funnelling their riches abroad, and plotting the next stage of their neoliberal revolution, would come to little harm. And I can move permanently to Sweden and hopefully avoid the worst effects. But your millions of thicko Ukippers won’t have these means of escape. Nor will they still be able to put the blame on Europe, as they undoubtedly will if a ‘soft’ or ‘semi-detached’ or ‘Norwegian-style’ Brexit is negotiated, and the furriners still keep coming in. That’ll teach ’em. And allow us poor Remainers some Schadenfreude, at least. ‘Tee hee! We told you so.’ Won’t that be worth something? (No.)

I’m afraid I’m not competent to make any judgment on the current shenanigans in the House of Commons, and among the Tory party, over Theresa May and her Brexit plans; let alone to predict the outcome. I doubt whether any sane person is. I rather liked this recent ‘Matt’ cartoon:

That says it all, really. What a fool of itself this once proud nation is currently making to the world! (On that subject, the LRB is planning a collection of short pieces on Continental press reactions to Brexit. Kajsa and I have done the one on Sweden. Watch this space for a preview.)

The special contributions that historians can make in these circumstances are of three kinds. They can examine and assess any historical arguments that are made on both (or any) sides of the case: Boris Johnson’s post-imperial posturings, for example, or nineteenth-century diplomatic precedents (‘splendid isolation’), or our heroic Second World War (‘we stood alone then’). These of course are mainly wrong or grossly misleading – the stuff of popular myth rather than of objective history. Secondly, the historian can look back over time for genuine precedents for the current situation. I have to say I’ve found no convincing parallel in ‘my’ special period for the goings-on in the Commons just now. The Boer War caused political divisions and rows around 1900, especially in the Liberal Party – these as it happens were what my PhD thesis and first book were about – but nothing quite like today’s. Apart from anything else, the Monty Python-esque characters of the leading Brexiteers mark them off sharply from the very serious actors on both sides in that earlier dispute over empire. Otherwise today’s events have no close precedents. Thirdly, historians may be able to provide a broader context for today’s goings-on, than the bubble of most contemporary political commentary generally provides. ‘Context’ after all is what they are thoroughly used to dealing with in their historical researches.

I tried to do that last thing in my initial reactions to the Brexit referendum, just before it had happened: https://bernardjporter.com/2016/06/16/is-it-really-about-the-eu/, and  https://bernardjporter.com/2016/06/20/this-dreadful-referendum/; at least to supply the immediate social and political context for the vote, which I have always maintained was never essentially about the EU, but rather a way for people to express their frustrations about other things – austerity, the government, Old Etonians, the deficiencies of Britain’s political system, ‘black’ foreigners – on the first occasion they were allowed to do this directly and effectively. That has been broadly accepted by other commentators since. (They won’t have got it from me.) The tiny and usually privileged minority of anti-European fanatics then cleverly used this to fake a populist appeal that would help them ultimately to achieve their very reactionary right-wing and neo-liberal agenda, away from the socially-concerned (if not exactly ‘socialist’) pressures they saw as coming from the EU. And the wider historical context of this, of course, is the accelerating progress of global capitalism, towards its (and perhaps the world’s) ultimate self-destruction, as good old Karl predicted (vaguely) all those years ago.

To return to today’s dramas: personally I’d like Brexit to be scrapped, probably after a referendum, and Britain to return to the EU with a Labour government which would then strive with Continental Leftists (who are on the rise, almost as much as the Nationalists and neo-Fascists are, and might draw support away from the latter), to make the European Union as socialist, or socialistic, or at least as social-democratic, as it promised to be at the beginning, before the global capitalists started nibbling at it too. The trouble with this is that the Right has so stirred up the Brexiteers – or a vocal and violent section of them – that ‘civil war’, no less, is being predicted and even encouraged if the latter are ‘betrayed’ in that way. That’s put the wind up Labour in particular, and probably explains what is widely presented as the ‘prevarication’ on Jeremy Corbyn’s part. Actually his policy is quite rational and consistent: wait for May’s plan to fail, force a general election, then (probably) have a second referendum which may show that the populace has changed its mind; then withdraw Article 50, go back in, and start reforming the EU from the inside. Short of that, the fairest solution, surely, would be a ‘soft’ Brexit – perhaps the Norway model – which would represent a fair reflexion of the country’s roughly 50:50 vote in 2016. But the Brexit fanatics and their millionaire tax-dodging expatriate allies in the popular press probably won’t stand for that. The EU is shortly to bring into effect measures to outlaw international tax avoidance, after all. Rich turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, even if lumpen ones can be persuaded to.