Porter’s Pensées

It’s hard to credit that two millennia of proud British history are about to end like this. (‘Proud’ in the sense that Brits have usually taken pride in  it; unjustifiably in many instances, I’ll grant.) Almost everyone in the wider world now looks upon us as a pathetic joke, a Humpty Dumpty in pieces at the foot of his wall, having betrayed the best bits of our history (openness, generosity, progress, parliamentary democracy), and headed for – what? Friendless isolation? An unregulated bargain basement for trade? An imaginary new ‘world role’? A client state of the chlorinated USA? Theresa May’s ‘hostile environment’ for incomers? The break-up of the United Kingdom? A freakshow of stereotypical English eccentrics? The socially reactionary country the Brexiteers (or their leaders) seem bent on? Fascism with a Bertie-Wooster face?

I guess that Italy might have looked a bit like this after the Roman Empire fell. (I don’t know; I’m an expert on only one empire.) I really thought that, with Britain’s having accepted her own empire’s ‘decline and fall’ after 1945 with relative dignity – her re-entry into Europe was part of that – she had escaped this kind of fate. It now seems I was mistaken.

It has all gone horribly wrong; and for largely fortuitous reasons: a failing economic system (not the fault of the EU), a fundamentally undemocratic electoral system, a criminally deceitful press, the onward march of ‘late stage’ capitalism, American and Russian interference, the continued influence of the grotesquely misnamed ‘public’ schools in our politics, cheating and corruption on so many levels (including in the 2017 referendum), widespread stupidity and ignorance, a TV-fuelled culture of personality, anti-intellectualism and disregard of expertise, popular distrust generally, political apathy, complacency on the ‘pro-European’ side – and in Europe itself; all contributing to the current ominous situation in which we find ourselves as a nation. (On all this, see https://bernardjporter.com/2016/06/16/is-it-really-about-the-eu/; and some of my other blogs around that time.)

Is this how it ends? Of course we ‘Remainers’ may be wrong, and the picture will improve gloriously after March 29, when we are due to leave: our Brussels shackles thrown off, other markets flocking to compensate for those we are about to lose, all those foreign immigrants – or at least the poor ones – turned away, our passports going back to being blue, our three-pin plugs protected (that’s one reason given for Brexit); and we return to being a proud people, like the ones who ‘alone’ kept Hitler at bay.

Or, alternatively, the simple vulnerability of our projected isolation will become clear: people will change their minds, and be given a second democratic vote to express this; and we’ll come out of the nightmare, bruised by the experience of this dreadful contest, and with enough Brexit irreconcilables remaining to prolong the bad feeling – perhaps even to provoke a kind of civil war – afterwards, and even more mistrusted by our Continental neighbours; but still able, hopefully, to mend bridges and concentrate on the real difficulties of our situation – inequalities, an unrepresentative political system, a rogue press, Eton College, and an increasingly destructive, and self-destructive, economic system. Could a Labour government fix these?

We’ll find out at the end of March. I’m not too sanguine. What we’re going through now feels far too much like death throes. What an embarrassing end to centuries of uneven, and not always admirable, but never quite so risible, history! (You can even see it in the leading Brexiteers’ faces (below): Duncan Smith, Gove, Farage,  Johnson. These aren’t serious men.)

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.)