Brexit Britain: Day #995 – Wor Nigel leads us… where?

Saturday 16 March 2019

Day 995 in the British Brexit house! Ah, and a tiny section of the housemates (100, apparently! A few lasses but apparently mostly elder gents) have opted to spend £50 to spend their Saturday morning at political march in Sunderland. In the rain. As you do.

I get it. The people of provincial or ‘Average Britain’, as Donald Horne described it in 1969, feel let down. They have been let down, by all governments from Thatcher onward and, most emphatically, by the austerity politics of Cameron-Clegg. Misty-eyed Remainers should read James Meek’s accounts of how globalisation has damaged specific communities, such as this one about Cadbury’s in Keynsham. The EU is not as some call it a ‘dictatorship’ but its free-market ethos has led to people losing out in certain places.

What I simply do not get is the trust large numbers seem to place in certain public figures: witness one Nigel Farridge. Why trust him more than a May, Miliband, Cameron or Blair? He’s done little constructive work as an MEP. He grandstands and speaks a populist language that makes him seem ‘different’ to a large number of people who opt to see politics in simple terms. Sometimes, seeing politics in simple terms is necessary; usually, it is dangerous and at the core of the problems we face.

A minimum of research leads you to the conclusion that this man, who went to fee-paying Dulwich College and became a stockbroker in the City of London in 1982, is no true man of the British people. He is a man of the affluent south east, very in favour of free-market economics which tend to benefit the already well-off; his emphasis on immigration is a tactic, as he steps back from associating with UKIP now that they have explicitly moved to the far-right. This ‘patriot’ has strong links to powerful nationalists such as Putin and Trump and he is regularly paid to appear as a ‘broadcaster’ on Murdoch’s Fox News.

Today, he began to lead a march that tries to latch onto the iconography of the 1936 Jarrow Crusade, following a fairly similar route. However, it is not quite the same as that tenacious endeavour of the Great Depression, born of material despair. To quote the Chronicle here: ‘The route features notable gaps, where it appears the campaigners will be transported up to 30 miles from the end of a stage and to the start of the next, instead of walking.’ And, as Geoff Thomas (via David Stubbs) has noted: ‘Farage’s marchers are being asked to complete the route to London in half the time the original Jarrow marchers took. These were 200 men selected on the basis of physical fitness from a larger pool of volunteers. Some 20 miles a day they’ll have to cover and, unlike on the Jarrow march, no rest days.’

Jarrow is now represented by Stephen Hepburn MP, who I gather represents some of the Blue Labour tendency John Gray identifies in yesterday’s New Statesman: Gray plausibly argues there is massive, latent support in provincial England and Wales for combining left-wing economic policies such as nationalisation with an agenda of law and order and cutting immigration. In 2017, some of these insecure, fearful voters went to Corbyn because of the former, some went to May due to the latter.

Former Jarrow MP at the time of the Jarrow march was Ellen Wilkinson; when education minister in 1947, she called for a high-minded ‘Third Programme Nation’, with access to culture and education shared by the many. It is a shame this only partially came to pass and then dwindled entirely, despite the efforts of fine folk like Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams, Arnold Wesker and Jennie Lee.

We are living with the consequences, but need to deliver tangible economic improvements for ‘Average Britain’ and address its justified anger at governments of the last 40 years. While consistently arguing against the scapegoating of immigrants. If not, we will be threatened with a Farage-fuelled, Boris Johnson-led Britain, as John Gray warns.

A ‘Fox News Nation’, if you will. Ponder on that.

Somehow, I don’t think the Jarra marchers were charged £50 for the privilege of marching alongside an ex-stockbroker in a flat cap. Apparently one who, by many accounts, got into his car by the time the gaggle reached Seaham.

Brexit Britain: Day #993

Thursday 14 March 2019

Day 993 in the British Brexit house! Lots of shouting, a pair of mad dogs in the Question Time audience having a barney, more yakking on about ‘sovereignty’ than about sharing or saving the planet. Less evidence of thinking or, even, research going on from the ‘researchers’ (ERG). Less and less evidence that even Brexiters can agree on what they want: Gove is for being a “vassal state” of the EU that controls immigration, Johnson is for an even deeper isolation which threatens the UK itself.

I cast Channel 4’s Dispatches on ‘The Brexit Millionaires’ via the laptop, onto the telly. It got me wondering just what the Leave voters in places like Sunderland make of the profiteering leading figures on their side… For example, Jacob Rees-Mogg (who has made an estimated £7m since the Brexit vote) and Crispin Odey (who made £220m). Also, the patriotic Mogg man’s firm has invested not in the UK, or even Somerset, but in China and Russia. You “get your country back”, but instead empower a new super-rich elite just as deeply embroiled in global capitalism; but who aim to gain from the economic recession of No Deal and avoid tougher new EU rules on Tax Avoidance that are due to come into effect shortly. Jacob has taken his lead from his father, former BBC Governor and Times editor William, who advocated a game-playing approach to “disaster capitalism” (see Andy Beckett’s article here).

To widen the picture… Observe: Farage, live on the BBC yesterday, claiming he would try and sabotage an extension to Article 50 through his connections in Italy. Apprehend: our favourite person with a “de Pfeffel” middle name trivialising child abuse, and proving unable to see the irony concerning a certain colossal amount of public money poured in the Thames over a farcical bridge project in a certain mayoral tenure. These really are tawdry, entirely self-interested people who simply cannot be trusted with power. They are not cavaliers at all, or Brexiteers – as there is no unity behind a specific cause.

See: Liam Fox, who has “rolled over” trade deals with around 9 out of 69 countries we currently benefit from via our EU membership. If so, it will take us until 2033 before he is finished! And my rough calculation doesn’t take into account that the hardest deals – i.e. with bigger world powers – are yet to do. Move to a different part of the superstructure: the media! Gather: Julia Hartley-Brewer, who constantly harks back to the supposed folk wisdom of one 2016 vote and who refuses to stare 2019 reality in the face.

To paraphrase both The Doctor and Special Agent Dale Cooper: “WHAT YEAR IS THIS?”

It comes to something when Hammond and even Gove are made to seem as beacons of probity, in comparison. Architects of much austerity are able to assume a mantle of “reasonableness” due to the nature of their avaricious opponents on the “Brexit Right”, who have notably walked away from responsibility. Seems we could now be sucked into another, debased, poisonous referendum (though, admittedly, it would be better if a choice between the Deal and Remain, as thus less abstract and more concrete; no scope to allow people to imagine their many Brexit panaceas).

The lie of a Hard Brexit posits exchanging EU membership with a say, for pipe dreams of the Commonwealth, with probably less say. The Commonwealth is far less populous than the EU, has no political organisation behind it and which we were proportionately trading much less with by the 1960s anyway. Imports from the commonwealth dipped from 38% of our total imports in 1948 to 20% in 1972; over the same period, exports fell from 38% to 20.5% Brexiters elide the likely necessity of the British in a ‘No Deal’ situation having to beg ‘charity’ from the trustworthy, outwards-looking Groper in Chief of the USA… The latest disgrace is that these pipe dreams seem to be fusing with Troubles nostalgia, see Johnny Mercer MP’s comments on an ex-British soldier being tried for alleged crimes during Bloody Sunday in 1972: “one soldier too many”, implying none should ever be legally held to account.

It really does seem pointless to go ahead with Brexit. Democracy is a changing process, not a faith with landmarks set in stone. However, considering current political economy and how the cards are stacked, a Norway option would be the most sensible and is a genuine compromise. I’m unsure we actually deserve it though. It’s hard to maintain enthusiasm in one’s country when so often the level of debate (at least online) is: “Brexshit”, “Remoaner”, “we won, you lost, get over it!” and our favourite, currently, “Why don’t we just leave?!”

Now, that delight, a second referendum. A 5-page questionnaire with ranked options and attached supplementary reading matter would be apter for this issue than an insultingly simple binary. If we do get the likelier, self-harm avoiding outcome of a Deal versus Remain, the ERG will try to claim betrayal. With some gall, considering the utter lack of ideas and plans they have had – and their selective blindness to the United Kingdom’s constituent nations, Northern Ireland and Scotland. These ‘researchers” incompetence has led to a scenario whereby we have seen IRA mail bombs to London and Glasgow, in 2019.

If we have to have another referendum (not generally a good way of doing things; imagine if we’d taken this approach in the 1960s to abortion, capital punishment and the decriminalisation of homosexuality?), then instead of Osborne, Cameron, Mandelson, what about getting Caroline Lucas, Patrick Stewart and Neville Southall to front it? The decent MP, the captain and the keeper! With some more adept political operators from the left and centre running the campaign than, gulp, the mighty Will Straw.

Much national humiliation – and worse, danger to security and life – might have been avoided had the Tory government (and Labour too) backed the SNP’s late 2016 plan: for Brexit, but with single market and customs union membership. But maybe a bit of humiliation is due, given so many politicians and voters still have an inflated idea of our world status. No one has learned the lessons from Eden, Blair or indeed remembered why we asked to join so many times in the first place.

Last night was what seemed like Part 13,377 of an absurdist morality play-turned-soap opera, with John Bercow out-Blesseding Brian Blessed (or is that Henry Irving?) and a “HOUSE OF FOOLS” (Daily Mail front page) only narrowing rejecting a seismic, UK threatening historical change. A government whipping against its own motion, which had been given ballast by Hammond and Gove’s dire forecasts for the future. A Gove now happy to assume the “expert” mantle, perhaps not appreciating the lessons of the old ‘Boy Who Cried Wolf’ fable. Government ministers abstaining on a matter of vital national importance. Historically, this will likely rival the Suez Crisis; we can only hope that it will involve less needless loss of life.

Introduction

I was going to write a lengthier introduction to this new blog, but the events of Friday 15 March 2019 bring perspective. I am a May, living in May’s Britain and this blog will be my story of living in these absurdist, sadly too dark-absurdist, times.

We have seen a neo-Nazi murder of 49 people in New Zealand. We also saw climate protests from pupils and students from schools in 123 countries, overshadowed by the grim events in Christchurch.

We have a choice between a culture of common, civilised humanity or a barbarism based on racial scapegoating. For too long, media outlets in the USA, Australia and the UK, among others – many owned by one privileged white man – have with their rhetoric created a climate of opinion that does not explicitly endorse but certainly does provides fertile soil for a far-right culture to grow and advance.

Enough of us chose the right path in the 1930s, and again in the 1970s with the emergence of Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League. We know which future to choose.