Corbyn and Peter Pan politics

“Every time a child says, ‘I don't believe in fairies,’ there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.”

Peter Pan leads the way to a fantasy land
where fairies depend on children's beliefs

“I believe it because it is absurd,” said Tertullian, one of the fathers of the Christian church. It’s a powerful and highly sophisticated statement.

Christianity, like any belief system, requires faith, an ability to believe despite a lack of evidence, even against all evidence. After all, you need no faith to believe that the sun will set in the West: that’s the definition of the West. To believe that a man can be executed and rise on the third day, that does require faith.

This is as true of trivial beliefs as these more profound ones, such as Peter Pan’s statement about fairies. Or the belief that a portly, white-bearded man in a red suit will come down a chimney to bring good children presents.

I find it impossible to make such an act of faith. I say that even though I know the great comfort that faith provides. It’s no accident that the words “communion” and “community” are linked: shared belief creates a community and belonging to one is a deep human need and a source of consolation in a difficult world.

Even so, I can’t make that leap. Like Diderot, I find it less of a miracle that Lazarus was brought back from the dead, than that nobody, but nobody, chose to record the fact. Surely, somewhere there’d be something from a neutral third party: a spice merchant from Asia Minor, a Roman officer writing home, perhaps a sailor from Alexandria, even if all they were saying was “there’s a really weird tale going around this place at the moment, about a guy called Lazarus. They say, would you believe, that he died but a visiting miracle-worker brought him back to life.” Instead, nothing, nada, nix. The only authority is from the gospel writers themselves, those who were promoting the belief in the first place.

Not a problem, of course, for those like Tertullian who believe because it is absurd. But for someone like me, looking for evidence to support a point of view (which isn’t quite as strong as a belief: it can be overturned by new evidence), I simply can’t accept the story on such thin backing.

So I’m deprived of the child’s joy in waiting for the tooth fairy to call, believing in the fairy even though no one’s ever seen her. Or indeed the sense of belonging that inspires a mass at its best, even though no one’s ever documented the conversion of a biscuit and a chalice of wine into flesh and blood. Or indeed, the atmosphere at a meeting of Corbynistas, encouraging each other to further acts of faith, even though no Opposition leader in history has ever won an election from a base of unpopularity as dire as their guru’s.

That’s a double misfortune for me. In the first place, because I can’t enjoy the simple comfort of the believer drawn from the mere fact of belief. There must be joy in the fervour of the Corbynist who can, like Tertullian, convince himself of the truth of an absurd notion, such as John McDonnell’s that Corbyn can turn the poll position around in twelve months. I can’t share in it.

Then there’s the second misfortune. A child whose parents are sufficiently indulgent, and sufficiently well-heeled, will wake up in the morning to find that a coin has replaced the tooth she placed under the pillow on going to bed. Unless the parents are exceptionally indulgent, an adult who does the same with a lost tooth is likely to suffer acute disappointment. Generally, indeed, we expect adults to grow out of such childish beliefs.

In the case of Corbynist fancy, not growing out of it has serious consequences for everyone in Britain: clinging to the belief that Corbyn can defeat the Tories prevents us replacing him by someone who might make some progress against them. That simply ensures continued Tory rule. The results are all about us to see: hospitals offering doctors nearly £1000 to do a shift in A&E to prevent complete collapse into unsafe service, kids from poor backgrounds far less likely to attend good schools, families of dying invalids deprived of basic support.

Unlike the Peter Pan claim, in the Corbyn fantasy, it isn’t lack of belief that kills. On the contrary, it’s belief itself. The longer we cling on to that absurd faith, we ensure the suffering, even death, of more people – not fairies, let me stress, but people.

Personally, I can’t believe that fairies exist and depend on the belief of children to assure their own survival.

I can’t believe that the universe is run by a God who took human form to suffer and die to redeem humankind from a fate to which he’d condemned it in the first place.

And I can’t believe that the least popular Opposition leader in my lifetime has the slightest chance of winning a general election.

Well, it would be absurd, wouldn’t it?

Be careful what you wish for...

Do you remember FBI Director James Comey announcing, just eleven days before the US presidential election, that he was once more investigating Hillary Ciinton over allegations about her time as Secretary of State? Only once the damage was done did he let it be known that no charges were going to be brought. Many believe his intervention may have cost her the election.

It’s particularly galling that it has now come out that Comey was investigating Trump at the same time, for the contacts between his team and known or suspected Russian agents. Comey said nothing about that. Imagine the impact on Trump’s campaign if it had come out before the election that his campaign had clandestine contact with a foreign, and not particularly friendly, intelligence service.

Comey may have been instrumental in putting Trump into the White House, but that hasn’t stopped the President he helped create rounding on him. Trump now claims that Comey “saved Hillary Clinton's life” by not recommending charges against her. Comey may have given Trump the shove he needed to get in, but he has no control over him now.

James Comey: is Trump biting a hand that once fed him?

And what about Comey’s other investigation? Whether or not it ultimately discovers any wrongdoing by the Trump people, it’s fairly clear Putin was keen on a Trump victory and prepared to do what he could to facilitate one. Like Comey, he may be wondering now how wise that attitude was. Though candidate Trump was more than complimentary about Russia and Putin, during his visit to Moscow on 12 April, Secreatry of State Rex Tillerson described US-Russian relations being “at a low point”. In that, he was echoing Trump’s own views.

Meanwhile, Trump is finding it hard to deliver on his domestic pledges. Like so many other inept and authoritarian leaders, he’s resorted instead to military action. It’s so much easier to fire missiles at Syria or drop a massive bomb on Afghanistan, than to make deals with Congress (the “great deal-maker” Trump is proving he doesn’t deserve even that title), far less to improve incomes or extend employment opportunities at home.

Like Comey and Putin, many of those who believed Trump’s pledges to help them out of their difficulties, may soon be wondering whether they were as smart as they might have been in backing an amateur’s bid for the White House.

Meanwhile, back in Britain, it’s becoming increasingly clear that leaving the EU won’t increase opportunities or improve trade. On the contrary, the country is likely to find it hard to sign trade deals that would be as beneficial as the arrangements it currently enjoys with its European partners. Nor does it seem that Brexit will even lead to any decrease in immigration – Britain needs the foreign manpower – even though that was the principal aim of many Brexit supporters.

Comey and Putin may just be the tip of the great wave of disappointment likely to sweep the US and UK in the coming years. It would be gratifying if that disappointment would drive people back towards more sensible positions than backing Trump or Brexit. Sadly, disappointed people aren’t always the most rational. The reaction may be a switch to even more extreme positions.

We’re going through difficult times. They may become a great deal more difficult still. But we need to get through them if there’s to be any hope of resuming progress once this retroactive period is over.

In the meantime, it’ll do none of us any harm to be a little more careful what we wish for.

Science comes to my rescue

It’s a privilege to witness the achievement of a truly significant breakthrough in science. It must have been wonderful to be around when Newton discovered that apples fall from trees, something which no one had apparently noticed in all the previous history of human existence. Or, equally, when Einstein came up with his celebrated theory that time can apparently distend to appalling lengths in the company of certain relatives.

However, t’s particularly gratifying if a discovery happens to have a direct impact on one’s own life.

I’m glad to say that such a breakthrough has just occurred.

It’s sadly the case that I have won myself an undeserved reputation for being unable to do up my shoelaces effectively. Well, perhaps a deserved reputation. Nevertheless, I would like to reject out of hand, as a monstrous libel, the suggestion that I may have to stop five or six times during a walk to retie my laces. Sadly, I can’t, but only because I don’t believe the truth can be construed as a libel.

Oh, blast. Again

So, it was with unmitigated delight that I learned from a Guardian article, that a team led by Professor Oliver O’Reilly, a mechanical engineer at Berkeley, had established beyond doubt that knots unravel under the simple effect of the impact of a foot on the earth, followed by the swing of a leg while walking.

In other words, my problems with shoelaces are nothing to do with personal ineptitude. We are up against a universal law here. It’s as inevitable and ineluctable as the law of gravity. I can no more be blamed for my shoelaces coming undone than I can for weighing.

Well, I mean, I can be blamed for how much I weigh, but not for weighing at all.

And I have the full power of science to support my position.

The Guardian gives us the background

Anyone but Corbyn? Don't be silly...

It began to feel like a trend when the third person in two days referred to me as belonging to the “Anyone but Corbyn” group, neatly abbreviated as “ABC”.

It seems this is the latest term that supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, current and flailing leader of the Labour Party, have come up with in their increasingly desperate attempt to label everyone else as part of one, homogeneous and, it goes without saying, despicable group.

We were all at one time “Blairites”. It was hard to get that label to stick to people, like me, with a long track record of opposing Blair as energetically as they now oppose Corbyn.

“Red Tory” didn’t work for people who’d spent a career opposing the Tories, in some cases winning elections against them. 

The label “plotters” (because they supported the supposed “coup” against Corbyn) suggested that there was a conspiracy embracing a couple of hundred thousand people, and you have to be profoundly paranoid to believe such a plot even possible.

They still, though, seem to need a single, simplifying term to brand us all. “ABC” is the latest attempt. Sadly, though, it merely shows how hopeless it is to impose such a simplification on a phenomenon far too complex for it.

I would never go for anyone but Corbyn. Why, we could end up with someone even worse – and there are people who would make an even more dire job of leading the Labour Party than Corbyn. John McDonnell, his Shadow Chancellor, for one. If we can cast the net beyond Parliament, the devious and authoritarian leader of the Unite union, Len McCluskey, would be another.

Perhaps “ABTC” would work: anyone better than Corbyn. Unfortunately not. I thought Ed Miliband, the previous leader, was desperately weak. More lamentable as leader even than his own predecessor, Gordon Brown. But either of them would be an improvement over Corbyn, and the last thing I want to see is either of them back.

What about “AALBTC”, anyone a lot better than Corbyn? I’m not sure that works either. You see, Tony Blair was massively better than Corbyn (or Brown or Miliband) at winning elections; he was dismal at resisting the lure of power and therefore followed the then most powerful man in the world, Dubya Bush, into the catastrophic Iraq War. That’s Dubya who was himself the worst President of the United States, or so I imagined until I discovered Trump.

No. We need someone with the ability of Blair to win elections but the guts to say “no” to power. An earlier Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, was good that way, refusing to take Britain into the Vietnam War, but he wasn’t exactly the straightest of individuals and he does suffer from the inconvenient handicap of being dead.

Harold Wilson: said no to LBJ over the disaster of Vietnam
But not exactly pure as driven snow...

So what we really need is anyone but Corbyn who’s a lot better at winning elections without being opportunistic about essential principle or kowtowing to inept political leaders. Sadly ABCWALBAWEBWBOAEPOKTIPL doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue.

Which perhaps makes my point. We’re talking about a complex view, not susceptible to simple summary. Trying to encapsulate it with a single word or pithy abbreviation is bound to fail.

On the other hand, if you absolutely insist on coming up with a single term for those of us who oppose Corbyn within the Party, I do have one that I feel goes a long way towards filling the bill.

I like to think of myself as a Labourite.

Another three films you could enjoy: Arrival, A United Kingdom and Sing Street

One of the more confusing forms of science fiction writing involves time travel. People meeting themselves in the past or changing history in ways that might, perhaps, lead to their never having been born – it’s all just too much to get a mind around, if it’s as bound as ours are to following time in a single direction, at its own good pace.

But then you get the approach of Kort Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5. Here the protagonist doesn’t so much travel around in time as up and down his own lifetime, unable to change anything, but able to relive as often as he wishes all the best moments, or even some of the worst if he finds that useful. And if you don’t know Slaughterhouse 5, the book and the film are both outstanding in slightly different ways, so you have a joy in wait for you.

In Arrival, Louise Banks, winsomely played by underrated actor Amy Adams, learns that trick too. She’s a linguist, brought in to communicate with aliens who have arrived on earth for no reason anyone can tell, but with whom humans initially decide to talk, instead of just trying to exterminate them. So the first task she has to undertake is to learn to understand, and later use, a language about whose forms of expression she knows absolutely nothing. In the end, she learns not just language but something else just as powerful, from which she can derive the skills needed to prevent a potential catastrophe.

Amy Adams working on communicating with aliens in Arrival

A film that provides a fine way to spend a couple of hours.

The same is true of A United Kingdom. We’ve known the scriptwriter, Guy Hibbert, for years and it’s been uplifting to watch his career slowly develop and finally take off with some notable successes, including this one. Initially, most of his pieces were perhaps best characterised by words like “raw”: they provided powerful insights into some of the ghastly things people do to each other and the pain they inflict on all around, including themselves. More recently his work has retained its capacity to shock but adds to it some more gentle tones, that both entertain and uplift.

In the late 1940s, Seretse Khama was in line to become King of Bechuanaland, now Botswana and then a British protectorate (a colony in all but name). During his stay in England to study law, he met and fell in love with a (white) English woman, Ruth Williams. It was a joy to see David Oyelowo playing Seretse Khama, especially as the last time I saw him he was in a completely different role, with a different accent, playing Martin Luther King, in Selma. Rosamund Pike, previously the deadly protagonist of Gone Girl, was excellently cast as the gentle but determined, decent and dignified Williams.

Rosamund Pike and David Oyelowo in A United Kingdom

The mixed marriage between these two people caused major tensions both in England and in Africa. Khama’s uncle, who was acting as regent, and a great many of his future subjects, found it hard to understand why he could not have chosen a wife from among his own people. Meanwhile, just across the border in South Africa, apartheid had just been introduced and the last thing they wanted to see was a mixed couple on the throne of the country next door. The behaviour of Britain, anxious above all to placate the South Africans, major suppliers of uranium, was despicable; even one of the great iconic Labour governments, the one headed by Clement Attlee, behaved in ways that were frankly craven.

Hibbert writes this aspect masterfully, drawing the contrast between Attlee’s weakness and the principled stand taken by Winston Churchill and the Tories. Just until they got back into power and showed themselves to be far worse than the Labourites they replaced.

But at the centre of the story is a couple that faces intense hostility but finds a way, though quiet and dignity, to assert their rights and mould their own destiny. In doing so, they also prepare the ground for one of the most successful moves to independence of any nation previously under British dominion. A great story, well told, with an uplifting message – and boy, do we need those these days.

For unadulterated good cheer and unbridled fun, you could hardly do better than watch Sing Street. Set in a rough school in Dublin, among sixteen and seventeen-year olds, you might suspect that it is principally aimed at teenagers. I’m sure it’s appreciated by that age group, even though it’s set in 1985 so the music may not be entirely appropriate, but it appeals to a far older audience too (as I can testify).

Raphina (Lucy Boynton) is a classical figure: the beautiful, mysterious and unattainable older woman (she’s seventeen). Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) is the younger admirer (he’s sixteen) who dares to approach her, to try to break the shell of her remoteness. To awaken her interest, he tells her he’s in a band; the moment he walks away from that first conversation, he tells his friend who’s been watching from a safe distance, “we’ve got to form a band”.

Lucy Boynton and Ferdia Walsh Peelo
The obscure object of desire and the admirer in Sing Street

The way they set about doing that is sheer delight. They have the encouragement and intelligent support of Conor's elder brother (a great character played by Jack Reynor), who failed to make the break he longed for from his dysfunctional family, and now gets the chance to live it vicariously through his brother instead. He coaches the emerging group to write songs which move from the embarrassingly amateurish to the surprisingly excellent.

Along the way, we get some great lines (“my mother’s in and out of hospital. She’s a nurse”), some good music and some excellent comic situations. The end, too, is a gem: the story wraps up at just the right moment, with a glorious, funny and optimistic scene.

It’s also a pleasure to see Maria Doyle Kennedy as Conor’s mother, while his father’s played by Aidan Gillen (Little Finger in Game of Thrones).

Three fine films. If you haven’t seen them, you have a great pleasure in store. Three times over.

Four if you count Slaughterhouse Five.

Spin: the right's good at it. But the left's not bad either

What’s in a word? Or, for that matter, a number?

Well, they’re invaluable if you want to communicate information. Or, for that matter, disinformation. The latter even requires a little ingenuity.

For example, when UK Prime Minister Theresa May formally told the EU that Britain would be leaving, she expressed the hope that a mutually beneficial new relationship could be established but warned that, in the event it could not, “in security terms, a failure to reach agreement would mean our cooperation in the fight against crime and terrorism would be weakened”.

The EU reacted with some heat to what it saw as an attempt at blackmail: give us a good deal or we stop cooperating on security and crime. May was shocked and pointed out that she intended no blackmail. Despite her denial, however, the threat is not out there – and won’t be forgotten.

What she forgot to mention in her letter was the status of Gibraltar. So the EU had its own surprise for Britain: arrangements for the rock have to be agreed with Spain. This is a horrific notion to true Brits: how does the obvious geographic fact that Gib is part of Spain trump Britain’s right of conquest?

Fortunately, former Conservative leader Michael Howard set the record straight.

“35 years ago this week,” he announced, “another woman Prime Minister sent a task force half way across the world to defend the freedom of another small group of British people, against another Spanish-speaking country. And I’m absolutely certain that our current Prime Minister will show the same resolve in standing by the people of Gibraltar.”

Some misguided observers, including me, took this parallel as suggesting a parallelism in planned action too. Was war with Spain imminent? Oh, no, Howard quickly assured us, nothing could be further from his mind. The Prime Minister herself laughed at the idea.

Again, though, it’s out there.

This smart use of ambiguous or imprecise language is an aspect of spin, and the Tories are good at it. But, it turns out, it’s not a monopoly of the right wing. The left uses the same methods. In Britain, the Labour Party is dominated by a left-wing trend that backs the current leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Under his leadership, Labour has reached a low-point in the polls which suggests it is heading for its most calamitous defeat for 80 years.

Among his supporters, however, none of this is attributable to him. For instance, a recent Corbynista blog post I read included this table:

Numbers: they’re so reliable.
Except when they aren’t. And words are still worse

That use of the word ‘coup’ is smart. A coup is the kind of thing that was attempted against Turkish President Erdogan. It involves threatened or actual violence; it is illegal and extra-constitutional, its methods sanctioned by no law or agreement. 

The Labour Party ‘coup’ was a vote of no-confidence by Corbyn’s colleagues in parliament. He lost it massively – 80% voted against him. He had to stand again for the leadership. None of this is extra-constitutional: on the contrary, it followed procedures specified by the Labour rulebook.

It’s arguable that the decision to precipitate a new leadership election was unwise politically, since Corbyn won it with a large majority. That, however, is a political view. It does not make the move against him a coup. But calling it one neatly intensifies the opprobrium against his opponents: a coup is illegitimate, treacherous, despicable.

There is, however, an opposite political view, to which I personally subscribe. If his fellow MPs felt Corbyn was leading the party to defeat, they had not merely the right, but the obligation to act against him. My feeling is that nothing we have seen since does anything but confirm the fears of his opponents: the decline is spectacular and there is no sign of its ending.

What about the numbers in the table? The “pre-coup” figures showed Labour ahead in one poll in April. The message seems compelling: look how the plotters spoiled things!

The broader picture.
Gives a better view. Unless that’s just what you’re trying to avoid
Source: UK Polling Report

But set the figures in context and a different picture emerges. The graph shows that at the time of Corbyn’s ascension to the leadership, the Conservative poll lead was somewhere in the 5-10% range. This was desperately bad, because to win an election, an opposition needs to be well ahead a year or so into a parliament. For a brief period, from about March to June 2016, the position became a little less dire with Labour trailing by between 0 and 5 points. Not too much importance should be assigned to the few polls that went so far as to show a Labour lead: occasional extreme findings are bound to happen by pure chance. The overall picture is of a general Conservative lead, though a smaller one than in the autumn.

Since then the position has steadily worsened. Long after the “coup”, Corbyn’s reaffirmed leadership has failed to turn the tide: in the polls, it continues to flow strongly against him. Again, ignoring occasional extreme results, the deficit seems to be of about 15 points, with an underlying trend against and not for Labour.

Whatever certain Labourites may have done against him, Corbyn is clearly proving unable to do anything for the party. Not, at least, as far as staunching the wound through which our electoral life blood is flowing.

That’s a painful message for his supporters. It’s not one they want to mention or even think about. It’s much more comforting to spin it with references to coups and one or two spurious poll results.

Well, who can blame them? The Tories have shown the technique works. Just don’t claim it’s left-wing.

Or particularly honest.

Nostalgia: it just ain't what it used to be

It was a pleasure to discover that my youngest son was visiting the family of our daughter-out-law this weekend. That took him to Belfast. And that took me back to some old memories, with feelings a little like nostalgia.

I say “a little like” because the word “nostalgia” suggests more attractive memories than those that came to my mind.

The first time I travelled to Belfast, I stayed in the Europa Hotel, reputed to be the most bombed in Europe. Indeed, when I arrived, one side of the hotel had all its windows boarded up after a bomb attack. To get in, I had to walk through a corridor with a chicane leading to a security area where luggage could be searched. Ironically, the whole cumbersome structure was unmanned, which was convenient since it saved me time, but also unnerving because it didn’t inspire much confidence in the security measures.

My room overlooked the headquarters of the Ulster Unionist Party with its sign, “Keep Ulster British”. That struck me as ironic since I was a Brit and little about the place struck me British.

Normally, alone in a new city, I’d wander out to get the feel of the place and find someone pleasant for a meal. I felt so afraid of those eerily empty streets that I found it hard to take the plunge on my first evening in Belfast. In the end, in order not to give way to simple cowardice, I walked quickly around the block opposite the hotel, saw nowhere that attracted me for dinner, and went back to order room service instead.

Later I got to know the city rather better, and had many of the classic experiences: driving without knowing it within a few hundred of metres of a major attack (the Ulster Defence Association’s shooting of Catholic civilians in a betting shop, leaving five dead and nine injured), asking directions of a flak-jacketed, machine-gun-toting policeman and being surprised by the cordiality of the answer, walking with other civilians through the middle of an army patrol…

A scene from 1971:
how civilians and soldiers mixed in Northern Ireland

I also learned to appreciate many of the ironies of the Northern Irish existence. For instance, the Ulster Defence Association that carried out the betting shop murders, was officially “loyalist”. Loyalty, it seemed, did not require respect for the law or traditions of the country, Britain, to which these gentlemen saw themselves as loyal. But then, outside the Northern Ireland Assembly building there still stands a larger-than-life statue of Sir Edward Carson, the man who raised an illegal army to fight the British government’s moves towards a timid measure of home rule in Ireland. “Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right”, he proclaimed, and though a lawyer and a Member of Parliament, he mustered forces to support his claim. However, his treason was met not by imprisonment or the rope but by a statue to his memory.

Some years earlier, I had travelled to East Berlin. I landed in the West and took the Underground into the Eastern sector, seeing for the first time the dimly lit ghost stations of the East, closed to passengers and patrolled by armed policemen. When I emerged at Friedrichstrasse, the only station left open in East Berlin on that line, I also had to walk through a corridor with a chicane, but this one was far from unmanned, as I came around a corner nearly into the arms of a young policeman with a machine gun clutched to his chest.

Armed police in a Berlin ghost station

As in Belfast some years later, I was nervous about wandering out into the streets of East Berlin. I quickly realised, however, that East Berlin fulfilled a positively Thatcherite vision of urban peace (Maggie was firmly enthroned back then, made secure by Labour’s decision to equip itself with a leader no one was going to elect Prime Minister – oh, how we learn the lessons of experience): the streets were safe, with more police on view than anyone else. Only near the Brandenburg Gate did I feel nervous again: there was the wall, suddenly blocking off the great boulevard of Unter den Linden, with a small opening guarded by armed men, and the glare of the searchlights in the death strip beyond them.

Thinking back today to those two experiences, of Belfast in the Troubles and Berlin in the Cold War, made me realise that nostalgia will soon not be what it once was. The nastiness of those days had a quality of drama, inspiring many a novel or film: how often have you seen floodlights on barbed wire in spy films based in Berlin, or blacked-up British troops patrolling past IRA murals in films about Belfast?

Whereas today’s ghastliness has replaced drama by farce. People who don’t know what they’re wishing for have elected an unstable moron to the White House or voted to take Britain out of the European Union, without understanding the wound they’re inflicting on themselves.

On the other hand, the farce is a dangerous one. An unstable moron with his fingers on the nuclear button? Sheer slapstick, for sure – but hardly a laughing matter. 

I preferred the old nostalgia.