Labouring to get to the concert

Some young people in a small country town heard of a concert in the rather bigger town next door. They decided to go on the following Friday and borrowed a camper for the purpose.

One of them announced that he would drive. Several were a bit concerned: he was a bit of a know-it-all and his ideas weren’t always good. In particular, he was known to get lost and they were afraid he might not get them there in time.

However, most of them felt he’d be fine and it was agreed he’d drive.

As they set out, he announced that he wasn’t going to take the usual main roads to get to the next town.

“There’s a small road after the next village not many people know about and it’ll take ten minutes off the trip.”

One of the people who’d been concerned about him driving was unenthusiastic about the suggestion.

“I know that road,” he said, “and it’s only made up for the first mile or so. After that it’s a mess, with huge potholes and mud everywhere.”

Several others shared his concerns, but most of them agreed with the driver and so they took the minor road.

As they’d been warned, the tarmac ran out after a few minutes and they were forced to drive round huge potholes and avoid patches of mud and loose gravel. Eventually, the inevitable happened and they ended up in a colossal hole, and there was an ominous cracking sound as the front of the camper went in. And there was no way of getting back out.

They had to wait several hours for a tow truck to arrive and get them to a garage. They missed the concert and also had to fork out for the significant cost not only of the tow but of the extensive repairs the camper needed.

The aftermath of a shortcut that went wrong

A few weeks later, another concert was announced, and the group decided to try again. This time, the previous driver agreed to let someone else drive. In fact, he even chose someone, a young girl, to take over the steering wheel from him.

Some of the others were sceptical.

“You won’t go down that minor road again, will you?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, smiling brightly, “it’s much the best way to go.”

“But look what happened last time!”

“That wasn’t because of the road we chose. It was because you guys dug an especially big pothole in the way. And because you wouldn’t give your full support to the route we’d suggested. But I know how to avoid the potholes, because I’m particularly gifted that way. And if you get behind me instead of trying to sabotaging me like you did the last driver, we’ll be fine.”

So what would they do?

Were they dumb enough to try again what had failed the last time?

Or would they learn from experience and demand that the driver chosen should be someone who could be trusted to take the main road?

After all, as one of them pointed out, it was better to take longer driving there but actually get to concert, than to take a shortcut and not get there at all.

Well, the camper, as you’ve guessed, is the Labour Party.

The first driver, with the shortcut, is Brother Jeremy. And his chosen successor is Rebecca Long-Bailey, who wants to have another go at doing just what he did last time. Which ended up in the pothole of the 12 December election, for which her supporters advance any excuse to avoid blaming the man at the wheel.

The sensible one suggesting that the longer but safer route is Keir Starmer.

So the question for us is the same as for the young people.

Are we dumb enough to learn nothing from experience and try again, with exactly the same attitudes that worked so badly last time?

We’ll find out on 4 April whether we’re that dumb or not.

Men of destiny, don’t you just love them?

A man of destiny, bearing the divine summons, to lead us to the uplands
And, lucky Brits, we can choose either Jezza or BoJo

Right now in Britain, the big question is what to do with the clear majority in parliament against a hard Brexit, almost certainly reflecting a similar majority in the country at large.

I say ‘almost certainly’ since no one knows for sure. That’s because there’s such resistance to the notion of asking the electorate again whether, after three years of this chaos, they really still want to go ahead with Brexit at all.

Funnily enough, the people most against asking that question are the Brexiters. It’s almost as though they feared they might get an answer they didn’t like. It has to be said that they’re the ones always saying we should respect the will of the people, so it’s a little curious that they don’t want to check what that will is.

For those of us who think it was a mistake to set out down this road in the first place, our last chance to do something about it is to stop our new Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, taking us directly to the no-deal Brexit he’s threatening. One of the imaginative ways to achieve that is to bring down the government – it has a majority of one in the House of Commons, so it could be done – and replace it with a government of national unity.

The problem is that the political opposition in Britain is split between a tiny minority that believes that the only person who could lead such a government is the current Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and the vast majority who think that he’d be hopeless. Especially hopeless at stopping Brexit because most of us suspect that at heart he remains a Brexiter himself.

Unfortunately, the tiny minority that supports him currently runs the Labour Party, which is the major party of Opposition. That doesn’t do much for the prospects of building a unity government.

Corbyn won’t stand aside. He claims this is because he’s a genuine socialist, while everyone else is just a lackey of capitalism, so what Britain truly needs right now is a government led by him. Unfortunately, some of us, perhaps rather cynically, believe that what really motivates him is that after 32 years spent on the backbenches of parliament, with never any prospect of his holding anything like power, he’s suddenly seen that he might be able to take the highest office in the land. Before, the only future he could see was a few more years as a protest politician no one very much had heard of and then retirement with a few million pounds and a generous pension, but now he can see Downing Street. The bug has bitten him. He feels it’s his right, now. He feels entitled.

In that respect, he strongly resembles his opposite number, Johnson. Of course, Johnson has much more experience of feeling entitled, having attended England’s most prestigious private school, Eton, before going to Oxford where he was a leading light in the Bullingdon Club. That was a group of super-wealthy students that made a habit of trashing restaurants or other students’ rooms, safe in the knowledge that one or other of the ‘daddies’ would be around the next day to pay for the damage.

With a background like that, what else could he imagine than that he was entitled to the greatest consideration the country could give him, and had only to wait for it to fall into his lap? Since the premiership now has, he must feel entirely vindicated in that belief.

Corbyn has less reason than Johnson to feel such things are his birthright. I imagine that he feels he’s earned it. That only means that Johnson believes he has a right to Downing Street despite having been a less than impressive Mayor of London and a downright catastrophic Foreign Secretary, whereas Corbyn, who’s never been anything very much, thinks he’s earned the same right by dint of doing nothing of great significance for a very long time (he’s 70).

Talking to his supporters, it’s clear that they, and Corbyn himself, think that he’s a man of destiny. Were they not mostly atheists, they’d probably see him as a man chosen by God to lead the British – his (God’s) chosen people – to the sunlit uplands. Since these are people whose roots are in the forties, seen as the golden age of the Labour Party, the uplands are presumably those of that time, when everyone was happy, healthy and rich. As so well chronicled in George Orwell’s novels.

It has to be said that Boris thinks exactly the same of himself. He too is the man of destiny who will lead the British to their sunlit uplands, although in his case, his nostalgia is for the days of Empire, back in Victorian times, when everyone was happy, healthy and rich. As so well chronicled in Charles Dickens’ novels.

Both men of destiny. Both ready to lead us to those fabled uplands. Guided by an inspiration nothing short of divine.

Just not from the same God.

Corbyn: the sheen fades

It’s slightly embarrassing to watch a man not gifted with great wit trying to be clever. How much worse it is when he tries to be devious…

The assessment of Jeremy Corbyn that sticks most strongly in my mind is the journalist Nick Cohen’s: Corbyn’s a man “not overburdened with intellect”.

Jezza: not the sharpest knife in the drawer

His fans, on the other hand, see him as a new brand of politician opening a fresh perspective on the future. In particular, they regard him as a man of courage and principle but also, in a slightly contradictory way, as a wily political operator. These claimed qualities are never more clearly displayed than in his approach to Brexit.

There are constituencies, especially in the North of England, that Labour must hold if it is ever to form a government, where a majority of electors voted to leave the EU. On the other hand, Labour members are overwhelmingly in favour of staying in the EU, as is the majority of the electorate in a great many other Labour seats. Because he needs both groups, Corbyn has decided to take no position on Brexit, in the hope that neither will be put off by his backing the other.

This is a policy known by his admirers as “constructive ambiguity”. To most other people, it’s hypocritical opportunism: sitting on a fence in order to hang on to support from two camps without honestly backing either. To such critics, this stance simply means sacrificing principle to electoral calculation, and is distinctly short of either honesty or courage.

Indeed, his approach suggests that far from introducing any kind of innovation into politics, he’s just the same old, same old political calculator, who tries to be all things to all voters to try to win elections.

What’s worse, we know him to have been a lifelong Brexiter. It’s true that he campaigned for Britain to remain in the EU at the time of the 2016 referendum, but without any great enthusiasm. So there is a second suspicion about his ambiguity: that it may be a way of covering up his true hostility to the EU, which he dare not reveal in a party 80% of whose members take the opposite view.

Since he frequently claims to want to campaign only for policies endorsed by the membership, this too is seen as a stance not overburdened with bravery or integrity. It is also not likely to endear him to the majority in the party membership.

His reputation for wiliness is based predominantly on this careful triangulation over Brexit, designed to retain support from both sides of the debate. But, as I said before, being this devious requires brains. If intellect is not your strong suit, the deviousness becomes too obvious and, far from retaining support, it puts people off.

That’s precisely what’s happening today. While Corbyn was still the new kid on the block, and seen to be bringing a refreshingly innovative approach to politics, his support soared. That made Labour Europe’s biggest party, and propelled him to a far closer defeat by Theresa May’s Conservatives in 2017 than most of us had expected.

Today, though, the gloss is dimming fast. Many of those who joined the party at that time are remainers, and while they might have been in doubt about Corbyn’s true position on Brexit then, today they increasingly understand that he opposes their aspirations. So now they’re leaving in droves. The party’s still huge but it has begun to shrink.

No wonder people are losing faith in politics:
two unpopular main parties.
But Corbyn is taking Labour even lower than the Tories 

The same seems to be happening to Labour’s electoral support. A first poll finding that Labour was seven points behind the Conservatives was only a straw in the wind – a single poll can easily be an outlier. But then there came a second poll with a similar Tory lead; a third with the parties exactly tied; and a fourth with a five-point Tory advantage.

It’s looking as though the Conservatives are building a small but sustained lead.

The only surprising thing about that would be if anyone were surprised. Voters like strength. They like resolve. They certainly don’t like “creative ambiguity”, which they respond to as evasiveness.

Above all, many voters turned to Labour as a party that would oppose Brexit and the Tories’ stance. But now they see Corbyn offering nothing better than a different version of Brexit. No wonder their backing is dropping.

Not that the Conservatives are doing well either. Both parties are now well below the 40% level. In other words, they are both seen as discredited, untrustworthy and a less than attractive choice to lead the country. It’s just that under Corbyn, Labour’s seen as even less attractive than one of the most unpopular governments I have ever seen in Britain.

Ah, yes. There may have been some shine on the Corbyn phenomenon when he got started. But, boy, is it fading now.

A little humour, a little much-needed bloody-mindedness

Many years ago, I enjoyed watching the French film Ridicule, which focuses on how the court of Louis XVI – yes, the one who ended up losing his head on the guillotine – had made a cult of wit, deemed to be fiendishly clever though it was often also fiendishly cruel. 

The film contrasted such wit with a more British quality, which it called  ‘humour’, and clearly viewed as greatly superior.

At one point, the protagonist, a celebrated wit, meets the King who asks him to say something funny, there, immediately, on the spur of the moment.

“Be witty this minute!”

But on what subject could he be spontaneously witty? The King has a suggestion.

“Use me, for example.”

The wit has the perfect answer.

“Sire, the king is not a subject.”

I thought that was brilliant, but I suppose you could argue that it is perhaps spoiled by a deferential quality verging on the obsequious.

The contrast is emphasised at the end of the film by a French aristocrat, by then in exile in England while the revolution is running wild in his country, walking along a cliff path above a breath-taking seascape. A gust of wind takes his hat. He cries out.

“My hat! I’ve lost it.”

“Better than your head,” his English companion replies.

“Humour!” replies the Frenchman, “it’s marvellous!”

Ridicule: A hat is lost, but a head is spared

To me, that is as witty as the first rejoinder. But there is indeed a difference: it doesn’t establish any kind of hierarchy between the speakers, it shows neither deference to the other person or superiority over him, but merely shares a smile between equals. If that’s humour rather than wit then, yes, I too prefer it.

Sadly, in the last two or three years that famous British sense of humour has been a little scarce in public discourse. The leadership of both the Labour and Conservative parties take themselves far too seriously to allow of any smiles. So it was good to see something of the spirit reappear a little, even though it was  on the Tory side at the expense of Labour, and it felt more like wit than humour: the comments were designed to belittle opponents.

It seems that Environment Minister Michael Gove, even though he’s generally someone to laugh at rather than with, showed some elegance when he described MPs who hope Theresa May can get a better Brexit deal than she has so far, as swingers in their fifties hoping that Scarlett Johansson would show up at one of their parties. Quite amusing though I was glad to read that Amber Rudd, speaking up for the female side, suggested “or Pierce Brosnan”.

The Justice Secretary, David Gauke, went one further and described the official Labour Brexit position as hoping for Johansson to show up on a unicorn. Cruel but hardly unfair: Jeremy Corbyn keeps suggesting that if elected, he will somehow bring home a hugely preferable deal to May’s, with absolutely no evidence to suggest that he could do any such thing.

At least the comments were worth a smile, not something that marks British politics much these days.

But there’s another quality my compatriots regard as quintessentially British. It’s a certain cussedness, if not downright bloody-mindedness, which refuses to allow power to do just what it likes. “Over my dead body,” it seems to say, or even “over your dead body” – after all, we cut off our King’s head nearly a century and a half before the French more famously did the same to theirs.

It’s particularly welcome to see that spirit stirring again.

Twice in 24 hours, the May government has been defeated in the House of Commons by MPs across parties working to prevent a cliff-edge, no-deal Brexit. It is heartening, in this parliamentary democracy, to see parliamentarians asserting their right to resist the government.

What’s more, the initiatives came from the backbenches, not the party leaderships. Yvette Cooper, leadership candidate defeated by Corbyn led one attack. Dominic Grieve, ex-Tory Minister, guided the other. The leaders merely opposed, in the case of May who was defending her deal, or followed, in the case of Corbyn who is, well, Jeremy Corbyn.

The government was particularly angry over the second defeat, with the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, who allowed the vote to take place. Precedent was against him, and it was a decision that seriously threatened the government’s usual prerogative to decide what gets discussed and what gets voted on. But what it showed was a Speaker intent on seeing all parliamentarians able to decide national policy, and not just the minority of them that form the government.

A refreshing notion.

The Speaker, though originally a Conservative himself,
getting right up Tory noses by asserting the authority of Parliament

And there’s a delicious irony to it, too. Brexiters keep saying that the aim of leaving the EU was to ‘take back control’. I don’t think this is what they had in mind, but I’m revelling in the spectacle of Parliament reasserting its authority over the Executive, which had been allowed to erode away far too far.

Now, that’s the kind of control I’m only too glad to see us taking back.

Especially as it’s so cussed. And gives us a lot to smile about.