Labour: read the writing on the wall!

It’s said that one of the worst problems with having your back to the wall is that you can’t see the writing on it.

Following the local elections in Britain, the writing is in letters a metre high for the Labour Party. The say, “you’ve been weighed and found wanting. You’re driving straight at a cliff edge”.

Labour no longer controls a single council in Scotland, once its bastion. In terms of councillors, it has fewer even than the Conservatives. Seven years ago, the Conservatives seemed to be a spent force in Scotland; today they are resurgent.

In Wales, which Labour has dominated for a century, it has lost over a fifth of its councillors and control of three councils out of the ten it had before.

It was beaten to the new mayoralties in Tees Valley and the West Midlands in England, both in areas that would once have been regarded as heartlands for the Party. Overall, the pollsters and academics were seriously wrong in their forecast for Labour in England: they predicted losses of as many as 75 council seats. In the event, the Party has lost 145.

Tories exultant as the victories keep flowing in

Reading the writing is no good if your back is firmly to the wall. But the problem is far worse than that. A majority of Party members, representing a tiny proportion of voters as these results show, is determined to cover its eyes with virtual reality goggles. Those goggles show them a sunlit upland where voters are charmed by the honesty and integrity of the present Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and impressed by his commitment to justice and decency, backing his policies in droves until they project him into Downing Street.

It’s a fairy tale that many of us might like to subscribe to. But it has nothing to do with the painful reality that the local election results reveal. Labour does not win power with its traditional bedrock so completely eroded.

Now this is not all down to Corbyn. The decline started under his two predecessors as leader, Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband. Both were poor leaders – Brown had been a fine Chancellor of the Exchequer, but he was far too gaffe-prone to lead the party; Miliband was simply gaffe-prone. Corbyn supporters keep pointing out to me how weak they’d been and how the rot had set in on their watch, and that’s true.

However, the implication behind these criticisms is that Corbyn would turn things around. Indeed, he was uniquely qualified to do so. His political persona made him the best choice to right the ship and get it back on course.

What the local election results have shown is how wrong this view was, how justified that of the people who tried to prise the leadership from Corbyn’s grip. Far from turning things around, he has made a bad situation far worse. Instead of bringing a breath of fresh air to the party, he has merely continued the decline from Brown to Miliband, making him the weakest of three weak leaders.

The sad truth is that the virtual reality goggles are still firmly in place. In only one way is Corbyn an innovator: he is the first Labour leader who takes no responsibility for the disasters that happen on his watch. The poor performance is all down to the Parliamentary Labour Party that rebelled against him – although the election results only show how legitimate their aims were – or the media, or even the vile behaviour of the Conservative Party (which seems unfairly committed to the notion of what is known, technically, as “winning”).

His supporters simply can’t read the writing on the wall. It will take a huge effort to get them to abandon the comfort of their nice goggles. But the attempt must be made, yet again.

Because it really, seriously, does say on that wall: “you’re heading straight for a precipice. Change driver!”

There's nationalism and nationalism

While on a visit to Llanelli in South Wales, I found myself chatting to a pleasant woman who had spent some years working in bookshops.

“The worst thing about the London-based salesmen for the publishing companies,” she told me, “was that they didn’t want to come down to see us. One of them even said they only delivered to the mainland.”

It’s an interesting notion. Because, you see, Wales isn’t in fact an island separate from England.

OK. So where's the sea between England and Wales?

The conversation reminded me of one I had decades ago with a Welsh lawyer. A fluent Welsh speaker, he’d built quite a practice in a rural area providing legal services to farmers and others whose English was poor.

“We’re always talking about nationalism in this country.” 

We were in Wales at the time and there was, indeed, a great deal of talk about Welsh nationalists who were on the rise and, in their most extreme manifestation, had even taken to torching Welsh cottages owned by absentee English proprietors.

“But,” he went on, “I don’t think it’s Welsh nationalism that’s the real problem. It’s English nationalism.”

He was on to something, it seemed to me. After all, Welsh, Irish or Scottish nationalism might be the ones that made the most noise, but what they were noisiest about was the need to resist an arrogant and overbearing England, intent on treating them as second-rate citizens with no specific needs of their own.

Why, even the iconic British red postboxes had been emblazoned “E II R” since Queen Elizabeth came to the throne. However Scotland, part of her realm, had never had a first queen of that name. For the Scots, the present queen is “E I R”.

A trivial matter? I’m sure it is in itself. But symbols matter and Symbolically the postboxes proclaim “Scottish history doesn’t matter. It’s been subsumed into English.”

How English history subsumes Scottish

Both sides of this divide are nationalistic. But there is a difference: Scots and Welsh nationalists, and their Irish predecessors who successfully achieved independence for their nation, are speaking out in defence of rights denied. The English nationalism is an empowered variety, proclaiming its own entitlement to deny rights to others.

It’s that kind of rampant, ugly nationalism whose rise around the globe is so worrying today. It’s bad in Britain. Here English nationalists, ironically supported by the Welsh on this occasion, inflicted Brexit on the entire population of the island, and the six counties of Ireland that are attached to it. It has become ever clearer that the hopes on which that movement based itself are entirely unfounded, not just illusory but self-delusory: there will be no savings to plough back into cherished national institutions like the NHS, despite the deceiving promises of the Brexit-backers; there will be no repatriation of control, but deepened dependency on others, such as the US, without Britain even enjoying the limited say in the making of their policy that it had in the EU; and, it has now been admitted, there will not even be the kind of reduction in immigration Brexiters had hoped for, such is our need for foreign labour to keep our society moving.

However, that only means that Britain will suffer for Brexit. Damage may be inflicted on other countries, but it will be relatively minor.

In the US, however, we have a team in power that has explicitly adopted the slogan ‘America First’. It sounds noble but in reality it means ‘everyone else a (distant) second’ (which, it has to be said in passing, makes it particularly ironic that Brexiters are looking to the US for national salvation). And the worst of it is that Trump has his finger on the button for an unimaginably powerful force – a huge nuclear stockpile.

On top of that, to ensure that in future the America he wishes to put first wins its wars, he’s looking for a large increase in military spending. To achieve it, he’s prepared to cut environmental protection and foreign aid, because he prefers dominating the world to keeping it habitable, and things it makes more sense to bomb people than feed them.

Refusing to deliver books to a part of your own country on the insultingly false belief that it’s an island is bad enough. It’s only the start of the harm that nationalism can do. It can go far further, hurling a nation into regression as Brexit will do, or worse still, jeopardising the future of the world as Trump now threatens.

Ugly and unpleasant, rampant, empowered nationalism turns out also to be dangerous.

On the train to Wales

I strongly believe, and often say, that rail is the luxury form of travel of our time.

It’s also romantic. The sound of the wheels on the tracks. The sense of speed as the lights from the windows flash on the houses, fields and embankments as we race past. No car, no plane, perhaps only a ship can rival the sense of adventure coupled with wellbeing.

Still, for the third time in four days? I’m learning the hard way that you can have too much of a good thing. Especially when your train isn’t due to get you to your destination until a minute past midnight. Tomorrow, for Pete’s sake.

I started the journey in Luton. Well, it’s where I live. So I guess that makes sense.

Across the aisle from me was a strikingly elegant young woman, by which I mean a young woman who had obviously gone to great lengths to appear elegant. There was perhaps just a touch too much makeup on the face, the lack of a coat was a trifle too obvious a way of highlighting the tightly-fitting dress, the heels were perhaps just a smidgeon too high.

I became aware of all this as I paused between a series of phone calls, remembering how irritating I find it when people make calls in a carriage I’m sharing with them.

“My apologies,” I told her, “I hope I’m not disturbing you by making these calls.”

“Oh, no,” she said, “I was trying to see if I could understand any of the French you were talking. I think I got a word here and there but no more.”

I’d been talking to my (French) wife and it’s true we tend to switch to that language when there’s a stranger close by (at least in England). And the strategy had worked. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted this fashion plate understanding anything I was saying, however innocent.

Especially as I’d noticed that she was resting her fine high heels on the seat in front of her. That’s a gesture I usually associate with young men in dirty jackets and low-hanging trousers. With boots.

It seems to me that elegance is what elegance does.

We left the train at the same station, Farringdon, in the City of London. I thought basic courtesy at least required me to acknowledge our brief contact half an hour earlier. Since she was obviously heading for an evening out, I thought I’d offer some appropriate wishes.

“Enjoy your evening,” I said.

“You too,” she replied.

I suppose the length of the journey ahead must have caught up with me because I couldn’t resist answering, “oh, I won’t be enjoying it. I’m travelling to Llanelli.”

There was a couple ahead of us, by the door. She smiled. He burst out laughing.

“Well,” he said, “there really is no answer to that.”

I felt I’d perhaps gone too far.

“Oh, I’ve nothing against Llanelli. I’m sure it’s a lovely place.”

It’s true. I like Wales. I like the Welsh, unless there are fifteen of them in red shirts facing the England rugby team. I had no reason to suppose that Llanelli would be anything but lovely.

“It is, it is,” he picked up from me, “but you just don’t want to spend the evening travelling there.”

“Quite,” I confirmed.

Llanelli. Charming place. In the daylight...

The young woman left the train with never a backward look. She may have suspected my motives in addressing her, worse still in leaving the train at the same station. But if she had found my air of satisfaction questionable, she was entirely mistaken: it was due to my managing to leave the train with my suitcase. Last time I arrived at Farringdon, I left one behind on the train, with lots of annoying (and expensive) consequences, not least the need to buy a whole new set of relatively formal clothes before my 11:00 meeting the next morning.

The couple headed for the exit. They were still, I swear, chuckling. 

 I made for the Hammersmith and City line platform to get a tube to Paddington.

And the not-quite-so-elegant-as-she-imagined young lady went tripping along the platform, her heels clicking her off to the evening ahead of her.

Voting Remain: it's about a lot more than a point or two on GDP

When German troops entered Alsace in Eastern France in 1940, the Gestapo arrested a great many potential opponents. One of these was the father of a friend of mine. The friend was four at the time and never saw his father again. Indeed, he never found out what had happened to him.

He told me this story soon after the introduction of the Euro, holding a Euro coin in his hand, with tears in his eyes, as he said, “I never thought I’d see the day when we had the same currency as them.”

A fluent German speaker living just a few kilometres from the border, he was a regular visitor to the other side of the Rhine. He had nothing but the most cordial feelings towards the erstwhile enemies of his country. In the Euro, he saw the embodiment of a determination that they would never be enemies again.

That’s why I find the EU debate in Britain today so lamentably trivial.

The EU isn’t about a few points on or off GDP, or the cost of holidays in continental Europe, or even whether immigration can be reduced or will rise still further. The EU and even the Euro, which is far more than merely a financial instrument, are about a political will to prefer peace over war and cooperation over conflict.

Just some coins – or something rather more significant?

That’s after a millennium and a half, since the end of the Roman Empire, regularly punctured by increasingly destructive wars.

How can we bear to make it about the accent of the woman serving us breakfast in a hotel? Or whether a Polski Sklep has opened where there used to be an Italian tailor’s? Or whether those young men cleaning our car so efficiently are Bulgarian rather than East Anglian?

That being said, there will naturally be economic consequences if we leave the EU. There would be short-term disruption. The currency is likely to fall. Unemployment would probably rise. Inward investment would fall. Tariff barriers might be erected, making it harder to export our goods to the Continent, and more expensive for us to buy imports from it.

None of this would spell catastrophe for Britain. The country would muddle through the short-term pain. It might be a little poorer, but it wouldn’t go under.

In the longer term, though, this is a world increasingly for the big battalions. China is a dominant power. India isn’t far behind. The US, smaller in population than either, remains the financial powerhouse. In such company, the European Union, the world’s biggest trading bloc with a population of half a billion, can hold its own. It will be taken seriously. Britain will not – and it may not even be Britain if, as seems likely, Scotland made a second and successful bid for independence, followed by re-entry to the EU.

Britain would be with the also-rans. The countries that get included in deals that others have negotiated. Brexiters often point to Norway as a successful European nation outside the EU. They fail to mention, or may not know, that Norway makes substantial contributions to the EU, as Britain does, and has to accept EU rules, including freedom of movement. That’s the price of trade with the EU.

So the difference between Norway and Britain is that Norway has no say in the rules it has to obey. Brexit will deprive Britain, or England-and-Wales, of its say too.

Naturally, England-and-Wales might decide not to accept EU regulations, and deal with the major economic powers alone. It could do that, but when China has to prioritise negotiations with the US, EU, Russia, India or England-and-Wales, it’s unlikely to be the minor off-shore European player that will preoccupy it most.

What this all means is that on its own, England-and-Wales would continue its decline from world power to minor island. We’ve been there before. 300 years ago a French visitor to England wrote a traveller’s book about the country: people knew little about this little, fog-shrouded island to the North West.

That was when England was on the way up, becoming a major economic power, not in its decline.

Far from spelling the end of British values, I therefore see in the European Union a way of preserving them within a structure that we can help make far more than the sum of its parts. The alternative, it seems to me, is continued descent into irrelevance. And relative poverty.

That’s my positive case for staying in the EU. 

There’s a negative case against Brexit too. It came out most clearly when Nigel Farage unveiled a new poster campaign on the theme “Breaking Point.” It showed a queue of people trying, apparently, to get into Britain, taking us to the point where we might break under the strain.

Nigel Farage showing off his poster

The photo is of Syrian refugees in Slovenia. None of them is ever likely to get anywhere near Britain. On the other hand, they’re all dark-skinned.

That makes explicit something semi-hidden inside the Brexit campaign. It draws a great deal of its strength not from economics, not from a commitment to Britain’s culture and its prospects for the future. Instead, it draws on something much uglier than that: a hatred of other people, of foreigners, above all, of other races.

As Brendan, husband of murdered MP Jo Cox, said, “She would have wanted two things above all else to happen now, one that our precious children are bathed in love and two, that we all unite to fight against the hatred that killed her. Hate doesn’t have a creed, race or religion, it is poisonous.”

Hatred is poisonous. Even if there were a compelling argument for Brexit, that bitterness is enough to put me off. There’s a toxic drive behind the Leave campaign from which our nation, or any other nation, can only suffer.

That, more than anything, needs to be resisted.

Jo Cox, murdered pro-EU MP
Her husband launched an appeal for love, and against hatred.

That’s it. I’m not putting teeth under my pillow any more

It’s enough to make me lose faith in fairies.

The Rugby World Cup’s been a strangely unsatisfactory competition, especially from the point of view of anyone English. Despite the tournament being held here, England failed even to get out of the pool stage and into the quarter finals. I’m always pleased when an English team sets a new record, but I wish it hadn’t become the first ever host nation to fail to qualify.

Still, one could as an Englishman switch one’s allegiance to one of the other Northern Hemisphere teams. Four of them had made it into the quarters, along with with four from the South: France, Ireland, Wales and Scotland joined Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina.

Of the four Southern teams, Argentina looked the weakest. It has been steadily improving for a couple of decades, but it’s only recently made it to the big time. On the other hand, among the European teams, the one that has performed the best in the last year or two was Ireland, which won the premier competition here, the Six Nations, in both 2014 and 2015.

As it happened, Ireland was playing Argentina, so that looked like about our best bet for getting one Northern team through to the semis.

South Africa looked vulnerable, beaten in their first match by Japan, a nation which looks like Argentina a decade or so ago: improving but still not a major side. Wales, one of the stronger European sides, might just beat them.

As for New Zealand and Australia, their performance had been spectacular throughout the competition. There was little chance of off-colour France beating the former, or Scotland, near the bottom of the Six Nations, beating the latter.

So what happened?

South Africa avoided the mistakes that cost them against Japan, and beat Wales.

New Zealand did a demolition job on the French, leaving them bloodied and bowed.

That took us to Ireland-Argentina, our best chance. Within thirteen minutes, Argentina were 17-0 up. Ireland fought back, but were well beaten in the end.

The only hope left was for Scotland to beat Australia. But Scotland is one of the weakest of the Six Nations. Australia have been magnificent throughout this tournament. Surely only a miracle could give Scotland the victory.

A miracle or a fairy tale. One of those great sports stories, beloved of Hollywood, where the unfavoured underdogs come good on the day and beat their fancied, powerful opponents.

Well, it nearly happened. With three minutes to go, Scotland was two points up. Then Australia was awarded a penalty, worth three points if successful. Which it was. So in the end Australia went through by a single point.

Scotland came so close to beating Australia
And making a fairy tale come true...

The fairy tale was not to be. 

It’s enough to shake my belief in the Walt Disney World. It’s enough to cast doubt on the existence of Father Christmas, even if you call him Santa Claus.

Anyway, the result is that we go into the last two weekends of the Rugby World Cup with not just the host nation eliminated, but the host hemisphere. The English often complain that we invent sports for the rest of the world to beat us: football (what everyone but the US call football, anyway), cricket, now rugby.

Indeed, as far as rugby’s concerned, it isn’t just the country of its invention that disappoints, it’s the whole continent.

Slaying dragons, or perhaps dinosaurs

It took a message from Catalan friends to remind that today is the Feast of St George, the pretext for a huge party out there. And it’s the day of our patron saint, too, back here in England (not Britain – England).

Barcelona's going to be having fun tonight

At first sight, it’s a curious coincidence that Catalonia and England share a patron saint, but a lot other places share him too, including Greece (and they really need a patron saint right now) and, naturally, Georgia.

St George has become a bit of a thing in England over the last couple of decades. The flag, red cross on a white ground, has begun to rival the Union Jack, that mish-mash that’s supposed to represent the whole of the United Kingdom: it’s made up of bits from the flags of England, Scotland, which is in the throes of an independence campaign, Ireland, most of which has long since gone, but not poor old loyal Wales. 

More about Wales later.

You see the flag of St George flown quite a bit these days, above all from church steeples. Church of England steeples, I suppose.

Flag of England on a Church steeple

The flag’s growth in popularity seems to be a reaction to the increasing nationalism of the Welsh and the Scots, which is a bit of a cheek, when you think that Welsh and Scots nationalism has grown in reaction to English nationalists lording it over them for centuries.

In any case, the most attractive aspect of St George is nothing to do with nationalism, but with his legendary exploits in slaying dragons. Now that’s something that we badly need again today. Or if not dragons, at least a few dinosaurs.

• The dinosaurs that inhabit the clubs of London, including the big one that meets in Parliament, and runs the Tory Party on the basis that the measure of a man is his wealth, and the greater his wealth, the better qualified he is to run the show.

• The dinosaurs in the US senate who’ve decided to react to the killing of twenty kids in Newtown by doing precisely nothing, even blocking the most limited control on guns, though they’ll doubtless react to the three deaths in Boston by clamouring for a war somewhere.

• The dinosaurs on both sides of the Atlantic who feel that the rights of an embryonic collection of cells in a uterus trump those of the grown, sentient, suffering woman to whom it belongs.

• The dinosaurs everywhere who think there’s a lot too much love in the world, so that any that occurs in couples of the same sex really ought to be locked away in the dark somewhere or, better still, banned.

• The dinosaurs who think that the best thing the poor can do is suffer a bit more to make sure that the fine people who run the place, can add a bit to their wealth. Maybe that’s just restating the first entry in this list but, hey, sometimes I feel it can’t be said loud enough or often enough.

So, come on St George! Show us what you’re made of and slay a dinosaur or two.

Which brings me back to Wales. That’s the country that’s not even significant enough to warrant inclusion on the Union Jack, but just when England, proud bearers of the flag of St George, were about to clinch the triumph of a Grand Slam in the Six Nations rugby championship – victory over every one of the other nations – who stepped up to deprive them? Wales, of course.

In the words of an Irish friend of mine, who adds insult to injury by living in Wales, they didn’t just beat England, they trashed England. I phoned to check whether he’d perhaps misspelled ‘thrashed’, but no, ‘trash’ was what he meant. And a trashing was what it was.

So, St George. If you don’t fancy taking on a dinosaur for us, let me point you towards Cardiff. There’s a dragon there on whom you might like to wreak revenge.

Welsh Dragon.
A target for St George if dinosaurs aren't his cup of tea

And, in the meantime, have a great party, my friends in Catalonia. And you Georgians too. As for the Greeks – see if you can at least drown your sorrows for one night.

And everyone else – happy St George’s, even if you don’t celebrate it.