Hey, New Zealand: couldn't you lend us Jacinda for a while?

It’s a tale of two accidental leaders…

Jacinda Ardern was never meant to be Prime Minister of New Zealand. Or at least not yet, not so early as to make her the youngest in a century and a half. She was serving as Deputy Leader of the New Zealand Labour Party when, just seven weeks ahead of the 2017 General Election, the then Leader, Andrew Little, stood down in the face of the dire poll standing of the party.

That’s not an issue for the British Labour Party under its present leadership. It trails a thoroughly discredited Tory government in the polls, at a point when it needs to be well ahead to stand any chance of winning the next election. But Corbynists shrug such matters off. There’ll be a surge, they say, as there was last time. They ignore the fact that the surge wasn’t enough to win and only produced a defeat less drastic than had been feared.

Funnily enough, Corbyn was an accidental leader too. He only stood for the leadership because no one else on the left was prepared to throw his name into the hat. He had no expectation of winning and, indeed, only made it onto the ballot because political opponents within Labour agreed to nominate him as a way of giving the left a chance to be in the game. They didn’t think he’d win either, and how they must be regretting it now.

As it happens, Ardern didn’t win the General Election. She came second with 46 parliamentary seats to the National (conservative) Party’s 56. But coalition negotiations allowed her to assemble a government and she took office. Since then, she’s impressed again and again, including in her personal behaviour: giving birth while in office in a way that charmed the nation.

At no time has she been more impressive than in response to the dire events that took place last Friday, 15 March. A new and far more dreadful Ides of March than those that marked the assassination of Julius Caesar. In Christchurch, a terrorist opened fire in two Mosques killing 50 worshippers and injuring many others.

Her statement to Parliament moved me to tears. She found an extraordinarily powerful way of expressing her total solidarity with the victims and their friends or relatives. It was a moving statement that said that these Muslim immigrants belonged to New Zealand and New Zealand belonged to them. It was a highly effective way of rejecting the views of anyone who might be inclined to nurse  xenophobic feelings towards the victims, a sense that it was tragic but nonetheless, they were somehow wrong to have come to New Zealand, that they were in some sense responsible for the attack on them.

She said:

We cannot know your grief, but we can walk with you at every stage. We can. And we will, surround you with aroha, manaakitanga and all that makes us, us. Our hearts are heavy but our spirit is strong.

Jacinda Ardern with the victims
Showing aroha, manaakitanga and ... leadership

She spoke of “us”, embracing all New Zealanders. And she underlined the message by using the Maori words for love and a much deeper sense of hospitality. The Prime Minister was saying categorically and clearly that the victims belonged in New Zealand and deserved its welcome.

Talking of the presumed perpetrator who, following her example, will not be named here, she said:

A 28-year-old man – an Australian citizen – has been charged with one count of murder. Other charges will follow. He will face the full force of the law in New Zealand. The families of the fallen will have justice.

He sought many things from his act of terror, but one was notoriety.

And that is why you will never hear me mention his name.

He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist.

But he will, when I speak, be nameless.

And to others I implore you: speak the names of those who were lost, rather than name of the man who took them.

He may have sought notoriety, but we in New Zealand will give him nothing. Not even his name.

I find it hard to read these words, courageous, outspoken, resolute, without feeling a pricking of tears in my eyes.

Compare them with what Jeremy Corbyn said when asked whether, in a second referendum, he might vote for Brexit:

It depends on what the choice is in front of us. If we’ve got a good deal in which we can have a dynamic relationship with Europe which is all the trading relationships and so on that might be a good way forward that unites the country.

“It depends”. A prevaricating, vacillating reply. And why does he make it? Because he thinks there is a Brexit deal that can unite the country. Which means he wants to pull in the xenophobes who voted to leave the EU out of a dislike of immigrants. Where Ardern tells xenophobes that New Zealand stands for different values, Corbyn tries to appease them.

He must know he can’t. Any deal that he would call ‘good’ would involve a softer Brexit that leave voters would regard as a betrayal. He’s making the same error so many others have made before him, not least David Cameron who called the Brexit referendum: he’s throwing raw meat to people who will only demand more, when they see that pushing their demands gives results.

Ardern stood firm and she’ll be admired for it. Corbyn yielded and he’ll be despised. Two accidental leaders, but only one is truly a leader, showing that accidents can turn out well on some occasions and pitifully badly on others.

How I wish we could borrow her for Britain, to lead Labour, and eventually the country. And send Corbyn back to his allotment to tend to his vegetables. He’d be much happier. As would Britain.

Alas, New Zealand wouldn’t let her go. But can we perhaps can find her like ourselves? At least she’s shown us what to look for.

Eloquent silence of the curious Mr Corbyn

It seems a crisis is stalking Britain. 

It’s the top story on bulletin after bulletin of the BBC. It’s the lead in many papers.

Migrants are crossing the Channel to Britain in small boats. At considerable risk to themselves, in a sea lane with some of the heaviest traffic in the world. Though the issue that seems to preoccupy people most is the way the migrants are undermining the borders that, as the Brexit vote showed, Britain is so keen to control.

The invading hordes have now reached the total of 239 people over two months. To give a proper sense of the dire scale of this incursion, the Greeks have had 500 people arrive by boat in the last week alone. Even in Britain, the Home Office reports that there have been 7444 applications for asylum in the last quarter.

Migrants in open boats in the Channel

It seems that 120 people a month coming over the Channel strike more fear in the British breast than nearly 2500 arriving by other means. Are Britons that terrified of boats? Or, at least, the xenophobes amongst us?

Not that everyone takes such an attitude.

The Bishop of Dover, Trevor Willmott, for instance commented:

It is crucial that we all remember that we are dealing with human beings here. Across the nation, we have been celebrating the season of hope and goodwill as we remember Christ’s birth – let’s not forget so soon that every person is precious.

Nor are such sentiments limited to Churchmen or even the British. John Kelly, soon to be Donald Trump’s former Chief of Staff, recently pointed out:

Illegal immigrants, overwhelmingly, are not bad people… I have nothing but compassion for them, the young kids.

Not everyone is so generous or tolerant. Here are comments from a couple of politicians. One commented that the government waxed lyrical:

… about control of our borders and being tough on security, but cannot seem to get a grip on criminal smugglers operating a few hundred miles of coastline. We cannot allow this to continue on our doorstep.

Another invited the Home Secretary to visit Dover where the migrants arrive:

I hope Sajid Javid will come and visit Dover and see how things are here at the Dover front line, look to creating a modern Dover patrol force, with the French, to make sure that any craft found in the Channel, whichever side of the line they are, are helped back safely and soundly to the French coast.

What I find most interesting about both those statements is that either could have been made by a Conservative. In fact, only the second one was – the Tory MP for Dover, Charlie Elphicke, speaking to the BBC, apparently feels the situation is grave enough to warrant military terms, such as ‘front line’.

The other is from a tweet by Diane Abbott, Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary. I tend to think of her as a close ally of the leader, Jeremy Corbyn, though she has established quite a track record as a maverick so she may have been flying off the handle a bit here on her own initiative.

In fact, it would be good to know what Corbyn himself thinks of this manufactured ‘crisis’. But, curiously, he’s staying completely silent. Although maybe that’s not as curious as one might think: he’s done this before.

Over Brexit, he managed to stay quiet on his true position until shortly before Christmas. His admirers claim that this was a clever ploy: he knew that Labour voters were split in their view of the EU. By not committing himself either way, he could hang onto the support of both groups. The stance was hardly honest or courageous, qualities his admirers claim for him, but they felt it was judicious.

As the debate enters its final stretch, he was inevitably going to have to come clean, however. This he did in a Guardian interview where he claimed that 40% of Labour voters were Brexiters. He then declared that if elected Prime Minister, he would continue the pursuit of Brexit, putting him on the side of the 40% – and I think that number’s inflated – instead of  lining up with the 60% – and I think the true figure’s higher – which you might think would have been smarter.

In any case, his refusal to take sides had simply fed the widespread suspicion that he was in fact a Brexiter. A suspicion his interview with the Guardian confirmed.

The odd thing about Corbyn is that, whatever his faults, he’s strong on speaking out for the vulnerable and underprivileged. The homeless for instance. So why hasn’t he spoken out for the people risking their lives crossing the Channel in small boats, at night, in winter? Why instead do we only have a statement from his Home Affairs spokesperson, who seems to want to reduce the issue principally to a matter of security and law enforcement?

This is where things become ugly.

A great many of the people he wants to court over Brexit only voted against EU membership out of xenophobia. They don’t like foreigners. They blame the EU for immigration and they want it curbed.

Given his track record over Brexit, and how he likes to use silence as a tactic, it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that Corbyn is keeping quiet now, to avoid offending Labour supporters who hold far right-wing views on race and immigration.

Jeremy Corbyn: you may like or dislike what he says
But it's when he goes quiet that he’s at his shadiest 

Sadly, it’s not going to be any more effective than his stance on Brexit was. And it’s ironic that a man who claims to be of the Left is appeasing the views of the hard Right. It also shows he’s learned nothing from the history of the 1930s. Throwing raw meat to the xenophobes doesn’t appease them. They only come back for more.

Much more.

The making of Eurodogs

It’s been a tough rite of passage, for Toffee and Luci, being turned into European toy poodles. A process not without its bright moments – indeed, there have been quite a few – but difficult all the same. Adaptation to change is never easy, is it?

Still, I’m sure it’s done them good. Neither had previously been out of Britain. In Toffee’s case, one could feel a certain incipient xenophobia, perhaps an infection from the toxic effect of Brexit. Certainly, where in Luton she’d always been prepared to be friendly towards selected dogs (small, unaggressive, with a certain je ne sais quoi, though I don’t know what that is), in France she barked at every passing dog, irrespective of size or attitude.

Which isn’t wise when you weigh not much more than a Great Dane’s evening meal and are barely shoulder high to a Pomeranian.

Luci, I’m glad to report, behaved in exactly the same way to the foreign dogs as to English ones: she backed away from them all, as she does with any people or dogs she doesn’t know. At least she was consistent across the Channel. So it seems she can’t be accused of xenophobia – she’s scared of everyone equally.

Exploring the Loire at Tours
When it comes to water, Luci still leads the way

What went better was that we visited some places they liked. They went bathing, at least at the paddling level, in the river Loire at Tours. They went paddling in the Atlantic at Mimizan, where Toffee developed a glorious technique of sideways jumps whenever the sea, in a devious and brutal manner, sent a larger wave than most to sweep her from her feet. Luci just enjoyed the water but Toffee, less brave with waves, preferred to keep out of the way.

Luci enjoying the Atlantic with Danielle
Toffee had decamped...

What they enjoyed least was the actual travelling bit. Twice we had to lift Toffee bodily into the car. In fact, the only thing that prevented her making a break for the long grass was, I suspect, the dread that we might actually leave her behind, a fate even worse than being forced into the car yet again.

She made her desire for freedom particularly clear when we stopped overnight in Lumpiaque, a town of 900 souls outside Zaragoza in Spain. It’s surrounded by fields and orchards – we were invited to help ourselves to figs, there were huge fields full of tomato plants that made Danielle sigh with envy, and excellent long walks along country paths. Toffee felt that we’d found a place after her own heart and could see no purpose in further travel in that nasty, smelly, wobbly thing we call a car.

Lumpiaque was fun for the humans, too. We had a meal in one of the three restaurants in the town. They weren’t really restaurants so much as bars that also did food. The kind of place where the proprietor proudly shows you her menu and then tells you which three of the fifteen or so dishes on it she can actually provide.

So the trip was a rite of passage for both dogs. But I think it coincided for Toffee with a coming of age, too – not always in the best way. For a long time, she has been a fierce defender of what is hers: Misty, our cat, or Luci were not allowed anywhere near her food, for instance. It was quite amusing watching that tiny bundle of fluff seeing off the massive Misty, twice her size and with claws as deadly as his teeth, whenever he had the gall to approach her bowl.

Now, though, she’s become a fierce defender of not just her own, but also of things that certainly aren’t hers. These days, when two bowls go down on the floor, she likes to move to the one that’s closest to Luci and start eating. If Luci then approaches the other one, Toffee moves back to it. She’s clearly worked out that making sure of your bowl is great, but having two to yourself is even better. I imagine she’d be blocked by a kind of glass kennel roof, but otherwise I could see her enjoying a glittering career on some board of directors in the City of London.

To be fair, she often leaves Luci her stuff. Say if they have a chew each as a treat. But then what she often does is to wait for Luci to finish while Toffee just toys with hers. Then, as soon as Luci’s finished, she’ll deliberately, ostentatiously and slowly nibble her way through hers with every sign of pleasure.

It’s cruel but so refined in its cruelty that I find it hard not to admire. Guiltily.

Luci does get her own back. The best way to get her to pee on a walk is to wait for Toffee to relieve herself. Then Luci will hurry to the spot and pee on top of it. I think she feels this gives her a certain superiority. I believe Toffee, who by then has generally gone off to look at something more interesting, doesn’t give a damn, and who could blame her? Still, if it makes Luci happy, who’d begrudge her that?

There are lots of things on which they see eye to eye, of course. They like Valencia and they like the flat, into which they’ve settled admirably. They enjoy defending it, too, against the Yorkie next door and the other Yorkie downstairs. They seem to have no linguistic barrier over communicating with Spanish dogs – both sides have a great time barking at each other.

Not that this kind of territorial defence had to wait until we got to Valencia. They were both engaging in it on the way. Though, honestly, it was a little hard to understand what they hoped to achieve. Defending a café terrace as their territory? A patch of beach? The space around a picnic table? I don’t see it.

So it’s great they now have something of their own to protect. Their flat. What’s more, it has a couch, just like the place in Luton. They’ve settled down on it and that makes it home. Doesn’t it?

Well on the way to being Eurodogs, both of them.

Settled

Freedom or rootlessness

It was a strange feeling setting the address for my mother’s flat into my car’s GPS for the last time. Even stranger turning up there and seeing it completely bare, just a space to be filled, without any of the jumble that had previously given it character and expressed her own.

They were ambivalent feelings. Once you’ve travelled the same route two or three hundred times, it’s a relief to know you won’t have to do it again. But the sense of relief is tinged by the sadness of the end of an era, when the one person you knew before you were even born has gone for good.

Good to be spared the drive. But I’ll miss the lunches

The death of my mother cut one of only two ties that kept me in Britain. My wife Danielle and I had decided we would, in time, move to Spain for her retirement and the rest of my working life – my job is one I can do from anywhere in Europe and, fortunately, I took the opportunity to take French nationality fifteen years ago, as an insurance policy against Brexit, which already seemed likely all that time ago.

The other tie to Britain was Danielle’s job. By coincidence, she was caught shortly after my mother’s death by the latest wave of redundancies in her company.

It wasn’t a fate unique to herself. A few dozen of her colleagues are also going, and two other companies on her business estate are laying off, while a fourth, from Germany, is moving its entire operation back home. Brexiters are always telling me that leaving the EU would free Britain to forge a powerful new presence on the world stage. If that’s so, it seems that we’re moving a long way back to get a runup to that seductive leap forward.

And that’s before Brexit has even happened.

With Danielle’s redundancy, the last constraint on our leaving has been removed. We’re free now, free to enjoy that freedom of movement that the EU guarantees and Britain, anxious to exclude immigrants, has rejected. Freedom feels good.

But the other side of the coin is a sense of rootlessness. For all its insularity and inclination to look backwards at a distant past that never happened, I liked my country. While my mother was alive, I had family here. While Danielle had her job, we both had livings here. Before Brexit, it kept its xenophobes in check.

Now those factors that formed something of an anchor have gone. Of course, the important thing with an anchor is not simply to drag it and end up adrift in increasingly rough seas. As we prepare for Spain, I like to think that instead we’ve deliberately hauled our anchor up, to set a new and more hopeful course.

After all, Spain is currently showing a much firmer attachment to liberal values than Britain. Spain is taking in migrants rather than leaving them to drown in the Mediterranean. Spain recently brought down an incompetent Conservative government to replace it with a Centre-Left one that might do rather better. A course that leads there strikes me as a good one to follow.

Our first step on that way is to put the house on the market. That, too, is a little ironic. We spent quite a lot just a year ago to make it far more comfortable. We won’t get the money back. We just have to take comfort from our enjoyment of a more pleasant house for the best part of a year. We have a track record of doing that: we spent a small fortune doing up a flat in Germany before moving back to England.

We’re far from alone in deciding that it’s time to move. The ‘For Sale’ or ‘To Let’ signs have been mushrooming all around our neighbourhood, though more especially in the streets with the cheaper housing. That’s where many immigrants from Poland or Eastern Europe live, and I wonder if it’s they who are going. After all, they can hardly feel entirely at ease in the foreigner-hostile environment Brexit has created.

'For Sale' or 'To Let' all the way down the street

So much property on the market could make selling our place more difficult. And time’s running out. With a hard Brexit looking increasingly likely, I can imagine that getting out after next March will prove far more difficult still.

It’s a shame. Britain was fun when it was more open, when so many – never everyone, of course, but many all the same – revelled in its multi-culturalism. It’s sad to see it declining, Trump-like, into a state that prefers walls to bridges. Walls that too many Brits think they can hide behind to keep the world out.

The Brexit illusion from which, sadly, they’re likely to suffer a painful awakening.

Is Labour really anti-Semitic?

There was a time when to be a British Jew was virtually tantamount to being a Labour Party supporter.

That was the case of the Jewish side of my family. My mother was an active Labourite, working as a secretary to a Labour MP during the Second World War, and true to that loyalty right up to her death at 94 two weeks ago.

Like her, I’ve never voted for any other party, and remain a member to this day.

That makes it sad to see that a breach has opened up between Jews and the Labour Party today. A personal sadness for myself. But also ultimately for the Labour Party itself.

The current conflict focuses on Labour’s refusal to adopt in its entirety the definition of anti-Semitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA). Or rather, not to accept all the accompanying examples.

Three Jewish papers express their anger at Labour's stance

As it happens, the IHRA’s text is weakly drafted and open to multiple interpretations. Take this suggested example of anti-Semitism:

Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.

The Labour leadership objects to it because they see it as limiting the freedom to criticise the state of Israel. However, I see no basis for saying it prevents anyone saying that when the Israeli government reduces the rights of its Arab citizens. Nor does it prevent anyone arguing that by doing so, the Israeli government and many citizens are displaying racist attitudes. As they are.

Indeed, it does not even prevent anyone arguing, as I do, that setting up the state of Israel was an error. It has always struck me as way for Americans and Europeans to salve their consciences over Europe’s failure to learn to iive with its Jews. In effect, we said ‘we can’t learn to live with you, so go away and set up your own country, even at the cost of the people living there today.’

Today, though, it’s far too late. The state of Israel exists and is home to about 6.5m Jews. That’s a reality with which anyone trying to argue about Middle East politics simply has to come to terms.

What is it about that example that annoys the Labour leadership? What argument do they feel it limits their right to express? Do they want to protect the freedom to argue that the Jewish population of Israel has no right to self-determination?

Let’s see where that argument would lead in practice. If that population has no right to self-determination, Israel has no right to exist. If it has no right to exist, then it’s legitimate to use force to bring it to an end. And what would happen to the Jews in the region? We would be backing a policy of ethnic cleansing of Jews.

Is that a position anyone in Labour really wants to take? I can’t imagine a more clearly anti-Semitic stance.

It makes no difference that Israel, while asserting the Jewish right to self-determination denies it to the Palestinians. The bad behaviour of the Israeli government does not justify Labour backing the use of violence against Israel’s citizens.

Another IHRA example of anti-Semitism to which Labour leaders object reads:

Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

Again, what right are they trying to uphold? Comparisons with the Nazis are the most facile and futile of arguments. Unless a government has deliberately set out to exterminate an entire race, the comparison is false. Injustice, collective punishments or excessive force against civilians are shameful crimes that Israel has committed, but so have the US and Britain. Perhaps a parallel with them would make more sense than a comparison with the Nazis.

In any case, why would Labour pay a high political price just to allow some of its members to make so lazy and intellectually weak a case?

Because the price is high. Had Labour simply adopted the full IHRA definition and examples, it would have won itself some credit with the Jewish community. It would have undermined the opponents who are now making mileage from the accusations of anti-Semitism. Instead, they have handed their enemies a weapon they could hardly have hoped for in their wildest dreams.

There is, however, another explanation. I’m afraid things turn a bit ugly at this point.

It could be argued that this is all about too little. There are only around a quarter of a million Jews in Britain. Labour could win every single Jewish vote and fail to win an election, or it could lose every single one and still get in.

Besides, though I don’t have statistical evidence for it, my persona experience suggests that British Jews have moved to the right since my mother was young. Like many immigrant communities, they started out on the left while they were poor and oppressed. But as they became prosperous and assimilated, many drifted rightwards.

So maybe there aren’t many votes for Labour to win among the Jewish. How much do they matter to figures in the leadership who suspect them anyway, because of their sympathy for Israel?

The people who matter much more are those traditional Labour voters who, out of xenophobia and delusion that Brexit would benefit them, went over to the far right. That’s why we have the paradox of figures on the left sharing a platform with the hardest nationalists, notably veteran left winger Kate Hoey posing for photo opportunities with Nigel Farage, then leader of the crypto-fascist United Kingdom Independence Party.

After all, there are several million of those voters.

The calculus is easy to follow. On the other hand, many of us in Labour would like to see it being a little more principled than that.

A party that cosies up to the hard right but can’t will make no concessions to show some respect for Jews? That’s not the party my mother and her friends backed in the forties.

How I wish we could get that party back.

Anglos of the World Unite!

Donald Trump approaches the end of his first hundred days with no achievements to boast for them. He tried to undo Obamacare and failed (fortunately). There’s no sign of the improvement in employment or earnings he promised for the poor. He has, however, managed to indulge in some mean-spirited xenophobia with his travel bans. Now he’s running the risk of shutting down the government of the US altogether because he can’t raise the funds to build his wall along the Mexican border. That’s because he has apparently failed in his stated aim to get Mexico to pay for it. The wall is, of course, another measure against the dreaded foreigner.

And yet his supporters remain firmly wedded to him: 81% of Republicans in a recent poll say they are mainly excited and optimistic about his presidency.

Meanwhile in Britain, it becomes increasingly clear that Brexit is going to deliver few if any of the benefits expected of it. Already inflation is edging upwards and, with austerity policies keeping earnings down, that means living standards are being squeezed. Well, squeezed for the poor: the wealthy have seen their incomes and wealth grow impressively since the 2008 crash. In society generally, growth is slowing except in the opening of food banks, for which the demand keeps trending upwards. In spite of all that, much of the population seems convinced that all that matters is to control immigration, to keep out the foreigner.

That desire apparently sustains continued support for Brexit, though it’s far from certain that leaving the European Union will even lead to a reduction in immigration.

Meanwhile, Australia has won itself quite a reputation for its handling of illegal immigrants and refugees, holding many of them in detention centres, some outside its own territory and administered by a private-sector company. Conditions in some of these camps have led to serious controversy, with allegations of beatings, insults and sexual assaults. One of the most controversial, in Papua New Guinea, is slated to close. Meanwhile, attempts to get information out about the centres are blocked by the Australian government.

It seems that Australia too dislikes foreigners.

The Manus Processing Centre on Papua New Guinea
slated to close, but leaving an image to awaken sad memories

It has now been reported that there is debate within the British Conservative Party about withdrawing Britain from the European Convention on Human Rights. The Convention has nothing to do with the EU. British lawyers played a leading role in its drafting and it was enthusiastically endorsed by Winston Churchill. It predominantly guarantees rights to citizens but, because it can be used by foreigners, sometimes unappealing ones like the Islamist cleric Abu Qatada, many British citizens would like the country to withdraw.

They’d rather see their own rights curtailed in order to deny them to foreigners.

The French talk about the “Anglo-Saxon” world, embracing such countries as the US, UK and Australia. They believe the Anglos have a culture distinct from their own. It’s hard not to feel they have a point. After all, France seems set on barring the far right from its Presidency, while many in the English-speaking world are intent on declining further into xenophobia and the protection of privilege at the cost of rights.

It feels to me as though the Anglo-Saxon world needs a new slogan. I have a modest proposal. How about:

“Anglos of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your rights. You have an elite to feed.”

Catchy, isn’t it?

Roman Britain? Why, for pity's sake?

There’s something strange about the notion of ‘Roman Britain’. So strange as to seem nearly incomprehensible. And never more so than when I travelled home to England from Rome on Friday.

That morning I had a couple of hours free before I set off for the airport. I decided to pack my coat in my suitcase and head out to find ‘I Dolci di Nonna Vincenza’, the pastry shop my wife discovered and was seduced by when she was out there with me in February.

This meant I was out of doors in a shirt and light pullover. Pretty soon, I was regretting that I hadn’t packed away the pullover too. It was early March but I was wandering the streets in shirtsleeves with a pullover draped comfortably if not particularly stylishly over my shoulders.

At the time of Roman Britain, Rome was certainly the most prosperous city in Europe, in the running for most prosperous in the world. And the weather was doubtless as glorious as it is now. Why would anyone want to go and stand guard on the Empire’s borders in fog-bound, rain-swept Britain?

These were thoughts that invaded me once the glow of homecoming with pastries from ‘Granny Vincenza’ had faded to be replaced by the duty – a pleasurable duty but a duty nonetheless – of walking the dogs. They enjoy their walks and I’m sure they cope with the rain. They even look quite amusing when they get soaked, whereas I suspect I just look bedraggled and a bit sad. Wouldn’t it be fun if we had some of the weather here that I was enjoying in Rome?

A certain charm when wet

I couldn’t help wondering why on earth anyone left Rome to go and stand guard in the fog and rain of Hadrian’s Wall, the Trump-like structure the Empire built against the weird and dangerous barbarians who inhabited Scotland then as now.

The truth, of course, is that few of them did. I imagine the officers would mostly have been younger sons of middle-ranking families, perhaps men looking to make a name for themselves in the legions in the hope of building a career later somewhere more promising and more comfortable. Even they, though, would I suspect have drawn a short straw.

Among the rank and file and the non-commissioned officers, there might have been a few Romans. But the majority were Germans. Tribesmen desperate in the ghastly, and even wetter plains and forests of northern Germany, who had worked out there were only two ways of enriching themselves: raid the prosperous empire west of them, or go over to it in the hope of sharing some of its wealth. The ones on the wall had made the wise choice of joining an army they couldn’t beat.

The orders on the Wall were probably given in Latin. I expect they were executed in German. I’m reminded of a young black colleague in South Africa, who explained to me that as well as English, he also worked in Zulu and Xhosa, but “naturally, I know how to take instruction in Afrikaans”. It was probably like that on the wall.

Hadrian's Wall: Trump-like structure
A failed last line of defence against the scary Scots

After the Romans left Britain, the Romanised Celts who took over clearly felt they could play the same game. They brought in more Germans, mercenaries, to help them fight the wars that broke out between their little kingdoms. But unfortunately, though they saw themselves as inheritors of the grandeur of Rome (one of them was probably the prototype of ‘King Arthur’), they didn’t have the clout of Rome. At its height, Rome probably only had between 15,000 and 20,000 legionaries in Britain, but they were redoubtable troops and the real fear for, say, rebellious German auxiliaries – maybe 40,000 strong – was that the legions could quickly be reinforced from the Continent by men who would exact a terrible vengeance.

The British kings didn’t have that deterrent force. When their mercenaries decided they didn’t want to go home, but preferred to stay, grabbing themselves some of the best land without so much as a thank you, and more likely with a blow, there wasn’t much the little kings could do about it.

And before very long the Celtic tribesmen, Romanised or not, found themselves either (a) dead, (b) pushed into Wales or (c) assimilated into the new Anglo-Saxon dispensation that had taken over the land. A large portion of Southern Britain had become England.

It occurs to me that this may be the root of the xenophobia so many Englishmen continue to suffer from and which fuelled the Brexit vote. Deep in our atavistic souls we feel that we are immigrants ourselves, outsiders who overstayed our welcome and took over. Some at least fear that the same thing might happen again, as we bring in Poles and Bulgarians to run our health service, our hotels and our trains, and worry that they won’t go home. After all, there’s a terrible risk that Johnny Foreigner may prove much better at those jobs than a lot of our own people.

We know what happened when we pulled off that trick against the original Brits.

Strange, though, isn’t it? After all, if I could choose between a balmy March morning in Rome and a wind- and rain-swept one in England, I know which would seem preferable. 

Believe me, I’ve had recent experience of both.

The trump, trump, trump of repressive boots

Nothing excuses the German election of a ranting, bigoted demagogue in the 1930s. But at least one can understand the trauma of a nation that had been beaten in a ruinous war, only to stumble into an unprecedented financial crisis in which the cost of living rose fifteen-fold in just six months of 1922; barely had they stabilised their currency than they were hit by the great depression and watched unemployment climb to 30%. One can understand the despair and therefore the blind groping that drove a large enough minority (the Nazis never won a majority) to choose an inexcusable, and false, solution to their problems.

But what explains the Americans? One of the wealthiest nations on Earth, the United States has 4.9% unemployment and inflation inching towards 1.6%. So why choose another hate-filled merchant of fear? The worst problem economically in the US is that wealth is so badly distributed, so that a small percentage of enormously rich individuals can hire or fire at will, forcing others to live precariously and on inadequate incomes – but the Americans have just chosen one of those individuals to occupy the White House.

Indeed, he has promised to do away with the one significant achievement of Obama’s White House, the one measure designed to alleviate the inequity of wealth, the Affordable Care Act (‘Obamacare’).

They have chosen a man who has promised the impossible: to bring industries back to the rust belt, to build a wall against illegal immigration, to prevent terrorists gaining entry to the US. He can only disappoint but he’ll wreak terrible suffering along the way: arrests, deportations, denial of basic rights.

Along that road, women will lose essential rights over their own bodies, and the major social progress of the last half century, towards toleration of minorities, most notably of LGBT communities, will be at least partially rolled back. And yet many women voted for Trump in preference to Clinton, though they know he holds them in contempt. Indeed, the only white demographic in which she won a majority was among educated white women – and even then, she only took 51%.

One of the more telling images of this most divisive election

The key word in that last paragraph is “white”. Something ugly has happened in the US. I can’t help feeling that what’s going on is the re-emergence of a white supremacist temptation that many feel, and most had learned to suppress in recent decades. Obama had seized the White House and, though he pulled off the feat of re-election in 2012, I suspect there is a widespread feeling among many whites that his success showed blacks getting altogether too uppity. With a candidate who openly expressed these feelings and therefore seemed to legitimise them, far too many were prepared to turn to him.

They did so despite the clear warnings he’d given of the damage he would do with the power they were handing him.

Trump’s is the victory of fear and hatred over reason and tolerance. Sadly, that’s by no means a purely US phenomenon. It emerged strongly in Britain too, in June, when the country voted to leave the European Union. At the time, there was much talk of the need to protect sovereignty and put an end to the erosion of supposed British rights. The reality was clear before and has been confirmed since, that the true concern was with keeping minorities at arms’ length.

Even Theresa May has been openly proclaiming that what the electorate voted for was tighter control of immigration. In other words, just like the white American voters fearful of people who look different from them, or have sex differently, or worship differently, Britain voted to throw up the walls and keep the foreigners out. I know a number of long-term foreign residents in Britain, and there have been media reports of many others, who were asked within hours of the referendum vote when they’d be leaving.

Xenophobes and white supremacists felt legitimised in Britain by the Brexit vote, as they did by the Trump campaign in the States.

On both sides of the Atlantic, a small majority of closed-minded individuals, driven by basic – and base – feelings of hatred and fear have taken control of the destinies of us all. There are grim times ahead. There will undoubtedly be regression, on many fronts. Hard though it is, we have to keep up our spirits and continue pressing as effectively as we can for a return to progressive, tolerant, open-minded attitudes. We have to maintain our hope that in time those better values will prevail.

With, I’m afraid, absolutely no guarantee that they will. Though if we don’t keep up the pressure, we can guarantee they won’t.

Xenophobia: the comforting game everyone can play. Well, nearly everyone

The great thing about xenophobia is that it makes you feel so good.

All you have to do is belong to the majority. In England, say, you just need to be white and native-born. Though it helps if you’re not associated with any of those tedious minority religions – you know, Islam or Hinduism or even Judaism, I suppose, except that the Jews are pretty much part of ‘us’ now.

Then, because you’re in the majority and we live in a democracy, which is about the rule of the majority, you’re basically doing all right. And you can blame all those other people for everything that’s going wrong. You know, their skin’s a bit too tanned, say, so they’re trouble makers. Maybe they speak some strange language you don’t like the sound of, so you ask them when they’re going back home, now we’ve voted for Brexit. Or worse still they say silly things like “Allahu Akbar” when they pray, which is a war cry, isn’t it? So they must be terrorists.

The trick is to keep those people out or, if they’re already here, keep them in their place, because they’re different. We can go round telling them to stop being different – demanding that they dress like us, for instance. After all, we want to see their faces, so that we can see the colour of their skin and feel superior.

Being white and ‘Christian’ – which basically means not one of those annoying minority religions – is good but it’s even better if you’re also male. And, to be honest, despite gay marriage and all that, it helps if you’re straight. It’s true that if you add those characteristics in, you’re not part of the majority any more, but hey, you can still behave as though you are and, oddly enough, the electorate seems to treat you as though you’re the majority which means you still have the whiphand, and that’s what matters.

And, if we’re going to be really honest, even within that slightly artificial – perhaps we could say ‘constructed’ – majority things aren’t completely the same for everyone. Some are from the north, and England being England, that means they don’t count for much. Actually, the Midlands and the South West don’t really have much weight within the constructed majority either. Basically, the majority is men who live or work in London.

Even there, though, there’s a bit of a difference. Some people, unbelievably, even in London, are only on median salaries or maybe just a small multiple of the median. What do they add up to? They can’t be said to matter as much as those who are on 40 or 50 or 100 times the median.

"And all those poor morons are focused on their Xenophobia?"
Laughing all the way to the bank

I suppose that’s the real majority. The ones who’ve bought themselves the power and can really call the shots. But of course they don’t add up to an awful lot of voters. So the key thing is to get a few more people to do the right kind of voting, so that the fake majority – the ones who are just white, native-born and not in a minority religion – hand the real majority – the handful on seven-figure salaries – the authority they want and know they deserve.

That’s the beauty of xenophobia. It keeps the numerical majority fixated with outsiders rather than the insiders who are living on their backs. It makes them feel good about themselves because they think that just by being ethnically and religiously with the mainstream, they’re part of the real majority, the constructed majority. That makes sure they do the things its authentic members need.

Wonderful arrangement, isn’t it? Xenophobia’s such fun for everyone.

Well, nearly everyone.

Well, at any rate, the tiny number of people who make the decisions for everyone.

Polish residents, Polish police, in Britain

It’s curious to read that two Polish police are being deployed in each of London and Harlow, the latter the scene of a recent fatal attack on a Polish resident which also injured another.

Polish police join an English colleague on patrol in Harlow

The Poles have become the biggest single group of foreign-born residents in Britain. In the atmosphere of heightened xenophobia, which I assume was present but pent-up before the Brexit vote but has been released by it, Poles have become the major target of the increased wave of hate violence.

On a couple of occasions recently I’ve been accused of displaying insufficient pride in my country. I’d have no difficulty pleading guilty to the offence if I thought it was one. I have a hard time, however, thinking of patriotism, notoriously described by Samuel Johnson as the last refuge of the scoundrel, as a virtue.

What, after all, am I supposed to feel proud about? I take pleasure in the great results won by British athletes at the Paralympics, feeling a bond with my compatriots. But pride? I didn’t contribute to their success except indirectly and at tiny scale through taxes. The achievement was theirs, not mine; to take pride in it feels terribly like claiming undeserved credit.

In any case, it’s not as though my country’s only achievements are matters of pleasure. Am I supposed also to feel pride over our forces’ involvement in Iraq? Our role in the badly-judged and ill-fated intervention in Libya? Or, looking at other areas, in Maggie Thatcher’s attempt to ban literature about homosexuality from our classrooms? David Cameron’s sustained assault on the miserly support we provide to the poor and ill? The aversion towards foreigners that inspired Brexit and the murder in Harlow?

Perhaps a small anecdote will explain why I don’t go along with these feelings.

For our first two years where we currently live, we were cursed with a neighbour from hell. She would hold all night parties five or six times a month, apparently drug-fuelled events which would run from midnight until midday, where festivities followed a constantly repeated pattern: raucous laughter and merry shouting, followed by karaoke singing at volume, followed by tearful recriminations and fighting interspersed with cursing and the noise of breaking crockery; after a brief pause, the cycle would start again with the laughter and shouting.

The police, starved of resources, would not assist. That’s in spite of one police employee telling me down the phone, one night at 2:00 am, “Oh, my God! I can hear her from here!”

It took two years to get her out of the place, but we and the neighbours on the other side eventually managed it by dint of constant complaints and phone calls to the landlord and the agent. In the meantime, she’d broken some of our belongings and stolen others, but we felt that was a small price to pay.

Since then, we’ve had a new family next door who never disturb us, for whom we accept packages and who accept packages for us, with whom we exchange friendly greetings when we meet. An extraordinary relief. A way of re-establishing our belief in the inherent decency of people.

The new neighbours are Polish. The old one was English.

Does that illustrate why I don’t go along with appeals to patriotism? And above all reject popular prejudice against Poles?

There may be a new hope for all of us in the arrival of Polish police in Britain. Just as it was a blessing to replace a foul English neighbour by likeable Polish ones, maybe we could benefit from more Polish policemen too – replacing the hopeless English ones who wouldn’t come out when we needed support against the ghastly Englishwoman next door.

In the meantime, anything that helps stop the kind of xenophobic violence that led to the Harlow murder has to be welcome.

Even if, as I suspect, the Polish police presence is just a gimmick for the moment.

A second vote on the EU: why not?

It’s not something to say too loud these days and, believe me, even I find it hard ever to express agreement with Tony Blair, but he’s right in what he says about the UK and Europe.

Certainly, if British voters change their mind, they have the right to a second vote. There’s nothing immoral or undemocratic about that. After all, the first vote was entirely negative: British voters opted to leave the EU, but they didn’t choose to go anywhere in particular. It’s one thing to decide you don’t like your job but, though some do it, it’s always struck me as a little imprudent to resign before you have a new one. How do you know it won’t be far worse?

The vote on 23 June was exactly like that. A small majority voted to leave the EU without expressing any preference on where to go next. That means that majority was made up of people with profoundly incompatible views about what they wanted to happen.

There are at least two major scenarios for what comes next, with many variations in detail between them.

The first is that we really, genuinely leave the EU. Completely. So that in our trade relations with the rest of the world – including the EU – we start from scratch, having to negotiate individual bilateral deals with no particular advantage as a starting point. A deal with China. A deal with the US. A deal with the EU. A deal with Ecuador, Bhutan, Burkina Faso. Our opening position is simply the rules of the World Trade Organisation, with no favourable arrangement with anyone in particular.

The second scenario is that we somehow manage to stay inside the Single Market. That means highly favourable trade terms with the EU – the same as we enjoy right now. That’s an option that comes with conditions, however. The most striking is that, unless Britain negotiates with consummate skill and the leaders of the other EU nations decide to be far more flexible than looks likely, we would have to accept freedom of movement of people and therefore unlimited rights for EU citizens to move here and work here.

The first of these options will, I suspect, look gloomy to a great many people who voted for Brexit. Britain will be paying for years, probably decades, for a decision to reset its trading relationships to zero.

As for the second, Theresa May as Prime Minister has made it clear that there can be no compromise over freedom of movement. By saying that, she endorses the xenophobia which, it’s becoming increasingly clear, was the main drive behind probably a large majority of the Leave voters: keep the foreigner out.

With the alternative to the EU clear, it’s possible the majority might crumble.

“You wanted out,” we’d in effect be saying, “but do you still that way if it means having to face the world alone and start making new deals with every single other nation, without the punch that either an Empire or EU membership gives?”

Or, alternatively, “You wanted out, but do you still feel happy with that arrangement if you have to accept the same terms as Norway, paying in the same contributions as we used to pay, with freedom of movement still in place, accepting all EU regulations but no longer having a voice over them?”

I wonder whether the majority would stand up faced with a stark realisation of what its choice really meant?

Good move on the anniversary of a declaration of war

Postscript It was good to see demonstrations taking place around Britain in favour of the EU, on 3 September – 77th anniversary of the declaration of war between Britain and Germany, for the second time in a generation, back in 1939. It’s worth remembering the depth of horror the EU was designed to avoid in the first place.

Immigration: aiming at the wrong target

We never seem to stop talking about immigration these days. And yet the real problem we face isn’t immigration – it’s precisely all that talk about it. Or more generally, the someone-else-to-blame mentality that lies behind all the hot air and bad temper.

Anti-Immigration: it's all the rage
Even among people descended from immigrants

One of the more remarkable women I know of was Emilie du Châtelet. She became a champion, in the eighteenth century, of what the best recent student of her life, calls “feminine ambition”: she forced the scientific world to take her seriously, publishing extensively on physics, including a translation of Newton’s Principia which she raced to complete before her premonition of death was verified.

She had a servant called Sébastien Longchamp, who would ultimately be dismissed from the household she shared at the time with Voltaire. Decades later, after his own death and even that of the man who published them, Longchamp’s Memoirs of his time with the illustrious couple appeared. One has to question the reliability of such a source; even so, there are some stories he tells in his ‘what the Bulter saw’ document, that ring true.

He tells, for example, of a summons to her bathroom, to fetch more hot water from the fireplace and pour it into the bath. As he came to edge, he realised that she was entirely naked, and the water completely transparent. To avoid being scalded, she parted her legs so that he could pour the water safely away from them. When he tried to do so with his eyes averted, she admonished him for getting the hot water too close to her body, so he was obliged to watch what he was doing and therefore view her naked.

Mme du Châtelet was by no means promiscuous. She would certainly not have appeared naked before a man. But that precisely is the point: Longchamp was not a man. He was a servant, and to a noble such as Emilie, that is less than a man. There was no need for modesty before him.

An outspoken champion of rights – hers at least – against the stubborn conservatism of her time could harbour such views. That may make it less surprising that men who took their commitment to freedom and equality so far as to engage in armed rebellion against British rule in North America, could nonetheless condone slavery. There’s no doubt that men like Thomas Jefferson were made uneasy about keeping slaves, but not enough to free them, at least in their own lifetimes.

Surely the answer is that they didn’t see their slaves as truly men or women (they certainly saw them as women in some measure: Jefferson fathered several children on one). Like Longchamp, the slaves were lesser humans, different enough from the masters to warrant denying them their liberty.

Now fast forward two and a half centuries.

We live in a world that is more unequal than at any time since the end of the Second World War. In England, 1.4 million people have an annual income of under £6000 a year; 6000 have an income over £1 million. On their own, the income of each of those super-rich is worth over 150 times that of the people at the bottom. And there many hundreds of people who take many more times still that lowest level.

With that excess money, they can fund politicians and buy them. They can threaten to move their wealth elsewhere to get their way. They have in particular bought the British Tory Party, and are now buying UKIP; it is no accident that while their earnings have grown over the last four years, those of the poorest have fallen still further.

The people who take that money and exercise that power know they deserve it. They know they are exceptional. They excel those who have, and receive, less. In other words they know themselves to be superior. The rest of us may be human, but we are a lesser kind of human. 

 There are 6000 of them which, funnily enough, was the size of the French aristocracy in the eighteenth century too. Like them, their position is based entirely on wealth. It’s no surprise that they preserve and maintain the same attitudes.

There are so many more of us. And we have votes. Why don’t we put an end to their domination?

Because instead of opposing them, we aspire to be like them. We protect the rights of the wealthy in the hope that some day we’ll join their ranks, and enjoy that protection.

However, since we certainly don’t want to blame ourselves for our troubles, we have to find someone else to blame. How about immigrants? There are relatively small numbers, they’re relatively easy to spot, and it’s easy to come up with some kind of justification based on our being the true possessors of this land while they are interlopers in it. Though the English took the country from the Celts, as did the French, and the Americans took it from the Natives who were there before them.

That’s the trap that UKIP or the Tea Party or the Front National in France lure us into. Blame the other, the foreigner, the alien. The lesser human.

The death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, and above all the fact that his killer has avoided any kind of justice, shows how those ideas are as strong today as they ever were. American Blacks may not be slaves, but who can say that Whites regard their lives as equally valuable?

Here one in six of our voters rally to the xenophobes of UKIP, and a higher still proportion of French voters flock to the Islamophobic Marine Le Pen. So we talk endlessly about the perils of immigration and do nothing about those who steal the bread from our mouths.

What of those people, the ones who really run the show and cause our problems? 

They’re laughing at the lot of us. All the way to the bank.