Two days of enforced inactivity can be good for you, if chosen as a thing to do. I have spent the last two days being inactive. That, however is because I got food poisoning on my way back from Brussels. Thursday night is something I would rather forget, but won't, I fear. I might try food again this morning. It will make a change from living on tea alone.
But there are plus sides. I felt tired enough to watch some football yesterday and not think about anything else. And I pretty much ignored all the news: I knew full well I was not going to write about it.
Maybe, on reflection, I should do that more often. It would seem nothing changed. The Cabinet is still at war with itself. The motorcades that interrupted my progression around Brussels on Thursday did not give rise to a Brexit breakthrough. We are still in a mess.
So I have pondered on how deep that mess is, and what the appropriate comparisons might be. It's hard to be sure what they are. The 1930s were grim. But there wasn't, maybe, the political paralysis that we now see.
The Irish question in the last 19th century created some paralysis, but it has to be contrasted with a nation that was, overall, confident with itself.
The comings and goings of German royalty on the British throne created various stresses in the 18th century that continued until the Victorian era but not, as far as I can see, a paralysis to match that we now have.
I have to really go back to the English Civil War era to find anything to match that. That is both in the era leading to the war, and in its aftermath when stable government around any constant bar Cromwell proved to be impossible.
And Theresa May is no Cromwell.
Nor can Brexit be equated to the Parliamentary cause, in my opinion.
Maybe, then, we are just in an unprecedented mess. But let's not pretend otherwise now: this is a mess of our collective choosing. Despite its very obvious failings the government enjoys high levels of political support. Maybe that's because Brexit is now a fault line in politics that will last for generations, in the way the Irish Civil War still resonates in that country, even now. And maybe that's because some really cannot imagine that Labour will deliver on Brexit even though I have no doubt Corbyn wants it. And maybe that's because Remainers really do have no one with the remotest chance of power who seems to speak for them. Whatever it is, the paralysis extends beyond Westminster. The whole country has no idea what to do.
Rational voices can predict all they like what might happen in that case. Their dire warnings are heartfelt and genuine, I suspect. For once, the elite are threatened: if the businesses for which they work leave the UK then their cosy lives will be disrupted. But the business elite will be ignored. As will Unite's appeal to Labour to allow a second referendum go by the wayside.
I suspect that a nation that does not know who it is anymore, and that does not know what it wants, and has no idea where it is going, or what part it wants to play in the world, has decided to withdraw to regroup. It may not have done so consciously: it is very hard to say that anything about the Leave campaign was conscious or informed, but that does not mean that it we as a nation are not now going to withdraw and regroup, come what may.
To guess what will happen is very hard, beyond saying it will be painful.
I strongly suspect the UK is over: Scotland and Northern Ireland will leave. I am not sure about Wales as yet.
I strongly suspect that political realignment will happen in those countries leaving the UK. But in England? That is anyone's guess.
All I am sure of is that the cost of this breakdown of a nation will be high.
And how long will it last? The Interregnum was 12 years as I recall. I can't see the current turmoil lasting for less.
And in that time there will be everything to be fought for. It may be in vain. There's always that risk. But to pretend that the fight will not be on now as we head for ever increasing chaos as Brexit approaches would be the ultimate folly. To get through what is going to happen we have to believe the other side, when we reach it, will be better. There is no other option to endure the mayhem coming our way.
On which thought I have to now decide if I can face breakfast, or not, as yet and whether mayhem will ensue if I do. I have to risk it, just as we as a country will eventually have to take the risk of engaging again. But it won't be for a while. And we will be in a very different place when we do.
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“I got food poisoning on my way back from Brussels” – time to leave the EU and eat chlorinated chicken?
Iain Macwhirter isn’t too hopeful either about May’s “strategy”: http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/16325601.iain-macwhirter-the-mad-riddle-of-brexit-will-end-with-britain-declaring-economic-war-on-brussels/?ref=fbshr
…and just in case any didn’t get yesterday’s The National – it’s that Scottish Currency again: http://www.thenational.scot/comment/16324597.sterlingisation-would-leave-an-independent-scotland-economically-weak/
I must have been feeling ill
I forgot to look for it!
One for the blog later this morning
Thanks
Richard,
I trust you have a speedy recovery; a little rest and relaxation is wise.
I do not agree with your perspective on the 1930s. Britain has a standard response to unpleasant self-discoveries; self-induced amnesia. The Conservative Party is particularly accomplished at this adroit self-forgetting (Duncan-Smith fecklessly blundered around this only last week – and people scarcely noticed the irony); I suspect most of Britain’s heating, until around the early 1960s, was fuelled by the burning of vast quantities of papers that it was considered inadvisable ever saw the light of day, within both the Party and Government. For example, it is extraordinary to me that nobody has written a book (so far as I know) about Sir Joseph Ball, who was certainly capable of brightly illuminating our understanding of our own shadowy history: actually, it isn’t extraordinary at all (I made that up) – I would rather be astounded if it ever happened; it would now be a very short book, and nobody wants to go there.
The problem is, I think discovered in your observation “Rational voices can predict all they like”; as David Hume so deftly advised, we are not rational. Rationalism in human affairs is often a disguise for Rationalisation (and typically, ex-post).
In an earlier thread now closed, I was critical of the hopelssly inadequate, crude (essentially Benthamite) psychology to be discovered underpinning Neoliberal economics. Marco Fante made a point of identifying Behavioural Finance as setting the record straight. I would identify two schools of what is perhaps better termed Behavioural Economics; currently at an early stage of development, and healthily – not wholly in agreement: Richard Thaler, whose ‘Quasi-Rational Economics’ gives us a clue; and Gerd Gigerenzer, ‘Bounded Rationality’, who book-ends where this train of thought is going.
“Reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions”. As we can currently, and quite obviously see – it certainly is.
Those look like things to follow up
I overlooked Jonathan Pile’s ‘The King’s Secret’ (2012) on Ball (which I must of course correct – and there is the Poliakoff film ‘Glorious 39’), but as Pile himself acknowledges, some of the Bodleian Library folios held of the Ball Papers were closed to his researchs; and it is established that Ball destroyed everything he could (vast quantities) before he died. We do not have the facts.
🙂
Jonathan Pile’s ‘Churchill’s Secret Enemy’ (2012). There are some days nothing seems to work!
Or Joseph Ball is still able to spread disinformation; even from beyond the grave …..
Hope you feel better soon.
The interregnum was 12 years. Then the monarchy, Tories and the church of England was restored in 1660. At various points it looked like one side had won, The Parliamentary Rebels in 1648 and the King in 1660. Twenty nine years later the King was deposed by the Whigs -with most Tory support. In 1689 Parliament imposed on the new King , most of the measures they had urged on Charles 1st fifty years before. The wheel turns. It may yet turn out well. We can hope.
Good points.
Ian
the Catholic Irish have a rather different view of the “Glorious Revolution.” An abstract from my PP article http://www.progressivepulse.org/ireland/on-ypres-and-poppies
The military efforts of my ancestors were seldom on the side of the British, though they were heavily involved in the War of the Two Kings, also known as the Williamite war. Naturally as Irish Catholics they were on the side of King James and sadly lost (in 1691). Victors get to write the history and the Williamite victory is depicted in Britain as the Glorious Revolution. A more recent history by Scott Sowery: Making Toleration paints things very differently: “Though often depicted as a despot who sought to impose his own Catholic faith on a Protestant people, James is revealed as a man ahead of his time, a king who pressed for religious toleration at the expense of his throne. The Glorious Revolution, Sowerby finds, was not primarily a crisis provoked by political repression. It was, in fact, a conservative counter-revolution against the movement for enlightened reform that James himself encouraged and sustained.”
The immediate result of the defeat was a disaster for Irish Catholics with the introduction of the Penal Laws. These were described by Edmund Burke at the time as “a machine as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.”
Sean
I live a few miles from Westonzoyland where James II’s army defeated the locals and Judge Jeffreys had the Bloody Assizes and exacted revenge.
The Glorious Revolution was, indeed, written by the victors. The Dissenters/Noncomformists did regain some of their rights in religion and in participating in civil society. The decline of religion in the following century also helped them.
I grew up reading Charles Dickens’ ‘A Child’s History of England’, which was very anti-Catholic. When I came to read about this period as an adult, it did occur to me that from a modern viewpoint, allowing Catholics to hold office was not necessarily a bad thing. Also that the landed interests had a rare moment of consensus and would not disadvantage themselves. However, the powers of the King were permanently limited and put on a semi legal basis. Democracy could grow from this. It often seems to me that the American president has the powers of William III.
I would not try to defend the English and Scots involvement in Ireland. it is a dark stain on our history.
Would tnis help the world right itself financially/ economically.?
https://youtu.be/j02zh6uHWkk
I have not had time to watch it
Re. this:
“I have to really go back to the English Civil War era to find anything to match that. That is both in the era leading to the war, and in its aftermath when stable government around any constant bar Cromwell proved to be impossible.
And Theresa May is no Cromwell.”
Now its funny that you should say that because I was thinking about the customs mess and the Irish border issue and how they (via intractable difficulty) have inadvertently rescued the Customs Union and will probably do much the same for Single Market. Well just about rescued. I predict that’s how it will end up eventually and I’m sticking to the prediction for now.
Then I see your comment above and am reminded of who it was that divided Ireland in the first place. So now it comes full circle. “Teresa May is no Cromwell” but if she was Cromwell she would go back in time and abort the ‘plantation’ of Ulster. Or Boris would if he could and he is definitely no Cromwell.
What was done then is done and I can’t see the Brexit Tories undoing it. All will end up in a phyrric stalemate going nowhere much and pretending that there was some sort of a change.
I think you’re an optimist
I am not trying to be an optimist though. I just think that the degree of difficulty is so acute that doing little in effect is not only the path of least resistance it is the limit of feasibility.
Maybe you are right
Sorry to hear about the food poisoning. That’s very unpleasant. Was it airplane food? On the plus side a day of fasting just drinking tea is beneficial.
On the bigger topic, I completely agree. Whatever the outcome of the immediate negotiations, or lack of, there’s a growing vacuum to be filled, which is not being addressed – and Labour is the main culprit. Failure to do so will further fuel the drift to the more extreme right. And, from history, we know where that can lead.
What’s missing is a realistically articulated vision for the future, that the majority can buy into. How many times has that been said here? But it’s true. Albeit there are obvious differences, there is a lesson to be learned from the US, where the Democrats are failing even to secure the support of socially progressive millennials, thus keeping Trump in power – https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/24/democrats-losing-millennial-vote-change-message.
Cometh the moment, cometh the ‘person’? For the sake of the next generation I pray that aphorism is true. For, as you state, right now there is nobody in public view offering that vision who could unite a majority behind him/her. While Corbyn’s manifesto is a modest step in the right direction, he is not natural leadership material. And people sense that. If he was the Conservatives wouldn’t be ahead in the polls at a time of almost unprecedented political chaos – http://ukpollingreport.co.uk.
Dangerously uncertain times lie ahead. Regrettably history proves lessons are rarely, if ever, learned. It should be a wake-up call to everyone who is not a dyed-in-the-wool, irrational Brexit hard-liner.
Be well!
I sometimes think I should just quit the university to think and write
That, I can now say with certainty, is not what universities are for
If there weren’t some other mouths to feed I would probably do it
John D,
“a time of almost unprecedented political chaos”
Well, no, not really, not at the moment. For the blissfully unaware its pretty much a case of treading water and business as usual. The almost unprecedented political chaos will come later, possibly quite soon.
Agreed Marco. That’s what I meant. Sloppy thinking on my part 🙂
Marco
Please don’t respond too negatively (you say a lot of well observed and researched things here that I learn from) but I think John D has it right. We are amidst political chaos right now. The chaos you allude to is really an economic and social chaos that as you say will follow on. Even here, business has been frank and is getting ready for it.
A polity that does not deliver balance to its people IS in chaos. It’s already happening.
Let’s look at what we’ve got.
The Tories have already cleaved the country apart because of the granting of a referendum on BREXIT. The Government cannot even agree amongst itself what a sane BREXIT should look like (if such thing could exist). One minister says something only to be slapped down by another. If that is not chaos I do not know what is.
Danny Dyer sums up the Tories for me (not just that buffoon Cameron).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZURHyR7Nzs
As for Labour – as I’ve pointed out before – they too are in chaos. Tory BREXIT dominates even the Labour party because some in Labour want out too.
And then you have the Corbyn Refuseniks – the sort who stand up in Parliament to proudly go against their leader when they are in minority opposition to make him look weak. The Corbyn Refuseniks are those whom if Corbyn and McDonnell did anything near what Richard (and others) propose on fiscal and tax policy – would talk to the Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Guardian about how such things are impossible. Because all they want to do is go after Tory swing voters – ignorant self interested lot that they are.
Any thing new proposed by Corbyn is also risky – ready to be used against him by those in his own party who do not see him as legitimate. Is it any wonder he is so withdrawn or wanting to avoid confrontation?
In both cases, both our largest parties are therefore dominated by internal disagreements and strife. This makes them both far too inward looking to be effective political leaderships for this country. The opposite of chaos is apparently ‘order’. Is this what we have? Order? I do not think so.
And for me Dyer’s ‘assessment’ of Cameron also applies to Labour’s Corbyn Refuseniks. They have let their party down but more than anything else they have let the country down. They are beyond redemption in my view.
And in the meantime the Fascists grow stronger – waiting.
The only salvation in all of this is that as we enter the BREXIT endgame, the seeds of its own demise are also beginning. Time is the revelator – and over time the mistake we have been made to make will be reified – made evident. And hopefully, progressives from all parties – Tory, Labour, Green even Raving Loony – will do what they should do – form a new party of their own perhaps?
But it will take time. Destroying something is so easy. Too easy. Building something is always harder whether its new Council houses or a better society. It’s a shame.
I agree…
“The Interregnum was 12 years as I recall. I can’t see the current turmoil lasting for less.”
Given that a couple of years was squandered on squabbling about the Euro-referendum and we’re two years into the aftermath with no sign of daylight that’s four years of virtual interregnum already.
Eight years of austerity hardly puts us in a condition to hit the post-Brexit ground running.
It will almost certainly take at least as long to repair the damage as it has taken to create, so that’s your twelve years and we haven’t turned the ship round yet. I’m not sure anybody even remembers what happened to the tiller.
But no one has lost their head as yet
And only Cameron has lost his job
And we now know he’s a twat – it seems to be official now
This is my hope. The tories will go to the country again in spring next year. The new Labour government will have worked out whether they can successfully run the economy under the Brexit terms. If not they will call another referendum, arguing to reverse Brexit, with the full facts in front of them. It will, as the last, be advisory, and if they disagree with the result they will ignore it. This will be the major part of their manifesto.
And what if the Tories win?
What I don’t understand is how business, who will be affected severely (as an example Honda in Swindon will need a stock of 10 days I think so warehouse bigger than anything in the UK will be required) are only at this very late stage speaking up. It is too late now to handle the customs checks at Dover, nobody in authority AFAIK has even applied for planning permission to build the new infrastructure.
Anyway, we have all known this for ages, so why is it now broached by industry?
I think that is a really good question
I may blog it
Oh, I hope the sickness gets sorted soon. I know just what that is like having had a bug i picked up in a hospital (yes I did come out worse than when I went in!).
Bad luck
I presume I will feel like food again, sometime
It has not really happened as yet
I think the shortages of this summer, and even the train timetabling issues have been started and engineered to get the British people used to not getting everything they want. The scheduling of the closures of the CO2 plants has all the hallmarks of government prompting, knowing full well that there would be continued delays in production of bio-CO2. If you subsidise something it is no guarantee that it will arrive on time, and because you’ve got higher expectations that you plan for then you get caught out when the production is delayed.
And so we are being rationed our fizzy drinks, lager, crumpets and Scottish pork. Sell by dates are being shortened. Abattoirs are working reduced hours or not at all. And if you want to take a train anywhere you have to plan on a waiting time with some weird chi-squared distribution where you might end up even end up waiting less time than intended if the earlier train is late by a lucky amount.
There’s no way this can be regarded as standard government bungling. Add in Universal Credit, and some dark forces are definitely ramping it up so that when there’s no trade deal, and we get an initial year of labour shortages and price rises, we all think it’s not so bad as 2018.
And vote Conservative again in 2022.
I have to say that I think conspiracy theories can be taken too far
The centre-left leaning philosopher A C Grayling seems to have sussed what Brexit is all about a sort of surreal coup of the extreme left and right to create a “Year Zero Brexit”! Here is his reasoning in an article he wrote for the New European and published there in March this year:-
“…the unseemly haste of the Brexiters to exploit the result in the most Machiavellian way suggests only one thing: it cloaks what is to all intents and purposes a coup against the UK and its real interests, in the interests of a claque with their own self-serving agenda. Alas! — it is two such claques, one on the far-right and one on the far-left, each wishing to trash the UK so that it can effect a recycling operation on the rubble tailored to its own dream about how things should be.”
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/ac-grayling-there-are-no-arguments-against-a-second-referendum-1-5426136
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Zero_(political_notion)
Hope you’re soon better – food poisoning is something I’ve managed to avoid for the past 60 years, and have no intention of allowing to seize my bowels again in the near future. Having said that, I now avoid any cows’ milk products, and have become a virtual vegetarian – vegan I don’t think is possible for me.
The Welsh – in the parts of Wales with which I have frequent contact, most of my contacts have switched from being pro-Leave to being strongly anti-Brexit – one Rhondda Valley lad said that his neighbours have realised that biting the hand that feeds them is not likely to end well.
“most of my contacts have switched from being pro-Leave to being strongly anti-Brexit”
Yep, its finally sinking in and there will be plenty more to follow. The more that the consequences become apparent, the greater the turnaround.
When I was campaigning for Vote Remain on the streets of Lincoln (as a member of the Green Party) I warned passers by that it would be very expensive, very complicated and require many more thousands of civil servants to undo all the administrative couplings with the EU. My estimate was that if re-uniting East and West Germany has taken at least 25 years and is not completely achieved even now, then the effects of leaving the EU will take as long. The majority of passers-by did not listen, did not care and ‘just wanted out’, mostly because of ‘immigration’.
I have not changed my view. There is a blighted generation ahead, until what will be left of the UK has created a new economical, political and social landscape for itself, all within the context of global environmental degradation causing mass migration across the world. I also underestimated the political turmoil it would produce. I grieve for the children and young people in this country. They did not vote for this.
And my children are in it