We’re witnessing the end of a way of life. For decades our political leaders, both Tory and Labour, have been able to blame things that went wrong, things they failed to do, anything that seemed unfairly constraining, or frighteningly liberating, on the Brussels bureaucrats. Anything that smacked of globalisation and corporate power, but also anything that seemed overly statist and controlling, anything that was bad for business, and anything that left the individual citizen too exposed. Put simply: anything.
It was a sweet little scam: the people in charge only admitted to being in charge when it suited them. They were good cop. Bad cop was some Belgians you never met. And Brussels is an excellent receptacle for blame. It has an aura of irritating blandness and pedantry, but not of frightening or acquisitive aggression. We could project enmity on to it without getting too scared and, for several decades, without creating the political momentum for anything to be done.
This is why, despite the stratospheric importance of the question of whether or not Britain is in the EU – not just in terms of economics and geopolitics, but of the hearts, minds and self-image of millions of Britons – the two main parties haven’t fought a general election on the issue for over 30 years.
They’ve argued endlessly about privatisation and NHS funding and tuition fees and foxhunting and MPs’ expenses, but they’ve both avoided the main problem, this colossal, festering, unresolved question, and left it as a personal matter for individual members. That’s like having decades of religious debate in the 16th century between two groups, both of which refuse to say whether they’re Catholic or Protestant.
But it worked well for the politicians. Brussels was there to be slagged off, and there was no threat to party unity. The British people have paid a lot for the unity of their politicians’ groupings and, more than anything else, that of the Conservative party, which should perhaps be renamed the “Self-Conservative party”, as that appears to be the only political aim on which its MPs are agreed.
The Labour leadership could probably have told its membership years ago, “Look, if you don’t like the EU, join another party,” and stayed pretty much intact. But the Tories would have split in half and turned from the electoral juggernaut of the first-past-the-post system to two Lib Dem-sized groups with little hope of office without major electoral reform of the sort Tories have been resolutely helping to block ever since the Earth’s crust hardened.
So with the rise of Ukip, and the pre-eminent importance of Conservative party unity in mind, David Cameron rolled the referendum dice. It is the most egregious example of putting party before country in British history, and he also screwed it up. It was cynical and it was stupid, the work of a second-rate chancer.
And the long political tradition of Brussels-bashing left him in an awkward position for the campaign. He could hardly say: “You know all that stuff that we’ve been saying is Brussels’s fault for as long as you can remember? Well, it’s Westminster’s fault, it’s my fault.” “Your problems are my fault! So do what I suggest!” is a flawed slogan. He’d probably banked on Labour being a bit more effusively pro-EU. Yet another thing that poisonous little prick got wrong.
But when I look at Jeremy Hunt, still trying to blame the EU for everything even now, like an orphaned calf nuzzling the festering corpse of its mother because it’s his instinct and that’s all he’s got, I take some comfort. At least the politicians are losing something too.
23 September 2018
On one of the thousands of occasions I glanced needlessly at my phone last week, it made me notice a news story. Vince Cable, it appeared, had described the hardcore Leavers’ delight in Brexit as an “erotic spasm”.
I liked that. It’s a nicely rude way of describing their irrational excitement at continental division and national isolation, and their inappropriately visceral feelings about the technical details of international trade deals. The whole country is going through a disaster, it is saying, just so a few extremists get to judder with sexual delight.
And it’s doubly potent because of who the leading Brexiteers are. Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Nigel Farage are people who it is particularly grotesque to imagine having an erotic spasm. In my view, anyway. Yet that grotesqueness has a grim fascination; I can’t help thinking about it, about each of them wriggling around, all spermy and thrilled.
Of course, that’s not their fault. The fact that they’re not conventionally attractive, and so their credibility is unlikely to be enhanced by lots of people imagining them in sexual contexts, is an unfair reason to dismiss their views. And I say that as a thoroughgoing non-oil painting myself. But that’s one of the many things about the world that isn’t fair, so I have to accept that what I say here is just going to seem less persuasive when I admit that I’m masturbating as I type it.
Then it turned out that Vince Cable hadn’t said it after all. The current irritating system whereby the texts of politicians’ speeches are circulated to the media before they’ve been delivered rather relies on our elected representatives being able to spit out the words as planned – which is easier said than done. Or rather said. Certainly easier said than “erotic spasm”.
I’m sure Cable knew it was a good line: he paused slightly before trying to pronounce it, indulging no doubt in an instant of self-satisfaction. “This’ll get ’em!” he probably thought. I know from my own experience that there’s nothing like feeling sure the next line is a zinger to make your teeth, tongue and saliva try to join in with saying it.
So he said “exotic spresm” instead. It’s very funny. I recommend watching it. Not the whole speech – that’s interminable – but that section. I knew in advance both that he was supposed to say “erotic spasm” and that he’d actually said “exotic spresm”, and yet somehow that made it even funnier.
He’s standing in a huge room full of people, most of whom presumably know he’s about to try to say “erotic spasm” – I mean, I knew in advance and they’re Lib Dem members who are attending the Lib Dem conference, so they’re bound to. They’re all ready, keyed up to laugh approvingly as soon as he says “erotic spasm”, and off he goes: “Years of economic pain justified by …” little pause – stand by, conference “… the exotic spresm of leaving the European Union.”
There is a quality to the silence following the remark that is almost magical. It’s pure distilled human puzzlement. Hundreds of people simultaneously wondering if they’ve lost it, if the part of their brain that decodes language has suddenly failed. It’s a puzzlement exacerbated by the fact that Cable just ploughs on as if “exotic spresm” means something, or as if the right noise could be dubbed on to the speech in post-production. He doesn’t otherwise fluff or stumble, and so it’s not even clear that he’s aware he’s screwed up.
Anyway, it’s all good fun, largely because the Lib Dems seem so irrelevant these days. They went back on their tuition fees pledge, and it virtually destroyed them as a political movement. Fair enough: tuition fees are the big issue of our time. That’s what all the historians will focus on when they write about this era: the great tuition fees conundrum. How Britain struggled with the huge and painful divisions caused by the towering question of tuition fees.
To be honest, I was pretty pissed off with them when they did that. I don’t think they got nearly enough out of the Tories for propping up Cameron’s government: basically just a referendum on a half-arsed form of electoral reform, when they might have got a commitment to proper proportional representation. Now that would have been worth betraying the students for. But, as it was, they fell for Cameron’s rhetoric about national crisis and used all their power to spare his electoral embarrassment, so that, now the country really is in crisis, they haven’t got any left.
That’s a much less amusing cock-up than Vince Cable’s speech because the consequences are proving disastrous. The Lib Dems are the only political party wholeheartedly representing the 48% of voters who opposed Brexit, yet the chances of them securing those people’s su
pport in a general election are vanishingly small.
To my mind, the Lib Dems are right about so much, and yet it does them no good. They consistently opposed the Iraq war, for example, which is now an extremely mainstream view. Obviously, the Labour party is very down on the Iraq war these days but, crucially, that wasn’t the case when it was actually happening. At that point, both Labour and the Tories were all for it.
The Lib Dems are also the only political group that’s consistently advocated proportional representation, and their failure to gain traction there may be the biggest disaster of the lot. It’s because of the first-past-the-post voting system that neither Labour nor the Conservative party can split without facing electoral annihilation. So Cameron called the Brexit referendum to keep the Tories together, and the majority of Labour MPs remain part of an organisation they believe to be ineptly or even malevolently led.
The energy required to keep the Conservative and Labour parties ostensibly united is tearing Britain and Europe apart. Meanwhile, the hapless and laughable irrelevance of the only political movement properly addressing the country’s biggest problems is a fascinating manifestation of our looming national disaster.
We get meaningless and useless nonsense from all of our political leaders at the moment. But when Vince Cable does it, at least it’s just a slip of the tongue.
7 April 2019
In the quest to understand Theresa May, which capricious fate has imposed on us all, the key is to think of James Cracknell. At time of writing, the 46-year-old is expected to take part in Sunday’s Boat Race, and the 62-year-old is expected to be Sunday’s prime minister. The former expectation seems marginally more solid than the latter, but both are likelier than not.
Before then, of course, Theresa May may announce – or should that be “might”? Theresa Might may announce – no. May may announce her intention to step down. Then again, she’s announced her intention to step down a couple of times already. But May may have announced her intention to step down again. Possibly more than once.
This patch of British politics is certainly testing the supposed dramatic power of repetition even more than Boris Johnson’s sixth-form rhetoric. The word “again” keeps popping up in BBC News website headlines with, by my reading of it at least, an ever-greater tone of dry contempt: “MPs reject prime minister’s deal again”; “MPs fail to back proposals again”. Meanwhile, EU leaders warn of the danger of a no-deal Brexit again, and Theresa May announces her intention to step down again. It’s the world-weary “again” of “The dog’s been sick on the carpet again”.
Saying she’s going to resign is Theresa May’s current technique for keeping her job. She says she’s going to resign tomorrow in order to remain prime minister today. What a committed remainer. But she’s taking it one day at a time. She’s in recovery from not being prime minister and the first step is admitting her powerlessness.
The case of James Cracknell will help us. The double Olympic-gold-winning rower cuts an eccentric figure as he strives to compete in the university Boat Race. At his age, he could be most Cambridge students’ father and is also older than one of the colleges. He’ll never again be as good at rowing as he once was but, unlike the discontinued Quality Street chocolate that shares his name, he’s not going down without a fight. He wants one more top(ish)-level race, and he’s expending immense effort to claim this comparatively modest prize.
But I get it. All of his other rowing is in the past. In his future, he has only this race, then years of looking back (which is how you sit to row, so at least he’s used to it). Similarly, Theresa May, whenever she ceases to be prime minister, will almost certainly never attain the office again. I mean, surely not?! I don’t want to further tempt capricious fate, but that would be a repetition too soul-destroying even for today’s Britain.
So this period of fiasco is the defining, most glorious, most important phase of Theresa May’s life. And, as with Cracknell and his rowing, she wants to extend it as far as possible. If she can hang on until mid-July, she’ll have been prime minister for three years. Take that, Gordon Brown, the Duke of Wellington and Neville Chamberlain! James Callaghan and the third Duke of Portland will be in her sights!
The difference is that James Cracknell is only rowing a boat, while Theresa May is mismanaging the entire country. So whatever the similarities in their psychological standpoints, it’s only Theresa who needs to … how best to put it? Is there, I wonder, a more appropriate phrase than “fuck off”? I don’t want to swear unnecessarily but, historically, people have found the expression useful. It’s certainly earned its place in common usage. And I have to ask myself, if we don’t tell Theresa May to fuck off, what on earth are we saving it for?
Whoever comes next, I suppose. Well, I’m going to reserve the right to tell them to fuck off too. That’s the kind of consistent political analysis people expect from comedians.
The question of who comes next could well be answered not by a general election, but by the members of the Conservative party. It’s the 160,000 or so party faithful and recent defectors from Ukip who, in a leadership election, choose between the two candidates put forward by Tory members of the House of Commons. This is the new, “more democratic” way of doing things, favoured by both main parties, in which a few hundred thousand party members get to overrule the elected representatives of many millions.
The power that our two-party state puts in the hands of the roughly 670,000-strong membership of those parties is vast. And the rate at which ex-Ukippers and radical leftwingers have flocked to join up is a sign that the adherents of extreme political views have cottoned on to this. These partisans are weird radical middlemen getting in between the British people and its elected representatives.
Many Tory and Labour MPs live in fear of deselection by their constituency parties. In general, we only hear about the ones who resist that pressure, either because they are openly disowned, like Dominic Grieve, or jump ship, like Nick Boles. But how many more must be tailoring their parliamentary activities not to the national interest, nor even to cynical electoral efficacy, but to local hardliners’ extreme interpretation of party values?
More than half of the constituencies of the UK are either safe Labour or safe Tory seats and, in effect, those places in parliament are in the gift of local constituency parties, just as, in the 18th century, most Commons seats were in the gift of local aristocrats. So, instead of a few hundred lords, it’s now hundreds of thousands of activists. That’s an improvement, but it’s still a screwed system, not a functioning democracy – and the supposed democratisation of how both parties choose their leaders has, ironically, made them less accountable to the wider electorate.
This is not serving Britain well. This isn’t about the 52% or the 48%. It’s about the 1.4%: that 670,000 who, by energy rather than wisdom, and with the intensity rather than the popularity of their views, foist them on the moderate majority. Theresa May is a creature of this corrupted system and, whether Tory or Labour, her successor will be too.
In the end, Theresa May was prime minister for three years and 11 days, just overtaking Neville Chamberlain but falling short of James Callaghan. In a funny sort of way, that feels about right.
7 July 2019
Have you heard of the uncanny valley? If not, let me say straight away, before you get at all excited, that it’s an IT thing. It’s a theory in robotics that just happens to have an evocative name. The valley it refers to, far from being a magical land between Narnia and the Big Rock Candy Mountain where everything’s a bit weird and the fish fly and the bees swim, is actually just a valley shape on a graph. A flattish asymmetrical U. Specifically, a dip in how positive people’s reaction to a robot tends to be as its appearance becomes more human.
The theory is that, in general, as robots look more human, we self-obsessed humans like it more and more, so the line of the graph goes up. Until, that is, the robots are nearly identical to humans. Then our approval dips into the uncanny valley because we su
ddenly find it creepy, like watching a bee swim. Until, again, the robots become even more humanlike, and indistinguishable from real people, when our approval rises once more at the comforting sight of what we mistake for our own kind. This makes up the other side of the metaphorical valley.
This notion has been knocking around since the late 70s, but is now backed up by scientific evidence. Some neuroscientists and psychologists in Britain and Germany have been doing fMRI scans of people’s brains while they reacted to images of robots and, according to Dr Fabian Grabenhorst of the University of Cambridge, “We were surprised to see that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex responded to artificial agents precisely in the manner predicted by the uncanny valley hypothesis.”
That’s good enough for me. Instinctively, I thought the theory sounded true. In fact, the only thing that surprises me about this outcome is that Grabenhorst says they were surprised. Then again, we don’t know that he was really surprised. I’d be surprised if they were surprised, but perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that they said they were surprised. It wasn’t Grabenhorst’s brain activity that was being scanned, so he could be faking his surprise to make the findings seem more interesting. Confirming what everyone is already convinced is true is probably an area of research that finds it hard to attract funding.
The uncanny valley has got me thinking about the Tory leadership contest and why it is that I hope Jeremy Hunt becomes the next prime minister. I mean, that’s quite a thing. I can’t say I ever envisaged hoping that, but I do hope it. I hope it, I hasten to add, merely because it’s the only alternative to Boris Johnson becoming the next prime minister, but it absolutely is the only alternative to that, and hence I hope it. Genuinely. Put me in an fMRI scanner and you’ll see. It’s slightly put me off the whole idea of hope, to be honest. If this is the hope, God save me from the glory.
Dishonesty is the Second-Best Policy Page 21