HISTORY MAY HAVE OTHER PLANS


"Events dear boy, events."


Anyone of a progressive frame of mind who is old enough to remember how they felt on those awful days in May 1979, days after Margaret Thatcher was elected with a sizeable majority, will have recognised the feeling on this Friday the 13th. It is a feeling like no other, the feeling of having all hope snatched from you. To say that things look grim for any pro European and left of centre citizen is an understatement. We are on the verge of a catastrophic tragedy, feeling all the impotence of a theatre audience watching Othello, or Hamlet.

However, although age and the passage of time are no guarantee of anything, certainly not wisdom, experience does provide something in the form of familiarity, - though even this can sometimes prove treacherous, for history does not repeat itself, either as tragedy or farce,- but it does sometimes take a direction that contains a similar list of possible scenarios. What it also teaches is that there is one thing that can always be relied on in politics, as in life, and that is the unpredictable, or as Macmillan put it when asked what was a statesmen’s greatest fear, “events, my dear boy, events.”

 There was nothing inevitable about the Thatcher decade, people forget about North Sea oil, whilst the Falklands could just as easily have blown up, like the Belgrano, in Thatcher’s face. And who in the aftermath of John Major’s victory in 1992 saw the ERM debacle on the horizon, or predicted 9/11, the banking crisis of 2008? Or further still back the consequences of events in Sarajevo in late June 1914, the triumph of Hitler and the Molotov Ribbentrop pact? I could go on but I think I have made my point.
What is unique about the situation that Johnson and thank god the ubiquitous use of ‘Boris’ appears to be on the wane, is that he will soon face a major crisis of his own making. In Brexit he faces the most difficult set of negotiations in modern times equipped with, to put it lightly, somewhat limited capabilities. The outcome could be truly calamitous. The EU owes Johnson no favours and If Trump is impeached and the Democrats take the Presidency, they will have no reason to look favourably on a man so closely aligned with Trump. Indeed, the UK will have few allies, let alone ‘friends,’ in the international community. When the next international crisis breaks Britain will stand largely alone,- and what those who have been daydreaming about the sentimental support of the Commonwealth will soon discover is that hard headed calculations will apply to any trade arrangements with the likes of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, who have no desire to be patronised by what, almost exclusively British jingoists, still like to quaintly call ‘the mother country.’

'Politics, like life, is what happens when you are busy making other plans.'


The coming years will be stormy and if we avoid a major recession it will be more likely down to luck than strategy or good judgement. However, the greatest threat that Johnson faces is the unknown, the as yet unseen. So, as Johnson stands triumphant, lord of all he surveys, remember Chamberlain triumphant after Munich or John Major in 1992, and consider that Johnson too will soon discover that politics, like life tends to be something that happens when you are busy making other plans.

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