The Politics of Dancing

 2020  LOOKING BACK   2021 LOOKING FORWARD AJP Taylor once said that either a policy of appeasement or one of standing up to German aggression, could have worked if the former had been taken to its logical conclusion and allowed Germany a free hand in Central and Eastern Europe to dominate that region, whilst the latter could, indeed would have succeeded had Chamberlain acted firmly and blocked German revanchism from the outset. What was most calculated to fail was a policy of dithering between both approaches. I thought of this the other night when Boris Johnson completed yet another U-turn and placed London and the South East in a lockdown, despite previous statements insisting that Christmas would be exempted. Indeed, as recently as previous Prime Minister’s Questions he had taunted Kier Starmer with wanting to “cancel Christmas.” Such inept dithering, from allowing pubs to stay open and racing festivals to go ahead, long after it was clear that this would lead ...

  There was Christmas before Dickens, of course, but not much of one. Christmas was an important day, but not, - if you read Pepys, - as important as 12th night, or as Hogmanay north of the border. Then came Dickens and the modern Christmas was born, a healthy baby it grew as strong as a Trafalgar Square Christmas tree and as fat as a stuffed Turkey. And at the heart of this newly created drama was the figure of Ebenezer Scrooge. Like Hamlet, Lear or Churchill playing Scrooge is a role offered only to the truly gifted. For it is that most difficult of all parts a journey to conversion. Scrooge is truly vile, rarely has mean spirited, miserly misanthropic squalor been better portrayed. This is what makes the part so difficult to play. The greater the emphasis on moral squalor the harder it is to make the conversion convincing, the weaker the depiction of moral squalor the less spectacular the conversion. In my, admittedly old school, opinion, only Alistair Sim has ever pulled this...

 BORIS JOHNSON, BONFIRE NIGHT AND  THE PERILS OF THE  PARDON  November is the most heavily pregnant of months, with Christmas and the new year ready to emerge from under multicoloured lights and tinsel. Already the shops are full of Christmas cards, decorations, and multiple varieties of chocolate. This year through Christmas is already overshadowed by the dark clouds of COVID-19 and economic hardship. Portobello has an unfamiliar grey feeling to it. It looks tired. The US elections have of course, overshadowed both Halloween and, that most British of institutions, Bonfire night. Although in recent years the latter has been increasingly overshadowed by a highly Americanised version of Halloween. Fireworks, for understandable reasons, are out of fashion whilst the idea of burning an effigy strikes, again for understandable reasons, a discordant and unappealing note these days. That said this saddens me as Bonfire night was always the big one in my childhood, with ...

 Trump, Putin and the Looming Threat For the first time in my life my political gaze has been primarily across the Atlantic, rather on domestic politics here in the UK. For the stakes involved in the forthcoming Presidential election could not be greater. Trump’s election, coming so soon after the Brexit vote represented the highpoint of populist neo fascism and the Putin project.   Putin knows that the collapse of the Trump presidency and the election of Joe Biden will represent an ominous turn for Russia on the world stage. For Trump and those enablers around him the consequences will be more concrete and personal, some will surely go to jail. Trump should go to jail, there is a positive embarrassment of riches with regard to the list of offences for which he can be charged, obstruction of justice, fraud, electoral violations, non payment of taxes...the list goes on. The primary crime to which he should be charged is, of course, treason. Stakes this high bring with them th...

  J Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon  The Burglary: The discovery of J Edgar Hoover’s FBI. Betty Medseer. Chaos: Charles Manson the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties. Tom O’Neil & Dan Piepenbring The Counter Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the History of The United States of America. Gerald Horn.   Trump is the worst, but not the first manifestation of the American nightmare.  Given A close examination of American history how could it be otherwise. A Jekyll and Hyde nation in which the idealism incorporated in the Declaration of Independence, many of its signatures were slaveholders, co-existed with the grotesque industry of slavery and the genocide of the indigenous people of the land being occupied. The legacy of slavery on white consciousness has perhaps been given insufficient attention, though some of its manifestations in the form of the Ku Klux Klan, lynching and Jim Crow are as obvious as they are grotesque. The other tale is one of...

 A REVIEW OF LUKE HARDING'S SHADOW STATE   The perfect storm that is Putin, Trump, Johnson did not develop overnight, political disasters never do. It has taken decades to arrive where we are. Luke Harding in Shadow State describes with great clarity the variety of actors and actions, always devious and dishonest, often, very often, illegal, that helped get us here.   Thus, even as Blair entered downing street or much later, we watched Bradley Wiggins or Mo Farah triumph at the London Olympics, the iceberg that was Brexit was already close to being fully formed and heading towards us. Though the story begins much earlier with the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union. I was in Russia and travelling around a number of its constituent republics from Estonia to Georgia at the time. My memories of Estonia and Ukraine in particular are of a sense of exuberance and excitement as statues were torn down and newly created news sheets proclaimed independenc...

The battle over Brexit is over, however this battle, which is really a battle over Britain’s place in the world, represents only the first battle in a long struggle. It is a struggle over whether we remain a Liberal democracy or take a much darker route into intolerance, nationalism, and xenophobia. I. I have often thought the categories optimist or pessimist as a typology suspect, certainly in my own case what mood predominates is dependent on a whole range of factors, not least being the subject at hand. I suspect this is true of a great many people. One of the primary factors being trends, the direction of travel. In politics over the last few years for anyone of a progressive disposition there has been little to inspire optimism. From Brexit to the 2019 election result the cause of progressive left of centre politics has received setback after setback. Reasons to be cheerful have been thin on the ground, pessimism seems an appropriate response. Though in such circumstance’s pe...

WHERE WE ARE NOW A discursive look at our current predicament  The bleak relentlessly beating heart of this period, is a cocktail of populism, fascism and the corruption that is never far from flawed democracies and all by their nature are flawed. We swirl around this black hole, that devours journalists, doctors, scientists, judges, and those enemies of the people, the ‘ experts.’   In the night people wake afraid, invisible, and everywhere the plague. Morning brings no relief only the stark clarity of daylight an extra five minutes in bed, listening to what the stale voice on the radio says. Then coffee, a laptop life in which we isolate. Still better than the crab commute, the fearful juggling of hot coffee umbrella and business bag, sweaty, cramped, and struggling to breath, chest tight with an animal anxiety. Across the city the room is vacuumed and disinfected for the press conference at noon. The insomniac stare of the politician at the lectern as he reads his car...

There is something childlike about Twitter, something of the playground. Gangs form, fights break out and others pile in. Shaming and name calling are rampant and bullying widespread. I say these things as a regular contributor to Twitter and also as someone not without sin himself. Indeed, even the most intelligent and erudite contributors sometimes seem unable to resist the temptation of the trite and unfair sideswipe.  Twitter is not Britain, although it does sometimes accurately reflect some of the more unpleasant aspects of a particular type of Englishness. And it also provides a mirror image of the most politically exercised and excitable elements of the population. In this way it provides a portrait of a certain mindset that may dominate the politically active. Which brings me to bookshelves. Bookshelves have suddenly gained an unexpected prominence in public life. Given the need for social distancing and safe isolation politicians have been invariably interviewed at hom...

Well the novelty has certainly worn off. I like increasing numbers of people live alone, the lack of physical face to face contact can start to tell on the psyche. This can be particularly hard in a big city like London in which, paradoxically you are surrounded by people, sometimes only separated by thin walls. For myself I am better equipped for solitude than most, not only used to my own company and remaining alone in the flat* all day. I have a wide range of interests, a love of reading, cooking and music. With modern technology I need never feel at a loss for intellectual stimulation. So, if I am beginning to flag a little, I can only imagine what it must be like for those with less interests or a lack of access to technology. Though I make no special pleading for the solitary. For those unhappily married cooped up all day in a tiny inner city flat with small children and someone they are increasingly beginning to hate the idea of solitude must sound like bliss. The weather, which...

1 History, it is said, is written by the winners. This is almost invariably true, but almost  since it only tells half the story since now it can be equally said that history is shaped by those who wrest control over the narrative. Thus, the South lost the American civil war but managed to successfully re-frame the struggle as one between a proud and civilised people who nobly sought to resist an uncouth and bullying centralising state, that went down fighting for independence and state rights. Of the real cause of the war slavery there is little mention. This ‘lost cause’ narrative has lodged itself into American consciousness and is still there and is unlikely to be completely dislodged any time soon. On a much more trivial level there is a classic example of who controls the narrative controls the way events are perceived. In the mid-eighties when the Conservative party was wiped out in much of England during local elections but managed to hold onto Westminster and Wandswort...

1. We live wrapped in comforting historical myths, from plucky Elizabethan privateers, heroic Empire builders, Nelson at Trafalgar, infantry squares at Waterloo, Jutland, the Somme, to the Battle of Britain and the blitz. All have supplied rich sustenance for the nationalist and populist demagogues to feed on. But not only demagogues and the hard right buy into such mythology, they have entered the public imagination to such an extent that even people born long after the end of the Second World War seem to imagine that they participated in the ‘blitz spirit.’ The writing of history must attempt to understand what happened, to untangle complex events and deal with ambiguity and nuance. Historical myths might best be called ‘ faction ,’ that is the dealing with historical facts but presenting an idealised version of events with inconvenient truths airbrushed out.

As the trees blossom like flowers and the days become longer it feels like a strange spring, nature unaware of the clammy disaster that has invaded the city. We seem to be paused momentarily at the point just before the contagion is about to devour significant numbers of the unwary and foolish, who flock to the London parks, many who will soon be ill, while others fill their shopping trolleys with kitchen towel, toilet roll, pasta   and anything else they can find on the shelves   in a daze of angry panic. The citizens will not submit without a fight, albeit for the last pack of Andrex toilet tissue. There are no potatoes, or indeed any fresh veg in Tesco. Where once there were carrots, onions and purple sprouting broccoli in abundance there are only empty pallets. I find some sea bass which fills me with joy as I place it in my basket. In the freezer there is little to buy, bar ice cream, potato waffles and chocolate cake. However, I do find some breaded mushrooms which ...

The Thatcherite Fallacy In an interview with Woman’s Own on the 23 rd of September 1987 Mrs Thatcher made what was to become her most famous statement, a statement that more than any other revealed her underlying philosophy when she proclaimed “There is no such thing as society, only individuals and their families .” The moral bankruptcy and failure of imagination that such an asinine statement involves have rightly stained her reputation ever since. There is no such thing as society. There are of course some who thought she was right; some still do, and they sit as Conservatives in Parliament. There is however a spectre that haunts such a shallow worldview ¸a spectre many believed had vanished, a spectre Samuel Pepys would have recognised, the Plague. Few things highlight how we are all interconnected more than a spreading virus. Pepys might survive, as would the king and anyone else wealthy enough to escape London or other denser concentrations of population. But Pepys ...

The Secret of the Jack of Clubs Circle A short distance from St James Park underground station, down a narrow side street, so narrow and nondescript, with an entrance almost hidden by a tree, that most people miss it. Going down a short flight of steps, you enter a short street, leading to the park dominated, on the left-hand side, by a late 18 th century terraced house. Some well-worn steps lead to an imposing black door, but this is not the interesting entrance. No, if you walk a little further on, to the right side of the main entrance there is a short metal spiral staircase leading to the basement. Should you walk down these stairs you would come to a dark green door. This used to be the entrance to the servant’s quarter, but now it serves as a meeting place for the Jack of Clubs Circle. I have deliberately omitted the name of the Street or the number on the door, since knowing these small details could put your life at risk. Indeed, I may have already told you too much, an...