The Politics of Dancing

LOOKING BACK ON THE 'TENS' Looking back over the last decade, and of all decades or perhaps like all decades, it is a clumsy amalgam of discrete periods, which in this case we must ludicrously call ‘the Tens .*’ So, in deference to the human desire to frame time, I must call years between 2010 and 2019 a decade, placing an uneasy cohesion on the chaotic days, months and years, a cohesion that never existed. It was a decade that started with confusion that resulted in the first coalition government in the UK since the 1930s. It also began with the triumph of the London Olympics that seemed to auger a new age Britain finally growing up. What followed was the most catastrophic period for progressive politics in the UK in the modern era, a period that made a mockery of those post-Olympic hopes. Many people commented upon the remarks made by the BBC’s political correspondent Laura Kuenssberg to the effect that ‘history would judge those who opposed Brexit after the ...

"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 13 th . 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...

Caligula: Tell me my young friend. What exactly is a tyrant? Skipio: A blind fool. Caligula: That’s a moot point. I should say the real tyrant is a man who sacrifices a whole nation to his ideal or his ambition. Albert Camus Caligula We may be witnessing something wholly new in modern history, a manufactured catastrophe. The outbreak of World War One and Two were the consequences of miscalculations, stupidity, a failure of imagination and in the case of the latter, cowardice and fear. The Wiemar hyperinflation and Wall Street crash were man made catastrophes but hardly deliberate, hardly intentional. From Suez to the Falklands, from devaluation to the 2008 financial crisis, these might have been avoidable, they might have involved greed, arrogance and mendacity, but unlike Brexit they were not manufactured. Brexit was born in the lab, deliberately created by middle aged white men, a monster designed to manipulate the public and produce a result that would both enric...

I do not know how important familiarity, routine, habit, the predictable, is in our lives, though I suspect it is much more important than most people might like to admit. Our lizard brains certainly prefer solidity. We sit in the same chair, sleep in the same position, take the same route to work each day. When we ascend on the escalator, we know that daylight will greet us as we leave the familiar tube station, supermarket or department store.   To gauge our reliance on familiarity for our mental health it only requires this orderly arrangement of things to be disrupted. We instantly feel uncomfortable, ‘put out.’ The greater the disruption the greater the discomfort. When the reliable and familiar disintegrates on a much larger scale, at the national and cultural level, this sense of disorientation can be even more disturbing. This is best illustrated by the hyperinflation of Wiemar Germany, or the impact of the Wall street crash and the depression of the early nineteen thi...

A WARNING I am speaking directly to you tonight from 10 Downing Street to request the patience and support from you the great British people whom I know now, as so often in the past, will come together in the face of the grave national crisis we now face. For I know that only when we are united can we tackle the problems that beset us.  I know too that many of you are angry about the shortage of some medical supplies and some items of food. I share your anger. For let me be clear, this crisis is not of my making but has come about because of the intransigence of a few foreign powers, sadly assisted by some in our own country, and their refusal to allow us to depart the EU amicably. The attempt to impose heavy burdens upon our industry and commerce by the EU must and will be resisted. However, in the short term this will mean some continuing hardship, but this country did not win two world wars by being afraid of hardship and once again those who wish to defeat us will ...

History, to adapt a phrase, is what happens when you are busy making other plans. As we enter a decisive week in the whole sorry Brexit saga there are two possible scenarios, Parliament folds and we see the beginning of the decline of parliamentary democracy, or Johnson’s crude power bid is seen off and Parliament emerges both victorious and enhanced. For the Conservative party these are the end of days. Certainly, a right of centre, indeed right wing party may emerge, but it will no longer be the party of the Union, of small c conservatism, of constitutional conformity and respect for tradition. Johnson’s gamble has compromised the Queen and placed the Tory party on a collusion course with the Union. Things can never be the same again. This is no longer just about Brexit but whether the UK as currently constituted remains intact and what sort of democracy emerges if Johnson gets his way. For make no mistake, the system, as Carole Cadwalladr has made clear has, and continues to ...

To speak of England and Britain or the UK as if they were one and the same thing, as many in the US and on the European continent are often want to do, always demonstrates a lack of understanding, particularly galling for Scottish citizens, but is now a form of deception, witting or otherwise. In a very real sense as a political unit, the UK and Northern Ireland no longer has any meaning. A chasm now separates England from Scotland. Wales increasingly sees its interests as separate from England. Whilst in Northern Ireland the unionist population is waking up to the reality that its needs, interests and concerns are of no interest to politicians across the water. This process began with the SNP landslides at the beginning of the new century but it has taken Brexit to blow the union wide open. All of this was perfectly foreseeable, indeed I wrote about it in 2013, and I make no claims to special insights, I did not need a crystal ball. Though, in an age when political stupidit...