Of Brexit and a tin-pot Mussolini

This week has seen two election communications land on our door mat. One arrived from one of the country’s two main political parties, unaddressed. The other was specifically addressed to The Other Half. Lucky him.

It was a folded leaflet for The Brexit Party, Nigel Farage’s latest political project.

After failing to persuade more than a few dozen people to march (part of the way) to London in support of Brexit (without him, himself), Farage has somehow found the money needed to launch such a publicity campaign.

Not that he’s saying where that cash has come from – or at least, not the one big donation that has (apparently) been received, even though election rules say such things must be revealed. Maybe he'll let on later. But not now.

The rest is all from individual supporters, all paying small enough amounts that these do not need to be declared. You can’t join The Brexit Party – you can only “register as a supporter”. This is not, in other words, a democratic political organisation. There is no mechanism for any internal democracy to elect any official within it or to decide any policy.

But then again, when you only have one policy, who needs discussion and debate?

And given that situation, what on earth do you fill an expensive election communication with?

The main meat, if you will, is a statement from Farage, dramatically headlined “We must leave the EU”. The key reason given is that, in “June 2016, 17.m voted to leave the EU – the biggest democratic mandate in British history”.

This is arrant nonsense. It would only be the “biggest democratic mandate in British history” if the margin had been the biggest margin in British history. It was not a massive margin. It was a very, very slender margin.

Indeed, it was precisely the margin that, a short while before the referendum, Farage himself told the Mirror that, were the vote to be 52% to 48% in favour of remaining in the EU, he would start campaigning for a re-run.

Not that I'm suggesting that Farage is a hypocrite. Obviously not.

There is familiar stuff in the leaflet about how MPs “have betrayed Brexit”. Apparently, “our great nation” is now being “humiliated” and we must “fight back against our failing MPs who have defied 17.4m of us”.

Unlike Farage, I can only speak for myself. But personally, I don’t feel “humiliated”. Don’t get me wrong, there are moments when I feel myself to be in a permanent state of face-palm frustration and bemusement – and possibly even some embarrassment – but I haven’t spotted any personal sense of “humiliation” yet.

Farage also seems not to have noticed that, among the MPs per se that he condemns in the leaflet, there are quite a number that support Brexit – and in several cases, they fancy the harder Brexit the better. That group would include former Trotskyist Unionist Kate Hoey, who did a Titanic routine with Farage himself on a boat on Thames and appeared with him at the start of the Great Brexit March.

Or, more to the point, Farage has condemned an entire group because the people he is trying to appeal to will swallow the simplest messages and not bother with the facts.

It’s all rhetoric – empty rhetoric. The rest of this leaflet is no better. Candidates for our region are quoted as saying that “we need to keep our democracy intact for future generations”. Joel Chilaka – medical student. What does that even mean?

“We must take our waters back and restore our costal communities.” June Mummery – “fishing industry”. One wonders if she’s asked Farage why he attended so few meetings of the EU fisheries committee, when he could have actually done some work on this very issue.

“Left-wing democrats should vote to deliver the referendum result” – this from ‘former’ Trotskyist Claire Fox, the individual who still believes that IRA bombings were okay and (allegedly) that viewing images of paedophile abuse should not be illegal. She’s on the ticket locally because, presumably, any leftie will automatically be convinced to vote for her like.

“I do deals for a living. Taking ‘no deal’ off the table is bonkers.” Ben Habib – boss of First Property PLC, who clearly doesn’t actually understand what ‘no deal’ would do to the country or doesn’t care.

“Our country deserves better leadership.” This is Richard James Sunley Tice: private school educated ‘man of the people’. Oh – and Brexit Party chairman.

“The Conservative Party has failed to deliver Brexit and damaged trust in our democracy.” And so declares Annunziata Rees-Mogg – journalist and intellectual prodigy, who claims to have joined the Conservative Party at the age of five and, three years later, been out “canvassing, proudly wearing my rosette.”

“I fought for our country. I’m not prepared to see it humiliated.” James Glancy CGC – decorated Royal Marine.

Dear Christ. My mother only sent me out delivering Christian Aid and NCH (as it was then) envelopes shortly before I was in my teens. Should I have to bow before Annunziata's genius? Or indeed, is she really such a genius – or just an entitled brat?

Any meat on the bones? Any policies? Nope. Not a one.

But there is more.

“83% of Labour MPs back a second referendum.”

Because the democracy they’re whinging about being under threat or broken would be further underminded by, err, voting.

“92% of Brexit voters feel betrayed.” This apparently appeared in the Sun, which is hardly a trustworthy organ. However, since polling in recent months has increasingly suggested that support for Brexit is no longer a (small) majority position, this could mean that those Brexit voters feel ‘betrayed’ when realising how many lies they were fed by Farage and others.

“498 MPs promised to honour the result.”

We live in a representative democracy. It is not the job of MPs to push ahead with policies that will damage their constituents and the wider country. Jobs have already been lost as a consequence of the vote – even before we leave the EU. The cost of living has gone up as sterling has gone down – again, as a direct consequence of the vote itself and then as a result of the prime minister setting in motion Article 50.

But of course: “Politics is broken. Let’s change it for good.”

Yes – our political situation is a mess: our political (and public) discourse is a mess. Neither have been helped by liars and spivs like Farage and his fellow Brexit high priests – or David Cameron.

But change it for who’s “good”? For what “good”? Indeed, does “good” here mean ‘permanently’ – potentially then suggesting something anti-democratic – or for ‘better’?

And there you have it. Brexit is Brexit is Brexit. There is only one Brexit (actually, there are probably as many Brexits as people who voted for it). Nothing else matters. There is no degree of Brexit. Only Brexit.

It’s just a case of ‘get Brexit done – whatevs!’

Farage and Tice give no indication of how leaving the EU will benefit the majority of ordinary working people.

That’s because neither of them care about British working people, per se.

They are on the economic right – and harness the social right to support it. They are disaster capitalists who believe that profit has no downsides and that those on the receiving end of profiteering corporates are acceptable collateral damage.

It’s worth remembering that Rees-Mogg’s dad wrote the text book on disaster capitalism.

The Brexit Party is an organisation that nobody can join, that has no manifesto, no policies, no internal democracy and no transparency about where it gets its money from.

It is facile and wrong to label all those who voted for Brexit as intellectually challenged. But if The Brexit Party’s empty election literature convinces you that it is the answer to anything, then you really are probably too foolish to have understood the question.

A very, very, very dark – but funny – matter

Copenhagen, the 19th century: Danish celebrity author Hans Christian Anderson is regaling an audience with his latest fairy tale, The Little Mermaid.

There are celebratory fireworks and showers of admiration for the writer, but there are also ghostly figures.

And when Anderson returns home, climbing to the attic of his house, it is to discuss these ghosts with Marjory, a disabled Congolese pygmy, who he keeps in a box and who writes the stories for him.

But why doesn’t she try to escape; is she and her situation unique and what does Charles Dickens have to do with it all?

Martin McDonagh’s latest play, A Very Very Very Dark Matter, is going to upset people. Though to be strictly accurate, it’s still previewing until 24 October and it’s already provoked Indignant of Islington and Vexed of Vauxhall to express their horror online.

One can imagine this work will trigger an orgy of offence.

Taken at the most simple face value, the play laughs at colonialism and thumbs its nose at the crimes of empires. And because McDonagh has written a funny play, the audience laughs along and, therefore, becomes complicit.

Except that this is not supposed to be taken at face value, and only a monumental naïf or someone utterly dedicated to a peacock-like display of their social justice warrior credentials would not understand or would pretend not to understand what McDonagh is doing.

And incidentally, if you push that idea that he’s genuinely laughing at the crimes of imperialism, then you’re saying that the black cast members are Uncle Toms, and I would suggest people don’t go down that route.

There isn’t much of a plot, as such. Like Stephen Sondheim’s Follies, this is more of a meditation on a number of themes.

Not least among these is the trivialising of the treatment of the crimes of colonialism – an attitude that has reared its head again in recent years, with continuing exceptionalism and the concomitant belief of some Brexiteers that, once free from the EU, the UK can build Empire II and indeed, the rest of the world is ready to rush into our arms to give us the bestest ever trade deals with only five minutes discussion needed. Because we’re Britain, doncha know.

Of course, the same can be said of the Trump-era US too, with the crude and fact-free racism of the MAGA crowd, convincing itself that ‘true America’ is WASP America.

Such attitudes never went away, but increased nationalism elsewhere around the globe means they’re re-emerging. And therefore, it is important to remind people of just what nationalism and colonialism means in reality.

McDonagh – a writer in whom the Irish gothic tradition meets London-Irish experience, with punk mixed in (as Fintan O’Toole’s excellent programme essay notes) – is ideally suited to push boundaries so that, while A Very Very Very Dark Matter is very funny, it isn’t what you’d describe as ‘comfortable’.

In concentrating on Belgian imperialism – and the genocide in what was the Congo – the play raises what will, for many, be history that they are not familiar with. In pointing up the rape of the region for resources, he even manages a sideswipe at environmentally-holier-than-thou cyclists, noting that while Leopold II’s publicly-stated intention (as with other countries) was to ‘civilise’ and Christianise, the less public one was the desire for ivory and rubber – here, with the latter used for bicycle tires.

A Very Very Very Dark Matter is probably not for the faint-hearted or those who get upset by ‘bad language’ – it’s gloriously sweary in a very Irish way.

It’s short – 90 minutes with no interval – angry and funny at the same time, and defies easy labels.

Director Matthew Dunster has done an excellent job and Anna Fleische’s design is superb.

As Marjory, Johnetta Eula’Mae Ackles, on her debut, is simply outstanding and more than holds her own with her massively experienced co-star.

Jim Broadbent as Anderson is a delight as the bumbling, eccentric and crass writer, living off Marjory’s talent and, all the while, pleading with her that *his* colonial crimes aren’t as bad as those of others. And his swearing is a glory.

Phil Daniels as “Charles FUCKING DICKENS!” is a hoot too, and getting Tom Waits to record the role of narrator adds both to the fairy-tale aspect of the piece, as well as the sinister and eerie nature of it.

Bloody brilliant.

• A Very Very Very Dark Matter, is at London’s bridgetheatre.co.uk until 6 January 2019.

St George's Day and Englishness: a few thoughts

In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s 23 April. Which means it’s Bill Shakespeare’s birthday – and St George’s Day too.

In the case of the latter, that means celebrations of some sort for the people of many countries, since he is the patron saint of more than one nation – and plenty of other things besides, including archers and sufferers of syphilis.

But national days have little to do with the historic reality behind the saint in question.

In this case, there seems to be some confusion as to where he even came from, although there is support for his having been a Roman soldier from Syria Palæstina.

The Catholic Encyclopedia is of the opinion that, while there seems to be no ground for doubting the historical existence of St George, that doesn’t mean that we should believe some of the more fanciful tales.

Which conclusion struck me as showing a certain lack of self awareness.

But the mythical nature of St George seems rather apt in many ways.

You could start with the very nature of nationalism: anyone who really thinks that the country they hail from is better than any other is daft – just as daft as anyone thinking the reverse.

My parents were very much in the camp of thinking that England was absolutely finer than absolutely anywhere else on planet Earth. ‘God is an Englishman’, they commented more than once – presumably, given their devoutly held religious beliefs, without entirely meaning it.

So convinced of this innate superiority are they that they have been rendered incapable of actually seeing the satire in things such as Flanders and Swann’s Song of Patriotic Prejudice – or even some of what WS Gilbert wrote – and treat such songs with utterly gleeful relish.

Which rather means that the joke is on them – even if they can’t understand this.

My mother used to comment loudly – and god, how embarrassing it would be – when people left the cinema before the national anthem was played. We obviously had to wait – and stand for it.

Yet in spite of growing up in such an atmosphere, I could never understand what it was I was actually supposed to feel.

I mean – why be ‘proud’ of where you’re from? Why would you take pride in something over which you have had not an iota of control or influence?

It’s as daft as being ashamed of where one comes from.

They really are the two sides of a single coin.

It took me years to work out what my own Englishness meant – and it has much in common with that Flanders and Swann or Gilbertian strand of disguised satire.

Like much English humour, they seemed to be either of the Establishment or at least rather tame, yet the reality was more complex.

They were observers, sitting slightly apart and recording the quirks of the English, often with a slightly surreal edge.

The same could be said of a vast number of talents, from Joyce Grenfell to Eddie Izzard and Alan Bennett to Victoria Wood.

Equally, I doubt my mother, for all her liking Shakespeare, is aware of many aspects of the Bard’s writing.

Take A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for instance. It’s long struck me as more than a tad amusing that it’s the first Shakespeare play that children are introduced to.

It’s about sex. An Elizabethan audience would have understood that Puck transforms Bottom into an ass because the ass has a whopping big penis. That’s what it is that attracts Titania when she sees him.

But there are plenty of other myths about England and Englishness.

The likes of John Betjeman and JRR Tolkien both helped popularise a particular mythology during the 20^th century.

For both of them, England was the countryside: not the dramatic, romantic scenery of the Lake District, for instance, but something far gentler: rolling downs and pretty woods.

You see this chocolate box idea in much of Betjeman’s poetry. And it’s no coincidence that Tolkien labeled the part of Middle Earth that was under threat and needed defending as The Shire.

There was no place for industry or the inner cities – and they both pretty much wrote them out of their visions of what constituted an ideal England.

You could also mention St Mary Meade, home of Miss Jane Marple. But since Agatha Christie’s sharp-minded old lady was always solving murders rather than sitting in the garden, drinking tea from a bone china cup and doing the Times crossword, it was hardly an idyll – however far geographically from the encroaching obscenity of modern, urban life.

On the other hand, Hercule Poirot most definitely disliked the countryside – although perhaps that’s because he was furrin?

It’s an England that did – or does – most certainly exist, and it has a powerful hold on the collective imagination of many; perhaps particularly those of ‘a certain age’ and a certain social background.

In a speech to the Conservative Group for Europe, on (note the date) 22 April 1993, the then Prime Minister John Major said: “Fifty years on from now, Britain will still be the country of long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and, as George Orwell said: ‘Old maids bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist’ and, if we get our way, Shakespeare will still be read even in school.”

It’s quite obvious that a lot of this is connected to class.

Grubby, grimy, dirty industry was what the hoi polloi in the cities and grim, industrial northern towns did.

The middle classes built “invincible” suburbia to live as far as possible from the inner city, if they couldn’t avoid working there.

Only very recently has this trend started changing: now, living in the city so trendy that the rising cost of even old council flats is driving out the people who once were the only residents.

There is a truth to the vision of Betjeman and Tolkien et al, and there is something quite intoxicating about the picture that Major conjured up.

But it is only one part of that truth; only one part of what constitutes England – and a smallish part at that.

When I travel to Bournemouth later this year for work, I’ll enjoy some of the sort of scenery that Betjeman eulogised. But my own Englishness also incorporates the landscapes of Lowry – and there, in a nutshell, may be the reason that he was so shamefully treated by the country’s art Establishment: he recorded a world that they didn’t want to see; that did not conform to ideas of what was ‘nice’ and acceptable: that could not be Art.

Betjeman was a snob. Oh, he’s an enjoyable snob to read – his use of rhyme and rhythm makes his work readily accessible – but there is poetry in the industrial and in the north too: witness the work of the sublime Alan Plater and, as mentioned earlier, Bennett.

And of course, that doesn't even touch on just what those grubby working types actually contributed to the country, which such snobs so conveniently forget.

But going back to English humour, perhaps at our best, there’s a determination to prick pomposity.

Think of Will Hay, playing a double agent and being allowed to make repeated v signs to a picture of Hitler in 1942’s The Goose Steps Out as he ‘educates’ would-be spies about English ways of showing respect.

But it's equally part of the greater picture that Hay's screen persona was that of a buffoon. He was hardly some heroic figure. And indeed, you see the same thing repeated in English culture, from George Formby to Norman Wisdom.

That example came to mind again last week, when English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson responded to a picture of the Taj Mahal on the Twitter homepage with the following: “welcome to twitter homepage has a picture of a mosque. what a joke #creepingsharia”.

Major wasn’t entirely wrong when he also said: “Only in Britain could it be thought a defect to be ‘too clever by half’. The probability is that too many people are too stupid by three-quarters”.

But quite apart from pointing out that the Taj Mahal is not a mosque, the Twittersphere had enormous fun taking Robinson’s hashtag and sending it up mercilessly.

To give a flavour, tweets included: “My nan goes to Mecca bingo. Coincidence? #CreepingSharia” by Robbie Gibbo.

It was the perfect riposte. And it was deliciously English.

It is the same approach that produces Private Eye.

Although the downside of this is that, in general, we also notoriously distrust intellectualism. Public discourse suffers as a result – little wonder we therefore have political (and other) ‘elites’ and that we canonise the thick.

See Jade Goody – a troubled individual, exploited by the media and a voyeuristic public, who became a celebrity for her stupidity, before being vilified for the same thing and then hailed as a saint as she died in the public glare, desperate that the financial benefit that that would bring would benefit her children.

England at its best; England at its worst.

But you can’t have everything.

On a rather more down-to-earth level, I’m afraid today’s food hasn’t been particularly English – with The Other Half away, I’m on an Italian kick involving seafood and cheese and dishes he would not want to eat.

But it could hardly have been more English on Saturday evening – well, British – with English lamb chops, English asparagus and Jersey Royals from, err, Jersey.

However, that’s not to say there wasn’t a little something to do to mark today.

Just over a week ago, while wandering along Columbia Road, we were both handed what appeared to be a rather knobbly, red business card.

In fact, it turned out to be an invitation from the mayor of London to a St George’s Day festival this weekend just gone.

But the little cards themselves could be soaked overnight in water and then planted in soil, since they contained seeds for English wild flowers.

Which was an entirely nice idea – and I therefore saved them to soak and planted them late this afternoon.

And that’s exactly what I did.

Dressed in jogging pants, a football shirt and a tweed cap (made in the UK), with a mug of Earl Gray on the side, while another April shower pit-pattered down and, between the steady growl of the city’s traffic, bird song filled the air, I sowed a little bit of one England in a little corner of another England.