ROLE MODELS

With the great and the good strutting their stuff, with partisan passions aflame and with the venal media reporting and exaggerating every little incident, you would have thought an election would stimulate the oratorical talents of every aspiring soap-box Gladstone and attract inspiring world-views from every village tin-pot Napoleon. Yet certainly my pulses are resolutely un-quickened and my heart beats at its usual torpid pace. The UK elections have yet to catch light; ordinary people have had a bucketful of politics, the faces are too familiar and the arguments cannot bear endless repetition. The electorate wants the poll to happen as soon as possible, for the urgent key decisions to be made and then to be left in peace for at least 5 years.

The central role in the election is held by the party leaders – they must give heart to their foot-soldiers and confound their enemies in front of admiring audiences. Such politicians are thin on the ground. Tory Boris is instantly recognizable and is generally quite liked, but I await a rousing speech from him – he has been ultra-cautious, if not quite as boring as the unlamented Theresa. Harrumphing about the merits of Brexit is fine for the faithful but he has to move minds hitherto closed or indifferent. We have only seen plonk ordinaire Boris so far – we crave for vintage bubbling Boris to pop our corks! A decisive win is within his grasp – go get it Boris!

Boris Johnson on the cusp of victory

At least he is a world better than Jeremy Corbyn, who embarrasses even his own Labour members. Posterity may well wonder what possessed Labour to vote him in as Leader in the first place and then to keep him when his inadequacies were laid bare. Never more than a street-corner agitator, he holds beliefs of such extreme idiocy that even Tony Benn would spin in his grave. Champion of everything anti-British, this rabid admirer of Ulbricht’s old East Germany is anti-American, anti-NATO, anti-EU (but keep that quiet!) anti-business, anti-Semitic and pro-CND, pro-Arab terrorist, pro-IRA, pro-nationalisation, pro-absurdly high government spending. He and his cronies, John McDonnell, Seumas Milne and Diane Abbott dream about the Marxist/Stalinist policy of destroying the gainfully employed majority by confiscating their wealth and distributing it to the poorest in our society. Sane Labour would never endorse such policies, but do not even wait to see: Corbyn is an Orwellian nightmare, unfit for high office and is beyond the pale of democratic politics.

Red Ideologue, Jeremy Corbyn

The Liberal Democrats made Jo Swinson their Leader in 2019. She is a Scot and leads a party of 21 members, swollen from an original 12 by oddball defections from both major parties. Jo was not well-known before becoming leader but she has been in Parliament since 2005. She talks endlessly about many transient LibDem causes not least the imbalance between men and women in top jobs in all spheres. She is articulate and enthusiastic but it is all to no avail. Her party’s USP is that it is the only main party backing Remain, viewed as a dismal, negative and antiquated prospect by most of the electorate. She will have to fight hard to retain any of her seats and I predict a LibDem disaster. Jo, I know it is ungallant to say this, but you must also do something to sort out those un-telegenic front teeth. No doubt in some constituencies she will poll quite well, but the voting system marginalizes third parties and the LibDems will be irrelevant in 2019.

Jo Swinson, LibDem cheerleader

Finally, we have the harridan from the SNP, Nicola Sturgeon. She has been First Minister of Scotland since 2014, succeeding Alex Salmond after the SNP-backed referendum on independence failed. She has administered Scotland reasonably sensibly although her country’s fiscal deficit continues to grow, its industries are sluggish and is kept solvent by generous Westminster subsidies. Brexit has given the SNP an opportunity to reopen the independence debate, a cause well-supported by about 25% of Scots these days but one which obsesses Sturgeon, who can talk of little else. The 2017 election showed a decline in SNP support and a Conservative revival. Despite the SNP’s trumpetings, I doubt if the SNP will make a clean sweep and I believe the Conservatives may hold on to its seats. There may be other surprises from Labour too as Scotland was its historic stronghold. The SNP fantasies about Scotland staying in Europe underline its feeble grip on reality. To voters outside Scotland, Sturgeon is a pain in the neck, spouting Anglophobia and personal hostility to Boris. Her glib chip-on-the-shoulder nationalism is deeply unattractive to many Scots too.

Nicola Sturgeon, hater of the Union

 So, our 4 political leaders are a rum lot and we cannot find a Cromwell, a Pitt a Churchill or a Thatcher between them. As a supporter of Brexit, I naturally gravitate towards Boris. I am now in Greece enjoying the autumnal pleasures of Athens and Salonika and only return on 10 December just on the eve of polling. Happily, I have already cast my postal vote in the Conservative cause and humbly suggest that my readers do the same.

SMD

28.11.19

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2019

BRITISHNESS

This weekend’s Festival of Remembrance at the Albert Hall and the Ceremony of Remembrance at the Cenotaph cannot fail to move millions of Britons, even this year - 101 years since the end of WW1 and 74 years since the end of WW2. The days of conscript armies have long gone but professional British forces have fought and died for us in, for example. the Falklands, Ulster, Iraq and Afghanistan much more recently. Many of the grievously wounded are with us still and all honour to them and to other sufferers and mourners.

The veterans at the Cenotaph 2019

       

These ceremonies are carried out with pride, aplomb and solemnity. The music at the Cenotaph hardly changes but is always deeply evocative – Rule Britannia, the Minstrel Boy, Dido’s Lament, The Flowers of the Forest et al touch deep emotions and all generations share them. It is not a moment for political point-scoring – how glad we were that Jeremy Corbyn conducted himself with dignity, so unlike the shaming distracted look and donkey-jacket scruffiness of Michael Foot a generation ago.

These occasions help define what is meant by “Britishness”, a quality enjoyed by both Leavers and Remainers – epithets which hopefully will lose meaning after the December 12 UK general election. There are extremes on both sides – the tub-thumping, flag-waving bigot on the Right and the over- populated Left of professional disparagers of their own country and admirers of the worst in others, be they IRA, Hamas, ISIL or Hezbollah. Somewhere on the margin are the various Nationalists, ever consumed with bile against an England they willfully fail to understand or cherish.

Away from those extremes is a broad middle Britain, united in love and respect for their country.

This royal throne of kings, this sceptre’d isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise…

This happy breed of men, this little world,

This precious stone set in the silver sea …

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

I know this is hackneyed and the stuff of clichés but it idealises something almost all Britons feel, the uniqueness of their native land (including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland).

Firstly, we love the physical features of our country, the glorious countryside and endless coast – matchless Yorkshire Dales, Lake District, Grampian Mountains, Hebrides, South Downs, Cotswolds, Thames Valley, Devon and Cornwall, Snowdonia and Co. Down.

Wordsworth's Grasmere in the Lake District

Then we love our great cities like London, Leeds and Glasgow throbbing dynamically even if beset by the challenges of our society. The smaller towns delight too, Stamford, Burford, Durham and Perth, not to mention fun places like Brighton or Blackpool.

Yet what defines Britishness to a greater degree is a certain mode of life – an innate geniality, a desire to “get on” with neighbours, a protective attitude to private space, a belief in the merits of self-sufficiency and, if necessary, a powerful line in bloody-mindedness. These habits are supplemented by familiar symbols – double-decker buses, draught bitter at the pub, pillar boxes, Marmite, beloved pets and the ubiquitous football and cricket bat.

Pride in our country is immensely fortified by knowledge of our history and by the rich poetic and literary culture accompanying it, only rivalled by that of the French. That history encompasses the Roman invasion, Boudicca, the Anglo-Saxon influx, King Alfred, the Norman Conquest, the 100-years War, Magna Carta, Bannockburn, the Reformation, Civil War, Cromwell, The Union of the Crowns and Parliaments, the Glorious Revolution, the supremacy of Parliament, the foundation of Empire, the struggle with Napoleon, Industrial Revolution and Victorian prosperity. The agonies of two World Wars and eventual victory ushered in hard times, economic recovery, the welfare state and the seminal vote to leave the European Union.

Poets from Chaucer to Shakespeare have sung of this world. The poetic diction of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burns, Shelley, Byron and Keats has resounded through all corners of the nation. The British independent spirit was most confidently proclaimed by Kipling and its apartness avowed by Philip Larkin who observed “Poetry and Sovereignty are very primitive things. I like to think of their being united in this way in England”.

This British nation is not prepared to go down the road of domination by Europe. We will run our own nation in our own way, while maintaining good relations with Europe and many other nations. The general election will, I believe, result in a firm majority supporting Boris’ deal on Brexit and result in a sensible agreement with Brussels. The outside world beckons and we will seize all opportunities we can.

Advance, Britannia Fair!

Lord Byron's Dark Lochnagar in Highland Deeside

SMD

12.11.2019

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2019