Changing times

It's nearly a year since Johnson became Prime Minister. Amidst all the bluster, lies, scandals, and evasions, he has one solid achievement. Britain is no longer a member of the European Union. We are now a third country, even if the full consequences are yet to be felt. Remain is over. We can begin the long application process to rejoin, but we cannot remain. Johnson took us out.

The final terms are unknown and the haste with which Johnson wants us to leave the transition period is baffling. Even so, we know that the shape of Brexit will bear no relationship to the one that we were promised in the referendum campaign.

Johnson's achievement was facilitated by others, of course. Cameron's decision to hold an unnecessary referendum at the tail end of the Euro crisis, expecting remain to win handsomely, was a master class in bad timing. Corbyn's decision (with a bit of help from Swinson) to vote for an early election, again thinking he would win, was criminal stupidity. Johnson's landslide with 43% of the vote was a consequence of the perpetual failings of our electoral system. His gamble in purging the Conservative Party of real conservatives paid off.

This was the culmination of an era of political instability in the aftermath of the financial crisis and the desperately misjudged response of the coalition government, with its austerity and resultant grinding poverty. Even so, everything was politically normal until 2015. Cameron's majority, as a result of the collapse of the Liberal Democrats, Miliband's weak leadership of Labour, and the bloody electoral system again, changed everything. Cameron initiated the chaos by holding the EU referendum, which smashed everything to pieces. Labour's folly was the collective act of suicide in choosing Corbyn as leader.

2015. Five short years ago. It seems a lifetime.

During that time we saw radicalisation accompanied by the processes of accommodation and excuse making that Anne Applebaum wrote about and that I referred to in my earlier post. First, Theresa May redefined the referendum result as mandating a hard Brexit, leaving the single market and customs union, in line with the demands of the right-wing ultras in her party. Then we saw her hard Brexit described as soft, as the Brexiters radicalised after the referendum. Hard Brexit became orthodox belief, even for people who campaigned for Remain. While Lexiters abandoned the language of social democracy in favour of vituperative hatred for the EU and all its works.

We saw the same accomodation on the left. People who had been critics of the politics that Corbyn had espoused, rallied round and found reasons to support someone who was clearly inadequate and personally unpopular. As Labour sank into a morass of antisemitism, they dug themselves in deeper. The left winning mattered more to them than the nature of the left that did win.

It's been changing for a while. Possibly, it's been accelerated by the government's inept handling of the pandemic, but it would have happened anyway due to the inherent contradictions of the politics of the era. Now, it's over. This week saw two things that clarified what's going on.

Rebecca Long-Bailey, the left's defeated candidate for Labour leader, tweeted her support for an interview with an actor. The interview contained an antisemitic conspiracy theory (as well as other criticisms of the party). I don't expect political acumen from a celebrity, but from a member of the shadow cabinet? It was not an act of intelligence. She was sacked. Rapidly, rightly, and decisively sacked. It marks the start of a serious change of political direction. The Corbynista left has become irrelevant.

As Labour detoxes, the Tories are finding that their one triumph is turning septic. The  European Social Survey was published this week, confirming previous trends and showing that support for the EU is growing across Europe. This report deals with its consequences for Brexit.

The survey, completed in 2019 and released this week, found that 57% of Brits would vote to be inside the EU, compared to 50% who said the same in the previous survey released in 2018.
By contrast, just 35% said they would vote to be outside the EU, compared with the 52% of people who voted to leave in 2016. Eight percent of Brits said they would not vote in such a referendum.

35%, that's all. Demographics and everyday experience will probably shrink that number further. The referendum took place at the only time Leave could win. Brexit has happened when the majority oppose it, in a form no one campaigned for. The form is one that few anticipated, and even fewer voted for.  It has happened solely because it was defined as 'the will of the people,' rather than a quirk of timing. It's shape is the result of treating the views of half the population as irrelevant. The insecurities of the Brexiters, with their accusations of betrayal, shows Brexit's fragile foundations.

Brexit is Johnson's nemesis. His only success is turning into a curse that will haunt him. His personal inadequacies are manifest. But worst of all, his legacy will be defined by a policy that will be despised. He has wrecked his party and his country with his one moment of triumph.  His premiership will be seen as a curse.

There is only one certainty about the next political era. It will be dominated by our relationship with Europe. Europe is, as it has been for centuries, vital to our security, economy, and, given our near fifty years of integration, our personal lives. The coming years will be spent dealing with the consequences of our folly. I'm sure that we will look back on our years of membership as "the land of lost content" as we begin to deal with the accursed legacy of Cameron, May, and Johnson.  

Chris Grey is right about the immediate tasks, and he views the prospect of rejoining as remote. I'm not so sure. Back in 2015, nobody could have foreseen where we are today. I suppose, much depends on the extent of the change that is coming. Reality points in one direction, as it has throughout. It's just that right-wing utopians chose to disregard it. 

The years 2015-2020  have been momentous. Though, how much better off we all would be if they had never happened.

Springtime for Johnson

In 2016 Boris Johnson famously wrote two alternative articles for the Telegraph, one backing remain and the other leave. He finally plumped for leave and reportedly told David Cameron that he expected to be defeated. It was a ploy to win a support base so that he could be next in line as Cameron's replacement. Echoing the plot of Mel Brook's 'The Producers,' he won a referendum that he intended to lose.

The consequences of winning are often more troublesome than those of losing. Losing allows rhetoric to continue unexamined. Winning brings the burden of implementing victory. That is far more difficult. In the case of Brexit, probably the most complex task any government has ever undertaken since the Second World War. The winning rhetoric was all about immediacy, simplicity, and huge benefits. The reality was that it would take many years of untangling our economy from Europe, be immensely complex with unpredictable consequences, and prove costly and yield no benefits. In the wake of the referendum, Johnson's leadership bid failed. That would have been the end of it if it hadn't been for the government making a complete mess of the process. Never a good idea, Brexit is now a comprehensive failure. The consequences are very clear. Any form of Brexit will:

a) Make the country relatively poorer.
b) Damage the country's international standing and strategic interests.
c) Reduce its power and control.

No-deal Brexit will do this in spades and adds immediate and unpredictable chaos. For what?

For the ultimate symbolism of blue passports, designed in France and printed in Poland?

Unlike 'The Producers,' Johnson profited from the mess. He got a second chance and is Prime Minister. But he arrived at No.10 in a crisis and only got there by using wild and irresponsible rhetoric to play to unrepresentative party members.

He is now demanding that the EU renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement to remove the Northern Ireland Backstop. They will not. He will fail. He says he is determined to default to a no-deal and is ratcheting up the noise. If he is trying to bluff the EU, that too will fail. He must know this. So, does he intend to carry through with no-deal against the wishes of Parliament, business, all major institutions, and public opinion? It would destroy his premiership. Is he a secret ideologue, longing to fulfil his Churchill fantasies by leading his country in an existential struggle against its … er … allies? Or perhaps he is bluffing us and his party, not the EU?

Johnson's tactic may be to defuse the ability of the Brexit Party to split the Tory vote in an early election and win a secure majority against a divided opposition, possible on as little as 30% of the vote. But even if this works, for all the sound and fury there will still be only three Brexit options for the UK: leave through the existing withdrawal agreement; leave without an agreement (no-deal); revoke and remain in the EU. One of these must be chosen.


The whole business is so strange, I can't help wondering if, whether by accident or design, this is another Producers tactic. It may be wishful thinking on my part, but, once he has glimpsed the abyss, will he refuse to jump like Tsipras before him? To be even more Machiavellian (or Mel Brooksian), his personal interest lies in failure as long as it is clear that he has tried hard and that it's someone else's fault. He may be eyeing the gathering Parliamentary opposition with glee, rather than fear. This could be the only time a Cavalier is delighted to see a Roundhead army assembling to oppose him.

End times

Brexit died last weekend.

By that I don't mean that it won't happen. There is still a threat of political stupidity hanging over us because of the capture of a political party by loons (not an overstatement after reading Johnson channeling his inner Moses in the Telegraph). What I mean is that it has returned to the margins where it used to lurk as an eccentric irritation rather than as a horde of vandals set on sacking Brussels. The majority are still bored and baffled, but, as a few dozen devotees followed Farage, up to two million ordinary people gathered from all over the country to march in London to oppose Brexit. The visuals of the comparative strengths of the two events would not comfort Leavers. Leaving is no longer a viable political option.

The march was to demand a second referendum, but an online Parliamentary petition to cancel Brexit altogether by revoking article 50 and remaining in the EU, has gone viral. At the time of writing it has over five and a half million signatures and is still climbing. The largest demonstration ever has been joined by the largest petition ever. Material reality is on the march against religious faith. All Brexit has left is the appeal to belief.

If Brexit happens, it will do so in the teeth of widespread opposition and confront the most surprising event of modern British politics - the rise of a mass, determined, pro-European movement. Leaving will not be accepted, it will be fought through all the torturous negotiations in the years to follow, and, given the overwhelming sentiments of young people, it will be reversed. All we will be doing is damaging the country, permanently losing our many privileges within the EU, making people poorer, and diminishing our power in the illusion that we are gaining sovereignty. For what? An interregnum. Brexit is an exercise in futility.

As I have always said, leaving is a project of the right. It is the means to two ends, redoubling the Thatcherite revolution and winning permanent control of the Conservative Party. Though a small group of Lexiters have jumped on the bandwagon as well, with the opposite aim of greater economic collectivism. Both see the European Union as a constraint. But there isn't much evidence to suggest that either have come to grips with the nature of the modern economy. In this excellent article, Duncan Weldon looks at Brexit in the context of 20th century economic history and concludes that there is nothing original about it:

For all the talk of a radical change in the economic policy set‐up, it is just as likely that the end result is a very British attempt to ‘muddle through’ with a model which itself is not working and of which one of the key props (EU membership) has just been kicked away. The implication of this is that Brexit will not generate a new model for the UK, but simply an inferior version of the existing one.

It's hardly surprising that Leavers haven't got the faintest idea of what they want out of Brexit or of how to achieve it.

But it is a political revolution. It recasts Britain's place in the world as one of vulnerable isolation -sorry Global Britain. It is driven by nationalism. And that's the problem. It's attraction is emotional. Get to the details and the justification falls apart. It's a vacuous revolution, whose main aim seems to be the entrenchment of the Tory right in the leadership, regardless of electoral consequences. Indeed. consequences of any sort seem to be the least of their concerns.

In a couple of interesting posts Will Bott describes the structural causes of the increasingly radical noises coming from Leavers as they shift from Norway to nihilism. there are a number of factors, but the most appropriate here is that Leave has always had a problem of legitimacy, which is why they have never been comfortable with their victory. From the very first they have attacked Remainers, often in vicious and provocative language. They claimed the mantle of 'democracy' and used it it to fix the referendum result as the only democratic outcome for all time.

The political parties have acquiesced in this game too, bowing down before the altar of 'respect the referendum result,' regardless of how it was achieved, whether opinion has changed, or, most startlingly of all, whatever the consequences of the result actually are. Crash the economy? Respect the result. Make people poorer? Respect the result. Strip people of their rights? Respect the result. Threaten peace in Northern Ireland? Respect the result. Utter madness.

The other line is the psychic perception of 'they knew what they were voting for,' which, by coincidence, is always the favourite option of the clairvoyant. Paul Evans skewers this one here.

Saturday's march challenged the complacency. The 'will of the people' might not be as clear cut as leavers insisted it was. Their first impulse was to denigrate the demonstrators to try and strip them of their legitimacy. They were marching against democracy, rather than practising it. Then we got the sneering. For a long time we have had the strange spectacle of multi-millionaires decrying ordinary people as the elite. Now wealthy commentators declared that Remainers are middle class and so are inauthentic, which means that their opinions must be invalid. Lexiters jumped on the Tory bandwagon too. Picking up on some naff posters, middle class leftists decried middle class protestors for being middle class. The reality of a diverse demonstration, showing a depth of anger that could bring coaches to London from as far away as Orkney, should have made them question their world view.

Both left and right Leavers were caught up by the myth of Brexit as a working class rebellion to be romanticised in different ways. Duncan Weldon summarised why that is not so:

It is tempting to try to describe the Brexit vote as a revolt by the losers of globalisation—communities that had experienced de‐industrialisation and stagnating wages simply voting against what the elite desired. One could argue that the Labour party and the leadership of the trade unions have been disconnected from their traditional support bases and that class politics (despite appearances) actually drove the Leave victory. Innumerable newspaper opinion columns have indeed attempted to make this case. But the evidence suggests otherwise. Despite the popular image of Brexit being something which finds its loudest proponents in a stereotypical northern working men's club, the reality is that the most hardcore Brexiteers are usually to be located in the bar of a southern golf club. 

Labour's nervousness about the possibility of losing 30% of its vote and recklessness with the risk to the other 70%, led to a curious decision. On the day of the biggest street protest in history, against a Tory government and in support of official Labour policy, the Leader of the Opposition dodged it and spent the day in Morecambe, grabbing a photo opportunity with the statue of a dead comedian.

A cynical politician would have looked at that demonstration and the distribution of signatures on the petition and seen millions of voters in strategic locations that they need to win over at the next general election. The less cynical would have realised that forty years in the EU have produced, for enough people, an affinity, identity, and attachment to the rights it offers its citizens, to make Brexit divisive and toxic. A realist would have read the hard-headed economic analyses, seen the joint alarm of the TUC and CBI, looked at the millions on the streets and thought - no, this mustn't be done. I think it might take a bit more time for our current ones to cotton on.

That's why Brexit is dead, but it still lives on. It's a bugger to kill. The temptation of a zombie Brexit remains. It would be a disaster. Now's time to hammer a stake through its heart. 

A new year

I don't make New Year resolutions. I never keep them and these days I would probably forget about them. Instead, in the spirit of such failure, I want to make some wishes for what I would like to see in 2019, none of which will come true.

1. An end to the delusion of British greatness.

Both Remainers and Brexiters cling to this. Brexiters think that we can be a global power once again, Remainers that we should "remain and reform" - take the leading role in changing the EU from within. Well, if this was a job interview for the post of EU Lead Reformer, then the way Brexit has been handled would mean we wouldn't make the short list. Remain and reform ourselves after this shambles would make much more sense. As for the global power nonsense, I though we got over that one after Suez in 1957. Brexiters forget that before we entered the EU, we were known as "the sick man of Europe." If we leave, we will become like a broken down drunk sitting in the corner of a seedy pub telling all the people trying to avoid him that he used to be an empire.

How about a bit of humility and realism. Being a partner in a successful international enterprise is not vassalage, it is not oppression, it's what a successful and prosperous modern nation looks like.

2. The abandonment of the word 'weaponise."

This is a Corbynista favourite. Anti-Semitism is being weaponised to get at Corbyn. The latest version is that the campaign for a "People's Vote" on the Brexit deal is another weapon invented to attack their hero. It's an old ploy, an accusation of bad faith. It's also a classic logical fallacy and a diversionary tactic. Actually, people attack anti-Semitism because it's poisonous and growing. They support a second referendum because they oppose Brexit. It has bugger all to do with Corbyn. But when his supporters suggest that it is being weaponised, they are saying that it can be, and that therefore there must be some truth in the accusation that he is an anti-Semitic Brexiter. I don't think that they have spotted that bit.

Can we just recognise and deal with the real issues please?

3. People stopping rabbiting on about the "will of the people" and misusing the term "democracy."

So many examples, but here's one drawn from my own prejudices. It's the tiresome Brexiter line about how 17.4 million people voted for Brexit as if the 29.1 million who didn't don't count (16,141,242 voted Remain and 12,949,258 didn't vote as opposed to the 17,410,742 who voted Leave) let alone the 4-5 million people who were most affected by the decision but were not allowed to vote (UK citizens overseas and non-UK EU citizens legally resident in the country). On top of that there is the tiresome insistence that opposing Brexit and trying to stop it is failing to respect democracy. I'm sorry, but democracy gives you the right to oppose policies, campaign against them, and overturn them. Opponents of leaving the EU are not betraying democracy, but practising it.

4. Going on about how the Brexit vote was all about "the left behind."

The Brexit vote was not predominantly working class. There was an identifiable section of working class Brexit voters, mostly from smaller urban areas, however, taken on their own they could never have won the referendum. There wasn't anything like enough of them. No, dig down in the figures and you will see that the majority of Brexit voters, as well as being older and more socially conservative, were relatively affluent and typically suburban. Fed on decades of anti-EU fabrications drawn from a genre established by Boris Johnson in the Telegraph, and embedded in a saloon bar culture of moaning about how everything has gone to the dogs, the majority of leave voters were anything but "the left behind." Brexit is the triumph of the suburbanisation of politics, a phenomenon that hasn't been discussed often enough.

Of course we should deal with the problems of 'the left behind," and with poverty and inequality. But we shouldn't do it because of Brexit. We should do it because we should.

***

This post has been an exercise in futility, but wishing a happy New Year to those who pass by this place isn't. Have as good a one as possible.

Murder most foul

A few days ago the Daily Telegraph led its front page with the speech of that egregious liar, our Foreign Secretary, under the by-line: "The Roaring Lion." This is quite mad. So is the speech by this arch reactionary in fancy dress who talks of Brexit in terms of Agincourt. Theresa May's speech, dogged by a virus, a prankster, and collapsing scenery worthy of the worst 1960s soap opera, was a disaster. But it was one of cringe making pathos, as the inadequate attempted the impossible. It wasn't the worst speech of the conference. She was inept; Johnson and Rees-Mogg were worse, they were sinister.

Whenever I hear the nationalist right expressing their deep love of our country and the glories that will come to us when we shake off the tyrannical yoke of our biggest trading partners and closet allies, I don't think of their disregard of simple things like facts, evidence, or truth. Instead I think of Oscar Wilde:

And all men kill the thing they love, 
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look, 
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Nationalism kills patriotism; and it kills the country it professes to love.

It's one reason why nationalists like referendums. They are faux-democracy; they flaunt democratic values, even as they undermine them. Democracy is a network of interlocking institutions, checks and balances, underpinned by elected representatives. Referendums by-pass all these safeguards and offer a one-off marketing exercise. Sell your fad or obsession to enough people just once and the entire structure of democracy is undermined. Referendums kill democracy.

All British national and regional institutions were opposed to Brexit. All parliaments, councils, and assemblies were opposed. Business and trade unions were opposed. Academics and the medical profession were opposed. Scientists and all our trading partners and allies were opposed. It could never happen. There was one shot. A referendum, where a bare majority of the honest but inexpert could overrule the lot. This wasn't the triumph of democracy, so much as its betrayal.

Nationalist crimes agains democracy are being committed in Hungary and Poland. While the polarisation in Britain is now being experienced by Spain. I don't know enough about Catalonia to have an informed opinion, other than a revulsion at the brutality of the Spanish Police, but the Catalan left are making it clear that they do not support the nationalists.

The appalling scenes of police violence that took place on 1 October in Catalonia along with the most baffling disrespect for democratic procedures and democratic substance that preceded them a month ago in the Catalan Parliament urges us to raise a collective voice.
This voice belongs to the democratic, non-aligned left, a left whose expression we have been longing for. While this voice unequivocally and strongly condemns the authoritarian violence endorsed by the central government, it sternly and democratically resists nationalistic discourse. We refuse to accept this binary as the choice we must face.

And in the same way we should cancel Brexit, assert our democratic values, heal our divisions, and end the xenophobic hostility that the referendum raised. In that way we can save the country we love, rather than let it be transformed into the plaything of a deranged and obsessive right.

Fan dance

I attended a lecture many years ago by David Denver from the University of Lancaster. He was unique amongst academics as he combined being a professor with running the bar. He was the only person I can remember who could entertain an audience by talking about voting behaviour. This was in the early 80s and he was discussing the 1979 referendum on Scottish devolution. He told a story about interviews he did with voters. He spoke to an elderly woman.

"Do you support devolution?"
"Oh no. I'm no too sure, but I don't think it's a good idea at all."
"So you voted no?"
"No, I voted yes. But I only put a little cross."

I stole that line for my own classes for the next twenty years. It's a great story to make students laugh, but it illustrates a serious point. A yes/no referendum tells you nothing about the strength of the views held by a voter. A vote by the absolutely convinced carries the same weight as someone who is wavering and unsure. And the wavering voter could just have easily voted the other way. This matters if the vote is close, which is why there are usually safeguards built into referendums. In 1979 just under 52% voted in favour of devolution, just over 48% were against. The referendum was lost as you needed a majority of the vote and the support of 40% of the registered electorate to win. They only got 33%. It made sense, even if the loss of the referendum brought down the Callaghan government. If this precedent had been followed for this year's referendum on the single most important constitutional decision this country has taken for more than forty years, we would not now be negotiating to leave the European Union. The majority was similar, however although the turnout was larger than in 1979, leave only gained the support of 37% of the electorate. I have no idea why the rule was not applied this time, other than shoddy thinking about the principles of democracy and complacency about the result.

Yes/no questions also fail to tell you anything about why people voted as they did, and are totally inadequate if the options are not a straightforward yes or no. In the Euro referendum the consequence of a remain vote was simple, no change. But the leave campaign kept offering different options with no method of knowing which one you were voting for.

As a result, I cringe when I hear politicians talk about the 'clear' result, and the 'will of the people,' the result was nothing of the sort. It was a very narrow majority, as this bar chart from Political Betting shows.

As the accompanying post by Mike Smithson points out, a swing of just 1.8% would have reversed the result.

That leave won by the rules set before the referendum is incontrovertible. Whether it is a secure basis for popular support for such a monumental reversal of policy is doubtful. Of course, it shows equally that the overall support for the EU is weak, yet this result is being claimed by the May government as the ultimate mandate for anything regressive that they want to do. The interpretation that the government has put on it is that it was permission to pursue a right-wing nationalist agenda. It's a clear case of mandate creep. This is why I found this article by Daniel Hannan in the Financial Times so interesting.

Hannan is a right libertarian and an obsessive about the European Union. There is a good long profile of him here. Now, at the moment of his triumph, he is getting worried. He makes two good points, but smooths over the obvious objections.

The first is that the primary motive of most who supported leave was not to stop immigration. He objects to all leave voters being labelled racists. So do I. They aren't. The result is that he is horrified to see the government make immigration control their overriding priority in Brexit negotiations. However, though the majority may not have been motivated by xenophobia, the referendum would probably not have been won without strident anti-immigration rhetoric. And if you think that you can hitch a ride with Farage and not get his politics, then you have deluded yourself.

Secondly, he recognises that this was not a clear result.

A 52-48 split, it seems to me, is a mandate for a gradual and phased repatriation of power, not for a severing of all institutional links with the EU. Britain should withdraw from the structures of political union while retaining some of the current economic arrangements, including the prohibition on discrimination against the products of another EU state, which is the true basis of the single market.

The obvious objection is that "a gradual and phased repatriation of power" was not on offer from the EU. All that was available was withdrawal and they never seriously thought that anybody would want to do that. The now familiar Article 50 was never expected to be used. In negotiating the future relationship between Britain and the EU, the cards are not in Britain's hand. I am afraid that by his logic an inconclusive result points to one conclusion only, to remain until such time as the case for leaving has been made decisively. And Hannan, a classic liberal, is concerned.

... if we insist on seeing the referendum as a vote for nativism and protectionism, we shall lose that opportunity. Worse, we might truly become the meaner country that pro-Europeans kept talking about during the campaign.

The complexity of reality is beginning to make itself known after the over-simplification of the referendum. In the same way, the inadequacy of referendums as democratic devices are being exposed. Looking at the hard economic data is scary. (And with part of my life lived in Greece, I am distinctly unimpressed with the falling value of the pound). At the very least, the risks are huge. The costs, as always, will be borne by those least able to bear them.

I listened to David Davis, the Brexit secretary, speaking in the Commons. He talked about wanting the "most open, barrier-free access to the single market possible." Of course that is what we have now, it's called membership. Without membership, who knows? I couldn't help thinking that Theresa May has just turned on a giant fan. At the other end of the room is a vast pile of stinking ordure, made up of the difficulties, contradictions, threats, and unpleasantnesses associated with Brexit. It is sitting on a slow moving conveyor belt, getting ever closer. All that stands between it and the fan is a giant, invisible wall of wishful thinking. This could get messy.

Grentrance

I shall be going to Greece in a few days, for a shorter stay than normal in the summer. Obviously, with a house in Greece, I have a vested interest in remaining in the EU. The collision of Brexit with Greek bureaucracy is a car crash I want no part of. My postal vote has been delivered. I have voted Remain. My motives are thoroughly privileged and middle class in origin.

But for those without my motives what a dismal campaign this has been; littered with half-truths, exaggerations and downright lies. A reckless referendum on a vital issue is not the best way of resolving a dispute within the Conservative Party. Actually, a referendum is a pretty crap way of resolving anything, as opposing bands of obsessive enthusiasts try and sell their line by any means possible. A referendum is usually the result of some burning point of principle or a moment of crisis. This one is odd though. There was no crisis in relations with the EU, nobody was particularly excited about it, and there was little demand for change. We are being dragged through this because of internal Tory party disputes, the same ones that wrecked the Major government.

That doesn't mean that there are no discontents, however. There is plenty of pain for people on the margins outside the pampered middle class - just read about the employment conditions at Sports Direct for example. There is alienation, insecurity, resentment and utter disillusion with politics. And this is the problem, certainly with this referendum, a vote to leave is a vote against the establishment. It is an expression of a multitude of discontents, none of which could be resolved solely by leaving the EU. Throw in the dismal Remain campaign, the lacklustre performance of the Labour Party, and the brazen populism of Leave and it isn't surprising to see the polls moving in favour of exit. Leave could well win. If they do, it will be because of the successive failures of British politics, not the European Union.

The decision will be taken when I am in Greece, a country in economic turmoil, in real conflict with the EU, and locked in the financial straitjacket of the Euro. The resulting austerity policies make ours look munificent. Yet the outcome is determination by the overwhelming majority of Greeks to stay both in Europe and European monetary union at all costs. They think we must be mad.

The debate has depressed me. There is little in the way of discussion of principles, little that is positive and no historical perspective. It is a contest based on competing fears. It's been horrible and done nothing for my referendum scepticism. So, let me wax all academic and point to some historical origins.

The idea of European Union is not new. There was even an attempt to promote one in 1930 with the Briand Plan. However, the principles on which the idea is based are much older. I would pick out four.

1. The idea of federation was a central part of a number of plans for a peaceful world order developed from the 17th and 18th centuries onwards. Immanuel Kant's essay, Perpetual Peace, is the best known. It was a central principle of Kant's design that the federation had to be between nation states that were "republics." That would translate in today's language as democratic. The EU is such a federation and for the wave of states emerging from dictatorships in the 1970s, and the post-Communist countries after 1989, the EU is seen as a guarantor of their new democracies.

2. A second mainstay of the 19th century peace movement was free trade. Trade was seen as a collaborative activity that bound peoples together in mutual self-interest. Above all, it was an activity that took place outside the state. It was the state that embodied militarism and war, and so it was the state whose powers had to be limited. Free trade was more than an economic concept, even though all we seem to debate today is the economic benefits or otherwise of the single market.

3. Moving from idealism into the world of realpolitik, the third principle is the balance of powers. Preventing the domination of Europe by a single power, and deterring the search for such dominance, was central to the construction of a peaceful continent. That balance was disturbed first by the French in the Napoleonic Wars and then by the consequences of the unification of Germany in 1871. Two world wars later, a union that would bind France and Germany together and restrain equally the power of each was seen to be the way to end the possibility of a European war for good.

3. Finally, we have to talk about the rise of technocracy. In Britain, "national efficiency" was part of the modernisation advocated by New Liberalism. The rational management of collective resources underpinned Fabian socialism. That specialisation and expertise is fundamental to running a modern state and economy is axiomatic, but there is a flaw in that it can lead to elite remoteness and overconfidence, a doctrine of managerialism leading to the centralising of power in a bureaucracy, and what is often called the "democratic deficit" of the EU. I see that as failure of responsibility, rather than of representation, but it is the source of the resentment of unelected officials in Brussels (even though our own civil service is not elected).

It is also a mistake to see technocracy as ideologically neutral. Of course it isn't. It governs by the precepts of the dominant ideology of its day. Today, it is 'neoliberalism' (a term that is rapidly losing its precise meaning to become a term of abuse) or economic orthodoxy. This ideology is shared by the British government too. Brexit would mean the same policies administered by different people, not a change in the underlying principles of political economy.

Two things emerge from these concepts. The first is that the EU is necessarily a device to constrain the freedom of action of a member state. This is because unrestrained states are capable of immense crimes against their own peoples as well as against other nations. Bound into a federal union, engaging in free trade within an agreed, common legal framework, with an international administration, and defined, legally enforced citizens' rights, states trade absolute sovereignty for democracy, security, and peace. The assumption is that this can only be secured permanently by limiting state power.

The second is that the assumptions underlying European Union are liberal. They are not socialist and they are anti-nationalist. This is why opposition to the EU is being led by nationalists and supported by some leftists as minor players.

Despite the rhetoric, Brexit is not a process of democratisation. It takes British democracy for granted and doesn't seek to broaden it. Nor does it offer a different political economy, something urgently needed and the main source of unease. Brexit is a nationalist project. But it's one that has the ability to gather in a whole range of legitimate discontents and offer leaving the EU as a simple solution. It isn't. At least it isn't as far as we know. Because the details of where we would be heading outside the EU are unknown and the options scarcely considered.

That's the problem with referendums. They give a binary choice, leave no scope for nuance, and are polarising. But at the very least, at a time of growing far-right populism and authoritarianism, we should consider the virtues of the restraint of the nation state rather than insist on 'running things ourselves,' without answering the questions who do you mean by 'ourselves' and in whose interest are things to be run?

"This mentality is unstoppable"

Unfortunately, it isn't. There was no cup to bring home. But there is no doubt who won the battle of the fans. It was incredible.

I don't share most other fans' antipathy for Manchester United. I have had a long connection with them, even though I always had a nagging sense of infidelity when I watched them, knowing my heart lay elsewhere. What I don't like is what they have become. The ownership issue is horrible and it stopped me going to matches there, but it isn't just that. It's the condescending sense of entitlement of a large number of their fans. Some of the most loyal and passionate, including people I know, have given up. They were alienated by the club's determination to be a 'brand', to brook no dissent after the green and gold protests, and to turn their fans into cash-generating 'customers' to feed the leveraged debt of a Cayman Islands registered company. It used to be a football club. On Saturday, their fans were mainly apathetic and quiet until they booed their manager as he went up to be presented with the cup. Afterwards, he was sacked for finishing fifth and winning at Wembley. Either would be a dream for Palace.

At the other end was something else. A gloriously unpretentious South London club showed how to support your side and cheer them on to glorious defeat. What would it have been like if we had won?

This is a wonderful shot of Jason Puncheon's mother in amongst the fans. He's local, grew up within sight of the ground, and his family are all Palace fans. He plays wearing the squad number 42 and scored our goal.

It was the display designed and choreographed by the Holmesdale Fanatics that caught the press' eye. Everyone bought into it. It was stunning.

I was in one of the seats in the top tier and all around me flags waved amongst a sea of red and blue balloons. The noise was deafening. After the Palace goal, the stand was physically shaking. It felt like an earth tremor.

My memories are not just of a great game and heart-breaking defeat, but the camaraderie between friends and thousands of other fans who were coming to party and give their team everything that they had to offer.

I drove part of the way, catching a train to Wembley Stadium from Banbury. As I drove back, I stopped off in a motorway service area. It was full of United fans who gave my Palace shirt a glance and said nothing. They looked as if they weren't bothered. There was no air of celebration. I was numb with disappointment, but overwhelmed by the emotion of a wonderful day that I wouldn't have missed for anything. If, in the unlikely event of Palace kicking on and becoming a top club, I hope we never lose that exuberance and lack of pretension that makes our support something special.

We'll be back. And please, before I die, let's win the bloody thing.

UPDATE

Of the fan videos being posted on line, this really shows the contrast between the fans in the build up to the teams coming out.

Labour pains

It is a curious thought that the National Chair of the Stop the War Coalition could become leader of the Labour Party, but I still don't think it will happen.

A little while ago I posted a link to a critique of the accuracy of a YouGov poll that put Jeremy Corbyn in the lead. Since then another poll has been published by the same organisation that puts him further ahead and gives him an absolute majority of the first ballot. The same methodological reservations apply. I don't think either poll is trustworthy or representative of the views of Labour members as a whole. If I was a gambler, I would be down the bookies right now to bet on him not winning, though he may not now finish fourth.

The great imponderable though is Labour's new electoral system of one member one vote. It sounds fair enough, except that for some bizarre reason they decided that you didn't need to be a member. For a one off payment of £3 you can have a vote and then disappear off into the sunset. You don't need to do anything. Just vote to determine the future of an organisation you don't belong to. The figures for how many have registered, and their political views, are opaque.

The aim of the open primary was ostensibly to swamp the left with the votes of a much more 'moderate' membership and electorate. That didn't turn out right, did it? Any system can be gamed, but people get complacent when they assume that what they think is what the majority think; a delusion shared by many Corbyn supporters.

What has happened though is that the poll, however dubious, has created a bandwagon, such that nobody is talking about anyone else. The same happened with UKIP in the general election. The effects are ambiguous. The media frenzy may create support, but it also generates panic and belated opposition as people suddenly realise that their opponents need to be taken seriously. We can't know, but my guess is that without that first poll his candidacy might have sunk beyond view, even if he was generating enthusiastic meetings. It would have needed his rivals to provide a bit of credible opposition, mind you. They haven't been very good at it so far.

So where does his support come from?

First, there is the anti-war movement. It is organised, vociferous, very anti-Israel, against all foreign interventions (except Russia's apparently), and its organisation is an alliance of Stalinists, the SWP and Islamists, supported by well meaning humanitarians. This is where his foreign policy, his apologias for tyrants, and some of his dubious friends come from. He is not over scrupulous about who he is prepared to share a platform with. There is nothing original about his thinking. It is the party line.

Second, there is an activist left and their sympathisers. They are always prone to hero worship and just as likely to cry betrayal (usually by a corrupt media and sometimes because of a hidden conspiracy) when they have to confront reality. I count among their number really nice people who are friends, but when I look at what they share on social media, some of their politics is bat-shit crazy.

There is an overlap between the two, but the noise they generate does not reflect their size as part of the electorate. They are mainly middle class and vote Labour anyway (apart from a few Greens). Labour's problem is that it has lost working class votes and that is as troubling as the need to have a broader appeal in marginal constituencies. I don't think these two groups are assets for recovering this lost ground.

Finally, there are the trade unionists, socialists and social democrats anxious for a change in the consensus in political economy. They are appalled by growing poverty, punitive benefits regimes, the need for food banks, and the diminishing of the public realm. At last they seem to have a champion, but is he a convincing one? I remain sceptical, especially given the experience of Syriza's confrontation with a world that was not as accommodating as they thought.

When I look at Corbyn's candidacy, it is only the last group that has any credibility. But the others will make the most noise, whilst attention will turn rightly to foreign affairs where he should face tough interrogations. This is not a marginal issue. It goes right to the heart of what type of left we have; about left anti-Semitism, the susceptibility to conspiracy thinking, and the willingness to cosy up to some deeply unpleasant regimes. Combine this with the difficulty he will have in commanding the support of the Parliamentary Party, most of whom oppose him, and simply his age – he will be in his seventies by the time of the next general election – and the prospect of his leadership would appear to be little more than that of an interregnum, much in the style of George Lansbury after the 1931 split.

I have long argued that Labour has an incredibly hard task ahead to rethink an alternative political economy that is both credible and capable of attracting the undecided and the alienated at the same time. It has to embody the values of the left, but it must be deliverable. Labour needs to do this if it is to seize the next opportunity when change will be possible. The last moment was 1997. The next one is not now and I doubt if it will be 2020 either.

The Labour Party loves to go all misty-eyed over Attlee. They forget the most important phase of his leadership. That was the period before the war when he headed the rebuilding of the party around the right, marginalising the far left with ruthless pragmatism, whilst accommodating talented left wingers when desirable. There would have been no Bevan in power without Bevin. They forget, too, his eventual embrace of rearmament against Nazi Germany and his opposition to appeasement. This isn't an attempt to argue from analogy, but to point out that throughout the Labour Party's history there has always been a struggle between the romantics and the pragmatists. The pragmatists always end up winning. And I think they will this September as well. I make no promises about eating hats, nor am I foolish enough to put my money where my mouth is, but I still don't think that Jeremy Corbyn will be elected leader of the Labour Party.

Truce

C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre: c'est de la folie
(It is magnificent, but it is not war, it is madness.)
Pierre Bosquet on The Charge of the Light Brigade, 1854.

Syriza charged towards the EU's fortifications, only to be cut down mercilessly by the Troika's cannon. I have written in this way because I want to show Shuggy that I have a greater command of inappropriate historical analogies than the average journalist. Those analogies abound, Tsipras has been "waterboarded" and "crucified," whilst this has been typical of the genre:

This is war. This time the Trojan Horse is in Germany's arsenal. It is called Europe. The Germans have now parked it at the gates of Athens. But the siege and slaughter may erupt all over the continent.

This is not war. It is not torture. It is diplomacy and economics. Yes it was brutal. The concerted verbal battering Tsipras took from the political right in the European Parliament was unpleasant enough, but the reports from inside the Eurogroup point to it having been a nasty and vituperative meeting.

That doesn't make it a coup or an attack on democracy. For it to be the latter it would mean that a referendum result in Greece, by Greek people only, is binding on the other 18 states. The Greek government is in place, it hasn't been removed. Greece had a choice, not much of one, but a choice nonetheless. It could default and presumably leave the Euro, or it could seek financial support to stay in the Euro. It chose the latter. The terms by which a loan is offered is usually determined by the lender. They have the money, they have the power to lend or not. All the wittering about infringements of sovereignty are meaningless, because entry into EMU in the first place meant giving up sovereignty and seeking a bailout certainly does. So why the hostility?

The most important point is that we have a collective sense of equity and justice about the terms of any loans. Many villains in our literature are usurers. We are appalled by the rates of interest charged by payday loan companies and the way they exploit the vulnerabilities of the poor. We look at the suffering of ordinary people and our compassion turns to anger. We are aware that in bargaining all the power lies with the lender, the deal is not wholly voluntary. And this perception of right and wrong has been aroused. People look at the conditions and think; these are unjust, they are not creditors, they are extortionists.

And this is where the democracy angle does come in. Greek voters had elected an anti-austerity party and voted against austerity in a referendum, none of that could be binding on the other countries, but it should have been a consideration and allowed a pause for thought. Yet what we saw was that it was dismissed with irritation and seen as something to be deterred from happening elsewhere. There is a distinction to be made between power and influence. The Greek referendum had no power over any of the other states, but it should have influenced them. It was a clear sign of major discontent with the policies that have been imposed on them since 2010. If this is government by consent, it is of only the most grudging kind. What is more, it is absolutely clear that the terms of the bailout were not what were wanted by Greece.

The world looked on amazed as Tsipras went to the EU and surrendered completely only to be told to surrender some more. Even the most entrenched anti-Syriza elements swung round to support Tsipras. The final deal modified some of the maximalist demands (notably on the €50 billion monetization - not just selling - of assets fund; now to be based in Greece, 25% of proceeds for new investment in Greece, 50% to buy back Greek banks after the recapitalization, and 25% to pay debt instead of 100% as first reported). But the overall effect will be deflationary and cut living standards further. You have to wonder when the great Greek slump will finally end.

Take all this together, throw in incipient anti-German sentiment (whilst forgetting the Finns) and you have the perfect recipe for resurrecting World War II stereotypes. But what really happened? The best journalism I have read has come from Marcus Walker of the Wall Street Journal (great articles, but in the name of sanity don't read the comments). He knows both Germany and Greece well and called it right from the moment Syriza was elected. This piece, published just before agreement was reached, is pretty convincing:

Behind Europe’s show of force lie three main factors: Fury at Mr. Tsipras’s delay tactics, shock at the rising cost of any and all Greek scenarios, and a worsening clash between German-led Europe and the IMF.
Since his election in January, Mr. Tsipras has oscillated between his hard-line and pragmatic advisers, Greek officials say. The pragmatists urged him to sign a bailout deal early, even if it meant accepting politically hard-to-sell austerity measures, because the terms of any deal would get tougher as the months passed and Greece’s economy deteriorated.
Nonsense, argued others such as now-ousted finance minister Yanis Varoufakis: Greece would get the best bailout terms, including less austerity and more debt relief, if it waited until the last moment before debt default. Europe would get scared of the destabilizing fallout from a Greek euro exit, this camp argued.
Mr. Tsipras went with the second school of thought, figuring also that his left-wing Syriza party would only swallow a bailout deal involving austerity if the alternative were imminent economic meltdown.
For months, Mr. Tsipras saw to it that Europe’s normal channels for negotiating bailout terms—the Eurogroup, and teams of EU-IMF inspectors—were paralyzed. He instead bet on face-to-face talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, believing that she would make a fundamentally political decision to keep Europe united, even at the expense of German economic orthodoxy.
It proved an epic miscalculation. Backed into a corner by Mr. Tsipras’s referendum, in which Greeks overwhelmingly rejected their creditors’ austerity demands, Ms. Merkel hardened her line. A deal with Athens that let Greece off tough economic reforms would be worse for Europe than splintering the eurozone, she argued. 

 Even if the hand had been played better, it was a weak one. Aces always beat twos.

What next? There are still obstacles to overcome before the deal is sealed, but if it is, for Greece, there will be more austerity. An economy suffering from lack of demand, will have even more sucked out of it. This will cost livelihoods, businesses and lives. But there is hope. The banks will reopen, the opportunity is there for Syriza to fulfil the second half of their mandate - reform of the state and the elimination of corruption - and investment could start a slow recovery. But the perception of victimhood and the bruised national pride will not go away easily.

Yet this is not the end. Germany's reputation has been battered. The damage to the EU's prestige is immense. This spells further trouble, and from more formidable opponents than Greece. The main contradictions of EMU have not been faced. Orthodox economics may have come out of this skirmish victorious, but has lost supporters. Until the flaws in the construction of the Euro are dealt with, crises will keep arising. And that major flaw, the inability to correct imbalances by redistributing surpluses from the wealthy members to the poorer, whether through fiscal union or through financial instruments like Eurobonds, is the main challenge.  Redistribution, a social democratic concept, sits uneasily with orthodoxy. We might, just might, be at the start of a sea change in elite economic thinking. It is long overdue.

UPDATE
The IMF weighs in. This isn't over yet.

Manufacturing a rant

One of my pet hates is Noam Chomsky. It is pointless picking up a book by him as you know exactly what he will say without having the chore of reading his deathly prose. In Manufacturing Consent he paints a doleful picture of people being deliberately manipulated by systematic mass indoctrination. He knows, is absolutely certain, that if only people stopped watching football they would agree with him. It is the standard delusion of political certainty.

And it is everywhere. After the Scottish referendum, ludicrous conspiracy theories saying that the vote had been rigged emanated from the 'yes' camp, alongside assertions that voters had been scared by the dishonest propaganda of 'no' campaigners and influenced by the 'bias' of the BBC. How about admitting that there were real, rational reasons for voting no, that it was a conscious choice, and not falling back on the line that people were fooled?

There are so many elements to this way of thinking - holding an orthodoxy that admits no doubt, wishful thinking, even sheer paranoia. Chomsky's fan club is prone to claiming that his views are being deliberately silenced and marginalised despite his many books, newspaper articles, respectful TV interviews, documentary films, magazine front covers and, of course, his prestigious academic post. And this is just one example of many.

I find this disrespectful to ordinary people who aren't as simple-minded and gullible as assumed, but more importantly, this way of thinking lacks any form of self-criticism and is sealed off from reality. Sometimes the failings are yours, not others' - it is entirely possible for you to be wrong. I wonder just who it is that is being brainwashed.

It is quite true that sometimes a minority view is right, is morally justified, yet is also marginalised and berated. But is this solely the product of deliberate indoctrination? There is a clear bias towards inertia in relatively peaceful and prosperous societies, mass dissent is the product of crisis. Propaganda will only work when it tallies with the real, material experience of the uncommitted and with their pre-existing prejudices. Otherwise they will just get on with enjoying their lives.

There is an element of truth in that we are all influenced by the media, especially when we lack detailed knowledge. And mainstream media will always tend towards an acceptance of the status quo, but this doesn't tell the whole story. This isn't some monolithic system of mass manipulation, it has competitors in the influence business and they are doing quite nicely. So let's forget the manufacture of consent and talk about the manufacture of distrust instead. This poses as anti-establishment and portrays itself as 'talking truth to power'. Much of it isn't. It is often the powerful and the powerless allied in talking bollocks. Instead of reason, we have a world-weary cynicism that absolves us of the need for evidence or thought. Here are three examples.

Complementary medicine may have no proven clinical worth, but it is a multi-billion pound industry. Given that it doesn't have to support costly clinical trials or use expensive ingredients, the profit margins must be huge. Instead of evidence, the pedlars of woo have only to assert some magical, sciencey sounding claims and throw in a bit of unsubstantiated anecdotal evidence to get people to part with their dosh. The most potent weapon in their armoury is the denigration of 'big pharma'. They do this deliberately, using carefully constructed techniques that they know will not work on sceptics like me. Those videos and articles with long rambling preambles before they get to the crunch are designed to turn away sceptics but reel in the true believers who are likely to make a purchase at the end. And it is not just the ordinary punter that they go for, people like the Tory MP, David Tredinnick wants to hand over wads of public money to herbalists, homeopaths and astrologers.

Secondly, I saw one of these on-line petitions circulated about fur farming. It had the standard gruesome picture of animal suffering and called for signatures on a petition to a well-known clothing store to end the use of fur in its products. I looked at some of the on-line discussions. One commenter made a factual observation. The firm that was being petitioned doesn't use any fur and never has. Everything they sell is faux fur. It is already their policy. This wasn't enough for another who wrote that the company was lying. The reason was that this individual once had a coat of theirs, singed its faux-fur collar and it 'smelt like hair'. Cognitive dissonance or what?

Finally, and this is most important, there is the blanket distrust of politicians. This is reinforced daily. 'They are all the same', 'they are only in it for themselves', etc, etc. This is manifestly untrue of all, but certainly true of some - as could be said of all professions (the reason I taught is because they paid me, even if I was dedicated to adult education. Being paid for writing is proving more elusive). But it is this mood that the likes of UKIP feed off. They play at being the plucky outsider taking on the establishment - even if they look remarkably like the establishment to me. Cynicism is the playground of the demagogue.

And so we need to once again fall back on sceptical, critical thinking. We should be shouting to all who will hear that complementary medicine is nothing if not capitalism at its most exploitative, that firms do not use more expensive materials secretly so that they can satisfy their cruelty, and that UKIP is a right-wing, populist movement as cynical as the cynicism it feeds off.

Excessive distrust of institutions is as corrosive as slavish adherence to the powerful. Both are human traits, reinforced by the marketing industry, but neither are wholly successful. You may be able to fool sufficient of the people sufficient of the time to make a few bob, there are others out there who can spot a charlatan a mile off. Liberal democracies are not populated by automatons waiting to be enlightened, but by human beings with all their cognitive weaknesses mixed in with intellectual strengths. Oddly, it is those like the Chomsky devotees who turn out to be most unthinking disciples of all. Maybe all they are doing is talking about themselves.

The enemies of reason

I have just finished reading the late James Webb's The Occult Underground. For a book first published in 1971, it has worn quite well. It was originally published as The Flight from Reason and that is a far better description of its theme, but a much less marketable title. In an area that I do know about, late 19th century radical thought, he made loads of mistakes – for example, Geddes was not a mystical thinker, Gandhi was already a vegetarian when he came to London, Kropotkin did not flee Russia after a murder, etc. - and his topic, the revival of esoteric thought, has been the subject of earlier and later study. For example, both Orwell and Adorno wrote about the links between mystical thought and the far right, whilst the occult nature of Nazism has spawned a library of books. But there is something quite fun about reading a book that kicked off a sceptical look at mysticism and its broader place in the history of ideas, not just the far right, especially one that has such a promising line at the beginning:

The neglected genius is a familiar figure of mythology; but there are those neglected lunatics who are worthy of study. 

And my, were they lunatics. According to Webb, they blended a half understood Eastern philosophy into a "sort of spiritual porridge." Political utopians and romantic nationalists fed from the same trough. Fake spiritualists, believers in mesmerism, frauds and charlatans pulled in believers by the score. Sects proliferated - schismatic Protestants, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, followers of a reinvented neo-paganism, deluded ghost-hunters and psychical researchers, mainstream religious revivalists, and many others. And if you want an example of the intellectual contortions they went through, look at this tragi-comic example of how Annie Besant reconciled her conversion to Theosophy and belief in reincarnation with the theory of evolution, in this case using "clairvoyant investigations" to discover her own personal evolution into becoming human.

The evolutionary leap was taken when Mrs. Besant was incarnated in a large, monkey-like body, in which form she was particularly attached to an entity already human, who was to become the Buddha. One night the Buddha and his family were attacked by savages. During the ensuing fight, the Besant-monkey saved the Buddha at the cost of its own life. The aspirations of this relatively humble creature provoked a stream of cosmic reactions so that "in the very moment of dying the monkey individualizes, and thus he dies – a man." 

Blimey! Have you noticed that most believers' imagined past lives are usually those of significant or interesting people? They rarely see themselves as humdrum. What I find sad about Besant is that she had been a formidable campaigner for women's' rights and contraception, a socialist and trade unionist, organising the female workers of the Bryant and May match company in their celebrated 1888 strike, active in working class education and secretary of the National Secular Society for seventeen years. Then she fell for Blavatsky's facile, perennialist nonsense.

And this is why the book still has an appeal today. I groan when I see supposed leftists come out with pseudo-scientific rubbish about GM crops, form alliances with Islamists, flirt with anti-Semitism, indulge in paranoid conspiracy theories, and talk in hushed, reverential tones about ancient wisdoms and authentic, 'natural' cures. How on earth did this happen? Mainstream studies see this as down to the influence of Romanticism and the idea of nature. Paul Berman has fingered what he called irrational death cults as one of the inspirations behind Islamist terrorism, but Webb did more, giving us a speculative structural explanation of why the occult should explode into life at the end of the nineteenth century, seeing the growth of irrational thought as the product of an intellectual sea change.

The occult is rejected knowledge. It may be knowledge that is actively rejected by an Establishment culture, or knowledge which voluntarily exiles itself from the courts of favor (sic) because of its recognized incompatibility with the prevailing wisdom. The word "occult" means "hidden", and in this idea lies the key to the occult's forbidding appearance. Something may be hidden because of its immense value, or reverently concealed from the prying eyes of the profane. But this hidden thing may also have achieved its sequestered position because the Powers That Be have found it wanting. Either it is a threat and must be buried, or simply useless and so is forgotten. 

For centuries, reason and science were an insurgent force against establishment religion and the power of the nobility. But then, in an intellectual revolution, they became orthodoxy. The victory was not clear-cut, there were fudges and compromises, but Darwin had overthrown god. Science as a method of enquiry, as opposed to a body of knowledge, had prevailed. The long struggle between Plato's idealism and Aristotle's materialism for pre-eminence was over. Aristotle had won.

Esoteric mysticism, The Tradition as Webb called it, became the opposition; rejected knowledge. And so it flourished as an act of rebellion, by both conservatives and radicals, as anti-establishment thought. Freed from the constraints of orthodoxy, it fragmented into many weird and wonderful ideologies. And so religious reaction, conspiracy thought, political utopianism, and the like all share a common root, fear and revulsion of the new age of reason.

Take Pseudo-science, for example. Webb wrote:

The pseudo-sciences, in fact, are not sciences at all, but offshoots of an approach which is similar to the Tradition, even if there is no direct connection. It is, therefore, not merely rejection from the Establishment which pushes homeopaths into the arms of the occultists, but a fundamental kinship.

And Webb gave a key role in this transformation into radical respectability to Theosophy.

In the last analysis the achievement of H.P.B. (Helena Petrovna Blavatsky) was to make what seems today a markedly eccentric society part of the "progressive" thought of the late 19th century. 

Later writers have tried to be break away from what they saw as Webb's manichean view of the opposition of esotericism and reason. For example, Marco Pasi wrote:

 … these occult organizations offered a social space where new conceptions of culture and society could be formulated and experimented with. This would be in itself a good reason – if there were no other – to argue that occultism, as part of the larger historical body of esotericism, has contributed significantly to the shaping of modernity, verging, in this case, rather towards the progressive, liberal pole of the cultural and political spectrum. 

I don't think Webb would have demurred, but he might also have pointed out that belief in bollocks is not a necessary precondition for social and cultural experimentation.

Webb's occult net was spread wide, perhaps too wide, but in looking at mystical underpinnings of even secular ideas, he was echoing the nineteenth century freethought movement, which sought to secularise ways of thinking, not just reject religious ideas. And when one looks at New Age ramblings, deep green primitivism, neo-feudal traditionalism and the deep distrust of science that comes out of climate change deniers, anti-vaccination campaigners and the opponents of GMOs, you can see that they share a common theological and eschatological mind-set. Rather than the hard task of using reason and science to further human emancipation, they chose to challenge and bury them under a pile of mystical 'woo' - reaction posing as radicalism. Some of this is harmless enough, but we are also seeing its malign, totalitarian side in murderous action in Iraq and elsewhere at the moment. Reason may no longer be an insurgent against the establishment, but it now has a counter-insurgency to fight.

Entrenched

The First World War began in August 1914. The centenary has started in January 2014. Perhaps this one really will be over by Christmas. I hope so, because centenaries usually mean the hijacking of history and the early kick-off promises a deluge of dubious reportage.

The commemoration has begun with some ferocious fighting. Michael Gove has spotted a left-wing academic plot to denigrate the brave British Tommy by pushing a particular line about the War as a pointless waste of life. On the other side of no-man's-land, Richard Evans has been launching telling counter attacks and here is the latest:

And who are these people who are peddling "leftwing versions of the past designed to belittle Britain and its leaders"? Step forward, please, Professor Niall Ferguson, a self-styled right-winger whose book The Pity of War argues that it was wrong for Britain to enter the war in 1914 and claims that the British government of the day should have left the continental powers to slug it out among themselves. Step forward, please, Sir Max Hastings, former editor of the Daily Telegraph, whose trenchant criticisms of British generals such as Sir John French in his latest book Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914 yield nothing in their severity to the coruscating attacks levelled at Sir Douglas Haig and other leaders of the British army by the late Conservative MP Alan Clark in his book The Donkeys, a term used to describe the British military performance in the war ("lions led by donkeys", was a phrase he attributed to a German commentator but later admitted he had invented himself).

Oh dear. But then Gove has always been better at preaching rigour than practicing it and he certainly suffers from the politician's malaise of being unable to distinguish between declaration and reality. To announce that it is so, does not make it true. Ever since I was first confronted with the history of World War I as an undergraduate in the late '70s, the War was taught as problematic, with multiple contesting interpretations. Whether these involved the social history of the home front, the experience of the trenches, the quality of leadership, the political controversies of the times, or, in particular, the causes of the War, I have never come across teaching that referred to the history as settled. It has always been taught as a continuing debate.

Of course, the image that Gove picks on does exist. It emerged at the end of the War, partly as a legacy of anti-war activists and the Russian Revolution, but mainly as a result of the remarkable literature of a generation who had been participants - Owen, Sassoon, Remarque, Graves - who captured, what Owen called, the pity of war. It became politicised by the inter-war peace movement. It probably is the dominant view in the popular imagination. But in academia? I don't think so.

So once again, Gove has turned his artillery on a straw man, whilst the massed ranks of historians, even those of whom he approves such as Margaret MacMillan, are replying with some murderous fire. Perhaps the centenary will be fun after all.

City of water

Hull was awash last night. A record 5.8 metre tidal surge was held up by the barrier on the Humber, but still parts of the city and surrounding areas flooded as the river overcame all the defences. Some of the city blacked out as power failed. The main through road, the Clive Sullivan Way, was under water and was closed. All trains out were cancelled as the main westerly rail line runs right by the river. And who thought it might be a good idea to have a day-trip over to see friends yesterday? Yes, you guessed right.

I got increasingly anxious about my train back, checked on the internet in the bar I was in and saw it was cancelled. The information on the web site was limited. I tried to ring the station, but it was hard to find the right number. Every one I rang gave out a similar long taped message. All asked you to ring National Rail Enquiries, so I did. An Indian voice answered. The conversation was not easy.

"Where are you travelling from?"

"Hull"

"I am sorry, I can't quite get that name, where is it?"

"Hull!"

"Where, sorry?"

"Hull ... 'Ull ... Hawl," every possible pronunciation.

"Could you spell that for me."

"H U L L"

She then proceeded to read what was on the web site and said that they had no further updates. I had tried to phone somewhere a mile away and had ended up in Bangalore. I couldn't believe it, surely they hadn't outsourced train information to India? Yes they have. The BBC reported:

A union representing UK call centre workers has criticised the chief executive of National Rail Enquiries for saying that Indian staff were better than their British counterparts.Rail enquiries chief executive Chris Scoggins said the service could be improved if outsourced to India.He said the move could also save rail firms up to £25m over several years.But Amicus union said: "This attitude is an example of the idiocy of moving the inquiry service 10,000 miles away."

It is the curse of the call centre. Stressed staff may be able to answer general queries, but in a crisis or for anything that needs some local knowledge they are useless and end up being abused by frustrated customers, whose real anger should be directed at the management who think that all we need is an underpaid person reading a prepared script and calling us customers instead of passengers.

I used my initiative, got down to the station early and spoke to the station staff face-to-face. They were fantastic. I was given information and when the situation changed, Selby station had closed as well and the replacement buses were stuck in the chaos, they ordered taxis to take the passengers to Leeds. All the time they were calm, helpful and friendly, even though one had a house near the river and was worried. They got us home eventually. And I bet they are paid peanuts too.

This was a microcosm of the British economy. Stupid management cutting costs by any means they can devise and the poor bloody infantry who actually do the job making it work in spite of it all. It is time we abandoned the cult of the manager in favour of investing in the worker; the local expert who knows what is going on and can make things happen. Now that would make a refreshing change.

Sick joke

There is a piece of political humour floating around the Internet. I have been sent it several times. It isn't funny. I find it revolting.

"Syrian President Assad crossed a red line. He used chemical weapons. Using harmful chemicals to hurt your own people – who does he think he is, Monsanto?"
Bill Maher 

I know that it was intended to attack Monsanto rather than comment on Syria, but despite being a neat line, it is as contemptible as it is glib. Why?

Let's unpack this. "Harmful chemicals"; "hurt your own people"? Chemical weapons aren't "harmful chemicals"; they don't "hurt". They are indiscriminate weapons designed to deliver an agonising death to as many people as possible. They were deliberately used in the most recent case to empty a strategic suburb, which the army had been unable to control, by killing the people who lived there. They had been used in violation of international law specifically to challenge that red line and to terrorise a population by showing that the thugs who run the regime have no limits to their barbarity. It was an act that said, 'cross us and we will kill everyone. No one will help you.'

You can't make a joke about this level of horror. Whatever you think of the controversial claims about Monsanto, if you read the harrowing accounts of the sadistic brutality of the Syrian government it is impossible to associate the two without belittling grotesque crimes against humanity. The bare facts are easily available and are deeply shocking. This is from an impassioned plea by Yassin al-Haj Saleh in the New York Times.

While the world has dithered, Syrians have experienced unprecedented violence. Around 5,000 Syrians were killed in 2011. About the same number are now being killed each month. The regime has targeted lines outside bakeries; it has used Russian cruise missiles to bomb densely populated areas; and local activists say they have documented 31 occasions when it has used chemical weapons (United States officials have confirmed only some of these attacks).
Countless Syrians, among them women and children, have been subjected to arbitrary detention, rape and torture. A staggering seven million people — one-third of Syria’s population — are now displaced, either internally or externally. 

The personal experiences are even more revealing than the figures. I recommend people explore this resource to access Syrian writing on the catastrophe to understand the sheer scale of the grief and anger.

But this 'joke' is also very interesting. It is deeply revealing about the juvenile, narcissistic and self-centred liberal mind-set as it confronts the worst humanitarian crisis of this century. It says, 'we are the real victims, corporations are the real enemy, ours is the real struggle'. And it is this attitude that underpins one of the great foreign policy failings of our time, the decision to postpone action to pursue chemical weapons control in isolation, whilst blustering about futile attempts at a negotiated settlement that does not challenge the legitimacy of a criminal regime. In the meantime, Russian arms flood in and Assad is left free to escalate the slaughter. A device has been found to make dithering sound worthy.

And, of course, we have the Stop the War crowd trying to prevent any Western action to bring an end to the systematic murder. Again, they are self-centred – 'our wars are worse than yours'. I actually agree that we should stop the war, albeit a different one. Here is Yassin al-Haj Saleh again:

We Syrians are human beings of this world, and the world must stop the Assad regime from killing us. Now.

Rigorous ruminations

It's that time of year again, the time when I am in Greece and contemplating if I will continue teaching (if it is offered, that is) or retire properly. If there was one thing that could sway my decision to step away, it is marking. Now, what I don't want to engage in is the usual teacher's moan. Instead, I want to think about how the inherently unpleasant activity of marking is partly the result of our educational philosophy and argue for a rethink of how we assess student achievement and make the exercise more meaningful for tutors and students.

At the moment, rigour is all the rage. It is Gove's big idea. The trouble is, it doesn't mean anything. Rigour is a posture rather than a policy. Given the reforms of GCSEs, it appears that at the moment it means basing assessment on traditional exams. For me, exam marking this year wasn't difficult, but it was boring. So many of the answers were the same; competent but formulaic. This is hardly surprising when we spend a lot of time teaching students how to pass exams by producing what is required.

As for coursework, often the same applied. Sometimes there was a spark of originality, but I was also running into a fair amount plagiarism. You see less of it in the first year, so that I have the impression that whilst we are busy teaching students the formula of how to pass, they are learning how to plagiarise from their peers.

And this is one reason why marking is such a disagreeable activity. Assessment becomes about gaming the system, rather than expressing the excitement of learning.

Let's start with exams. One of the most interesting thinkers on education was Patrick Geddes. There is a good chapter on him in this (sorry). He saw exams as the antithesis of rigour. Despite becoming a professor of botany, he only ever took one exam and that was to demonstrate how ridiculous they were. He wanted to show that it was possible to pass a qualifying exam with only one evening's study beforehand. He did it and became a qualified inspector of mines without knowing anything at all about mining. Rigorous?

The pest of plagiarism is too easily palmed off on student dishonesty, though that is still at the heart of it. But it isn't helped by the way we make it too easy. The internet is full of stock answers to stock questions, so perhaps one of the solutions is to stop asking them. I also think that it is intrinsically linked to the development of skills, including self-expression - finding a voice - and critical thinking. We do not put enough effort into teaching students how NOT to plagiarise, relying only on the implementation of stringent sanctions as a deterrent.

This is partly what we end up with in universities; students doing something manifestly unfulfilling accompanied by tutors doing something that they hate. It is time for change. But what?

I am not one of those techno-enthusiasts who think that the Internet has changed everything. However, it has altered one thing irrevocably; the relationship between students and resources. Where once resources were scarce, putting a premium on knowledge and recall, now we are carrying around vast libraries in our pockets. Part of modern education is learning how to use the Internet properly and not as a convient crib for cheating the system. So I was intrigued by two, if overly evangelical, pieces from a few weeks back.

It is obvious that MOOCs (massive open on-line courses) will have to rethink assessment to deal with both the volume of students and the way that they learn. I liked Anant Agarwal's call for blended learning, augmenting traditional delivery as part of the college experience. But it was Sugata Mitra's article that struck me most. Even if it was directed at schools, you can see the universal application and I liked this about exams.

In school examinations, learners must reproduce facts from memory, solve problems using their minds and paper alone. They must not talk to anyone or look at anyone else's work. They must not use any educational resources, certainly not the internet. When they complete their schooling and start a job, they are told to solve problems in groups, through meetings, using every resource they can think of. They are rewarded for solving problems this way – for not using the methods they were taught in school... 

If examinations challenge learners to solve problems the way they are solved in real life today, the educational system will change for ever. It is a small policy change that is required. Allow the use of the internet and collaboration during an examination... 

I am a solitary person, not fond of group work, but there is still no reason why his approach would not be adaptable to the likes of me. I really like the way he sees this process opening up interesting and difficult questions; ones that can never be plagiarised or produce stock answers. And as I read on I thought, 'that sounds familiar.' If you omit the Internet, it is very similar to ideas published at the end of the First World War - by Patrick Geddes. He wished to replace assessment with something he called "estimation," using the sort of practical work that Mitra is arguing for today. The Internet is not changing everything, but it is making old ideas cease to appear outlandish and instead seem modern and necessary.

The idea of rigour is locked into nineteenth century methods of assessment, which, in turn, produce unimaginative work, plagiarism and the hell of marking. And as for me, if I was still running programmes in adult education I would be experimenting with all these new/old ideas. Instead, as a humble part-timer, I have to do what I am given. Maybe this will sway my decision as much as anything.