Okay, a little more about what's happening in US...
B.J. Novak's superb comedy "Vengeance" – released in 2022, but only caught by me on the plane back from Vancouver last August – charts an aspiring true-crime podcaster's attempts to document "the new American reality". And I mean charts. The film is a text. So this post isn't an in-depth review, just a recommendation. I'd originally meant to put it out as an immediate response to Trump's election victory back in November, because I thought: what rational reader wouldn't be thinking "Wait, what the hell's going on?" and I'd enjoyed the film as a search for some answers. Then I didn't post it, and now I've learnt the film's leaving Netflix on February 8th, so quick, HERE IT IS*
I'll return to "Vengeance" in a bit, and maybe it's too late now for post mortems, maybe no-one's in the mood for "What happened was...", but it's only going to get later, so here's another search for answers I meant to share – answers other than just "Everyone's Abandoned Democracy", which seems hopeless if true – and by the way, I'm so glad Jon Stewart's back...
"What happened was, the country felt like Government wasn't working for
them, and – the Democrats, in particular – were taking their hard-earned
money, and giving it to people who didn't deserve it as much as them. And
so the Democrats got shellacked."
Or, as Jennifer Pahlka puts it even more succinctly in this article:
"the reality is that
Republicans let their voters choose the candidate, and Democrats didn't - twice."
Maybe what resounded most, then, rewatching "Vengeance" after Trump's terrifying majority, were its final words, so here are SPOILERS... Our hero's initial understanding of events, before he even arrives in Texas, has proved completely correct: the girl he hooked up with in New York was just a hookup, and despite the conspiracy narratives spun by her family, she did die of an opiate overdose. But his understanding of everything else now – how to act, how to choose, how to love, how to remember... the big stuff – is scorched earth, and when he concludes to her mother, as we're all taught to conclude, "No regrets", the Texan muses back:
"I never understood that... No regrets... In my
life, everything starts with a regret... Ends with a regret... In between,
regrets... It's all regrets... You run as fast as you can from the last
regret... And of course you're just running straight into the next one... That's life... It's all regrets... That's what you should say... No other way
to be alive... It's all regrets... Make 'em count."
"So Six Flags, the theme park..."
"Exactly."
* UPDATE: For those who can, it's now up on All4 HERE.
It's important to me to keep this blog from becoming just another reaction to the big thing, a somewhere else from stuff. But I acknowledged Trump when he won back in 2016, so I'll allow him another mention here. Daniel Hodges' reaction to the presidential pardons of insurrectionists who tried to gouge out his eyes is
the kind of cold, heartfelt reality check his country needs as many of and as soon as it can get, and unlike the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde's sermon to Trump upon his inauguration (reaction shit posted below) – which I'm guessing most readers will have already seen – it's an address explicitly directed to "everyone watching", so I'm happy to boost those numbers.
Another great reminder of how much power we do
and don't have right now is a fleeting story I saw on instagram, which said – perhaps in reaction to the breadth of the brim on
Melania's hat – "If you've kissed a loved one on the cheek today, remember, you're
more powerful than the president."
We have more resources for reaching out to and checking upon each other than have ever existed before. Let's use them. I hope you're all doing tremendously.
"Pound as in the pounding of these zammoths' feet?"
"What zammoths? The ones to our right?"
"The ones I'm pointing at. Well, yeah, those ones, okay. God. So I wasn't exactly pointing at them. But yeah. God."
"No. Pounds as in insert-national-currency-here. The future has no regulated currency."
"Oh, and air?"
"No. And no zammoths. They're hallucinations. This planet's atmosphere is too thin. We're dying of radiation sickness."
"Speak for yourself. My body's packing in because it doesn't know how to function on a planet that has only a third of Earth's gravity. Hey, where are those guys going?"
As America marks Bonfire Night just as we marked Independence Day, let's let it happen and just crawl down a hole, because it's all okay, look into the screen, closer, I found the hole. Come on. Let's go. Just for now. Into the screen...
Once you're out, don't look up how old Kane Pixels is (no relation) or how he shot this. But do look up parts three and one, especially if you're into horror and into general and zillenial definitions of the liminal (thresholds and corridors) because both The Oldest View and its creator are doing something quite firsty. In fact, look up how it was shot as well, and maybe also look at this video about Utopian Botanist Julien Bercheron and the Vally View Mall, Texas, which mysteriously appeared once in my recommendations, and led me to this hole.
No, not Lembit Öpik. He's just here to introduce the real winner – and, for all I know, only candidate – Dr. Igor Ashurbeyli. Dr. Igor keeps his victory address short and informative, and since I haven't been keeping up with the Asgardian Parliament, I was grateful to be brought up to date...
While Ashurbeyli admits the "so-called panemic" has stalled Asgardia's financial development somewhat, I was excited to learn that the Space Nation now has its own currency – the "Solar" – and that the exchange of fiat currencies into Solars has been "enabled", even if "the third part of the cycle" – namely the exchange of Solars back into actual money – "has yet to be addressed." A project for the next five years then.
The launch of a new sattelite called "Asgardia 2" is also on the agenda it
seems, although what it will do, how it will do it, and how it will be
launched is yet to be determined.
Ashurbeyli is keen too, he says, to create a new language for Asgardia, and website.
An imagining, I'm guessing.
But "the constitutional anchoring of Asgardia's primary mission" remains "the birth of the first human child in Space." The Head of Nation still seems really keen on this, and "on our path to achieving the goal," Ahsurbeyli announces, "we have come close to the first stage – an isolation experiment on the ground, simulating a year-long space flight involving several married couples of volunteers to conceive and give birth in conditions as close to those in orbit as possible. However," Ashurbeyli admits, "the cost of such an experiment is very high and funding has to be secured." Close then, but no cigar. Also I'm pretty sure the closest conditions to being in orbit achievable "on the ground" are forty second burts of zero gravity in a plummeting fuselage, so encouraging couples to volunteer for a whole year of that might really eat into the budget. Still, at least someone voted for him.
I've dropped you into this video just as the Head of Parliament Lembit Öpik – himself introduced by Asgardia's "Head of Administration" and one-hundred-and-third human in space – appears to be pretending to know sign language. Oh Lembit.
BOO! Ha. No. This is old news. From 2018. The untouchable past. And, to give both sides, Boris Johnson called this "so-called association with Steve Bannon... a lefty delusion whose spores continue to breed in the Twittersphere." So who are you going to believe? Our Prime Minister, or deluded lefty, Steve "Badges" Bannon? Indeed, the idea that the Brexit campaign might have just been a vehicle for a populist, far right coup, and that nobody actually campaigning for it really wanting to leave the EU, is... well, is given some credence I suppose by Johnson's many statements before the referendum on the folly of leaving the EU. But a person's allowed to change their mind. And if the entitled energy of this coup-staging prick...
... Well, the latter won an election, so he's entitled to take the piss.
"Wash your hands to the National Anthem." Love it. Herd immunity. Highest daily death rate in the world. One thing the Prime Minister has been consistent in throughout his political career is his praise for the mayor from Jaws, so you can't say people didn't know what they were voting for, ie someone who could be trusted to put business interests before human life – not business interests in general obviously, because Johnson also famously said "fuck business" regarding Brexit, but his friends' business interests – and the National Anthem, of course. And statues and shit.
No, it's not a coup if you win an election, no matter how many thousands die. No matter if over a thousand are still dying every day. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, Steve Bannon was granted a Presidential pardon yesterday. But why am I talking about that? That was yesterday. Today is a new day. America has a new President. Trumpism's definitely gone. And I love America. And I'm sure the happiness will kick in in a bit.
"At the risk of sounding crude, I don't think we need more vaginas in parliament, I've made this point many times. It matters what sort of vagina is entering parliament."
I keep thinking I hate the idea of heroes, and then coming across heroes. According to wikipedia, Stella Nyanzi practices "what scholars have called 'radical rudeness,' which is a traditional Ugandan strategy of calling the powerful to
account through public insult." It is glorious to witness. There's more on her "radical rudeness" here, and this might seem an odd day to post such a hopeful video, with the Ugandan elections now over, and opposition leader Bobi Mine apparently under house arrest, but I didn't know about any of this until just a couple of hours ago, and still feel we could all do with a shot of what Dr. Stella Nyanzi is giving out – the courageous, warm and unashamed Yes to this and No to that.
This is the last of the four posts that will begin with me confessing I'm posting them all on the evening of Saturday the seventh. This is the evening that it was finally confirmed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had indeed won the election, and Trump's legal team had indeed chosen not to concede graciously but instead announce that "lawsuits will be brought, starting on Monday", and that "networks don't get to decide an election, courts do" from a freestanding podium in a parking lot because they'd booked the wrong Four Seasons.
I have been waiting so long to be able to find this monstrous administration funny, and now... oh god... I just... and all of us... I know that when I decided to try blogging daily it was because I didn't want just to be reacting to stuff on twitter but... Oh God look at it! This, and the sudden revelation of the unpopulairty of populists. And everything.
Thank you. Thank you to those courageous enough to stay in line for eight hours in the face of unprecedented and state-mandated voter intimidation, thank you to everyone who made a plan for this, and thank you, thank you, Four Seasons Total Landscaping, beside Fantasy Island Adult Books, and opposite Delaware Valley Cemation Centre, for taking that call.
Hi. Twitter Simon here, beginning to wonder if the fall in (aways mild) abuse I receive when sticking my nose in might have anything to do with the new profile picture. I'd love it if people thought I was actually a lawyer from. Who wouldn't love being mistaken for a lawyer?
NO FURTHER QUESTIONS etc. But why was this headlining my twitter side-bar last night? What even is "Nine News"? Ever since I read, a couple of months ago, that a Trump mega-donor had bought a "sizable stake" in the site, I've become very threat-level-whoah-now about what the site promotes. So, when I returned from last night's quiet walk to see #londonriots trending, I checked the hashtag, and indeed most tweets accompanying it were also wondering why it was trending, as there hadn't been any riots. I did also see footage of the anger in Whitehall. Sure. But I'd witnessed that before, any weekend over the last two years in which I'd been down to do a bus tour, and the Brexiters had had one of their "marches" – not marches so much, as a crowding into the Wetherspoons as early as possible to drink and drink and wander around with a flag and hurl abuse at buskers, looking for fun, or a fight, or a fun fight – and I would stand there, hoping that London might be a cure for this, and that these racists – I saw their banners and I saw their caps, these were racists – would see how alone they were.
But anyway, yes, I saw last night on twitter yesterday's outnumbering of the police outside Downing Street, and I saw some commentators express "boggled minds" that this "brutality" was in response to a shooting on another continent, and I tappity-tapped, in my little lawyer's wig, a reminder to those commentators just what Downing Street had been up to for the past four-years-plus: the Windrush scandal, the "Go Home" vans, "pickaninny smiles", "letterboxes", and the much discussed "hostile environment", and I hoped – again, hoped – that these protests might illuminate what that blithely bandied-about phrase "hostile environment" actually meant, and how instantly intolerable everyone should find it. Here's another hostility:
"Ending freedom of movement". And a Union Jack.
As I wrote on Monday (okay, Tuesday morning) us pinky grey men never really have to think about "freedom of movement". I suspect this tweet knew exacty what it was doing though. Division aways benefits the Right, which might be why so much government messaging seems purposefully designed to ruffle liberal feathers, but while I still believe Fascism Thrives On Division, and while I still suspect the PM – and definitely POTUS – would rather see a civil war than their own resignation (for the same reason Hans Gruber blew up the Nakaomi Tower), I'm also very happy to see pressure applied, proper pressure, because no police officer was charged with anything relating to the killing of George Floyd until people marched.
Also, I'm not sure what we're seeing here is Division. I hope. After the December election, I decided to turn this blog into a Politics/Anxiety tag-free zone, because the increasing shittiess of all things seemed such a given, I wanted to spare anyone who came here any more of it. Also, I still had plans for a series of Time Spanner in which an avatar of the demiurge – President Guff Goofy – declared a zombie apocalypse, saying "you know who the zombies are", and I was saving up my politial anxiety for that. But that was six months ago, and now there feels something like a tugging at the monolith, slow work, but potentially effective, an awakening of care, which I find invigorating, and it needs to be kept up. So, I remain a remoaner.
I looked up what I'd been doing during the last #BlackLivesMatter protests in 2015. I'd voted for Corbyn. Again, I'd been hoping for an awakening of care, but we know how that turned out – care became discredited, and those who'd spent their entire political lives attempting to orchestrate a more just environment became associated with bullying and intolerance. So this probably does have to be led from the bottom. And, while I have Santa's knee, I'd also quite like a government intent on kerbing the manipulation of democracy through online misinformation, rather than one led by gamers seeking to become a world leaders in it. That seems another fair demand.
And finally, here is my favourite twitter interaction for a while. Elizabeth Jackson's not cowed by a wig. It's important to remember this is also an option.
This election should never have been agreed to while so many of its participants were under investigation, but it was agreed to, and the self-styled "Grand Wizards" now have their majority. To everyone who campaigned against them: thank you from the bottom of my heart. But if it's any consolation, I don't think the Wizards won because they named themselves after the KKK, I think they won because most people are scared of free broadband. Honestly. And they won because their campaign was the issuing of a simple three word sentence followed by an unprecendented fucking off, while the opposition's campaign insisted on being a narrative centred around its most obviously off-putting not-fucking-off-er.
As the exit poll came in last night, I was talking with my mate Tom
about performing in front of crowds without a demographic, and he noted that, yes, people are superb when they're paying attention. Jeremy Corbyn however was an attention repellant. Every wonderful, brilliant, compassionate canvasser for Labour knew that his name was a handicap, they heard it again and again, and reported back, but the man himself never seemed to care... And, wait, I love.... I love... that he addressed how abominable things are for so many... that he noticed, as just one example, postal workers are now penalised for standing still, nobody else was talking about that! But... as I also noted when I first voted for him in 2015, he does love telling people off, and people really do not like being told off, and while I'm repeating myself, he was also... is also... a terrible, terrible boss. If only his claque (a clique that claps, true word) could have brought itself to get behind that motto of the London Olympics: "This is for everyone." But no, it had to make gospel the caveat "Not the few", and whether that qualification was simply tone-deaf or pitch-perfect dog-whistle, it was never going to win an election, ever. You cannot spearhead a popular compassionate campaign with threats. Momentum also enjoyed telling the electorate off of course: austerity was Tony Blair's fault now (just as the Tories had argued) - why would you vote for Tony Blair, you stupid idiots who voted Labour into office three times in a row! So I hope Momentum get in the fridge too. I am excited by that prospect.
Similarly exciting is the fact that both main parties promised an end to austerity... although voting for a lie doesn't make it true, so who knows what will happen next? We have our Nixon now (not our Trump, that's potentially Rees-Mogg), and Johnson is absolutely incompetent enough to let this country slip into civil war, but I've no idea who he'll have around him with this majority, maybe this larger pool will provide a greater chance of non-maniacs in office, a group less Steve-Bannon-y. And even if it doesn't, there is still the law. And there are still lawyers. Things change, is what I'm saying... although that's easy to forget while watching yet another Labour leader take to the podium and, just as Miliband and Brown did before him, blame the fucking media. Well no, hon, you chose to post that appalling Celebrities Read Mean Tweets video when you're not really a celebrity and those weren't really mean tweets, and you can't really read. You chose to make this election about you, when so many feel threatened by you, not just because of shitty political coverage, but because of literal threats continually being issued by your defenders, upsetting the work of the thousands who played nice.
Here's why I'm writing though. It's not because I have anything new to say (hence all the links). I just think that now that the campaign is over - and I count myself so lucky not to be terrified, so it's easy for me to say this - we might stop filling our feeds with nightmare worst-case scenarios, just for now. Nobody in the history of talking ever "won" an "argument" anyway*, and twitter's not a hole in the ground to scream into. It is the exact opposite of a hole in the ground, in fact; it's possibly part of the problem, so we should probably stop feeding it. We can't hate the electorate. Fascism Thrives On Division. People are simply scared of free broadband, that's all. And they don't like being told off.
And thank you again to those who played nice. You make me happy, you give me hope. And when Corbyn goes, oh my goodness, the hope then...
What she said. Again.
* Update: This was not a reference to Corbyn's "We won the argument". That was published the following day.
I'm trying to make another film on my phone but the bits keep slipping about, I've been having the same problem putting subtitles on "Jonah" as well, it's quite disheartening, like that moment in childhood when you finally realized the adhesive limits of a Pritt Stick, but WHO CARES because we had a general election and everything's suddenly bearable again! PHEW, RIGHT?!!!*
6:09am, June 9th, Frankfurt
Well, we saw. (Links to cautiously optimistic article about Corbyn from two years ago). And I'm very glad I got all of this out of my system before the results came in because it's worth remembering just how dark things looked. (Links to cautiously pessimistic article about Corbyn from two days ago). But didn't I say! "Do your job, focus on the facts, convince through competence, smile, be
courteous, and let the Right go mental and out themselves." See! I said! And here's the thing: Maybe this is where the wave breaks, but I can't really see how. If the Tories aren't seen as strong then what are they? There can't be a more towering proof of their incompetence than the calling of this election. I'm not going to blame the results on the campaign however, Trump had a dumber campaign and won. "How good a campaign is" can only be judged on the result, it's a conclusion, not an explanation. Alex has a better explanation:
I think that that Ariana Grande concert helped too.
* Disclaimer: Of course the prospect of the Right unmasked and mental is still terrifying and, facing the possibility of a deal with the DUP, we now have to man the walls against a wave of batshit thicker than anything we've yet seen, but I don't think this will be a tsunami, and the walls seem a lot stronger than they did three days ago. That's where I was wrongest: I don't think we're headed for a civil war now. Not on the mainland at least. We seem saner today, less frightened. A lot of commentators have been bemoaning the loss of a centre in British Politics but I think they're dead wrong, and I think the reason they're dead wrong is the same reason they've been dead wrong about this in-one-sense-unnecessary-but-in-another-absolutely-necessary election all along. Joel finally put his finger on it:
"It's not the despair, Laura. I can stand the despair. It's the hope." Clockwise
It's not really though, is it? As I write this, the polls are still open, but the Conservatives don't appear to be breaking a sweat, and the odd engagements I've had with Tory voters on twitter have given me very clear hints why Blair and co. thought it such a good idea to rename the party: for so many in Britain, the very word "Labour" is bafflingly, deafeningly toxic. Back at Tory HQ meanwhile, following the example of Trump, the Conservatives have learnt the best way to win at Democracy – as with Global Thermonuclear War – is simply not to play. Instead, attack human rights as enablers of terrorism, attack the judiciary as "enemies of the people" and, fuck it, attack the very principle of opposition as a tedious attempt to "frustrate the will of the people". I almost included attack the media as discredited pests, but of course both sides have done their share of that, with the odd honorable exception. And Christ, that clip was hard to find! Googling "Corbyn defends press" gets you three pages of Corbyn instead attacking it. Someone should write a strongly worded letter to Google's offices, that'll fix it.
I am voting Labour, you might not be surprised to read. I've even made the odd campaign contribution, although I actually left the party, almost a year ago, after it backed Brexit. Watching Corbyn's performance during this campaign, however, I get it now: voting is sacred to him. That's why he never stood down having won that vote, why he backs Brexit, why he rebelled so often while voting as a backbencher while producing such a coherent manifesto, and why he refuses to consider any further "deal-making" to form a coalition. He has clearly always believed that a vote is a genuine expression of the self, and that a democracy must honour those expressions. Well, good for him, I suppose. It's proved a pretty strong platform this past month. And we'll see. But the attempts at uniting a country have come and gone. Even the campaign slogan "For The Many, Not the Few" foreshadows, a little too strongly, some incoming civil war, and only the Right benefits from division. As I'm sure I wrote elsewhere – although I can't find that now either – I've always preferred the motto of the London Olympics' Opening Ceremony:
And I remember* John Oliver once made this observation about the elections in Egypt:
"Under a dictatorship you get used to a dictator kicking you in the
balls. Under a democracy you have to get used to half your own
population kicking you in the balls." I'm not sure it's google-able, you'll just have to take my word for it. I'm still in Frankfurt. I only know what happens on social media. I think my friend Gemma's in Stratford now. She's making a show about the Civil War. She's been researching it for years. Fun fact: one of Oliver Cromwell's big ideas once he came to power was to replace Holidays with "Days of National Humiliation". Nobody thought there'd be a civil war before then either, she told me. Sides just became too entrenched.
I was reminded of this thread from Jack of Kent on Wednesday, looking at the front pages in Sainsbury's as they got all excited about the white-supremacist sex-pest president-elect's promise of a juicy new trade deal for Britain post-Brexit. "See?" was the gist. The problem is, as this thread illustrates, that no deal with Trump is worth the paper it's written on. It's tough enough getting him to cough up when he has an army of
lawyers, what chance will we have when he has an army of everything
else?
And let's not pretend we haven't been here before. Godwin's law can do one – Churchill's law states you're fucked signing deals with a demagogue con-artist. So what's the alternative? On its own Britain is completely at this swollen clown's mercy; here's what "taking back control" looks like. We've never needed to be in the EU more than we have now. So we can't let Brexit happen, sorry. And we can't do business with Trump. And we can't let Trump/Pence happen, sorry again. How can we stop it? I've no idea. Let's sign a thing. At least put out the house-fire before worrying about the rot.
I want to stop Trump and Pence, then. And I want to stop Brexit. So am I completely against democracy? Well, what is democracy? It is full enfranchisement, not the dictatorship of the majority. Referenda are barmy; you can't vote for a single issue without voting for its baggage. I often think about the end of this, posted by Michael Regnier back in July:
At one level, what is more democratic than the
country voting on a simple choice between two courses of action? The
majority wins, of course, every time.
There is another manifestation of
democracy, however, which is not about winning majorities, but
acknowledging, supporting, even protecting, minorities. Human rights,
freedom of movement, tolerance and compassion – simple, decent humanity.
It was 2005 when I realised this other
idea of democracy existed – I was studying for a Masters degree, and a
far-right demagogue was doing well in Austrian politics. One of my
professors started a discussion with us about what should happen if they
won power in Austria. My opinion was that if you believe in democracy,
you have to accept the will of the people, even if you hate what they’ve
voted for, even if they’ve voted away their democratic rights.
The liberal academic’s view was that democracy exists not so much in
votes but in the much broader set of rights given to people to live
their lives the way they want to, and that a far-right government would
undermine that and undermine democracy, so something radical had to be
done to prevent this outcome, even if it was the popular choice.
So while going against the popular
vote from the referendum would be, by definition, undemocratic, I think
it might also be the most democratic thing we could do. Because
democracy is for the losers as much as – if not more than – the winners.
Okay. The best thing that could be said about Angela Eagle's interview on Channel 4 last night was she did, at least, definitely appear to support herself. But it's one thing for a supporter to say they're voting for you because you're "doing a good job", and because it's ridiculous Labour hasn't yet been led by a woman, it's another to make that your whole campaign – particularly a campaign for a post that's already filled. Is this the forge then? Will this unite? "Well, look"? And "Of course" and "Well, look" and "It's too early to say" and "Well, look"? Nothing about what's gone wrong, and how it could be put right, and nothing about what you actually believe? No persuasion. No story. Just "I think I'm the best." That's Angela Eagle's bid to be Prime Minister?
Angela Eagle's actual resting face in that interview
She's not even trying to earn it. She must have been preparing for this for months, yet when Krishnan turned to her, she looked like Guy Goma. No, she can't have been preparing for this. She can't. It was the kind of insulting, dispiriting mess, half-learnt off a napkin ten minutes before you're on, that reminded me with the force of a bullet train why I'd voted for Corbyn in the first place. Yes, it seemed to me time for him to go, but if eighty per cent of Labour's MPs can't work with him – okay, since they can't work with him – they surely have to field an alternative who will appear happy, and indeed keen, to explain off the cuff exactly what it is they actually believe in, because if they can't find that, then it might not be a coup, but it is a con, and they've no right, with two election defeats behind them, to call Corbyn unelectable. The Tory Far-Right appears to have evaporated, meanwhile, and the parliamentary centre ground continues to move left. And unpopularity isn't Corbyn's problem right now. It's the least of his problems right now. People are throwing bricks through windows for him.
We're still in France. This river's called the Orb. My parents here receive a monthly pension in pounds. Hopefully by the time of the next payment that pound will have stopped wobbling or the euro will have dropped as well. That's what they're hoping. I figured out yesterday what the Brexit result felt like, over here, not in Britain. What is feels like. It feels like being dumped. I don't mean that as an analogy. I think both me and my girlfriend feel like we've been dumped. And yet here we are, still on holiday, together, which is weird.
Here, I think is where "Remain" may have gone wrong (and it's also where Labour may have gone wrong last election): If trust in politicians is as low as it is right now, you're wasting your time trying to win it back, that's too slow a game. Just promise more stuff. That's what won last year's election for the Tories and it's clearly what won this referendum for "Leave". It's also why those who claim to trust politicians the least always perversely vote for the least trustworthy politicians, because they're the ones promising the most stuff. (And it doesn't bode well at all for Hilary Clinton.) But here's my plan. Here's how we stay in the EU:
We never actually leave, we just tell everyone who voted to leave that we have.
I mean, what are they going to do? Check?
Anyway that was yesterday, here's to today. Today we went to Sete. It's the second biggest port in the south of France. It has THIS terrifying fountain honouring Cthulu in one of its town squares. And it has jousting gondolas. And we caught some of that. We're still in France.
When you join the Labour Party you receive emails addressing you as "comrade" which is a bit hilarious. Now Corbyn's leader of the party, and a non-appointed front bench are resigning in droves, and it's still a bit hilarious. Here, anyway, is what I reckon...
"I see you, the media!"
I genuinely don't think I'll forget that first TV debate. I'll never
forget thinking "Well 'favourite' Andy Burnham's nobody's favourite now surely." But more than that, I won't forget the
woman in the audience who asked why refugees should be given a home while
she might lose hers, and how Corbyn scolded her and took this
opportunity to attack the show "Benefits Street", and then how Yvette Cooper said she didn't want
to see her lose her home either, and how I thought that that was important. Both Cooper and Kendall appeared to have a far greater understanding of the true importance of Social Security than their male counterparts. It was practical, not ideological. So why did I end up voting for Corbyn?
Maybe it's because the next time I saw Yvette Cooper on television she was talking about how her policies were "for the future, not the past..." and I just couldn't take any more guff. "We need to send a clear message" - every candidate was saying that apart from Corbyn. Maybe it's because I found candidates campaigning for the party
leadership on a platform of how attractive they'd prove to the opposing
party off-puttingly bone-headed as a strategy: "Vote for me because I'll
ignore you." Maybe it's because I wanted an opposition that opposed and didn't just abstain. Maybe it was because of that thing I wrote about wanting a Labour movement that engaged with the electorate as an energy to be harnassed rather than a market to be captured. Maybe it's because, horrible as this sounds, Cooper's husband couldn't even save his own seat so I found it very difficult seeing him on the steps of Number 10, even by association.
Mainly though, I think I voted for him because I wanted him to win. To see. Just to see. That might strike you as irresponsible, and I take the passion of those on the Left who attack Corbyn as unelectable extremely seriously, but I just can't agree yet. Arguing that his leadership would condemn Labour to the political wilderness ignores the fact that Labour have lost two elections now, while Nigel Farage made a far larger dent in the political discourse than Miliband without even winning a seat. What exactly is a wilderness if not where Labour already was? There'll be voters at the next election who were born in 2002. Try warning about them about "the lessons of the '80s".
This image is included to fool people.
And was the 1980's really such a wilderness? I remember that wilderness producing pretty much everything British that I loved about growing up: the television, the comedy, the music, the comics. So - however long Corbyn leads the party for - I look forward to some excellent art coming out of it. The Great Consensus is over, maybe not for good, and maybe Corbyn will prove an immediate disaster in which case it will be back stronger than ever, but at least it will have earnt it. I'm very excited that we're finally going to see. And until that happens, let's not use the word "sensible" in a debate again. (Tony Blair argues that most "sensible" people recognise it
wasn't the whole economy that broke, just a small part of it. The
chain didn't break. Just the one link... Also, if we're going to discuss the National Economy in terms of a family making savings then let's shrink the banks down by the same degree and admit we're talking about a family that owes money to, at best, another family whose lives they saved... or if the banks are larger than this, admit that that's a problem. Focus, Simon.)
Likewise this image from Roger Quimbly.
Although what's not to like?
And how long will Corbyn lead the party? I thought during those debates he'd have no taste for it - that he was a direction rather a director. But his often stirring and occasionally whiney acceptance speech yesterday showed me a man who was up for it. So we will see, won't we? Personally I'm worried about Tom Watson as deputy. He's a magnificent campaigner and there's much talk of him uniting the party BUT... he did call Michael Gove a pipsqueak. But you hate Michael Gove, Simon! Haha, yeah... No, yeah, I really do... but if there is a lesson from the 80's, I think it's also the lesson of 2010 and 2015, the lesson Obama learnt, helping him beat the far more centrist Clinton: it has never gone well for the political Left when it talks about Good and Evil. Do your job, focus on the facts, convince through competence, smile, be courteous, and let the Right go mental and out themselves.
Speaking of security, an almost identical message found its way to me
as an email from CCHQ, somehow circumventing my spam filter.
Nobody likes being told off. Let the artists handle the telling off. Corbyn needs to learn that immediately, and so does Watson. Which is pretty much where we came in, with Corbyn scolding a scared woman and Yvette Cooper trying to reassure her. Right! I'm off to see what I've missed in the past hour.
I don't mean the interview, although no I didn't see that coming either; for the last five years, Labour's appeared infuriatingly reluctant to engage with any grassroots movement at all, let alone stick up for one – a disengagement that's done far more to see off the old two-party system than anything the Lib Dems managed. Now Plan A enters its endgame, Ed Miliband's campaigning for a majority like he's the only game in town, but surely he's left it too late. Probably. Almost definitely. It's maybe too late, but not I think too little, because the more Miliband campaigns for a majority, the more I actually believe that he actually believes he can pull it off, and I find that I find that exciting.
And to find that exciting, I must at some point have stopped believing he was an eye-watering liability, so when did that happen? Certainly not during the Scottish referendum, nor his last conference speech, nor even the 2012 conference speech, when he gabbled on about Disraeli instead of food and jobs and homes. It was recently, maybe as recently as the publishing of the Tory Manifesto: the shoddy maths was an open goal, but Miliband's been presented with open goals before, and still managed to kick himself in the face... Suddenly, I have a very strong mental picture of – THAT'S who he reminds me of:
Back to two weeks ago though. Here, finally, was the most cogent and coherent (those words don't mean the same thing do they?) argument against the Tories being made – not in an online petition, or in an article circulated around twitter – but by the Labour leader himself. Maybe he wouldn't be useless in office, I suddenly thought. Maybe he's just useless in opposition.
The following day, "The Making of Ed Miliband" appeared in the Guardian, an account of his period in opposition that, while not exactly glowing, at least showed that not nothing had been going on in all those years, and that the Labour leader had, if not a plan, at least an aim. Put more simply than I've heard him put it himself, that aim was: "How to be radical and still win British elections." It was something Ken Livingstone had also hinted at years earlier... "I like Ed because he's a socialist". It's a very interesting read, and at the end of it, I knew I would be voting Labour.
Then the following day this happened:
It was extraordinary: by refusing to appear, Cameron had let the entire debate turn Ed into a statesman. But it was also a cunning plan: leaving Miliband on his own to court coalition with anti-austerity nationalists allowed Cameron to paint Labour as nation-wreckers – I adore how cunning Cameron is, by the way; he's the only one playing anything like three-dimensional chess – and we can see this was the plan, by the way, because that's exactly the picture the Tory machine has gone on to paint. Except Miliband didn't court that coalition. He didn't fall into the trap. Indeed, his attacks on Sturgeon drew quite a bit of fire and eye-rolling tuttage. I was among the tutters, which again begs the question: Why do I now find the idea of a Labour majority exciting? I'm against austerity – today it was revealed there are just 48 affordable house in London, and yet we're still told the money isn't there. So I'm against austerity, and look! Here's a fierce anti-austerity coalition of minority parties! I'm also, historically, a big fan of minority parties. Except two of these parties are nationalist, and I'm not a happy nationalist. And the third is – well, differently austere. Green. I mean, isn't being green all about austerity? Oh yes, then this happened:
Five years ago, I held my nose and voted Labour because I didn't want to contribute to any chance of exactly what then happened happening. But it happened, and this blog fell silent for a while. It's worth me remembering how genuinely threatened I felt. How much I hated those in office, and how much I wanted to write about how much I hated them, and I how I didn't, and how people I knew ended up pilloried and in some cases jailed and kept awake by the police, simply for being in the same building as protests criminalised by the last Labour Government, a government which had created something like a police state just in time to hand it over to the Tories, a government that ended free higher education, that dismissed the housing crisis as the fantasy of ignorant racists, and that fucked about with some wars.
Do you know what the last Labour Government didn't do, though? It didn't single-handedly bring about a world-wide recession. Do you know what it did do? Saved the economy by bailing out the banks. Do you know what happens if you bail out banks? You run low on money. All this, though, was clearly news to Cameron and Osborne, who had no idea the country would be low on money, and therefore had to hastily jettison their manifesto in favour of a programme of austerity measures that have since hurt a lot of people I think it's the job of a civilized democracy to try and see don't get hurt. In fairness to them both though, they did all this without complaining. But this is old news. Osborne's told us not to get complacent about the recovery, so I'm assuming everything's only ostensibly all completely fine now.
I've never seen Ed Balls so happy as when Labour lost. I'm not sure I've been able to forgive him for that.
Anyway...
Yes! Peter Oborne! Three days before he sadly but sensationally resigned from the Telegraph because it refused to publish anything bad about HSBC, Oborne wrote "if Ed Miliband does become prime minister, he will have done so without owing anything to anybody."
He wrote it in the Spectator – so maybe I should be a little more guarded about referring to a "Tory Machine" – and the piece resurfaced around the time of the Opposition debates, which is when I read it. It's that rare thing: a blistering commendation. "It is extremely unusual for opposition leaders to win votes in the House
of Commons and Ed Miliband has made a habit of doing so." Oborne then goes on to give chapter and verse. When I read that, I realised I could vote for Labour without holding my nose. There was achievement there. There was survival. There was Olympic spirit. Remember? Opening ceremony? Tim Berners-Lee? "This is for everyone"? I've always said whoever could make that motto their own would win a majority. Miliband hasn't attempted to. I do have a problem with that. He's not very good with words.
But put him next to Russell Brand...
Five years ago, I also wrote "It's like Battlestar Galactica, isn't it. Is it? It's like Mad Men. What's the word I'm looking for? It's drama." This too is drama. This is brilliant. It's brilliant because it's so obvious. Disaffected voters have a spokesman, and that spokesman's an international celebrity with nearly ten million twitter followers, so speak to him. It's never been easier. And here Miliband is, jacket on, tie done up to eleven, and utterly himself because ultimately, whatever you think of Russell Brand, he will let you speak. There's so much sniffiness in the News about simply defining our terms, but here that is finally allowed to happen. I have friends who have nightmares consisting solely of Brand saying the word "paradigm." But the word does mean something.
"I have rolled up my sleeves, because I have rolled up my sleeves. What's Ed Miliband doing? Talking to someone who thinks you shouldn't vote? What an idiot. Has he rolled up his sleeves? I have."
I remember Gordon Brown delivering tub-thumping speeches in front of applauding crowds five years ago. I remember thinking: without them, he's nothing. He needs the machine. He can't brook any opposition. Miliband, on the other hand, has had to. I think this "Trews" is the best public speaking Miliband's done, and it needed Russell Brand for it to happen, which is also what makes it such great drama. This is Obama talking to Bill O'Reilly. You could also maybe say it is a cry for help, but it's a cry a lot of people I know have been waiting to hear. So shrug, Ed, look like a goon, it doesn't matter, I get it: Politics is hard. And it starts with the people. I agree. It's us against the machines – not the machines by which things eventually get done, but the machines in the shadows, the non-dom free-sheet proprietors and pollsters, the bullshit-spinning giant spiders whose clumps of web we're told are simply the terrain. A coalition is inevitable, we're told. Nothing's inevitable.
That's why I find the idea of a Labour majority exciting. And that's why I joined the Labour Party today.
It's gone. I'm pretty sure it's gone, the comfort
zone. That seems to be the mood. Hence the outrage. Yes, I said "mood".
Is my political judgment too superficial? I don't know. But if I
attached no importance at all to the superficial, I couldn't be an actor
or a writer. Heavens, how would my conscience stand for it? I'd be a
doctor instead. I'd make bread or chairs, or, Christ, yes of course,
work in politics, even if I was useless at it... rather than make things
that serve no material purpose, things as superficial as Obama's "Yes
we can" or the broadcast of Brown's "bigoted old woman" or even (NEVER
FORGET!) Cameron's decision to cycle into work while having a spare
shirt chauffeured in behind him. But I make these superficial things,
have no qualms about making them rather than healing or feeding people
because you know, I suppose I believe that in a society where people
have the right to communicate with each other, how they communicate is
actually important, and should be taken care of. I must believe that.
And
believing that, I can't help but consider the "superficial" aspects of
this new deal, and in so considering conclude that the National Security
Council's biggest gaff thus far has been simply turning up...
I mean, LOOK at all these English whitemen. Does Clegg look out of
place? I think he does actually. He's the only one who's achieved
anything. An entirely superficial judgment I know, but one I never
thought I'd be saying a month ago. Who would have thought Clegg's
woodeness when working to a script belied a such a gob-smacking hidden
talent for political improvisation? He's like Eddie Izzard, on both
counts. Did you see how comfortably he reacted to that journalist who
brought up Cameron's description of him as bad political joke (in a bad
political joke?)? And did you see Cameron shit himself when he walked:
"Hahaha, come back. Haha..."? In spite of all the work Cameron's put in
he's actually feeble in his command of the superficial (symptomatic of
what we in the making-shit-up industry call "lacking vision".) Having
Clegg stand next to him doesn't make him look good at all. And standing
next to Cameron is now Clegg's job.
Actually okay, I've just watched it over again
and what really strikes me now about this clip is how Cameron isn't
working from a script either. He can't. The BBC meanwhile, who still
are, just look like jerks now (John Finnemore's good on this).
And if you're spitting tacks at Clegg for seeking a coalition with the
party that got the most votes, then you confuse me because that's
exactly what he said he'd do, isn't it? Which is why I voted Labour.
If you voted Libdem, surely this is what you voted for. And good for
you! We're all out of our Comfort Zone now. Hopefully. Even those
forty-something English whitemen taking us over. And Christ, we should
have left it long ago, certainly by the time David Kelly slit his
wrists. We should never have let the Comfort Zone consolidate itself
into a place where who you feared or hated were the only credentials
that meant anything (apart from, I suppose, your favourite X factor
judge), never have let it take our Government - OUR Government - into
unchallenged recession, war, the state-sponsored teaching of creationism
and the unpunished killing of innocent bystanders by police. Oh and this.
So fuck the good guys. Where there's death there's hope, and we had to
say goodbye to that. I have no idea how this will pan out, or who will
suffer, but I do know two things: A) Every face that made me smile when
Labour won in '97 has long since been forced to resign or died or been
forced to resign, then died. And B) Come PMQs it would be very cool (on
an entirely superficial level of course) to see Diane Abbott at the
dispatch box.
