Brexitwatch: A warning from the future, for Labour

 Working painstakingly with paper and glue I have managed to put together another passage from The New Oxford History of England: Brexit 2015-, presented to me by Sybil, the emissary from the future, in the obscure corner of North London pictured above:

‘Labour was in power for 13 years under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. It could have brought in proportional representation for electing MPs, which would have made it impossible for a Conservative government ever again to win power when the majority had voted against it.

Unfortunately, Labour decided that stopping this disaster was less important than preserving the chance for its own MPs to lord it over the country even when the majority had opposed them. The result was that in 2010, after 13 years of Labour, the Conservatives were back for even longer, with what was up to then the most right-wing government the UK has seen in modern times, which took the disastrous decision to leave the EU.

So when Sir Keir Starmer won the general election of 2024, there were some hopes that Labour might have learned from this bitter experience, and that this time it would put the interests of its voters and the country before narrow party advantage, but history repeated itself.

The size of Starmer’s parliamentary majority was enough to obscure the uncomfortable fact that once again most of those who had turned out had voted against the government now given virtually absolute power over them. Hardly anyone in the Labour Party had the courage to point out that this could not be regarded as democratic, and proportional representation was rarely mentioned.

While Labour wrestled with the dreadful mess the Conservatives had left them, their opponents regrouped and ruthlessly attacked the new government's performance, so that after five years of Labour, the Tories were back again with a working majority on yet another minority share of the vote, with all the catastrophic consequences we have seen.

 

How assassins work and does assassination work? My podcast now available

 

What motivates assassins? What are their favourite methods? What was the first assassination in history? What was the strangest? What was the first terrorist group? And does assassination work?

These are some of the questions Matt Lewis asked me in a wide-ranging podcast interview about assassinations over more than four thousand years from ancient Egypt to the present day, drawing on my book Assassins’ Deeds (Reaktion). 

Follow the link to access the podcast – mine is episode 7. The series is inspired by the popular video game Assassin's Creed.

https://pod.link/1615075257

Brexitwatch: how to talk like a Conservative minister

Ever wanted to be a Conservative cabinet minister? No reason you can’t be, but one thing you will need is the right speech. So, as a public service I am providing, free of charge, the Tory Self-writing Speech Kit.

Write each of the phrases below on a card, then put on a blindfold, and arrange them in a random order. Fill in the gaps between with any old guff that takes your fancy (fact-checking not required).

These are the phrases:

evil gangs of people smugglers (put this on 3 separate cards to ensure repetition)

illegal asylum seekers (again on 3 cards)

economic migrants

a lot of them are young men, you know

stop the boats (3 cards)

abusing Britain’s hospitality

proud record of taking in refugees (though not ones arriving in small boats obviously)

delivering the people’s priorities

activist lefty lawyers

opportunities of Brexit

global Britain

I am available to promote any business of your choice in return for shedloads of money [actually, maybe leave this one out] 

How historians will see Brexit. I have been granted a privileged glimpse: the CPTPP

 I have managed to decipher another section of the fire-damaged New Oxford History of England: Brexit 2015- which was offered to me by Sybil, an emissary from The Future (see my post of 7 March). This is from what appears to be the section on the CPTPP.

‘After a brief attack of courage when he faced down the Brexit fanatics who wanted the UK to welch on the agreement we had made with the EU over Northern Ireland, Sunak sadly soon reverted to spineless type, and decided he had to offer the ‘head-bangers’, as they would become known, a consolation prize.

Most British people soon saw that even among the multiple absurdities of Brexit, the UK’s ludicrous decision to join a trade group on the other side of the world in preference to neighbours 20 miles away, stood out.

It was presented by Sunak as one of those highly elusive ‘Brexit benefits’, but this argument soon fell apart when it was revealed that, on the government’s own figures, it would benefit the UK's economy by about 0.08 per cent, while Brexit impoverished the country by fully 4 per cent, fifty times as much.

Instead it became clear that joining the CPTPP had only two functions: 1. As one of those endless empty gestures designed to fool people into thinking that there was some upside to Brexit, and 2. To try to put another obstacle in the way of the UK ever rejoining the EU, so imprisoning the country permanently in the Brexit disaster.’

Brexitwatch: A Book of Secrets - have I met an emissary from the future?

 A funny thing happened to me the other day as I was walking across a blasted heath not far from where I live in North London.

I saw a woman standing by a fire. I was going to write ‘old woman’ and then I realised she was no older than me, and was possibly a good deal younger, as most people are. As I approached she held out a book, quite a weighty tome, and said: ‘I am Sybil. I have come from the future with this book of secrets. Take it.’

Sadly, living in modern Britain has bred suspicion and cynicism in me, and I quickened my pace and brushed past her. After a few moments, I heard her shout: ‘Then I’ll burn the book.’ I looked back and saw her throw it on the flames. Then I went hurrying on my way.

A few hours later something made me go back. There was no sign of the woman. The fire had gone out, but among the ashes were the remains of the book. I saw that it was a volume in the New Oxford History of England entitled Brexit 2015- but the end date of the period it covered was lost, as was the author’s name and date of publication.

Gingerly I retrieved what was left of the volume, and found the opening sentences:

‘We can now see that the Brexit referendum of 2016 was the real fault line in English history. The previous year, David Cameron, a friendly, plausible prime minister, had won a surprise victory in the General Election. Unfortunately Cameron was also shallow, weak and careless, and rarely failed to put the interests of the Conservative Party before the interests of the country.’

I am now trying to piece together other passages, which I will post in this blog.

Brexitwatch: the Windsor Framework - two cheers for Sunak

 

As a floating voter who has never belonged to any political party, I'm free to give credit where it’s due. So I say ‘well done’ to Rishi Sunak for negotiating the Windsor Framework with the EU.

Will the substantial slice of the Conservative Parliamentary Party blinkered by their irrational hatred of the EU, manage to vote it down? Apparently Brexit liar-in-chief Boris Johnson did not even bother to show up to hear Mr Sunak yesterday. So no change there. Will the people-who-like-to-say-no DUP refuse to come back into power-sharing now they’re no longer Northern Ireland’s biggest party? Who knows?

The point is Mr Sunak has made an effort to stand up to both groups, and assert that the EU is not our enemy, and that if this country is going to limit the damage from the Brexit disaster, we will need a constructive relationship with Europe.

This, of course, will raise many difficult questions for him. Yesterday, he was waxing lyrical about the advantages to Northern Ireland of being inside the EU Single Market. But Brexiters like him are denying those advantages to the rest of the UK, even though they promised we would stay in the Single Market when they were conning people into voting for Brexit. Every day more people see through the Brexit lies, so for how long can this doublethink survive?

But perhaps for the first time since 2016 we have a Conservative prime minister prepared to stand up, to some degree, for the UK. No Brexit is as good as being in the EU, but the Conservatives have so far chosen a particularly bad version. If Mr Sunak is prepared to defy the fanatics in his party and lead us away from the foolish delusions that have dominated the Tories, he deserves credit for that.

This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

 

Farewell to the Hardy Tree

In the 1860s, Thomas Hardy, the famous novelist, was learning the ropes as a young architect in London, and was given the unenviable task of digging up graves at Old St Pancras Church to make way for the railway about to power its way from St Pancras Station to the East Midlands and beyond.

He tried to give a decent burial to the human remains and stacked the gravestones around an ash tree, creating what became known as the Hardy Tree. Sadly, weakened by last year's storms, the tree has now fallen.

Two decades later, Hardy wrote a poem about another churchyard where remains had to be dug up and reburied, and included the lines:

We late-lamented, resting here,

Are mixed to human jam,

And each to each exclaims in fear,

'I know not which I am!'

You wonder how much that was inspired by his own experience of the daunting task at St Pancras.