We’ve been here before. On the eve of her departure Margaret Thatcher saw a snail trail of cabinet ministers encircle her with their tearful expressions of undying but actually mortally wounding love. She couldn’t understand why after all she had done these lily-livered colleagues (whom she raised from nothing) could politely suggest she should bow out. Johnson is now about to walk the same plank too. Not before time of course. Soon, he’ll just be a bad memory. The Tories will elect a new leader (who policy-wise will bring no real change, except possibly for one eye catching thing to suggest the government really has changed). John Major succeeded Thatcher with a big advantage—he could stop the poll tax (Get Rid Of The Poll Tax Done!) and I strongly believe that many voters thought the government then had changed, even though they had no say in it. In 1992 Major went on to win one of the biggest ever popular votes, although curiously that only delivered a 22 seat majority. Are we about to see history repeated? Now, a new Tory leader, like Major will have a couple of years to recover the party’s fortunes. By 2024 Johnson will be forgotten (perhaps he could spend his retirement playing golf with Trump at Mar-a-Lago). By then Starmer will look jaded and past it. Life will go on as if nothing really happened. Nothing will change the British constitution, the establishment will go back to sleep, happy that it itself has not been challenged and all this focus on one man’s personality diverted attention away from the need for deep, structural change in our body politic. The Labour Party will continue to acquiesce in this, ever dreaming of recovering Blair-era majorities so that it could somehow fashion a new, kinder form of capitalism. Am I right or am I right?
Starmer apparently thinks there should be a general election, given the mess the government’s in. So why hasn’t he called for a confidence motion in Parliament? Surely this would flush out the real Tory dissenters? Why must the country have to wait upon the internal wranglings of the Conservative Party?
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I have studiously avoided commenting on the career of my successor as an MP, Ed Balls. But his performance whilst co-hosting Good Morning Britain (GMB) the other day demands a break in this self-imposed iron discipline. Balls it must be remembered only just squeaked in to the newly created Morley and Outwood constituency in 2010, and so strong was his 1,000 majority then that within five years of living in a self-delusional fog he lost the seat to a Tory. I refer to a ‘self-delusional fog’ since in his own political memoir Balls confessed he had unquestioningly assumed he would retain the seat, so spent the election campaign being Gordon Brown’s great enthuser on the nationwide stage, thus forgetting that the first lesson in politics is to secure your own base. Ever since the constituency has been represented by a somewhat odd Tory (but aren’t they all a bit odd these days?) and poor Ed has now refashioned himself as a ‘TV Personality’ or celebrity if you will. This is a sad way to go for a once senior politician. It reminds me of the Hamiltons.
Still, given the task of trying to emulate the success of Piers Morgan in stirring up click bait, Ed decided to challenge a climate change activist on GMB with the charge that disrupting a fossil fuelled public event was equivalent to terrorism. Thus some slight inconvenience for F1 racegoers is on a par with the Bataclan massacre. One wonders what other balls will spout forth. Perhaps Emily Davison was a terrorist for throwing herself in the path of the King’s horse? At what point did Nelson Mandela cease to be a terrorist to become a saintly peace-loving grandfather? Balls’ inability to grasp the climate change agenda doesn’t surprise me. He and his mentor’s philosophy was (sometimes) to talk the talk but not to walk the walk, not least when there were more important issues to deal with—such as ‘growing’ the economy with such necessities as an extra runway at Heathrow. The minor inconveniences the public may be put to because of climate activism is as nothing compared to what climate change is already bringing. Ed no doubt would agree with Parliament declaring a ‘climate emergency’ but as we know there has been little or no action to back that up. So some people are getting frustrated with the do nowt brigade. So good luck to them (the activists). Whether their exact tactics will alter the public’s mind is another question. If I had much to do with it the activists’ efforts would be wholly focused on MPs—it is the complacency of MPs that prevents adequate action being taken. And their complacency is boostered by people like Balls who can’t be bothered to examine the case for activism. How long will it be before Ed and his ilk appear as useful idiots in Murdoch’s domain? If the money’s there . . The fossil fuel industry know the game’s up, but they have been thrown a lifeline by the pandemic and now the Russian war on Ukraine. Everyday we are hearing how in order to combat rising prices new coal and gas will be essential. This is a kind of normality for fossil fuel energy suppliers, who will always sit on their filthy arses with a self-satisfied glow and say ‘we told you so.’ Against this industry's proven hegemony in politics, a handful of climate activists are deemed outsiders, and described by glib attention seeking has-beens as ‘terrorists.’ The real climate terrorists sit in boardrooms. +An instructive battle may take place in West Virginia in the US midterm elections, if an article in the Intercept (Joe Manchin May Not Be Kingmaker in West Virginia for Long (theintercept.com)) is anything to go by. The Democrats there lost control of both houses of their State capitol, their Congresspersons, the governership—and their only significant flag bearer is the awful, self-serving Senator Joe Manchin (on whose shoulders some of the blame for recent Supreme Court decisions can be laid, amongst many other crimes against people and planet). But, according to the Intercept, a grassroots rebellion has led to the near complete takeover of the local Democrat Party machinery by a progressive alliance. Some of them may have been motivated by the fact that in the Sanders/Clinton primary, West Virginia Democrats voted in every county for Sanders, but the Democrat hierarchy chose superdelegates to vote for Clinton instead. Manchin must be worried that his moribund party will revive and start fighting Republicans, unlike him acting as an echo chamber for every perversion Republicans stand for (such a tactic is of course common. Tony Blair and Bill Clinton alike both wanted to occupy their opponents’ territory, as if that represented a victory, rather than marking out their own. Note how the Trumpian Republicans are not playing this game and are nevertheless gaining ground. Now we have Starmer playing the same worn-out so-called triangulation strategy. And he’s so embarrassingly bad at it even Blair thinks he’s a plank. Apparently.)*
+I wrote a sentence mentioning floods yesterday before I heard on the news that a collapsing glacier in the Dolomites killed a few people. The reasonable assumption is that the current extreme heat in Italy contributed to the collapse. First comes the collapse, then the flood, then the drying up—i.e. no more abundant drinking water, hydropower or irrigation. Another once in a 1,000 year event? ‘fraid not. *And now, just as the serial liar Johnson is once again on the ropes, what does Starmer want to talk about? Brexit! There are still a few embers spluttering under the ashes of the Leave vote (I’m one of them) but fanning this fire is precisely what people aren’t asking for. Every time Starmer thinks he’s extinguishing it, it merely reminds people what a flake he was over the subject in the first place. So, a dip into the Venice Biennale was transformed into a Covid curse. I was expecting some of the art to be a struggle but as it was five nights in the Giovanni e Paolo Ospedale took the prize for a piece of inscrutable performance art. Following a slight dizzy spell near the Rialto bridge I was whisked down the Grand Canal in a water ambulance, sirens blaring, feeling very embarrassed to be causing so much trouble. I tested positive at the hospital and so was eventually confined in an isolation room, although not entrirely alone. The two-bed room already contained an old man whom I immediately knew would be trouble. Everything about him was inert apart from his respiratory tracts and orifices from which emanated a range of sounds akin to all the animals of the jungle. Being imprisoned with this human noise machine I knew would mean enduring a sleepless nightmare, and so it was. Thankfully, after three nights he was moved out, but I spent many hours wondering how a lack of sleep aids one’s recovery? My experience of hospitals tells me that a good night’s sleep is not necessarily part of the therapy, and it was certainly true here.
The saving grace of this particular room was its view, which featured the island of San Michele, the Venetian isle of the dead (now home to the tombs of Stravinsky, Diderot, Pound and other cultural luminaries). The tombs are protected by high fortress walls and the interior is crowded with Cypress trees, a sight which brought to mind Rachmaninov’s Isle of the Dead, although that was inspired by an entirely different place. The only trouble with the view was that directly beneath my window people were freely wondering up and down on the promenade enjoying themselves, so reinforcing my sense of captivity. Part of my condition (which was pretty much symptomless throughout) may have been exacerbated by the heat. In Venice it was around 30 degrees C, in Milan, a previous stop, a pharmacy sign showed 38 degrees C. This is way above my usual tolerance levels. 20—25 degrees is my comfort zone. I guess being pretty much symptomless throughout can be attributed to having been fully vaccinated and which also possibly led to a relatively quick return to a negative test. But the danger is now apparent—Covid rates are rising and being fully vaccinated is not 100% proof against getting Covid. A lot of complacency has set in and we may be in for a shock. A woman I met in the hospital’s emergency isolation room, who was fully vaccinated, had had a very bad Covid experience. She wondered why she was a victim. Working in a high-end jewellery shop in Venice, she wondered why she had to wear a mask all day when the customers could come and go without. A consistent approach to mask wearing has long since evaporated in the face of ‘If nobody else bothers why should I?’ A strange outcome of this experience seems to be that ever since my blood pressure and pulse have been more in the normal range than ever before. Has something been mysteriously adjusted? Am I the first to be blessed with a Covid benefit? Time will tell. In the meantime I note that tickets for the Biennale remain valid until it ends on the 27th November. Perhaps there’ll be a return trip later in the autumn. Then, it may not be the heat but the floods one will have to worry about. Having now hopefully broken the Covid blogging spell, what is to be said about our current global situation? IT’S ALL WORSE! |
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