The Impotence of Being Earnest

Posted on 23/09/2015 by John

Corbyn – the leading player or the laconic Fool?

In Shakespearean tragedy the Fool is often the wise head who sees what the serious players cannot see. In Shakespearean comedy the Fool often owns a tragic edge that peeps from behind the comic mask. In both cases he can speak truth unto power in a way not permitted to “serious” characters.

The Labour Party has chosen for its leader a man who has spent a long political career earnestly speaking what he believes to be home truths to the powerfully privileged who actually run stuff. In the course of a few months his supporters have cast him as The Doctor; as a Merlin or a Dumbledore; or as the Will Smith ‘Legend’. Corbyn’s victory has given him a chance to script his own starring role. Jeremy Corbyn is now a leading player. Will it be History, Comedy or Tragedy – will it all end well or will he be Labour’s love lost?

Jeremy Corbyn the classic political outsider has arrived at the centre of UK politics if he has not himself yet travelled to the political centre. He was elected Labour Leader by about 60% of the votes cast in the recent election – a total of around quarter of a million votes were cast directly for him. Earthquake; Tsunami – you choose – the similes of natural disaster abound. But catastrophes have rarely come in more prosaic disguise than the shambolic motley of the mildly spoken and earnest sounding Jeremy Corbyn. A vegetarian; a moralist; a humanitarian: the author of this event is as unlike the expected Messiah of the left as any might have imagined. Whilst many about him now holler and shout and whoop for joy – he stands aloof in sandals and shorts – as unfashionably out of step with the times as any sandalled Jeremiah might have been in his time. In the best Labour tradition Corbyn has more of more the whiff of Methodism than Marx in his political sermonising. He is serious; he can be puritanical and he can be tetchy. He is as unflashy as New Labour was glitz and glamour.

Corbyn has come upon the Labour Party leadership much as Senator George McGovern came upon the US Democratic Party presidential nomination in 1972 – from the far outside of the left field. Much like McGovern, Corbyn’s low-key manner has inspired an idealistic cadre of youthful adherents. Therein lies both his strength and his weakness. For those he has inspired are apt to believe in miracles – and his election goes some way to justify their belief. The problem is there is scant evidence that beyond those happy few true believers that Jeremy Corbyn will have a wider appeal. It is always too tempting not to make early easy judgements. Good sense says – wait and see – but for what it is worth Corbyn’s personal appeal and message resonate most with former Labour voters who have drifted from the party in steady numbers since the early 1990’s. The problem is how many of them are there out there and to put it crudely are they living in the right places to make a significant electoral difference?

We have no definitive answer to these questions but early statistical analysis is not altogether hopeful.

Corbyn’s margin of victory was impressive by any scale. No party leader in the history of UK politics has been elected by more votes than Mr Corbyn. Almost 430,000 votes were cast in the Labour leadership election. This compares to the roughly 210,000 votes cast in 2005 in the Conservative Leadership election. It all sounds pretty decisive. It therefore needs some further context. At the next general Election Labour would need something in the order of another 12.5 million votes just to win a bare majority. That is approximately 33% more than the 9 million or so Labour won in 2010 or 2015. The bar is set so very high because Labour cannot rely on picking-up many of the 40 seats lost in Scotland in 2015. Therefore, in order to win at all the party will need to win very big in England – and not just in the bits of England where it did well last time; or where it came close. One of the oddities of the last election was that at its end Labour had many seats with bigger majorities and so did the Conservatives. There are therefore many,many fewer marginal seats that might change hands on swings of 5% or less.

There will be 650 new constituencies next time around. They will all roughly be the same size. The exact impact of that cannot be known until the Boundary Commission does its work but, for example, if in 2020 Labour were to halve the UKIP vote it would not add more than a handful of MPs to the 238 it currently holds. Labour needs a whopping swing of 9.6% to win the barest majority in 2020. Only twice in its history has the Labour Party secured anything like a swing of that scale – 1945 and 1997. In both those cases the enormous swing gave Labour a landslide victory. Yet if repeated in 2020 that almost unprecedented swing would give Labour only a bare overall majority. Therefore, 12-13 million votes is its minimum target. That same number also happens to be roughly double the number of Union members. By way of contrast there were almost 13 million union members in the early 1980’s when Jeremy Corbyn first became an MP. That neatly summarises the journey the UK has taken in those 33 years. The question both for Labour (and by implication for the Unions who now largely bankroll the party) is can a Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn turn back the tide of history in a single election? Corbyn’s age means he will certainly only get a single chance at best to make this dream a reality.

The answer Corbynites give is that it can be done – there are lots of young voters and they are largely metropolitan voters. They are currently alienated from politics but could deliver many seats to Labour if they can be persuaded to register and vote in numbers. There are similarly swathes of working poor who have also tended over 25 years years not to register and therefore not to vote. The same argument applies to them as to young voters. It is said these two groups are disproportionately attracted to Corbyn and to his radical message. Finally, there are the lower paid blue and white collar voters (many in the public sector) who have done relatively badly from post 1980’s economic settlement and who have suffered most in financial terms in the aftermath of the financial crash of 2007-8. Again these might be mobilised in numbers which might overturn the patterns of previous elections. This theory rests on no hard statistical evidence and hard evidence is often the only thing that really counts when votes are counted on election night.

The last Labour leader to win the party crown from the left of the political centre – (and of the Labour party) – who successfully went on win a General Election was Harold Wilson. In 1963 many thought Harold Wilson was principled and modern. Later after repeated electoral success Wilson came to be loathed by the left – above all for his unprincipled pragmatism. In 1963 the ideas dominating the centre ground of politics were much more interventionist and collectivist than today. As it happens, many of Jeremy Corbyn’s economic policies might have been taken straight from the 1964 Let’s go with Labour manifesto. In this sense Corbyn and his shadow chancellor John McDonnell are not quite the Revolutionary hord at the proverbial gates of private property. Neither yet, however, are they quite the Rousseau or Voltaire of our age that some devotees have taken them to be.

Strikingly, it is rather Corbyn’s defence, foreign and social policies that are children of the cultural and sexual revolution that reached its apogee in his youthful flowering in the 1970’s. As it happens Corbyn’s era was also mine. In that time many on the further left of the Labour Party flirted with deeply unfashionable minority causes. The causes of those times were also more complex than often portrayed in happy retrospect. For example some gay campaign groups inadvertently sheltered some suspect organisations – like the Paedophile Information Exchange. The same dubious connections existed in groups ostensibly supporting a United Ireland or a Palestinian Homeland which often had crossover members from the terrorist IRA and PLO organisations. Oppression makes strange bedfellows and the post 1960’s left made cause with many unfashionable minorities but sometimes it was a less than critical friend. As the political importance of the left dwindled in the repeated electoral failures of the 1980’s – bad causes became a left wing cause in their own right – George Galloway’s career perhaps illustrating the maverick worst of this left-leaning political narcissism. Galloway made common cause with all and sundry – even tyrants like Saddam Hussein.

Throughout this time the politics of the left became more and more earnest.Overtly stern perhaps unintentionally dour – over often left wing politics sounded like an angry sermon from an evangelical pastor. If the language and style was a little archaic – shunning Media friendly soundbites beloved of contemporary politicians – it was also unfashionably and self-consciously high on “principles” and as often it inhaled deeply its own rhetoric and got even higher on “principles” as its influence waned within the Labour Party. Militant Tendency had spent its Revolutionary fervour in the barricades of endless party committees. The intellectual left had left them to it and instead pitched their tent in the Olympus of utopian socialism.The political air gets thin up in those dizzy heights and eventually it is hard to do anything more than dream idealsitic dreams.

Then over their high mountain and without any warning marched young General Tony Blair – a latter day Hannibal – leading the elephants of New Labour in a violent rampage over the low lying centre ground of politics. He had outflanked those to his left and to his right. The lofty dreams of the left overnight became a nightmare of political compromise and fiscal obfuscation. The Blair-Brown project was redistribution of wealth by stealth. Even they were surprised at its success. Their tactics of their campaigns were borrowed from the political game plan of Bill Clinton’s New Democrats. There was a genius to it but it always had its naysayers.

Like Thatcher, Blair’s bitterest enemies were always within his party. Today’s hatred of Blair is just as irrational as the adulation that once was his. Grave though his foreign policy failures may be taken to be Blair’s greatest crime in the eyes of those who hate him was his chumminess with George W. Bush. No one complained about his equally close and personal friendship with Bill Clinton or indeed the even apparently more illegal intervention of NATO in Kosovo. Indeed, after Kosovo, Blair’s speech in Chicago on the remit and reach of post Cold War foreign policy was rapturously received on all sides. The rationale for actions later to be taken in the case of Iraq was set out in that speech. Blair’s doctrine was a worthy successor to Truman’s. It was global. Moreover it was also in the tradition of Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’ speech in Fulton Missouri in 1946. In Chicago Blair made the case for an activist foreign policy that the leader of the senior partner in the NATO alliance – the USA – was unable to make for political reasons. Monica Lewinsky and her infamous dress caused Bill Clinton’s impeachment. His domestic arrangements had international consequences and one of them was to make Tony Blair the US administration’s unofficial official spokesman on foreign affairs.

The principles of foreign policy enunciated by Blair later were effectively endorsed in the General Election landslide of 2001. Strange to recall now from this retrospect that then in 2001 the left wing of the Labour Party was curiously happiest with Blair’s interventionist internationalism. Claire Short’s Department of International Development was seen as one of the genuinely ‘left wing‘ things done by New Labour. The shambles of Iraq and the questions of weapons of mass destruction aroused strong anti-war sentiment and men like Jeremy Corbyn came into their own once more – though initially the LibDems under the late Charles Kennedy were the electoral beneficiaries. New Labour began its inglorious retreat under relentlessly hostile fire from within and without the Labour Party. The poison of Iraq gradually seeped everywhere in the Labour movement and like acid it hollowed out the soft centre of Blairism. By the time of the financial crash New Labour was already pretty much a husk.

Hindsight foreseeing all – in the end not even the scale of the Corbyn victory should have surprised. It was inevitable and even if it came more quickly than expected it had been a long time in the making. The social-democrat-ish flank of Labour – ascendant since 1994 – had not shown itself to own much political imagination and more surprisingly any political heft in the last decade. After the misplaced coronation of Gordon Brown as party leader in 2007 the dominant right in the PLP (Parliamentary Labour Party) repeatedly failed to deal with ‘leadership issues’. It was cowardly; and often as self-serving as it was timid. From 2008 until 2015 it left leaders in place who were bound to take the party down to terrible defeat. From before 1994 their rationale had been to win power by all means and to do so by compromising pragmatically on principled ends. It turned out they were really not that good a winning by all or any means.Therefore, when the time came this May neither of the two insiders – Burnham and Cooper – seemed to have much fresh to offer that offered Labour any hope of electoral success. Liz Kendall spoke home truths but no one was listening. Corbyn by way of contrast was a veritable Pied Piper. He appeared unaffected and refreshingly direct and even ambitious. He cast his spell far and wide.

Therefore, Jeremy Corbyn’s time has come because his timing was perfect. He has also been lucky with his opponents. Most successful politicians always seem to enjoy the greatest (undeserved) luck. Ronald Reagan aptly demonstrated how charm may appear to transmute fool’s gold into the stuff from which dreams are made. Luck turned the bit actor on the B movie set into the lead on the world stage. Mrs Thatcher – after her apotheosis as PM in 1979 – was lucky in her unfortunate opponents. They always seemed doomed – first a voluble Michael Foot; then an even more voluble Neil Kinnock; both ever ready to talk themselves out of her job. Blair after his ascension to power in 1997 was also lucky in his opponents: first, hapless William Hague in his baseball cap; then coughing Ian Duncan Smith; then the sinister shades of Michael Howard. The election results of 1983 and 1987; and of 2001 and 2005 were almost preordained by Fate. And especially when in 1992 Major pulled of the fourth election win for the Conservatives in a row – and when in 2005, despite the Labour debacle over Iraq, voters were not quite able to abandon Blair.

Politicians by profession overestimate their own long term importance. In that they are always far,far too earnest for their times. For those on the right of Labour it was these foreign policy and social issues more than the economics of fairness agenda that left them unpersuaded by Jeremy Corbyn. The other question Labour has to answer is how many of these Labour supporters will now feel disinclined to vote Labour in the next election – even if they do not vote for some other party. In short for every new voter Corbyn wins for Labour the relevant question is also – how many voters will he lose for Labour?

His first PMQ’s was over-hyped by a Media mad for a news line to follow. His refusal to play the game left an impression that he had wrong-footed Cameron. However, take a careful look at the questions others asked the PM that day. From Northern Ireland and elsewhere there were lots of questions that were pointed to Corbyn’s past. He might not choose to respond to them in the House of Commons to his advantage but these questions will persist and his past connections will be used against him.

Still no one can deny Jeremy Corbyn has certainly got attention – and not all of it in the bad sense. There is however no clear sign of a bounce in Labour’s polling. This is neither a Wilson nor a Blair moment. However both of them were elected when Conservative governments had already become deeply discredited. This government still basks in ratings several percentage points higher than on 8th May. Nevertheless, for whatever reason the Labour party has a spring in its step. Whether it will duly fall flat on its face has to be seen.

One of the oddest things about choosing one’s tribes in one’s life is that the choices made so very young often last a lifetime. This is peculiarly true of politics.The reason the Media pays so much attention to politicians changing party is precisely because it is not that usual. I chose my tribe in my early teens in the early days of the first Wilson government. It caused the first memorable adult row with my dad over Sunday lunch. Later mum, with dad gone, herself came-out as a Labour supporter. It was I guess partly also Catholic thing – the idea of the Social Gospel was very fashionable in Catholic intellectual circles after World War II. Catholics of that generation were encouraged to be very engaged by the causes of poverty and the need to address it. That itself was partly a response to the philosophical challenge posed by the rise of socialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

My Catholic grammar schoolmates and I also talked politics on the train to and from school in Reading. As we grew up they grew more Conservative but I stuck with Labour and Mr Wilson. As fashions changed in the Labour Party I remained pragmatically convinced that only Labour in government mattered. I was never even in my heady undergraduate days attracted to the left of Labour – soft or hard. I was never read the Tribune. I stuck with the Guardian and New Statesman By the time I got to Leeds, Student Union President Jack Straw had moved on to greater things but even then I regarded Jack Straw as too far to the woolly left.

So it can be seen I’ve been unimaginatively faithful to my early adolescent ideals and my political tribe. Now I am forced to consider it – I’ve also shown the same unimaginative fidelity to my other early tribal loyalties – Irish; Catholic; and Gay.

The same cannot be said of the electorate. Since the 1960’s voters – always apt to have their heads turned by any passing political fashion. They have indeed become serial political philanderers. There are many reasons for this heightened promiscuity and its fact gives hope to all politicians. For Jeremy Corbyn’s many supporters this is a moment of intoxicating hope.They earnestly believe Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell offer something different. Principled;authentic; honest – Corbyn and his ilk have earnestly preached this message all along. The problem with sermons is their sentiments often meet with approval but they rarely change behaviours or truly change hearts. In the longer run in political theatre is show business and speaks many parts. The voters want to be entertained more than improved. Therein lies the terrible truth about the impotence of being earnest. Meanwhile the best advice for old cynics like me perhaps is to keep our own counsel or perhaps even better….with apologies to Wilde..

Matters of principle & matters of Judgment – my vote in Labour Leadership

Posted on 19/08/2015 by John

Matters of Principle & Defining Realities:

Yesterday, I completed my on-line voting in the Labour Leadership race. I did so knowing that it is highly likely if not quite certain that Jeremy Corbyn will be elected the next Leader of the Labour Party and next Leader of the Opposition. It seems as likely he will win on the first ballot. That is the defining reality. I therefore no longer need to calculate how best to cast my vote and I too can vote on the basis of principle. It therefore falls to me to set out why I cannot vote for Jeremy Corbyn and as previously promised, I will also declare how I voted.

The primary context for this election has been the aftershock of Labour’s huge defeat last May. This inevitably means the party has had to consider its future whist still in political anaphylactic shock from the scale of May’s defeat. But politics is a cruel trade and its terms of business most often are brutal.

The same electoral defeat has also triggered a crisis both of identity and of confidence within the Labour Party. Dazed it has struggled to rearticulate if fresh terms the competing values of Social Democracy and Democratic Socialism which have long been co-exited – not always happily – within the party’s big tent.

If the nostrums of New Labour perhaps sound passed their sell-by-date the pragmatic centre of the party has yet to reformulate them in terms that seem attractive to an audience now weary of being told – ‘x’ will not work or ‘y’ is just a failed old idea. Here Burnham, Cooper and to a lesser extent Kendall have struggled – or perhaps more fairly have been perceived to struggle – to say anything new. In fact Cooper in particular gave a good account of the politics of the post-crash decade in her speech in Manchester but by then the Media was following its agenda about Corbyn and the split in the party. Burnham has promised a National Care Service integrated with the NHS whilst suggesting in Wilsonian terms that “Jeremy” must play a big part in the next five years of opposition. Kendall – who has for some reason evoked a visceral misogyny – has argued the party needs to leave it comfort zone of being seen to speak only for sectional interests dependent upon the public sector and the welfare state.

Gordon Brown gave an even more compelling analysis last Sunday – 7500 words of it – and he the broad stakes in the election. Here Brown made the case Blair could not make because of the tainted nature of the Blair legacy on foreign policy. Brown pointed directly to the fact that the left of which Corbyn forms part, has long had a history getting into bed with some very dubious figures – Hamas, Hezbollah, holocaust deniers, President Assad and not least Vladimir Putin. Jeremy cannot recall some of these close encounters but the camera has caught them and it will speak volumes in an election campaign. Moreover, those like George Galloway, who now is seeking to re-join Labour, supped with not such a long spoon with dictators like Saddam Hussein – a man who was guilty of quasi-genocide.

Still these hard facts have not impeded Jeremy Corbyn’s triumphal progress. Jeremy Corbyn has emerged as an unlikely hero of the hour and of this election. He has been in Parliament for 33 years. He is 66. He has long been a standard-bearer of unfashionable left wing causes as homespun and as unfashionable as his carefully untailored appearance that contrasts so sharply with the cut of New Labour’s suits. It is the contrast – some would say authenticity – that marks out the man and marks out the fresh ideas. The uncontrived exterior seems as freshly minted as a shiny new coin. I conjecture from my seat in the peanut gallery that it is alas as contrived as its novelties are counterfeit.

Mine is one vote out of 610,000; of these some 410,000 have joined the Labour ranks in one form or another since last May. If the hustings are any guide two groups strongly represented within this new membership are the young and union members. Both groups have been at the sharp end of the economics of the past decade – since the financial crash – which has significantly disadvantaged them over other groups – save perhaps for the poorest and disabled. Many who have joined the party have been radicalised by this experience and they strongly reject what they perceive to be the failures of the old politics easily summarised in the term: ‘New Labour’.

The pragmatism of Labour’s conduct in office has, quite inaccurately, come to be described the as ‘neo-liberalism’ of New Labour or even more disparagingly as Tory Lite.

Neo-liberalism is the new ‘’c” word of the left in general. It’s a portmanteau term used in debate disparage free market economics and especially (if somewhat oddly) the policies of the last Labour government. The fact is the last Labour government spent very large amounts of public money in ways no neo-liberal would countenance – for example on very effectively on tax credits; maternity and paternity pay; and child benefit. In fact, however, in this debate facts no longer count.

Corbyn has told the party and his supporters that he offers Labour a fresh start and new thinking and – and that principles are to be their new watchword. Beware any man or woman who retails political principles – they not only come with the unspoken subtext that his or her opponents are possessed of none – they suggest principles alone are the measure of the public good. Inviolate principles are in fact the business of philosophy and religion and their Panglossian kings and turbulent priests but politics as best practised is the art of the possible; the science of the pragmatic; the ascendancy of the small differences adding up in time to something much bigger.

The Corbyn offer has included in addition to reopening mines; investing in ‘real industry’; renationalising the public utilities and the railways; not renewing Trident; reducing defence expenditure and spending the money on jobs; leaving the NATO alliance; putting LGBT at the heart of foreign policy whilst engaging with Putin and Russia; (perhaps) leaving the EU and generally “anti-austerity” painlessly financed by taxing the rich more and increasing public borrowing. He claims this ‘investing’ in the public weal can be done whilst also reducing simultaneously the public debt and increasing economic growth. This particular idea – not necessarily a bad idea – is not new idea – in fact it is the same idea as the one that has just crashed in flames on the doorsteps in last May’s election.

Good or bad, as ideas go not one of them can be called new. Many of the economic ideas have been tried before and failed in the mid 1970’s. Though there are many who shout: this is not the 1970’s or 1980’s. That is true. However, it hardly makes a case for trying them again. At least when they were last tried they possessed the virtue of being applicable to the economic circumstances of the world as it was. Time has moved on; the economics of the world has moved on; the financial markets have moved on: we might not like this different reality but it is the reality from where we are and from where we must go forward.

Being anti-austerity on the centre-left is alike Motherhood and apple-pie. Anti-austerity is a phrase which many agree about in principle but differ over what it means in practice. The version of anti-austerity Jeremy Corbyn articulates on the part of the unreconstructed Labour left is not at all the same anti-austerity as that of SYRIZA or Podemus. Theirs is based of membership both of the EU and the Euro Zone. Corbyn‘s offer is unilateralist in temper; pacifist in tone; it takes little or no account of treaties which bind the UK’s economic conduct – like the EU treaties; membership of IMF; the World Bank and GATT.

Amongst the rebranding of old ideas as new there was one idea that has sounded sound genuinely new – Corbyn’s suggestion that a Labour government could use QE (QE is Quantitive Easing; it’s the mechanism the Bank of England has used to increase the liquidity of banks’ assets by swapping government bonds held by them for cash) as a painless means of financing public investment in housing building and acquiring assets like the Utilities or the Railways from the private sector. It has played well to audiences up and down the county and has been repeated to great applause. It is widely known using any Central Bank for such purposes will break the terms of the UK’s membership of the EU, IMF, World Bank and GATT. It is the financial equivalent of making a single-entry in system of double-entry accounts. It does not add up.

The matters of principle which influenced how I used my vote are those which reflect this role of the UK in the wider world: its membership of the EU; NATO; the IMF & World Bank together with its role as a Permanent Member of the Security Council and signatory of the Convention on Human Rights and founder of the European Court of Human Rights. It may appear odd that these foreign matters matter so much to me but they matter precisely because they are the expression of values of solidarity and democracy are the foundation for the successful social progress since 1945.

That progress has transformed the lives of many to which I am as a 60 year old gay man in the UK a most particular witness. I’ve seen and lived the accumulation of argument and persuasion and small incremental changes have added up to something very big indeed. I think that is the path of consistent reform to which the Labour Party must continue to be committed; and to which in my view the party must continue along. If it takes the shortcut of the big gesture politics it will ultimately lead only to another catastrophic defeat.

To put it is a nutshell voters are sceptics not true believers. Like all sceptics they need to be persuaded. Voters are little interested in policy and principles; they’re interested in their lives. If we can persuade them we will make their lives better they will vote for us in large numbers. Thus far, Jeremy Corbyn has preached to enthusiast believers. Indeed he has fired many of them to re-join a Labour Party they felt had left them. He has re-connected with a large group of young voters who sees nothing inspiring in the New Labour since many of them were themselves children when New Labour was born in 1994. It was part of their life; inevitably they see it as part of the problems they live with day to day.

Politics turns in cycles and sometimes you cannot persuade by recourse to the example of history and its wisdom. Each generation has to be permitted to choose for itself and to learn for itself from its choices. The priorities of democratic socialism will counter-intuitively be achieved by gradualism rather than revolution. I believe Liz Kendall or Yvette Cooper can best deliver that and therefore I’ve voted for them in that order. Others will choose differently and I do not doubt I will be on the losing side. It is however, the better side of this argument and I believe the majority of the party will in its own time come to share that view.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn’s mission statement is marked – “open carefully this contains the new kind of politics”. I suspect it will self-destruct in the manner beloved of those mission tapes in the opening sequence of that 1970’s classic – Mission Impossible. Retro is the fashion of the times and Jeremy’ like his hero Tony Benn, is of the vintage of the tape-recorder.

However, we now live in the Digital Age; there is no going back; no rewind; only faster and faster forward. Labour needs someone who thinks in those terms to take us forward……

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Twilight at Gwern ddu

Posted on 11/08/2015 by John

Twilight at Gwern ddu

It’s Wales – the rolling marcher lands that border England – the lands where waltzing time stands still and everything is still the same.

There are no trains, no cars, no planes in their fancy flights; no rumbling underground; no sirens screaming; no throbbing disco sounds; no blue neon flash to disturb dreaming. There’s no jingling ringing tone; no callers calling home; no bad reception here; or there no satellite; nothing to trouble twilight.

This tranquil country looks as if freshly brushed to life by Constable or, as if exhaled in elegiac couplets from some poet’s secret hide. There’s a hush unrushed: angelic whispers soft spoken by the landscape.

How is it, our city-sky-scapes scintillate with unnatural light but words simply can’t illuminate the bright-cut of the fading day? Why, with data streaming speeding faster, ever faster, do beams of such serenity so surely slip us by? Spellbound by the miraculous glare of tiny hand-held screens must we earthbound bypass twilight’s magic touching every blade of grass?

It’s July – the third week of the month – it’s not been a hot day – not like some hot summer school day warmly remembered – nor like the humid daze of London’s dog-days – that sultry heat in which sweating, sticky, sickly, city-slickers swelter sleeplessly.

The day has been as cool as crisp cotton sheets. It has left behind an apprising dusk that’s chillier still – colder than cold cucumber soup – but in its late loitering there’s all in all of summer’s highest peak – its lightness lightly caressing the grassy fields and softly stroking the troubled brow of the timeless hills.

As light fades strange shadows wrap the undulations of the land. The cattle’s bass echoes over the wide pasture; the sheep’s bleating chases it into an echoing sky. No Shropshire lad’s new wedded bliss could ever better this or landed wealth endow richer reward.

The orange glory of the sun is gone – its blazing disc has tipped behind the highest ridge – as if the balance of some law has been upset and fine light judges the present day lost. Daytime hangs-on by the very last threads of daylight’s rope – guilty light – drawing on the last breath of a dead day done.

The sheep move towards rest – white dots in clusters by the hedgerows – or dotted in the woodland shades – or under the canopy of a solitary tree that holds them in its gentle sway. The cattle too slowly chew their languorous way towards the hedged edges of the pasturelands as the shadows creep across hilly grassland; its ever green deepening shade by shade as patchwork-fields yield one by one to night’s advances.

The hills’ crests soften in this shadow-time leaving the trees etched along their outline like finger puppets in a shadow play – maybe there’s a cockerel proud – or maybe a fox’s snout pokes from the blacker woods into lighter shades.

The sun has left the heavens but midnight’s starry children are yet unborn to night; the bewitching moon’s rakish wraith hasn’t risen; only day’s late lustre lights the sky.

There fluffy puffs of streaking clouds flirt nakedly with a flighty breeze whose surusso plays airy music with the rustling leaves.

Like morning breaks the sweetness of a dream the patient gloaming brakes the fading day and extends its hour beyond the point of light even as day’s umbrage wrestles to restrain the arm of amorous night.

And of all of this I keep watch as many more before me have watched such days close and seen the final ripples of daylight enfold the sheep in sleep.

I watch – lonely shepherd to this time – the one who alone keeps the watch this single night – not a great man who shepherds many sheep – but a solitary sentinel shepherding my own life’s passing keep for my time too runs further down at each sun’s decline.

In this gloaming, I see shadows of my young-self roaming in the lightless fields of youth; I hear my shrill laughter ringing back as if chiming with the baaing sheep; my lowing thoughts amble by the cattle’s evening creep; my lost life as indistinct as the contours of the distant hills.

Why do I return to the past here – here, in the moving quiet of this waning day – why here do I recall the trivial shadows of a trivial past that’s merely moairn on the slopes of history?

My rap repeats not for wasted chance; or for life’s cruel dice cast on the wrong side of romance; or for those, by accident of birth, life mirthlessly leaves outside the gay insiders’ girth.

My elegy is not that these hills will outlast me as they have outstared so many curious eyes; or so out-breathed so many breathless sighs; or so ignored so many dead replies.

Wistful tears are life’s eternal due; their lonely fall comes by Fate’s unfeelingness, like GPS, seeking out each of us and putting us precisely in our place.

My life has danced fleetingly over the purlieu of the earth leaving no mark- no more than any twilight reverie imprints itself in memory – once gone it will be as if I was never here – as if tonight I never stood upon this nethermost point – near life’s ending spit half-lit in distant horizons – at that very end that like the passing day will finally give way to the solitude of – of – of some pointless night.

It is not fearful; nor a matter of regret; it is not to be avoided. I do not wish to forget its pretty inevitability. It is shatteringly beautiful owning only this momentary. It makes all seem bright; alive; quite unlike my dull life.

Here in this wilderness I’m important if only because like sin I darkly reflect upon these things; and, in the moment I still time; then I am still.

And if I dare to feel with whom would I dare to share my altered state?

If I am alone then like the baaing sheep no one can equally equate my singular view no matter the inky flood of sage words drowned upon this page.

Or, is there God alone with whom I can alone engage? Am I – am I truly in His image or is He merely the image of my vanity?

The hills in fading light are so fragile; they are reshaped by losing light; like me, the trees become mere shadows of all they once were. The hillside sheep too are lost, only lonely voices from the charcoal fields; the cattle too seem to be all gone.

There’s little left to see – maybe the sheep and cattle are there no more – maybe I’ll not wake at dawn to see them all appear unchanged as doubtless all will be. Will they be forever gone if I’m forever gone and no longer conscious of their reality?

And then is there nothing: or, is there God? Is He out there in the fading light of day? Is it He as quiet and as purposeful as ever in the teaming smallness’s of our tiny lives? Out there in His light might we still stand out – remembered – not because we’re important or because we deserve not to be forgot – but because – like the shaded landscape – while lost to sight – we are never lost entirely for we are ever loved – and being greatly loved by Him perhaps some of His greatness still resides within.

Looking up into the sky I watch as the first shaft of stars prick the dark with points of light; now I also see the moon has risen to rule the night in her white majesty.

I will go quietly to bed – mindful mine aren’t great thoughts – still, as twilight gleans meaningful light to dead day’s dying content so, surely, from my inevitable end may my mean thoughts also steal slight enlightenment?

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Part II: The Labour Leadership – the apple of discord

Posted on 31/07/2015 by John

Picking the right apple from the left branch…..

Apples and humankind have a long association. From Eden to Snow White it seems the apples turns up to make difficulties where there ought to be none. Most famously the golden apple of discord was made by Hephaestus for the goddess Eris. It was inscribed: for the most beautiful. She rolled it into the midst of a party hosted by Zeus to which Eris had not been invited. Eris was the don’t bring Lulu of the eternal Olympians. Hera, Athena and Aphrodite each insisted the apple was meant for her alone. They asked Zeus to decide and like men are apt to do when asked to make a difficult choice Zeus delegated the task to Paris – one of the sons of King Priam of Troy renowned for his good judgement.

The story goes the goddesses duly disported themselves naked before the lucky Paris – a scene immortalised again and again in European art – but – none of them quite playing fair – each offered the Prince a ‘gift’ if he chose her. Paris fatally chose Aphrodite’s gift: the love of the most beautiful woman in the world. The woman in question was Helen of Sparta who was already married to Menelaus of Greece. Aphrodite got her golden apple; Paris got his Helen; the Greeks got to launch a thousand ships; and Troy got its infamous war. The Judgment of Paris therefore turned out to decide much more than who got to take home the golden apple.

It is my sense of things that this Leadership in the Labour Party is similarly to be a fateful decision.

There are four chasing Labour’s golden apple – Andy Burnham; Yvette Cooper; Liz Kendall and Jeremy Corbyn. Like the goddesses before each feels he or she should win the golden prize. The PLP (Parliamentary Labour Party), having nominated the choice, like Zeus has stepped aside leaving the membership to play the judge. Like in the myth these modern gods of politics disport themselves before the naked eye of the ever watchful Media and like their forbears they also beguile us with flattering promises.

The question for us is whom to choose and why.

The Leadership – an offer of hard choices and soft options:

The man who went into this race as favourite is Andy Burnham – former Health Secretary and Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham is a family man; a Catholic; born in Aintree he is a Liverpudlian and importantly he speaks with that accent – which contrasts with the metropolitan tones of all the other candidates. Burnham has gained a lot of credit personally for his support and work for the survivors of Hillsborough disaster. Like Wilson before him he holds out the promise of the authentic Englishness of the north. His most distinctive policy – the creation of an integrated NHS & Social Care Service is bold. It also has strong echoes from the proud past of Attlee. It has twice been aired as a manifesto item and twice – under Brown and then Milliband it has failed to make the final cut into the manifesto.

The other experienced candidate is Yvette Cooper, briefly Shadow Foreign Secretary and then Shadow Home Secretary for most of the last Parliament, Cooper served in the Brown government as Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of State for Work & Pensions. She too is married – to Ed Balls who lost his Leeds seat in the debacle last May. She and Ed Balls were the first married couple to serve in the same cabinet. Cooper’s campaign pitch has been about equality and she has been scathing about the way both the women candidates in the election have been treated by the Media. She suffers alike Hillary Clinton from the Media preoccupations about her husband.

Both these candidates seemed to have chosen a safety first style of campaign that was both relatively cautious and frankly deliberately dull. This turned out not to be what the party was in the mood for and consequently it has had the effect of pushing the two outsiders into the frame.

From the ‘right’ Liz Kendall has taken up what others have chosen to characterise as the Blairite torch. Kendall is a newish MP – elected in 2010 – and representing Leicester West – she was born in Hertfordshire where she grew up. In that she aptly personified the problem for Labour since the world she knows best is the one that does not know nor love the Labour Party. In the current mood for some in the party and some outside the word Blair ignites a visceral response. Kendall’s challenge to the party is that it needs to leave its comfort zone.

She suggests the party has been successfully tarred with being only concerned with appealing to a narrow band of public service workers and the working poor and has thereby permitted itself to be portrayed as supportive of a dependency state caricatured as ‘welfarism’. She argues Labour must rather look to the concerns of the middling sort who prosper in places like Herfordshire and the old Home Counties. Labour needs to win them over in order to win an election. The rhetoric has been bold but Kendall, like Cooper, has lacked a single illustrative policy specific to help her make her case – or perhaps Kendal has such specifics in mind but feels they cannot be aired until after she has the apple of leadership in her hand. Either way it has hampered her campaign and she seems to be the fourth placed at present.

Last night she did win a constituency nomination in Vauxhall. Despite the Media narrative this election may be somewhat more fluid than first impressions give.

By contrast it is the fourth and, at the outset least favoured candidate, Jeremy Corbyn, who has, if the Media are to be believed, set this election on its head. Corbyn has been MP for Islington since 1983. He entered Parliament in the same year as Tony Blair. He has been there since – a part of the old left that once looked to Tony Benn. He is a socialist is that mould and not a social democrat. He is courteous, persuasive and rather alike some aged sage of King Arthur or Tolkien’s Middle Earth he utters his inscrutable wisdom to star struck applause. Corbyn is only on the ballot by the kindness of strangers in the PLP since he could not muster the necessary 35 votes on his own account. His meetings are now packed with the relatively young and a number of those true believers long lost to Labour. He plays the old revivalist tunes with aplomb. He is rather more ambitious that the polite manner and studied eccentricity of dress and demeanour might first imply.

During one interview on Channel 4 Corbyn quite lost his temper when probed about speaking of Hamas and Hezbollah as his friends. In the main he has kept to his script of nationalisation; of attacking poverty by radical redistribution; of investing in public services (code for higher wages in the public sector); abolishing fees in Higher education; a strong line on gender and sexual equality; an equally strong empathy with immigrant community issues; a non-nuclear defence policy – with at times a slightly pacifist tinge. Though there is little new per se in any or all of these causes, Corbyn’s clarion has turned out to have a wider resonance than many wise saws saw. He has appealed to disillusioned voters who have left Labour ever since the early 1990’s and also to the younger better educated metropolitans who feel Labour has been unambitious in its recent past. The response of these groups has been genuine and genuinely unexpected. In a political world where the diet of soundbites has left voters feeling well and truly stuffed – there is something almost Franciscan in this would-be Savonarola demanding we embrace the poorer in our communities – cast off the gods of mammon and its creed of trickle down economics – and make a bonfire of vanities of consumerism. Tempting as it is to sneer – Corbyn has hit upon something genuine. Only a fool would not reflect upon that and upon what is means.

The problem here is it may mean any number of things – and none of them together may mean there’s enough to win an election on this diet of worms. Equally, it may be the public has a real appetite for something radically different.

Labour in opposition 2010-2015

Though it has hardly been mentioned – the context for all of this soul searching is the corpse of Ed Miliband’s leadership. Ed’s leadership has not yet received its decent burial and therefore no one feels quite comfortable talking about it whilst its corpse is still in the committee room.

There is a proxy for this discussion in the familiar form of an older, greyer leitmotif: Tony Blair. This leadership election is alive off-stage and on; in front of camera and off-camera; everywhere in Social Media with Tony Blair. There are: Blair haters; Blair baiters; Blair fêteers. Blair – Labour’s most electorally successful leader by some considerable distance – is a divisive figure these days. He is a cult hate figure for some and an occult charm for election winning for others. His current position in Labour history is the the very same as the one suffered by other successful election winning Labour leaders – Attlee and Wilson. Important though New Labour was and important though Blair was neither of them are precisely germane to this election. For the context is only the very recent past. The electoral failure of the Milliband leadership provides both the direct context how it was we have the four candidates we have; and the wider the context about whither the party should go. Had Labour won or come close to winning Ed Milliband would still be in his place.

The cruel fact is that once Labour lost the 2011 Scottish elections by an even greater margin than it had lost them in the pit of unpopularity of 2008, Ed Miliband’s leadership was holed beneath the waterline. The party – PLP and centrally did nothing – the Unions grumbled – everyone hoped for the best – hoped the Scots would not turn to the SNP in the Westminster elections. Wishful reasons were offered time and again to suggest there was a path to victory which frankly did not challenge the party to do more than cut and paste bits and pieces of past policy on to a fresh page. The polls provided Delphic encouragement. The mayoral elections in 2012 were another warning – a London that was voting Labour in ever greater numbers re-elected Conservative Boris Johnson as its mayor. The Labour candidate Ken Livingstone was almost a throw-back to the politics of the 1980’s – the politics which also brought Jeremy Corbyn to Parliament and which corbyn still articulates. Livingstone was a talented mayor and an original thinker but by 2011 he had no new ideas – they were re-treads of very old tunes. He lost by a whisker but the fact is Labour ought to have won the mayoralty by a mile. It was another warning about the need to have the right candidate at the top if it wanted to win – and not the just the candidate of the right or the left or the centre.

This was all in sharp contrast to what Ed Milliband himself had offered in 2010. Recognising the scale of the 2010 defeat Ed suggested the terms of electoral politics had been decisively altered by the crash in 2008 and the public was ready to try something new and radical. It was time to challenge the orthodoxy of free markets and culture of free lunches for bankers that had held sway since the late 1970’s. It was time to replace Thatcherism – the capitalism of unfettered markets and trickle down economics with a new model. Many thought that this was a compelling analysis – the problem was did Miliband’s leadership ever really test the idea in more than rhetorical allusion? The answer to that question might well determine how to cast a vote – for if it is yes, then Corbyn is surely only a repetition of a failed idea; if it is no, then Corbyn may be the answer for which the party is looking.

There is, however, a further context to all this – young Ed got the top job by a squeak – his victory in the Trades Union section of the party outweighed by a fraction that of his brother in the PLP and amongst party members. Ed had squeaked out his own brother. As a result Labour lost a man of unquestionable talent and one who had the range to communicate complicated ideas in simple language without simplifying issues themselves. Labour’s losses of communicators over time has been punishing: John Smith; Donald Dewar; Mo Mowlam; and Robin Cook were taken by death but lost to party rivalries were David Miliband; James Purnell; Alasdair Darling; Gordon Brown; Jim Murphy; Douglas Alexander. Ed Balls fell in the election and now Ed Milliband is himself lost to frontline politics. The loss of forty Scottish MP’s has decapitated the Party North of the border. Labour has wasted a generation of talent.

There were plenty of chances for Labour and particularly for the PLP to seize the day and deal with the leadership problem that had existed certainly by 2012. As in the dolour days of PM Brown the PLP and the party chose to stick its collective head in the sand and hope for the best. There was talk by insiders of disaster ahead though possibly the scale of defeat came as a nasty surprise.

Those of us who has sat through the elections of 1987 and 1992 knew all too well what was in store when the LibDem constituencies fell to the Conservatives one by one last May. The scale of what was in the offing probably only really came into clear view during and after the Scots referendum campaign. The Scots referendum exposed soft underbelly of Unionist Labour loyalties in Scotland. Westminster had permitted Gordon Brown and the Scottish Labour Party their last hurrah but before they could savour saving the Union Mr Cameron on the steps of Downing St calmly cut the ground from under Labour both in Scotland and in southern England by declaring there now must be English votes for English Laws.

The Conservative party’s message was not subtle. It was carefully calibrated to be effective in those seats traditionally ‘conservative’ seats in the South and South West of England where the LibDems had been elected and re-elected since 1997. These were the very seats that had provided Thatcher with her majority in the 1979;1983;1987; and even Major in 1992. The Conservatives successfully concentrated in 2015 on regaining these seats. They were helped by the fact the LibDem brand had been destroyed by the coalition and Labour’s collapse in Scotland to an SNP to its left made an even narrow overall Conservative majority as good as a landslide.

The last Judgment?

So by the long circuit I return to my original supposition. This choice is less about me and more about the future I would like for my great nieces and great nephew(s). It is a false choice I pose in these terms since because as a family we have prospered in our lives all of our kin will also be blest with advantages that accrue with education and a financial inheritance that can offer opportunity. I am less clear and more concerned for those born today like me or my sister or brother at somewhat of a disadvantage.

One of the deepest impression of my school days was made on me by Thomas Gray: Elegy written in a country churchyard which mourns the waste of talent lost by accident of birth.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene, the dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear: Full many a flow’r is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

The churchyard in question was Stoke Poges not far from Wexham Park hospital which in many ways epitomises the good and the troubled bad that is within the NHS. Our Public Services are part of the fabric of our civilisation – they play a part not unlike the monasteries and guilds in the Middle Ages. They stand as an inter-generational guarantee to some sort of coherent opportunity for all. The far right and far left both preach a dissolution of this old order of civic decency and to replace it with something radically different. Neither to be honest can truly describe the consequences of what they suggest. Socialism that actually changes lives accepts as part of its effective creed the inevitability of gradualism. It does so in part because it accepts the costs of revolution are usually too high and too wasteful to those who live in the injustice of the here and now. The creed of Democracy is of continuing reform because the wheel of progress is as yet too much a wheel of fortune. Despite the blandishments offered to me by Jeremy Corbyn of true change – whatever that might amount to in time – I do not think Labour can risk not winning the next election. Equally I do not think the party cannot but sit up and consider the reaction to his candidature.

Unlike Paris in his judgement I get a number of bites at my final Judgement. For the present I am honestly and totally uncertain as what to do for the best. I think we now need to hear the how candidates respond to those whom Jeremy Corbyn has engaged and even enthused. I will honestly say personally I’d like a woman to lead the party. I just think it’s time. But in the end I must try and choose the best candidate I can. I promise to make this public once I have completed my ballot in two weeks from now. It is not for me to tell others how to vote but to rather persuade them what to consider when casting their ballot. Thomas Gray casting his eyes about the graveyard put into words what is a stake in that telling phrase – their lot forbade. It must be part of our endeavour neither to shut the gates of mercy nor close the doors of opportunity on those not born to opportunity of right. It is our job to give them that chance. That is their golden apple and they deserve to get it as of right.

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast

The little tyrant of his fields withstood;

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,

Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.

Th’ applause of list’ning senates to command,

The threats of pain and ruin to despise,

To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,

And read their hist’ry in a nation’s eyes,

Their lot forbade: nor circumscrib’d alone

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confin’d;

Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,

And shut the gates of mercy on mankind.

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Amelia, Abigail & Charlie Thomas & Labour’s Choice

Posted on 29/07/2015 by John

Why it’s a matter of personal interest

I have two great nieces – Amelia and Abigail – and a great nephew, Charlie Thomas. I see less of them than I’d like but like most people these days I see lots of photos on Facebook and short videos of their progress through the early stages of their lives. I’m very aware that inevitably I will play only a small walk-on part in their lives. I’m already in the section of Life’s Warehouse marked old models – or even obsolete. When they are young adults trembling on the edge of adulthood if I’m not already history I will be at the very least a largely decorative part of the family’s constitution – to be given birthday cake, congratulated on reaching such an age and patted on the back of the hand.

What follows is, therefore, is inevitably more for them than for me or indeed for most of you who will read these pieces. Thus, this is not quite the piece I originally conceived of writing. It has arrived in this shape largely because having felt moved by recent developments to react to what is being set forth as the narrative of Labour’s leadership election I have been forced into a period of considered reflection. The political subject may seem an odd address to infants but like it or loath it the choices made in the next weeks will shape their future in a way politics will no longer be able to shape mine.

I also write this knowing it will hardly charm the committed or indeed arouse more than a passing nod from many of those to whom it is addressed. Moreover, those of you who have any interest in this subject will also usually have long ago made-up your minds about politics; parties and politicians.

You will not be easily persuaded by anything I say. Yet I will persuade myself I must still try.

Part I – Why Politics Matters:

Politics is boring. Politics changes nothing much. Politicians are in it for themselves. Political Parties are all the same. Most ordinary folks thinks politics doesn’t really affect them. Most ordinary folks express a perceived self-interest when they vote. Those with a perceived interest are usually by definition those with some financial stake in society and, therefore, their larger part is predisposed to be ‘conservative’. Voting is regarded largely as an exercise in private interest rather than a participatory act of the collective polity.

All these dull clichés literally govern our lives.

As a society we have a long history of disdaining all politics. It is not a new contempt. It at least as old as the Whigs and Tories. It is not that political causes per se do not matter to us as individuals – they do – LGBT rights was the cause of my lifetime – but perhaps Nuclear Disarmament was the political issue that generated most engagement of my generation – as it had previously in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s under the banner of CND.

Political subjects that arouse similar individual interest and active commitment today might include – Climate Change – the exploitation of natural resources – genetic crops and industrial agriculture – modern slavery – the use of animals in laboratories – animal welfare and animal rights, including say Fox hunting – all of these own a political dimension but generally they are single issues of particular interest to an activist campaigning minority but still with a wider social resonance. They are the subject of general conversation over dinner and amongst friends. These days in the aftermath of Charlie Hebdo we might also add in freedom of speech and freedom of religious expression and perhaps the moral issues of euthanasia; capital punishment and abortion. However, politics and party politics in particular are not so highly favoured. They do not fit in to the single issue concerns that generally concern us. Does that matter? It does – it is just that we do not quite appreciate how very much.

For half a century now fewer and fewer people have joined political parties – let alone been party activists. It is not because joining large organisations is itself unfashionable – as the burgeoning memberships of the National Trust and English Heritage illustrate. Similarly, charities and smaller niche interests attract large memberships of so called ‘friends’. These active memberships are hale and hearty. It is true that sometimes these memberships also buy some privilege – like advance ticket purchase in the case of Theatre or Opera or sport – or invitations to the steward’s enclosure in the case of Ascot; Henley; or Wimbledon. Football patrons are offered a similar hosts of freebies and special offers. Wine Societies thrived on this same basis in the 1980’s.

Political parties by contrast have not thrived. The public remains politically unengaged – at best – downright hostile at worst. Politics, if ever it was, is most certainly no longer amongst the polite interests of the aspirant lower middle and middling middle classes. For them it is a non-subject – although perhaps that is more true of Conservative voters who predominate in this group than those who own other political allegiances. And in Scotland in the last ten years – alike Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century – it is positively smart to be seen to be a Nationalist.

Politics, however, remains the peculiar obsession of the social elites above the middling sort. That is mainly because they perceive it to be their personal business. Thanks to Trades Unions that political elite has expanded to include others drawn from a wider social and economic milieu. The activist working class and even underclass who like those at the very top are often politically engaged because they see the outcomes in terms of their own lives.Though interestingly and as with acting – politics once in a family often then remains an inter-generational family interest. All my family are political and hold strongly progressive values even if Mum and I were the most active politically of our family. We as a family branch were also the outsiders – both Labour supporters – in a largely Conservative world both in Ireland and later in Maidenhead and its conservative social acquaintance. It interests me that some Irish Catholic families from the same social strata of Irish society became strongly Labour in the post war diaspora whilst others were deeply Conservative.

My later status as an “out gay” man in hostile times of my teens and twenties made a political career difficult and I did not pursue one for that reason. I had as it were chosen my cause – and with the later advent of AIDS I had another cause to pursue.

It may well be, therefore, that one or other of my great nieces or nephew(s) may take up the cause of party and of politics on one side or another.

Politics is an acquired taste. Like all such tastes once acquired it usually remains a lifelong passion. Politics never makes for polite conversation. It is a minority interest, alike Philosophy and Religion and like both of these uglier of the three sisters, Politics matters very much. It also matters very much in modern democracy that there are viable vehicles for political aspiration and expression.

One of the great falsehoods peddled by received wisdom is that party politics changes nothing very much.

Party politics has changed us time and again in my lifetime – first, in the post war decade of Attlee; then it refashioned us in the 1960’s of Kennedy and Wilson; it once more altered our world in the 1980’s of Reagan and Thatcher; though largely forgotten Blair and Brown, alike Clinton, also changed the terms of the political trade in the 1990’s; and the current Conservative leadership personified by David Cameron had to reinvent itself largely in terms of the perceived Blair hegemony.

This catalogue reminds us that in politics as in much else in life – fashions come and go. As with clothes we often change our politics with the times without ever realising we’ve made a conscious choice to alter our views. In politics these fashions and fads successively most favour one party or group of parties over the other. Success breeds success but it also breeds reaction. Attlee was a socialist until we all became socialists; just as FDR’s New Deal was a commie trick until it became the blueprint for the postwar world. Goldwater was the nutter whose time came in Reagan; Powell and Milton Friedman were the gurus of Thatcher. Politics’ job is partly to make unpalatable truths into accepted facts; and to tame the wild ideas of extremes into domestic pets beloved by the ordinary voter.We rarely acknowledge it but party politics shapes the world about us in more ways than we are apt to think – as absentmindedly we plan our weekends with friends or order takeaways from our mobile apps or check ourselves into airports using our mobile phones.

Were I to posit that the choice of say nursery or school; or whether children had a chance to learn music; or the opportunity go to theatre or opera; or the experience to travel abroad and to learn a foreign language; or the chance to play sport with proper facilities – were not matters of general concern to the welfare of all of us – most parents would laugh me out of court. Yet the context that will shape the world where these activities takes place and determines who has access to them – party politics – is generally thought to be a matter of no more than of passing interest to those same devoted parents.

Politics will indeed shape our children’s world whether we wish to see it and acknowledge it or not. Moreover, as we can see from the long post war period of progressive hegemony from 1940 to 1970 followed by the equally long period of dominance of Conservative political ideas from the later 1970’s to 2008 – it is unarguable that the world made today will define our children’s tomorrows in ways we can only half-imagine. If party politics matters then the parties are important to us as they are in democracies the vehicles of delivery of political aspirations; so, additionally the ideas that fire the politics matter for they will determine the routes those vehicles can take.

The significance of this Labour leadership election is that it is taking place at a hugely significant time in our political affairs.

We are at one of those inter-generational defining moments – moments when political ideas that will shape the future are being tried and tested by both arms of the body politic. Will Obama be followed by Clinton and thus secure a new progressive dominance in US politics or will the now more ideological right of the Republican Party take full control of the agenda by winning the White House? The election here in May with the relatively familiar style of David Cameron – resting so heavily on its imitation of Tony Blair- has obscured the fact that the future politics of the UK is also at a profound turning point.

Our place in Europe and the survival of the UK as a political union are only the obvious things now at stake – but there is much more as we now face the consequences of globalization of finances, world trade and as national economies respond and nation states struggle to come to terms with this upheaval. The instabilities in the middle East with ISIS and the Caliphate not only drive terrorism they also drive pulses of migration.

Migration and population have long been the most powerful forces in History. They brought down the Roman Empire and made the Middle Ages and unmade them in the Black Death; they colonised North and South America; they help spawn the tumults of World War twice in the last century.

How we will come to face that future will in part be determined by whoever Labour chooses as its leader. For he or she will help determine how the political nation makes that turn it now faces and ultimately shape the direction of that turn itself. Sometimes the parochial is the global as much as the personal is the political.

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Budget – it’s really Good News for Labour

Posted on 09/07/2015 by John

Why Labour had good reason to feel cheerful:

Sometimes I fear we are not as surefooted as we should be. The events of the last week should us Labour supporters a bit chipper. It should make us realise that we can put the election defeats of 2010 and 2015 behind us. It should embolden us to reapply out thinking to the structural problems of the UK economy that remain unresolved – particularly social care, housing and the place of our young people in modern British society but also productivity….the bete noir of UK ever since the end of the Second World War.

The good news for Labour is that the government’s adoption of its fiscal and some prominent economic policies if properly talked-up by the party will finally put to bed the notion that the program it offered last May was in any way undeliverable; irresponsible; or unrealistic. Quite to the contrary – we are all gradualists now and all in favour of businesses not using the Welfare system to maintain low wages – which is of itself one of the major causes of low UK productivity.

Mr Osborne has finally admitted in this first Conservative budget since 1997 that it is prudent and possible to spend £82 billion more over this whole Parliament; that it is possible to raise the minimum wage; that it is possible to increase taxes slightly; that reductions in public spending can be made over a longer timescale. Thus in principle what Labour offered in May was broadly right. Even if the government is now making poor choices it is still using the flexibility we identified. We are on longer therefore a party of economic incompetents and Labours spokesmen should welcome the Conservatives on to their centre ground.

Labour can now concentrate the debate on means and ends as the Conservatives have practically conceded the fiscal realities. How should government use that flexibility correctly identified by Labour in the public finances to the best ends for the good of the whole nation is what we should debate with the government. We, for example should not cut Tax Credits for many on low incomes to cut fund a cut in Inheritance Tax for those with homes worth 1 million pounds. Similarly, the argument Labour made on Energy turns out to be have been correct and the market not only needs better regulation; the public get back what it is owed them.

Thus, we can finally put behind us the controversies of the past and put the leadership campaign in the focus of the future. We no longer need to feel the political debate must be all about the closing years of the last Labour government. Instead Labour must concentrate on the problems like housing and engagement of our young adults in the economy and the polity – for they’re our future. We can also give Ed a standing ovation – because it turns out the argument was good even if we lost. Equally, we have to be truthful with ourselves, Ed wasn’t the best persuader we could have chosen to make the case and that the case was never made on the economy and the causes of the financial crash was our fault and not that of the electorate.

We now need a leadership that is fleet of foot and persuasive in debate – and one that sounds – fresh – we have the issues – fairness – housing – social care and health care – and the reengagement of our future hope – our young people who are now being cut out of the security of the modern state by deliberate act of Conservative government policy.

We can now have a leadership campaign confident of the soundness of our judgements over the past decade.

Thank you Mr Osborne – in your eagerness to get into No 10 – you’ve made our most difficult political argument for us – we do have the resources available to make different choices and to bring about genuine change for the better for the many rather than for the advantage of the few.

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Kiss & Tell…..William Tell at the royal opera house

Posted on 07/07/2015 by John

William Tell – Royal Opera House – 5th July – Kiss & Tell

There is one scene in this production which aptly summarises the gratuitous perversity of its whole. It occurred not long after the now infamous “rape” a la ClockWork Orange perversely acted out over pretty the Rossini dance music for the original ballet.

The scene is for female chorus and two sopranos. In this production the women are accompanied by children – some indeed very small – who, whilst the two principals sing – are undressed to their skimpy underwear and washed on stage. There is no reason for this. The audience was invited to oggle at this side-show rather than concentrate on the singers. At the very least visually the kinder-strip wreaked of prurience and at worse it evoked something much more sinister….

William Tell is a troubled Opera with a patchy performance history. It is self consciously Grand Opera a genre still only in its infancy at the time of composition. At its best the music is mesmerising – rising to vast crescendos of soloists;chorus and orchestra. Like Wagner the characters have leitmotif – Rossini’s invention. Like Meyerbeer it’s a sprawling entertainment made up of many elements. Written for the French Opera that necessarily included dance or ballet music and an incidental music to set scenes – like the fabulous storm music at the end. It has an equally sprawling overture which is twice the length of the famous bit that everyone knows – the music used in TV series of The Lone Ranger – announced by the unmistakable flourish of hunting horns. These operas we meant to be elaborately staged – they were really the Epic Movies of their day.

This is essentially a story of good and evil – the evil represented by Gasler (a sort of Sheriff of Nottingham figure) the good by Tell. Dramatically the libretto is based on a Schiller play and is a complex study of the politics of the state and of the nation – a conflict between personal liberty and feudal duty. This conflict is made flesh as it were in the person of the heroine – the local princess Mathilde. For all its obvious drama the elements of this strange giant of an opera never quite meld into an intoxicating dramatic whole – though in their own right the elements are quite extraordinary. Rossini’s genius has so many original vocal ideas that others like Verdi and Wagner and even Meyerbeer would freely plunder to develop to effect.

In order to convince this opera of all needs a lavish production that fills in the gaps. What we had was one idea – the horrors of war – with which we were beaten over the head for 5 unrelenting hours. Some of it was silly – a ghost carrying a suitcase in front of the great trio of Act II; some of it was insulting; some of it was adolescent – the use of toy soldiers and a comic book; some of it gratuitous; very occasionally some of it resolved into a wonderful still tableau that indeed caught something of the grand in Grand Opera. But the fact is the whole thing was bloody awful rather than bloody and awful. It was an insult to the audience that the production only managed to add injury after injury.

Productions that court controversy deserve all the opprobrium they get. Cutting out the scenes designed to shock – there was not a lot left except a stage covered with compost and a big dead tree. These were the leitmotif for the barrenness of the producer’s imagination. It was telling in its lack of response to the variety of Rossini’s musical inventiveness. It is the vice of our times to believe audiences can only hold one idea in their heads. It is the vanity of producers to think we need continuous visual distractions or we’ll get bored. This William Tell was an exemplar of both these vices and vanities. In the end it was (rightly) buried alive under the weighty grandiosity of its conceptual pomposity.

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Charles Kennedy RIP

Posted on 02/06/2015 by John

Charles Kennedy RIP:

I am genuinely sad to learn of the death of Charles Kennedy. He was still a young man although perhaps his greatest days sadly were behind him. Nevertheless, he was one of the very few politicians who in mastering the Media art in the politics of our times never lost his authenticity. Like the late John Smith he is a reminder to us all of the immense richness we gain as a political nation by the Union. He was also that most rare of birds in our political ornithology – a true social democrat. If continuity with its Liberal past makes a comparison true – Kennedy was most successful Liberal leader since Lloyd George both in terms of votes won in 2001 and 2005 and seats won in 2001 and 2005. Charles Kennedy was right about the Iraq War when many, including me, were terribly wrong. Curiously perhaps for a leader of a third force in the UK he was not particularly in favour of PR. His personal demons got the better of his later time as a leading public and political figure but because of his personal authenticity perhaps his fall from grace was consequently graced with humanity rather than hubris. It is not often it can honestly be said but for Charles Kennedy it can be – if there were more of his ilk in public life our politics would be better regarded; our Parliament held in greater esteem and our institutions of government better served.

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Game of thrones III – a rough Guide to the Wars of the roses

Posted on 27/05/2015 by John

Game of thrones III – Lancaster bombs and York’s son rises:

Some events no sooner have passed than they are bound with a tissue of myth. It is part of our cultural response to certain events – the assassination of JFK in November 1963 is an obvious example. Henry V was similarly and almost as immediately immortalised after his unexpected and unforeseen death in 1422. He was joined to that Pantheon of heroes – most often young – snatched tragically too soon – before their work was yet completed and before their promise was fulfilled – epitomised by Alexander the Great. Unlike us lesser mortals they never taste the soured grapes of failure; they elude the chastening of history’s hard judgement; they escape the forgetful frailties that come with age. Forever young – they live on in myth – and in the case of Henry V forever wrapped in the splendid cope of Shakespeare’s poetry.

As a king, Henry V quickly came to epitomise an English chivalric ideal. As a monarch he was devout; as any good Christian king, he was religiously observant. As a patron he was a generous benefactor – Henry V founded All Souls College as a memorial to his victory at Agincourt. As its name suggests it was partly endowed as a Chantry College part of whose office was to pray for the souls of England’s dead heroes rather than teach undergraduates. Henry V was a king who fought battles and won them against the odds. He was the king who made himself heir to the throne of France by force of arms but graciously sealed victory on the field by the peaceful gesture of dynastic marriage. Though young and brave he was wise and restrained. Whether the real Henry V was all or any or none of these things hardly matters for Empire won on the fields of France the conquering hero who was Henry V did not dally long before he in turn was conquered by death.

Henry V’s marriage to Katherine de Valois was a dynastic rather than a love match. Katherine was in fact the second wife King Charles VI had furnished to an English king since her elder sister Isabella had been the child-bride to the doomed Richard II. Katherine de Valois was quickly pregnant. Their first child was a son, born in December 1421, he was christened Henry. The infant boy was heir to both the thrones of England and of France.

The unification of the two warring kingdoms personified by this young prince-ling had required Charles VI to disinherit his youngest son – claiming the dauphin (later Charles VII of France) was illegitimate. His two elder sons, Louis and John had perished at Agincourt in the general slaughter of French nobility. The subsequent Treaty of Troyes (May 1420) bestowed not only the hand of Charles VI’s daughter but also settled the succession to the throne of France on Charles VI’s new son-in-law, Henry V. It may be as a consequence of this French chroniclers nicknamed Charles VI ‘the mad’. Mad or not, Charles VI certainly suffered from repeated bouts of depressive illness which might have been of no significance were it not to be for the subsequent history of his grandson.

Henry V

That was yet to come for in December 1421 the proud father, Henry V, was only thirty three. The House of Lancaster was secure and it appeared the greatest days for dynasty and king were yet to come. As ever in history appearances can be deceptive.

Charles VI of France died in October 1422 – ten months after his grandson’s birth by which time the infant prince’s young, vigorous father, Henry V, was also dead. As accidents of history are most often fatal to a dynasty; so, it is the unforeseen that most often alters history’s course. Such youthful promise lost still in its fullest flower drew easy comparisons and in death Henry V’s renown was readily burnished with the heroic patina of an Alexander. But renown’s paeans die in the eerie still that follows the herald’s final trumpeting. The future now belonged rather to the dead king’s nine month old son, King Henry VI.

Henry VI – Faction & Intrigue

Young Henry VI’s coronation did not follow swiftly on his accession but like most of his life – it had rather to wait upon events. In July 1427 – inspired by Joan of Arc – the ‘bastard’ dauphin – the young son whom Charles VI had disinherited – was crowned Charles VII of France to acclaim in Reims cathedral. By way of contradiction to the coronation of the dauphin Henry VI was finally crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey in November 1429 and shortly thereafter he was also crowned king of France in Notre Dame de Paris. Already it was too late as even by 1429 the dazzling possibility of a single English monarch governing the two kingdoms was but a chimera. Its moment had already passed.

The accession of so young a king had also caused other problems. The queen, Katherine de Valois, had hardly the time to established herself in England before her husband was dead. It was therefore inevitable that the chary nobility refused her the natural role of regent or any formal place on the king’s council. Equally, they did not want their queen to return to France. She was rather marooned in England – and then subsequently she was kept from a marriage to a high ranking Lancastrian noble by the jealous council. The queen was closely confined and kept out of harm’s way in the royal apartments in a suite of rooms on the king’s side. The young dowager queen was only just 20 and as so often with the young – harm has its way of finding them out. She looked elsewhere for comfort, entertainment and love. It came to her in the courtly cape of the keeper of her wardrobe – a Welshman – Owen Tudor. The Tudor family had been stalwarts of Owain Glyndwyr’s rising in 1400 which had been supported by Edmund Mortimer. After their defeat a number of these Welsh ‘gentry’ were brought to Henry IV’s court – rather as hostages – and many made there way from there into royal service of Henry IV and to hold office- in the royal household. The dowager queen was quickly pregnant and their son Edmund was consequently of doubtful legitimacy.When in time Henry VI made their son Edmund, Earl of Richmond few would have believed he would become a significant player in the battle for the English succession. Legitimised and ennobled, Edmund Tudor in fact married into the legitimised and ennobled Lancastrian Beaufort line – Margaret Beaufort, daughter of the second Duke of Somerset (by second creation) and by 1485 surviving sole heiress of the House of Lancaster. Edmund and Margaret had only one child whom they named Henry Tudor. The rest, as they say is history.

Meanwhile, much as in the reign of the young Richard II, Henry VI’s government was the business rather of his royal uncles. And as before, they quickly filled the royal breach with their own ambitions. Initially, there were plenty of Lancastrian Uncles left to choose from – of the brothers of Henry V – the eldest Thomas, Duke of Clarence had died in 1421; the next, named for John of Gaunt, John, Duke of Bedford was appointed regent in France. He faced down Joan of Arc but died without issue in 1435 and was buried in Rouen. The youngest of Henry V’s brothers was by far the most able – Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. He was Henry VI’s lord protector but he too was unlucky in love – his first wife bore him no children and his second wife was accused of sorcery and imprisoned and by the time of his death in 1447 he had no legitimate heirs.

Humphrey was also unlucky in politics since his main rivalry was with the cadet Beaufort branch of the House of Lancaster in the person of John of Gaunt’s second son by Katherine Swynford, Cardinal Henry Beaufort Bishop of Winchester. It is the rivalry and intrigue between these two scions of the Gaunt descent that fills Raphael Holinshed’s history of England and shaped much of Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part I. The cardinal died shortly after Humphrey leaving the young king to rule alone. Henry VI was by then 26. The ‘bastard’ Beaufort line was fecund and in its statutory legitimacy found itself bound into the wider English nobility. And it is with the other Beaufort – the 2nd Duke Duke of Somerset – second creation – who is is famously depicted in Henry VI Pt II and set in Temple Gardens. The meeting portrayed opposite never took place but it sums up perfectly the elements in the gathering storm that was to completely overwhelm the House of Lancaster and her king, Henry VI in the decade after 1445.

The root of the problem was the king. Henry VI was later memorialised as a saint. In Tudor ceremonials – funeral and marriages – Henry VI’s arms were borne in procession under the designation St. Henry. He certainly was religious but is was his poor mental health that posed the greatest danger to his government. His marriage to Margaret of Anjou was successful enough in its own terms but Henry was slow to fulfill his office of husband. His first serious bout of mental illness therefore left him at the mercy of the ambitions of his Yorkist cousins.

The rise of the sons of York

The House of York had originally somewhat withered on its original branches. Edmund Duke of York, Edward III’s fourth son and his eldest son and heir, Edward were both dead by 1415. The duchy lands – though not the ducal title – had, therefore, passed sideways to Edmund’s second son, Richard (of Conisburgh) Earl of Cambridge. The York branch was junior to all of Gaunt’s children. The Beaufort – illegitimate children of Gaunt’s mistress Katherine Swynford – were later legitimised when the grand old duke married Mistress Swynford but their legitimisation excluded in any event from the succession. The senior lines to Gaunt via Richard II had failed; and via the second son of Edward III, Lionel Duke of Clarence, it had descended via the female line into the Mortimer. The Mortimer, father and son had been Richard II’s preferred heirs but that came to mean nothing and by the death of Henry V the male Mortimer lines had also failed. However, their deaths left a sister, Anne Mortimer. Her marriage to Richard (of Conisburgh) Earl of Cambridge united the senior Clarence claim to the junior male York descent. Their son, another Richard, was consequently made Duke of York by Henry VI. He is the first Yorkist claimant.

The family tree that led to a family at war with itself…

Richard, Duke of York was premier peer. He married in his turn Anne Neville sister to the Richard Neville Earl of Warwick (the kingmaker). By her he had four sons – Edward, Earl of March; George; Richard and Edmund. Richard, Duke of York, was as aforementioned the first of the royal house to use Plantagenet as a family name. This Duke of York was as able and ambitious as his royal cousin Henry VI was vacillating and modest. Whilst Henry VI was mentally incapacitated Richard served briefly as Protector of England (1453-4). This promotion only served to feed his appetite for a more permanent royal status. York bullied the then heir-less king, Henry VI, into naming him as his heir.It was a fateful ambition that now stirred.

Henry VI’s recovery from his silent depression was quickly followed by his wife Margaret’s pregnancy. The birth of their son, Edward of Westminster changed everything. Whatever the king had promised York or was prepared to accept Margaret was not minded to have her child lightly set aside. She refused to acknowledge her son was disinherited and despairing of her husband’s spine – Margaret took matters into her own hands. The thwarted Duke of York reacted furiously asserting his right to the crown and claiming legitimacy via Anne Mortimer. Parliament havered – it was nervous about removing an anointed king so instead it settled on Richard Duke of York the titles of Lord Protector; Earl of Chester and Prince of Wales. Richard Duke of York was therefore legally putative heir to Henry VI. The promotion to Earl of Chester was important since it made the Duke of York a Palatine Prince co-equal to the palatinate status of the duchy of Lancaster. Parliament could not create such a palatine but it could and did award one already existing and already owned by the crown to York. It could hardly have been more explicit.

Queen Margaret fled North looking for allies and found a welcome in Scotland. Together with James III she invaded England at the head of a large army and Richard, Duke of York was unexpectedly defeated by her army at Wakefield. He and his youngest son Edmund were killed.

His three surviving sons, Edward, now Duke of York; George, (later Duke of Clarence);and Richard (later, Duke of Gloucester) were not minded to take the murder of their father and brother lying down. If his father had ambition; drive and skill on the field; Edward had real military flair verging – alike that of Henry V – on genius. He was also handsome as Hades and a notorious womaniser and looked every inch the king he was about to become. The three brothers together with the Neville defeated Margaret. Edward seized his moment and was quickly crowned Edward IV (1461-1483).

Queen Margaret and their son Edward of Westminster fled to France. Henry VI was placed in the Tower. In their places they all stayed until Fate tempted them.

Fate came in the cut of the Earl of Warwick – the kingmaker was switching kings. He persuaded Edward IV’s brother George Duke of Clarence to join him. Clarence later double-ratted and the worm of treachery burrowed its way into what until then had been the united House of York.

The House of York

Edward IV once king had surprised everyone by marrying down rather than up. He fell in love with and secretly married Elizabeth Woodville and by her had two sons Edward (proclaimed Edward V in June 1483) and Richard, Duke of York. These are known to History as the ‘two princes in the Tower’.There were a number of surviving girls – Elizabeth; Mary; Cecily; Anne; and Bridget (who became a nun in Dartford Abbey). If the boys failed to live up to the promise of the three glorious sons of York – Edward IV’s daughters fared better and went further.

Edward IV’s marriage was not without controversy and not at all what the earl of Warwick had planned for the king. Warwick in negotiation with France had won the hand of a French princess for the new dynasty’s new king. Thwarted Warwick fell from favour and fled England. His travels eventually brought him to the court of Margaret and the Lancastrian Prince of Wales. Their subsequent invasion caught Edward IV off-guard and he in his turn fled London to Burgundy. Henry VI was briefly restored but as ever with Henry’s reign fate rained on his parade. In 1471 at Tewkesbury Edward IV defeated the forces of Margaret and there followed a bloodbath of Lancastrian nobility which included the putative Lancastrian heir, Edward of Westminster. Edward IV then had Henry VI brusquely murdered in the Tower – leaving no further hostages to fortune – it seems the family war was finally over.

There was one other trailing piece of business – Edward IV no longer trusted his brother George. He duly had the duke was arrested and attainted for treason. Clarence’s children were excluded from the succession and Clarence ended in a butt of Malmsey wine.

But alike Henry V, Fate now took a hand and her revenge upon the Yorkists in their pride. Edward IV died suddenly. He left two young princes at the tender mercy of the body politic. If minorities were unstable this was to prove the least stable of all of them.

Edward IV’s younger brother, Richard Duke of Gloucester was briefly Lord Protector to the minor Edward V but the princes were declared bastards and Richard was himself proclaimed King Richard III in July 1483. Richard III was the last Plantagenet king to rule England and the last monarch of the House of York. His death at Bosworth Field in 1485 made way for the Tudors – who had their claim via the Beaufort cadet branch from John of Gaunt and Catherine de Valois, wife of Henry V and later of Owen Tudor.

Elizabeth of York married Henry VII and thus the Tudors united the two roses and she is consequently both mother to the Tudor dynasty and a grandmother to the Stewart.

The other daughters of Edward IV – Cecily married John, Viscount Wells – half-brother to Margaret Beaufort; Catherine married the William Courtenay, created Earl of Devon in 1511 by Henry VIII. Clarence’s surviving heir was restored in blood by Henry VIII. She had by them married a henchman of Henry VII, Sir Richard Pole. Margaret Pole, Clarence’s youngest daughter was made Countess of Salisbury in her own right. But the sun on these last of York burned too bright. Margaret’s son fell out with Henry VIII over the divorce. Reginald Pole fled England in 1533 and only finally returned to England under Mary I to serve briefly as Archbishop of Canterbury. his mother, Blessed Margaret Pole was by then dead. She had refused the Supremacy and was executed for treason a few days after her eldest son. He grandson died a few years later in mysterious circumstances inside the tower. The lights of the House of York were extinguished.

Ends and what ends mean

However, because the story is complicated it does not mean it cannot be readily understood.That seems to me to show intellectual condescension that is unjustified. If the “average Joe” is quite capable of following a complex web of family intrigue involving power that is the Game of Thrones on TV the Wars of the roses ought to be a piece of cake.

There has been a great deal of twaddle spoken and written about Richard III over recent months. Historians good, bad and indifferent have paraded around Media studios like circus clowns. I saw one historian sitting on a sofa wearing a suit of armor chatting to Jon Snow meaningfully about how it helped him to get inside the tenor of the times of Richard III. Dressing up in costumes and play-acting is fun – it should be encouraged – but it should not be dressed up as history – anymore than microwaving a chilled dinner can masquerade as cooking.

Richard III

Channel Four News coverage has gilded practically every lily and white rose it could lay its hand upon. We have been solemnly informed that this was an historic occasion; the Epic journey of the last Medieval Plantagenet king; and at its end Richard III was finally buried with the dignity of kingship.It makes one wonder if any serial killer might deserve to be re-interred with such pomp in the right circumstance.

The event was noteworthy and not historic. As it happens the king had already been buried in Grey Friars and would have received all his spiritual dues, even if his dead body had by then been exposed to indignities. Carting the rediscovered bones of Richard III about Leicester in a new coffin hardly adds up to an Odyssey let alone an Epic event. Finally, King Richard III has been dead some five hundred years and at this stage whatever we know we are unlikely to know very much more – the surviving evidence is not changed a jot by all of this. His bones – with the curvature of the spine – provide an interesting footnote. His tomb in Leicester Cathedral will provide the city with a tourist attraction – much as the relics of saints did for churches in medieval times. In that there is no harm and perhaps some definite good.

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Humble Pie Day

Posted on 08/05/2015 by John

Humble Pie Day:

One must never be grudging or bitter about being wrong. I have been completely wrong before about election results so being completely wrong again is not a surprise to me. I wrote the paragraph below at 2 am before bed but I did not post it but I think it’s fair enough in the cold light of this coldly disappointing day.

“As ever the important thing to learn from a political defeat is the right lesson. For all this night may now bring in disappointment to political parties and to individuals – it is very much alike the victories bought with Danegeld which bought time and a sort of peace but left entirely unresolved the problem the of the Danes. The Union which makes the United kingdom had been traded by the Conservative Party for the fools gold of a victory that is only English.The LibDems are completely eviscerated as they had were previously been by their fond embrace of the Conservative Party in the 1930’s.

Labour has deluded itself for five years that it could eke out a victory by winning in the marginals without winning the bigger argument. and one of the arguments lost decisively was lost shortly after 2010 when the coalition pinned the responsibility for the financial crash on Labour ably assisted by Liam Byrne’s foolish letter – meant as a joke – which always sounded to the wider electorate as a confession of guilt.

Finally, for those on the progressive and Union side of UK politics this not a time for mutual recriminations. We must start from where we are and learn from what went before.”

I’ve not seen the actual voting % yet as I went to bed around 2 not long after Putney but I will make some observations – first, the LibDem % below 10% would previously have led to to the conclusion that alike UKIP they would end up with only a handful of seats. Secondly, to be fair to the pollsters the Labour vote I’m guessing will be around 30% which would have been at the lower end of their + or – 3% rule. Thirdly, it seems the Murdoch press has what it wanted – the SNP in Scotland and the conservatives in England. Prepare for the Europe referendum and for the SNP demanding another Referendum as part of their Holyrood campaign next year.

But one should not deny the Conservatives their due – once again they played a blinder with the vote SNP get Labour mantra which clearly had traction. This strategy started on the morning of the Referendum result when Cameron cited English votes for English Laws as a consequence of the Scots decision to remain in the Union. As in 2010 the Conservative leadership has played its hand with a ruthless flair and you cannot learn the lessons of a defeat unless you embrace the reality of its cause.

I’m glad to have quoted Teddy Kennedy’s speech previously – it was written by Ted Sorensen who crafted all of JFK’s great speeches and Bobby Kennedy’s too. Great causes need great words but they also need guile of great men or women – we need to find them in the rubble of this defeat….and one of them will not be Mr Balls!

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John Murphy

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Picking the right apple from the left branch…..