Frankly, My Dear ...

In August 2017 the time-travelling author of these pages anticipated that one day Gone With The Wind would be withdrawn from circulation due to its complicity with America's racist history. That moment grew closer yesterday when the movie was withdrawn from streaming services as a painless casualty of the Black Lives Matter movement. The lionhearts who removed it “said the 1939 film was "a product of its time" and depicted "ethnic and racial prejudices" that "were wrong then and are wrong today", which does raise the question of why it was licensed and broadcast by the service in the first place. In the eighty years since it was made, how was its manifestly inappropriate nature overlooked by anyone able to turn a profit on it?

Sordel doesn't care about Gone With The Wind and (in a they-first-came-for-the-Communists stylee) is unlikely to lose much sleep over its reversal of fortune, but consider the plight of the first African-American to win an Academy Award in an acting category. Hattie McDaniel, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress at a segregated ceremony in 1940, should surely have known that the depiction of her character was “wrong then”, and in taking the role she was arguably as complicit with the racism of 1939 as Mammy was with the culture of the antebellum South. If, as I sincerely hope, her achievement continues to command some respect going forward, what will it mean that the film in which she appeared is reviled by later generations, joining Birth of a Nation and Song Of The South (together with every film associated with Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and Woody Allen) in cinema's Book of the Damned?

In one sense, it should be crystal clear that black lives matter or, to put it more pertinently, that black deaths matter. All deaths at the hands of the police matter, which is why Sordel remembers the case of Ian Tomlinson, the newspaper vendor who was meted out an unintentional on-the-spot death penalty for mouthing off to a riot policeman.

In another sense, however, the BLM movement unpicks history statue by statue, removing the context in which future generations might learn about it. Black lives, in the sense of their biographies, matter, but theirs is past that we have reason to discover only because of the visible history from which they were so often excluded. I strongly doubt that anyone in Bristol actually revered Edward Colston because he had his name on stuff. But while his name was on stuff it gave parents the opportunity to point out to their children that Edward Colston made his money in the slave industry. Alfred Nobel (at the time of the premature publication of his obituary) was described as “The Merchant of Death”. Cecil Rhodes remains an antagonistic figure, prompting people to research the history of colonial rule in South Africa, precisely because he remains relevant to us as a philanthropist. If you really want people to understand how the morally-compromised wealth of the past gives rise to the inequality of the present, you need the past to remain present rather than sanitising it.

When all this is gone with the wind, many careers that might have been celebrated by the new social order will have gone with it. If you think that an acting achievement will be written in stone, consider that the first African-American actor to win an Academy Award was James Baskett, who won an honorary Oscar for playing Uncle Remus in Song of the South. If you don’t know who that is, Sordel can hardly blame you.

Designated Driver

There’s a stereotype about male drivers that they would rather drive twenty miles in the wrong direction than stop and check a map. Broadly speaking, this is what happened in the UK General Election. Despite the fact that there is considerable evidence that a majority of the electorate believes that the Brexit referendum came to the wrong decision (neither a “stonking” majority, nor a “thumping” one, but a majority nonetheless) UK voters made the net decision to drive on down the road in the hope that they would either locate a convenient and well-signposted junction on which to change direction or, better, would discover that they were on the right road all along.

What this means is that the issue of Brexit has been settled for a generation. (That's about eighteen months if you live North of the border.) What will they all argue about now?

It seems that the Labour Party is going to be riven (at least for the three months that it will take them to coalesce jubilantly around a new leader) by the question of what is to blame for its ignominious defeat. The analysis from the Left (for how could it be otherwise) is that the party was effectively run down in the street: it had been minding its own business, embracing ideals that were being warmly endorsed by the population in general, when it was brutally mown down by the issue of Brexit.

Labour Centrists, on the other hand, argue that holding a Marxist rally in middle of the South Circular was asking for trouble in the first place. A muddled message on Brexit was as nothing to the suspicion with which Corbyn himself was viewed by “traditional Labour voters”.

There’s room for both sides to be correct.

The sunny days of Corbyn’s Indian Summer, when he gambolled at festivals in the company of gaggles of doe-eyed supporters, seemed already long past when this election was called. He had done little enough to earn their adulation in the first place and little enough to estrange it in the last two years. It was just gone.

Certainly there was still enthusiasm for Corbyn, but it was the grim resolve of Jonestown rather than the febrile tunnel vision of a popular mass movement. The “Youthquake” had moved on to Extinction Rebellion with a more direct means of expression than the quiet anonymity of the ballot box.

Boris’s advantage was not that he was easy to like but that he was difficult to hate. Many managed to do so but nowhere near enough. It’s difficult to associate the image of a racist, sexist hard-Right politician with the photo ops that he gave in a fishmarket or delivering milk. Boris’s lies were legion, but they appeared, somehow, to be little white lies.

Corbyn’s truths were also legion, but they were great big scary truths full of class envy & social division. There was much in them with which voters widely sympathise, but ideals such as Corbyn’s are perhaps best viewed through the prism of a more pragmatic leader.

Finally, a word about Jo Swinson, the “blink and you missed her” leader of the Liberal Democrats. She has never appeared before in these pages as a label, nor is she likely to do so in the future, but there was something bitterly unfair about her constituency defeat. Her candid & straightforward approach to politics was a refreshing alternative to the cynicism of the Right and the fanaticism of the Left. This is one nutshell, however, where the middle of the road is a bad place to be.

Boris Treads The Boards

The Commons (currently of no practical use as a place where the country's laws are written) has reverted to its alternative use as a theatre. When a theatre goes dark it does so in the expectation that a bold new production is in preparation. That is what our freshman Prime Minister managed to deliver yesterday.

As it turns out, we could have all saved ourselves the trouble of learning the word prorogation because The Supreme Court decided that Boris’s attempt to prorogue parliament was void. Consequently Boris was now up before the Beak: dragged back to the Commons to be served with as many of the best as UK MPs could deliver before their arms got tired. And none of them looked like their arms were going to get tired any time soon.

This was make or break for Johnson. His one & only Question Time - during which his bumbling delivery sounded rather clueless in the chamber - had not gone well. That, mind you, was before the highest court in the land had ruled that he had broken the law. Media coverage the day before had depicted this as a humiliating defeat and, worse, the Queen (talismanic to the majority of Conservative voters) had been caught in the crossfire, threatening to divide the government's core supporters. But early notice was given that the show might run as expected when Attorney General Geoffrey Cox gave a surprisingly feisty performance at the matinée. Like or loathe his manner (which is not so much that of a great barrister as that of a ham actor playing a great barrister) Cox steadied the ship, giving the Tories something to cheer about with more heartfelt sincerity than most of them can have thought possible.

The set piece debate that Johnson opened with a statement on the legal ruling was meant to go like this. Opposition MP after MP was lined up to say, again & again, that he had been found to have “mislead the people” by a “unanimous” decision of the court, was “unfit for office” and would, “if he had any shame” resign. This basic template was only varied by the SNP, who mixed in other sentiments in keeping with their nation's long cherished desire for liberty.

None of this needed to be said for the purposes of proceedings in parliament: it was all designed to send a message as many times as possible to television viewers. As such, like so many Commons deliberations, it was all hot air, if rather hotter than usual.

Johnson came back with a debater's trick: the Supreme Court judgement was a sideshow & in his opinion wrong ... the real issue was Brexit. And, surprisingly, it worked. Many opposition MPs, attracted both by the shiny word Brexit and the Prime Minister's gall in criticising the judgement, started responding to his narrative instead of following the agreed script. They were supposed to be furious about one thing ... now they were being furious about something else, or perhaps everything.

Then Johnson unleashed the phrase “Surrender bill” which has been kicking around for a while: it's like a nickname that the unpopular boy at school keeps using in the hope that everyone else will think it's as clever as he does. And, amazingly, the fish bit down hard on this unpromising bait. MP after MP stood up to say that it was quite improper, and probably dangerous, to describe a piece of legislation that had been written into law as a “surrender bill”. At which Boris would neatly reply that it certainly was a surrender bill, or capitulation bill if you prefer. Terms that had never had much currency before were suddenly being used on both sides of the House. And the angrier the Opposition got, the more strident they got while Johnson (after a couple of veiled but unambiguous appeals from the Speaker) dropped into a conciliatory tone, looking reasonable and - it has to be said - rather pleased with himself.

Boris had lost the judgement and won the debate.

Sordel says “won the debate” not “won the argument”. Many people, perhaps most people, will feel that Boris's bad guy act (especially on the subject of Jo Cox) was in poor taste and his thespian artistry was nothing more than Public School playacting, far removed from national concerns of pressing importance. But if this parliament has nothing to legislate - if it is essentially a bear pit in which the most vicious rhetorician prevails - then Boris managed to turn the tables on his opponents. They will consider their strategy more carefully before giving him hours at the despatch box next time.

The opposition emerged bloodied from the encounter: none more so than Jeremy Corbyn, who looked ashen when Nigel Dodds reminded a silent house that the Labour leader's new-found respect for the Rule of Law came too late for judges murdered by the IRA. Politicians who had sued for the right to recall parliament must have ended the day bitterly regretting their victory. As so many disinterested onlookers must do.

If this Boris show is not swiftly shuttered it may run & run.


(Illustration copyright Simon Haynes. Ironically it is reproduced from an article from July 2018 on whether that month would finally see the end of Boris Johnson.)

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Theresa?

In one of the better villain lines of cinematic history, James Mason’s character in North By Northwest describes a troublesome adversary as “a matter best disposed of at a great height ... over water”. Would that this expedient solution was available to the Conservative Party which - having missed many opportunities during Theresa May’s Humiliation Tour of Europe over recent months - now faces the ghastly prospect of a Vote Of Confidence.

Events are moving fast; even given the normally ephemeral nature of blogging, Sordel sets finger to keyboard knowing that suspense will be brief and the matter largely settled either today or shortly thereafter. Yet, so rich & aromatic is this smoke for the connoisseur of game theory that it is irrestistable to draw it in and linger over it for a moment before breathing it back into the air to be lost forever.

In terms of tactics nothing should be more simple. The Prime Minister clearly does not carry the confidence of her party. No fewer than a hundred were expected to vote against her Brexit deal had she not put the motion back in her pocket and walked away whistling. If a hundred would oppose in public, it's a reasonable guess that others would oppose given the luxury of a secret ballot. On paper, Brexiters (whose letters largely, if not exclusively, triggered the vote) should vote against her. Remainers should vote against her.

Yet behind these seemingly straightforward decisions there is a lot for a Tory to ponder. Moderate Remainers and Brexiters could probably rally around the current deal to avoid the possibilities of No Deal or a so-called “People’s Vote” (which is just another referendum only this time made less threatening to anyone intimidated by four-syllable words). Hardline Brexiters have to weigh the possibility of wielding the knife yet losing the crown. And noisy Remainers face the exquisite paradox that although they are very keen to extend a vote to the country in general, they are genuinely terrified of putting a choice to their own party membership, who are very likely to impose a Brexiter leader should the vote fall to a free choice between a candidate from one of the party’s two extreme wings.

So although Conservative MPs don’t back Theresa May, there can be very little appetite to remove her. If she wins the vote, she is entitled to stay as leader: she cannot be challenged again for twelve months.

This is the key problem.

For while the parliamentary party might be happy to leave her in place severely wounded, there can be no delight anywhere at the prospect of giving her security of tenure until after Brexit. Unfortunately for her, the Prime Minister is not at all trusted by either wing: putting the Union in jeopardy has alienated even the somewhat Brexit-agnostic to her right; pulling the vote and humiliating the party has enflamed the paranoia of those to her Left to such an extent that it is widely suspected that she is engineering a stealth No Deal. Should either mistrust prove founded, there would be the numbers to support an opposition-led No Confidence vote, but that would be the only way to remove her and they would have to face a General Election whose result is highly uncertain.

The twelve-month moritorium on further votes was introduced to give the leader some security again endless Votes of Confidence, but it may prove to the decisive factor in unseating Mrs. May. A calculating Tory MP on the Remain side might rationally conclude that keeping her in place is hardly worse than having even the most loathed Brexiter in her place. (Indeed, there is a reasonable argument for saying that a loathed Brexiter in her place might be very good for a Remainer, giving considerable cover for moves against future government motions.)

When neither wing has a possible route to victory, it hardly matters what the result is, and that's how Mrs. May got the job in the first place.

[Image copyright: Reuters]

Everyone Says I Hate You

The unmasking of Harvey Weinstein (if one can describe as an unmasking the public revelation that what he appeared - on the most cursory of glances - to be was actually what he was) has led to a remarkable wave of self-congratulation in Hollywood. Weinstein, a traditionalist who seemingly regarded the starlets as his own personal seraglio, was, until 2017, doing pretty much what the rest of us thought most producers were doing. Had he not actually attempted to ruin the careers of his more unyielding targets, he would almost certainly have harassed his way into a comfortable retirement. Now he's long gone, and we are told that a new spirit has seized not only the film industry but all other industries, as though some sort of leadership role is automatically conferred to the industry with the most appalling wrongdoers. It's almost like Volkswagen gets to lead the world in anti-Vivisection campaigning.

This has now become a problem for Woody Allen, who has certainly slept with more than one of his leading ladies (Diane Keaton & Mia Farrow to name but two) but not, as far as anyone knows, outside the bounds of strict propriety. And I think that we now would know, because open season has been announced. For the most part this involves the Clintonian defence from actors: they worked with him once, they didn't inhale and they wouldn't do it again. Rebecca Hall, Colin Firth & Mira Sorvino are just some of those doing the walk of shame, apologising for having dared work with him in the first place.

People are choosing to believe that the furore over Allen goes back to 2014, when Dylan Farrow tried (somewhat unsuccessfully) to get actors interested in her renewed accusation that the director had molested her. The reality of the matter is that everyone of an age to remember will recall that these accusations came to light at the time of Allen's separation from Mia Farrow in 1992. So the much-repeated excuse from actors that "I wouldn't have worked with him if I had known then what I now know" rings pretty empty, even were they to know what they are claiming to know. Moreover, even if you set aside the idea that Allen molested one adopted daughter, it is a matter of public record that another adopted daughter - whom he first met at about the age of nine and to whom he owed an unambiguous duty of care - became his sexual partner and subsequently his wife. It's odd to take in one's stride the relationship with Soon-Yi and yet baulk at the accusations regarding Dylan.

These actors posturing over Allen are therefore wrong in two different ways. In the first place, if they are concerned about his sexual biography then they had plenty of reason to avoid him in 1992. If they were worried about the Dylan Farrow accusations, these have been known for as long as many of them have had careers. Yet they were investigated and no prosecution brought at the time. The Law did not sleep over Allen the way that it could be said to have done about other historic accusations. Isn't punishing someone because one believes the legal system to have failed the very definition of Vigilantism?

Greta Gerwig's "come to Jesus" moment was seemingly being nominated for two Academy awards. Gerwig had appeared in the 2012 film To Rome With Love and, like every actor who appears in an Allen-helmed feature, had presumably enjoyed the career boost that comes from inclusion in one of the director's stellar ensembles. It was a useful step up for a young actress, but now her movie Lady Bird is up for several Oscars and, frankly, this is no time to leave dots undotted and crosses uncrossed. So she came out and joined the attack on Allen. She also "guided" another Lady Bird actor, Timothée Chamalet, to donate his fee from another Allen film to charity.

Gerwig doesn't strike me as an activist. Her previous brush with controversy came only last year after she signed a letter opposing an Israeli-backed play. She later climbed down from her support, writing in words that seem especially ironic today that "to put my name to something outside my personal realm of knowledge or experience was a mistake - my mistake - and I am sorry for any confusion or hurt I may have caused'. Her stated positions are at the very least subject to review.

But more worrying than Gerwig herself is what her behaviour says about an industry that was so recently terrorised by Weinstein. If, as Sordel suspects, she fears that insufficient condemnation of Allen may tip the balance in Oscar deliberations, doesn't this show that while the new boss is not the same as the old boss, it is still a boss that governs through terror? Now that Allen's star is seen on the wane it is hardly surprising to see people turn on him. Genuflecting to Power is still the only game in town when L.A. is the town under consideration.



Picture credit to Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49011499

Era Of Vandals

There's a moment in the movie Die Hard when Hans Gruber, after executing the hapless Harry Ellis whose life he had sought to trade for his stolen detonators, utters to McClane the neglected but immortal line: "Sooner or later, I might get to someone you do care about!"

The war over the Confederate Statues follows the same logic: a war in which - since the point is to provoke - the "Abolitionist" side will always move to the next target in line. Once the statues are gone, the next targets will be "Sweet Home Alabama" & "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". Warner Bros. will withdraw Gone With The Wind from sale. After that, Civil War reenactors will be prevented from commemorating any battle won by the Confederacy; then anyone wearing a grey uniform for such purposes will be egged or worse. If you don't care about any of these things, don't worry ... eventually they'll get to something you do care about.

Today's Guardian floats the idea that Nelson's column should be next: it comes complete with a cartoon showing not the statue being removed to a museum, but pulled down, evidently to smash on the ground below. Are you provoked yet? Don't worry, we'll get there.

The author of the article, Afua Hirsch, appeared in the newspaper in 2012 dressed in what Sordel supposes to be traditional Ghanaian clothing and announcing herself as part of the diaspora now returning to the country. During her time there she produced a number of articles of patient virtue including the important (with titles such as Ghana's cashew farmers struggle to share in the profit of their labours & Ghana accuses Environcom of illegal fridge imports) as well as the frothy (Ghana: the new Ibiza for international party set). Now, however, she lives in the UK and writes things designed to upset you and get picked up in social media. Sordel was previously irritated by her article about her experiences as a black student at Oxford but not quite enough to contribute the nutshell's broad readership to her circulation. But she'll get to someone I do care about one of these days.

We in the UK are very on-message about hate speech. It helps that it is prohibited by law of course (no such luck in the U.S.) but it also helps that we don't care about the American Civil War and that the people with the swastikas self-identify as the bad guys. So the Vandals are going to have to go after more central British cultural images: Colston Hall (mentioned of course in Hirsch's article); Admiral Lord Nelson; the Last Night of the Proms. Do you really care about these things, faithful Reader? No, me either.

How are you on the Pre-Raphaelites? All those ivory skins and red hair; an art market explicitly fostered by the profits of the Victorian Age. Alma-Tadema's white-washed vision of the Classical past. Or how about Plato & Aristotle themselves, those idle speculators in a culture propped up by the labour of slaves? Sooner or later ...

The thin end of the edge is already in. Perhaps the seeds of this age of idol-smashing was the fall of Saddam's statue. Sordel watched it live on TV: the all-too-ironic way that a U.S. vehicle tore down the statue because the protestors were unable to tear it down themselves. The symbolism was spot on. But then, last year, one of the Iraqis who was involved gave an interview in which he says that he regretted doing it: "now there are 1000 Saddams". If you don't have anything to put in its place, why destroy anything?

The age of great statuary is over. We can't afford to build new statues even if we could agree on who should be there. There is an empty plinth in Trafalgar Square where artworks stand for a short time before being removed, but soon all the plinths will be empty.

We are in the midst of a slow, relentless replaying of Mao's Cultural Revolution, and as with its precursor it is the young who will execute the policy. Civic pride is a vice of age; irreverence for institutions is a virtue of youth. But these young will be led by those like Hirsch "doing well by doing good". And the Vandals didn't stop at the gates of Rome.

The Prisoners of Number Ten

The problem for the Conservative Party is not that it won too few seats, but that it won too many.

Being out of office for a political party is an occupational hazard and in some respects one of those healthy burns that Nature uses to keep a forest growing. Had the Conservatives lost, they could have taken Theresa May out back with that 12-bore reserved for the purpose, and cleanly begun the task of replacing her with a new leader. Boris, encouraged by the thought of years jeering from the Opposition benches at the hapless Corbyn, would joyfully come off the bench, affording both the Tories and the General Public great entertainment without anyone having to risk giving him any actual responsibility.

Moreover, not being in government would be something of a gift right now. Tories on both the Remain & Leave sides could come together to make common cause in criticising whatever slim pickings a Labour government might be able to secure from the EU by way of Brexit settlement. All the problems that currently fall to them would be pushed off onto Labour.

Were Corbyn to underperform against the high standards that he has set himself (as he surely would) he would disappoint the hopes of his younger supporters who would - like every starry-eyed generation of dreamers before them - become cynical inactivists. As it is, they will continue to support Labour in opposition, building a head of steam for the moment when he gets his next chance.

Due to their inconvenient success, the Tories can obtain none of the benefits of second place. Since neither Boris (nor anyone else) wants to lead a minority government tasked with impossible and critical negotiations with the EU, it will be very difficult to replace Theresa May. They are saddled with a lame duck leader who got the job because no one wanted it and will now keep it for precisely the same reason. How long they can tolerate the sight of her limping on with shattered authority is very questionable: John Major pulled it off with some aplomb, but Theresa May is nothing like John Major.

Worse, Tory hands are completely tied: if they opt for a soft Brexit they will be pilloried by their own Eurosceptics & eventually face a General Election at which the votes of former UKIP voters will bleed away; if they opt for a hard Brexit they will be defeated by a grand coalition of the Remainers.

The Tories felt that another period of government would be their reward but it is becoming increasingly obvious that it is actually their punishment.