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.

The Last Gasp

Compared with the EU Referendum the 2017 UK General Election has been conducted in a spirit of considerable decorum. But then, compared to the EU Referendum, The Jeremy Kyle Show is conducted in a spirit of considerable decorum.

The Conservatives had two ideas at the outset: Jeremy Corbyn can't be trusted with the Brexit negotiations; and, Jeremy Corbyn can't be trusted. (It's one idea really.) In terms of positive campaigning, we have Theresa May's proud adoption of the "bloody difficult woman" nickname (an equivocal compliment at best) and her eleventh hour promise to do away with some of those pesky human rights. Otherwise, the strategy was to keep reminding people that the "leader" of the Labour Party is someone that the Great British Public already dislikes. If Corbyn is unthinkable then May is inevitable.

More significantly, the attacks on Corbyn have largely been matters of fact & record. He's opposed to the use of nuclear weapons and would not authorise a retaliatory strike. He is a Republican sympathiser (both Irish and, for that matter, English) and does not condemn the IRA. He is anti-Israeli and more comfortable than is entirely proper in the company of some of Israel's extremist enemies. He is ideologically wedded to a significant expansion of government spending based on tax-raising calculations that are at best back-of-envelope guesstimates. While Boris Johnson certainly went too far in describing Corbyn as a "friend of Britain's enemies" who "opposed shoot-to-kill" you can say quite a lot against Corbyn without actually having to make stuff up.

Yet precisely because Corbyn is seemingly willing to stand by so many of his past statements, it makes it difficult to use other innuendoes against him. Corbyn is opposed to "shoot-to-kill" in the sense of state-authorised assassination, but he has been unambiguous in his approval of the use of lethal force against terrorists during an incident. He opposes Israel but condemns anti-Semitism: some regard that as an implausible distinction but he doesn't seem to be lying.

On the other hand, there is too much that we don't know about May. Her stated policies - taking apart human rights legislation, taking away free lunches in primary schools, charging directly for social care provision - are, frankly, the stuff of The Left's most paranoid nightmares, yet these are the very measures which the Conservatives hope will enthrall your vote. Not to mention the free vote that they are offering on fox hunting: Sordel doesn't have strong feelings about that one, but it's hardly the most pressing business to which Commons time might be devoted.

Looking at Theresa May it's difficult to argue with the feeling that she has run a "Hillary Clinton" campaign: assuming that she will be elected on the basis that she is clearly the lesser of two evils without offering any sort of social vision around which voters can rally. Public approval of Mrs. May was tepid at the outset: she will be breaking ice to swim in it now.

Whoever wins this week there are dark days ahead since neither Labour (consistently behind in the polls & with an ungovernable parliamentary party) nor the Conservatives (with a badly wounded leader & recovering from a nasty scare in terms of their poll decline) are in the best shape to govern Britain.

On balance, it seems that the most likely winner of this election will be the E.U.

The Blame Game

The Independent had some interesting results on public opinion regarding the party leaders. The idea was to compare how much of a net drag the leader's popularity was on the party. Theresa May scored a healthy +6%: of those who liked either her or her party, more liked her than liked her party. Jeremy Corbyn, in marked contrast, scored -24%: of those who liked him or his party, far more liked his party than liked him.

If you were planning the campaign for the Conservative Party, you would probably push May into the spotlight, and this is of course what the Conservatives have done. As campaign planner for the Labour Party you would probably bind & gag Corbyn and lock him in a broom cupboard, yet Labour has also pushed Corbyn into prominence: he, Diane Abbott & John McDonnell have become the three-faced goddess of the Labour campaign.

Partly this is probably recognition from the party leadership that if Corbyn doesn't speak for himself then none of the moderates are likely to speak on his behalf. But it also seems highly likely that the Parliamentary Labour Party - seeing inevitable & swift defeat racing towards them - is isolating Corbyn so that he can become the scapegoat of their collective failure.

Unfortunately for them, this may backfire.

Corbyn cannot win this election, but to a certain extent he doesn't need to. Since the election was announced, Labour has stubbornly risen in the polls from a low point of 24% (probably an outlier) to a high of 32%. Even allowing for errors and the fact that Labour historically performs better in polls than elections, that suggests a 5% rise against a very popular government during a period when most Labour MPs have either been sitting on their hands or publicly saying that Corbyn is poison on the doorstep.

Moreover, the visuals of the campaign are playing into Corbyn's hands. The Prime Minister, attempting to sit on her lead and disinclined to take any risks, has thus far underperformed to what in another election would be an alarming degree. So far, the stories about Theresa May have been about an unconvincing performance as human being on The One Show and an attempt to eat chips sponsored by Photoshop. Her disciplined focus on the phrase strong and stable (which will probably help to win her the election but does nothing to endear her to journalists) only reinforces an impression of tedious stolidity.

Corbyn, however, has made some running. Appearing to cheering crowds of the faithful, he has reinforced the impression that those who like him do so less grudgingly than May's supporters. The likelihood of a landslide against Labour is now all but discounted: Corbyn could come away with a win by showing a roughly equivalent performance to Ed Miliband, which is what current predictions suggest will happen.

After all, there is a lot in this election that is not Corbyn's fault. He cannot be held to account for the collapse of UKIP or the good will currently extended to Theresa May by those who backed Brexit. He's hardly responsible for the fact that the Liberal Democrats (last bastion of the self-proclaimed 48%) are languishing at a dismal 8% of the vote in current predictions. It's difficult to see what he could have done to strengthen Labour in Scotland, where the battle lines seem to have been drawn on The Union & the EU.

It's not entirely impossible that both of the antagonists in this gladiatorial competition will come away with a win.

And whom will Labour MPs (such that remain) blame then?

"Have You No Sense Of Decency Sir?"

Amongst the electrifying moments of political history, one of the most memorable is surely Joseph N. Welch's response to Joe McCarthy. Welch, Chief Counsel to the U.S. Army at a time when it was being investigated by Senate Committee on Investigations, had turned the table on McCarthy wth allegations of cronyism. In response, McCarthy sought to blacken the name of a young attorney in Welch's own firm who had previously been a member of a professional organisation deemed to have Communist leanings, prompting Welch's famous rebuke: "Have you no sense of decency Sir?"

Sordel doesn't have a vote in U.S. elections but can hardly be imagined to be a Republican sympathiser in general or someone who would make common cause with Donald Trump. That said, it has become increasingly clear that someone needs to ask Trump's opponents Welch's question. Have they no decency? Is there nothing to which they will not stoop to blacken the man's name?

For years we were rightly told by Democrats that there was something troubling about the so-called "birther" lie that Barack Obama had been born in Kenya rather than Hawaii and was therefore ineligible to become President. To be sure, it was problematic accusation since what seemed like a nice legal point also had a discernible undercurrent of racism. But where a person is born is rather beyond their control. Had Obama been born in Kenya, it would not have amounted to a fault, merely a technical disqualification.

Donald Trump, however, has been branded "a self-confessed molester of women", someone with an incestuous passion for his daughter, a crook, a "vile misogynist", a "Russian stooge" & someone already convicted in court of public opinion of treason.

There are those amongst these accusations which are thin in the extreme: for example, an Australian politician's claim that Trump is a "self-confessed molester of women and [has] green-lighted sexual assaults" is obvious nonsense. Trump never said that he had personally grabbed women by the pussy, made it clear that consent was granted ("they let you do anything"), claimed this dubious privilege only for a "star" (not your regular working stiff) and can hardly have been said to give the green light for anything in a private conversation. Trump may, in fact, be a molester for all Sordel knows (there have been occasional stories but surprisingly few for a man who was going about shaking hands with completely the wrong part of a woman's anatomy) but all Sordel knows in this case is pretty much all that you, Constant Reader, know.

If any of these allegations against Trump were true, it would be a big deal, but it has become increasingly clear that the anti-Trump movement doesn't care.

Consider the treason allegation. In some fanciful minds (not all those who use the term, but certainly some) Russia decided to "turn" a TV celebrity notably lacking in even the most elementary espionage skills (such as discretion), ran him in a presidential campaign that he seemed all but certain to lose and then "rigged" the election so that they could have their man in The White House. Prima facie evidence of collusion is very, very, very thin and it is important to bear in mind that - even if the Russians did, as supposed, hack the DNC servers and leak the results in a bid to turn the course of the election - those leaks actually had virtually no effect on public opinion during the Presidential election, being completely dwarfed in importance by a great many other factors. Among those factors was another leak: the leak of Trump's "Pussygate" conversation, which no one seems to object to in the least despite the fact that there was a clearer public interest for the publication of the DNC leak than there was for the Pussygate one. (And yes, a leak orchestrated on the basis of an illegal operation by a foreign country would, of course, be different from a leak by a U.S. citizen but nonetheless, there is a double standard at work here.)

It is not Sordel's business to determine whether Trump is, in fact, a Russian sleeper agent or a misogynist etc. etc. That's not my point. My point is that with Trump a psychological point seems to have been crossed at which what people are prepared to say about a sitting President is no longer innuendo about where he was born or what religion he follows in secret. Now it's everything you can possibly say about another human being, whatever the evidence. Often the people who say these things hardly seem to believe them, resorting to the childish excuse that "they started it." If you value Truth at all, then your valuation should not change depending on how much your opponent lies.

What route is there forward for the U.S. now? What businessman will ever stand for the Presidency again? Why would next election's losers ever hold themselves to a higher standard than the last election's losers? Whatever happened to the fundamental decency of the Left?

Or are they just all Joe McCarthy now?

Ghosts of the Barely Civil Undead

If the media consensus is to be believed the UK currently finds itself in middle of an election campaign that has been greeted with public apathy. Presumably, voters are bored for the same reason that shooting fish in a barrel never caught on as a spectator sport: rather than sportingly let her opponents get a head start in the renewed race for number ten, Theresa May called the election when she already had a considerable poll lead.

Unfortunately, bored journalists looking to make a story out of nothing have two sources of potential headlines close at hand: Tony Blair & George Osborne.

Blair's so-called return to politics is, of course, nothing of the sort. He has been a constant feature of the political landscape for the last year: he campaigned against both the Brexit side of referendum & Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour with all the determination of a man who has been on the wrong side of public opinion before and will be damned if he doesn't place himself on the wrong side of it again. Blair is not so much back as ever with us like the poor, and that era of foreign wars of which he was a principal architect.

Osborne, on the other hand, has been licking his wounds since last July. He is a man with a very particular claim to fame, having lead a campaign that failed to secure a Remain vote in the referendum despite having all three governing parties (&, for that matter, the SNP) on his side. As if that failure was not feather enough in his cap he is then reputed to have attempted to have May removed from her post at the Home Office as punishment for her failure to support his campaign more full-throatedly, laying the ground for a splendid reversal of fortunes of the sort more usually found in Game of Thrones.

Last September, it was reported that Osborne was attempting to cast himself as "the Tory opposition to Hard Brexit" and "revealed" that he was "considering a return to front line politics". All very "Tony Blair", who has been threatening something similar in an attempt to hold the media spotlight.

Now, however, Osborne has availed himself of a pulpit somewhat different from the anonymity of the back benches, as he has become the editor of the London Evening Standard, a paper that was described at one point as "a mouthpiece of the Conservative Party" but which has now recovered some measure of independence by trashing May's campaign (by no means unfairly) for its reliance on sloganeering above policy detail.

So here we have two senior politicians - both, in some measure, great successes & stupefying failures - who have decided to bring the force of their debatable insight to bear upon the leaders of their respective parties. Blair is trying to work up some enthusiasm for tactical voting & a progressive alliance; Osborne is sniping at the woman who sacked him, arguably in the hope that he can speed the Wheel of Fortune's inevitable turn towards the moment when he can inherit the party to which he is currently showing disputable loyalty.

Yet neither of these men wishes to serve. They airily speak of returning to politics, but not the politics of constituency surgeries, just the politics of enjoying an unelected vantage point for commentary. They are perfect representatives of the political class that played duck & cover when the EU referendum backfired: the class of which Boris and Cameron are also such perfect examples. They know all about cars just as long as they are kicking someone else's tyres.

And when it comes to unelected vantage points for commentary, the line forms behind Sordel.