Celebrating Britishness before it's too late

My keyboard is misbehaving today - when I try to type i I get ik7, - but I can cut and paste. So hear is some great comment on the referendum debate.

First, Ian Jack (one of my favourite journalists) mourns the possible end of Britishness:

In the SNP’s big-change but no-change version of independence, nobody’s identity is at risk. If people want to think of themselves as British as well as Scottish, then they can keep calm and carry on. 

As Salmond wrote, soothingly, in the same document: “Much of what Scotland will be like the day after independence will be similar to the day before: people will go to work, pensions and benefits will be collected, children will go out to play and life will be as normal.” 

And of course it will. But gradually British identity will wither. If it survives at all, it will become narrow, eccentric, strident and romantic, like so many other national identities that have been deprived of their states and institutions. I value it too much to want that. 

Gordon Brown erred when, as prime minister, he attempted to enunciate his list of “British values” – which turned out to be the values of most civilised nations. He would have been wiser to have written, as Orwell did, about its characteristics rather than what he imagined to be its longstanding moral beliefs. 

The markers of Britishness for me include empiricism, irony, the ad hoc approach, pluralism, and a critical awareness of its own rich and sometimes appalling history. It’s sceptical, too: it has seen a thing or two and knows nothing lasts. 

But perhaps what recommends it most is the frail senescence that makes it an undemanding kind of belonging, and unexpectedly fits it for the modern world. 

The untangling of the institutions – military, administrative, academic, ambassadorial, commercial, cultural – that have sustained this identity can’t but be painfully destructive. The past 300 years have not been about nothing.

Next, Paul Mason attends #LetsStayTogether in Trafalgar Square:

I’ve been thinking about what was different to the vibe last night and, say, the Olympic opening ceremony designed by Danny Boyle. Boyle’s spectacle was brash, drew on a Brits-via-Hollywood meme, and placed heavy stress on working class culture (Abide With Me) and the folk traditions of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. 

The Dan Snow/Bob Geldof version drew much more on poetry, the non-national and even laid claim to internationalism (The Night Mail, by gay, communist conscientious objector WH Auden was read out.) 

So maybe, if you want a Britishness that exists at a higher level than medleys of regional folk songs, this is what you have to accept. 

There was no mention of royalty, or Dunkirk. Nobody shouted “British jobs for British workers”, as Gordon Brown did to the Labour party conference once. You can have strident English nationalism of the EDL and generations of far right football hooligans. 

You can have the progressive English nationalism we saw around Euro 96. You can have the sturm und drang available to both sides in Northern Ireland, or the soaring, class-based patriotism that transports rugby crowds at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium.

But maybe you can’t have a strident *British* nationalism. Maybe that’s the subtextual mistake all those lectern-banging politicians have been making. Maybe it has to be something quiet.

Then Isabel Hardman dissects "The Vow" made by the three party leaders:

It doesn’t matter how many front pages you sign next to your new promise to Scottish voters, you’ve still only unveiled this offer in the last two weeks. If you had it planned for ages, then why wait until the point that it’s so late you appear desperate? Or if you’ve only cobbled together this promise in the last few weeks, then is it really a good idea.

Finally, Nick Cohen shows that Scottish nationalism is as pernicious as any other variety:

Nationalists build walls to keep their people in and the rest out. They create ‘us’ and ‘them’. Friends and enemies. If you disagree, if you say they have no right to speak for you because not all Scots/Serbs/Germans/Russians/Israelis think the same or recognise their lines of the map, you become a traitor to the collective. The fashionable phrase ‘the other’ is one of the few pieces of sociological jargon that enriches thought. All enforcers of political, religious and nationalist taboos need an ‘other’ to define themselves against, and keep the tribe in line. 

The process of separation and vilification is depressing to watch but familiar enough. Scottish nationalists are preparing a rarer trick, last seen in the dying days of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. They are trying to break up an existing multi-national state and turn neighbours into foreigners. They want people, who have lived together, worked together, loved each other, had children together, moved into each other countries and out again, to be packaged and bound up in hermetically sealed boxes labelled ‘Scots’ and ‘English’.

The notion that Scottish nationalism is always cosy and ‘civic’ has flourished without challenge. Alex Salmond’s greatest propaganda success has been to limit debate. If you are outside Scotland, and disagree with him, you have no right to comment on its internal affairs. If you are inside, you are ‘talking down Scotland’; showing yourself to be a self-hating Scot unfit to serve on its ‘Team’. 

The nationalists have bullied too many into silence. People who know better have not spelt out the costs of separatism, or said clearly that progressive forces will suffer most. 

How can they not? Nationalism will allow capital to remain global, while forcing arbitrary local divisions on labour. Brian Souter and Rupert Murdoch have flirted with Salmond because they can sniff a small state coming that must, whatever its currency turns out to be, run surpluses and build reserves to please the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and, above all, a market that will punish the tiniest step away from neo-liberal orthodoxy. 

The currency question has no answer except deeper and wider austerity. That people who think of themselves as left wing can brush it aside and pretend that working and middle-class Scots won’t suffer is a self-deception so extreme it borders on religious fantasy.

Keyboard latest: the backspace is working again.

David Wynne, Boy with a Dolphin and Ozric Tentacles

Photo: Keith Pitchforth

The sculptor David Wynne died earlier this month.

I remember seeing a marquette of his Boy with a Dolphin on the Antiques Roadshow one Sunday. The next day, after calling in at the Liberal Democrat News office at Cowley Street, I walked along the bank of the Thames to Chelsea, where I came across the real thing.

The model for the boy was Wynne's son Roly, who grew up to be the bass player with Ozric Tentacles. He died in 1999.

Yes Scotland has lost the referendum campaign

Terrific stuff from Cicero's Songs:

Yes Scotland have comprehensively lost the intellectual argument. They have been totally destroyed. From currency, to healthcare, to pensions every argument that they have put forward has been eviscerated. 

It is not that Yes Scotland has more emotion that bothers me- it is that they only have emotion. All rational considerations have been ditched and those who raise the perfectly valid questions of how - practically - Scotland can avoid serious problems, are dismissed without any attempt to answer the questions.

And he later says:

This referendum has been divisive and dangerous, and no matter who wins, it will be difficult to heal the wounds that have been created. 

Now, the process of healing must begin, but the Yes campaign should understand there has been emotion - and increasingly that emotion is abiding anger at the way that they have dismissed so lightly all the serious concerns that any rational observer would have at making such a big step.

Just to cheer you up, let me add a passage from Shuggy's Blog that I quoted yesterday:

This is not a national independence movement that requires any struggle or sacrifice but rather one that promises that nothing and everything will change. Keep the Queen, the open border, the currency - you'll hardly notice a thing, except your wallet becoming a bit fatter. 

It is the lie of painlessness and that it is so widely-believed is storing up trouble for the future for this country, regardless of the outcome. For who do you imagine the nationalists will blame if they're denied this decaffeinated national rebirth, or if they get it and then realise it isn't how they were told to imagine it? Certainly not themselves.

 

Trivial Fact of the Day with Norman Lamb

Norman Lamb began his political career as a researcher for the Labour MP Greville Janner.

It's amazing what you learn on Wikipedia.

Paddy Ashdown on the global power shift

From the TED website:

Paddy Ashdown claims that we are living in a moment in history where power is changing in ways it never has before. In a spellbinding talk he outlines the three major global shifts that he sees coming.

This talk was filmed atTEDxBrussels in December 2011.

Six of the Best 464

"This is not a national independence movement that requires any struggle or sacrifice but rather one that promises that nothing and everything will change. Keep the Queen, the open border, the currency - you'll hardly notice a thing, except your wallet becoming a bit fatter. It is the lie of painlessness and that it is so widely-believed is storing up trouble for the future for this country, regardless of the outcome. For who do you imagine the nationalists will blame if they're denied this decaffeinated national rebirth, or if they get it and then realise it isn't how they were told to imagine it? Certainly not themselves." Shuggy pus his finger on the dishonesty of the Yes campaign.

Towards the Sound of Gunfire reveals how thin on the ground Liberal Democrats now are in many parts of the country.

David Hencke on a crunch week for the child sex abuse inquiry.

On the Spiked Review of Books, Bruno Waterfield stands up for George Orwell against Will Self.

"The man who had created the world’s greatest detective never knew how badly astray his own investigation had gone. In part to avoid embarrassing him, Elsie and Frances did not reveal the secret of the paper cutouts until long after his death." Mary Losure, on The Public Domain Review, looks at Arthur Conan Doyle and the fairies.

Retronaut presents maps from the Festival of Britain.

One the for the writer's notebook

This afternoon I was passing a house where two small boys were climbing on the fence in the front garden.

Their mother came out and the following dialogue took place.

MOTHER: Don't climb on the fence.

FIRST BOY: Why not?

MOTHER: Because your father put it up and it's very likely to fall down.

This sort of thing happens to people like Alan Bennett all the time.

Market Harborough Arts Fresco 2014

My mother is home but needs a lot of looking after, so I was able to pay only a flying visit to Arts Fresco today.

But it was good to see it back in the town.

Elvis Costello and the Attractions: Watch Your Step

When East Midlands Trains warned its passengers to "Watch Your Step" I used it as an excuse to post the Spencer Davis Group cover of the song of that name by Bobby Parker.

But in the comments on that post Asquith sent to me to this terrific song from Costello's fifth album (and fourth with the Attractions), Trust. Like the best of his early work, it is perfectly poised between beauty and menace.

The video shows a live performance on American television. Elvis Costello was interviewed, and it is amusing to see him encountering a chat show host from another era. Note also that in those days he had far more of a London accent than we are now used to hearing from him.

Back to Purple on the Stiperstones

When the mining industry petered out on the Stiperstones in the 20th century, many of the remains were disguised by the planting of conifers.

In recent years the Back to Purple project has seem those conifers cleared and the original vegetation of heather and bilberry (whinberry in Shropshire) restored.

Alex Salmond and Rupert Murdoch

“@SnoozeInBrief: Yeah, an independent Scotland would see a completely new style of politics. #indyref pic.twitter.com/LP5ePulhCH” Lol or cry
— Kevin Maguire (@Kevin_Maguire) September 13, 2014

This tweet reminds me of something I blogged in 2012 after Alex Salmond refused to meet the Dalai Lama during his visit to Scotland:

I am instinctively sympathetic to the idea of small nations, but today's events have done nothing to make the prospect of an independent Scotland more attractive. 

They have reminded me of Alex Salmond's appearance before the Leveson Inquiry. You can read his evidence on the inquiry website, but this quote from a Daily Record report is telling: 

“I have no responsibility for broadcasting policy, I have no responsibility for plurality in the press but I do have a responsibility for jobs and investment in Scotland.” 

I don't find the idea that the provision of jobs in Scotland trumps concerns of media plurality or media ethics appealing. And if you heard Salmond you would have gained the impression that he would have little time for such considerations even if they were his legal responsibility. 

It is easy to imagine an independent Scotland, at least one with Salmond and the SNP in charge, being a little too keen to placate the powerful and unattractive, whether it is Rupert Murdoch or the Chinese government, out of a fear of losing jobs.

It also reminds me of this Herald report from the following year:

The police investigation into alleged misconduct by journalists in Scotland has effectively come to an end. 

Spending on Operation Rubicon has fallen to a trickle, and, by this summer, only three officers were working on the probe. 

Moreover, John McSporran, who was the senior investigating officer on the case, has retired from the force. In reference to Rubicon, 

McSporran said on his social media profile: "Retired at the end of this enquiry." ... 

During the Leveson inquiry, set up to examine the ethics of the press, the then chief constable of Strathclyde, Stephen House, said he had "no doubt" there were individuals in his force "who are in receipt of money from various people". 

As a result of the investigation, Bob Bird, the former editor of the Scottish edition of the News of the World, was charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice. 

Douglas Wight, news editor on the Sunday tabloid, was charged with perjury, conspiring to hack phones, and of multiple counts of conspiracy to obtain personal data. 

However, despite an initial flurry of activity, the work of Operation Rubicon now looks to be at an end.

William Hague knew of Sir Peter Morrison's possible involvement in child abuse in North Wales

In July I wrote about Sir Peter Morrison and the rumours that circulated about him in the late 1980s.

Today's Daily Mail prints an extract from the new, expanded edition of Gyles Brandreth's Breaking the Code (which I mentioned a couple of days ago). Brandreth succeeded Morrison as Conservative MP for the City of Chester constituency.

Brandreth, as well as discussing his own experiences at prep school, writes:

The first, and only, official acknowledgement of my predecessor’s possible involvement in child abuse came my way in 1996, when William Hague, then Secretary of State for Wales, came up to me in the Commons to let me know that he had ordered an inquiry into allegations of child abuse in care homes in North Wales between 1974 and 1990 - and that Morrison’s name might feature in connection with the Bryn Estyn home in Wrexham, 12 miles from Chester.

As Brandreth says, nothing has been proved against Morrison. But Hague's warning does suggest these allegations were taken seriously in Conservative government circles.

Donald Sinden and Diana Dors

#2658623 / gettyimages.com

Photographed on the set of An Alligator Named Daisy with the eponymous crocodilian and Richard Wattis.

"For very good reasons, Britain's political parties do not campaign on election day"

Iain Martin, billed by the Telegraph as a "political commentator", wins our Bizarre Opening Sentence of the Day Award.

He reminds me of polling day at Richmond upon Thames in the 1983 general election. Having been up to do the good mornings and working ever since, I arrived on a doorstep 10 minutes before the polls closed.

A Conservative Party worker arrived on the same doorstep at the same moment. We compared notes and found we were there to knock up the same person.

Escaped LOBSTER found in Northampton town centre by shocked member of the public

In an extraordinary development, our Headline of the Day Award goes for the second consecutive day to a story involving lobsters.

Yesterday it was the Cambridge News: today the Northants Herald & Post.

Mind you, the best lobster story of all remains the one from Market Harborough.

Stewart Lee on Mel Gibson and Braveheart

Some of the wilder voices on the Yes side of the referendum campaign are convinced that Scotland was once conquered by England.

In reality, the union of crowns was entirely voluntary. You could not see James VI's backside for dust when he was offered the throne of England, and there were soon complaints about the preference shown to Scots at the court in Whitehall.

Perhaps the belief that Scotland was conquered comes from Braveheart. If that is so, allow Stewart Lee to put you right.

An expanded edition of Breaking the Code by Gyles Brandreth

Exaro News promises us fresh revelations about Peter Morrison and the operations of the Conservative whips in a new, expanded edition of Gyles Brandreth's Breaking the Code.

Which gives me a chance to praise the first edition of that book. I once described it in Liberal Democrat News as:

a readable account of the last Conservative administration. Elected in 1992, Brandreth began as a government backbencher. He makes it clear what an awful job that is. It's not, as young idealists fear, that you may be forced to vote against your principles. It's more that you vote in the small hours when you have no idea what is at stake and would much rather be in bed.

Silent lobster vigil marred with arrest ‘over blowing a whistle’ outside Cambridge restaurant

Headline of the Day goes to the Cambridge News.

Market Harborough is the drinking capital of the Midlands

Cool as Leicester writes:

There has long been many a campaign to persuade consumers, where possible, to buy British. To protect British industry and producers. And long may that continue. But local communities are now beginning to focus their loyalty further by looking to support a “Buy Local” movement. 

There are few places where this is more evident than in Market Harborough, where local businesses proudly display “Buy Local” slogans, in support of local producers and businesses. In some areas, this might mean to sacrifice quality for community support, but with the quality of producers and businesses for food and drink in Harborough, buying local is to discover some remarkable quality produced on your doorstep. In particular, there is a whole world of outstanding alcoholic drinks to be discovered.

Warner Edwards gin on Countryfile

I have been known to sing the praises of Harringon gin distillers Warner Edwards.

Here they are on Countryfile.