In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

  • Message to Keir Starmer

    Dear Keir Starmer,

    I’m a Labour member and a strong supporter and admirer of your leadership. I am sending this email message – and will upload a copy on my blog – fully aware that there is no prospect that you will read it. But, maybe, one of your team will.

    I can see, of course, that a Brexit Deal would be better than a Brexit No Deal. But should Labour therefore actually support a Deal, (assuming that Johnson’s oven will eventually cough up some indigestible mess or other) ? Doing so would of course be seen and used as a statement of the Party’s support for Brexit, making it available to share the blame, when the true consequences at last hit home. This is an extremely difficult call to make. But I think that for Labour to support any Brexit at all would be both wrong and politically unwise.

    I don’t always agree with Alistair Campbell, but respect him ; he knows his way around and, writing recently on this issue, was at his most disciplined and impressive ; he was also simply right (his piece was in “The Independent” and may not be accessible to a non-member. But I recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it) : https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/labour-boris-johnson-brexit-deal-b1763806.html

    And I agree wholeheartedly with Neil Kinnock here :  https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/04/neil-kinnock-backing-brexit-deal-politically-lethal-for-labour  Let Johnson and the Tories be made to own the disgrace and disaster they have brought on this country. They alone. That way lies the nation’s best hope of recovery.

    These two pieces make the points better than I can and with rather more authority. I would just add the following : Brexit is not really an argument at all, not a policy, not a strategy, not an answer, not a sustainable future.   It is delusion land, lie land, regressive escapism and scapegoating, a going rogue, out of which some dishonest or deluded politicians and press barons are seeking to make profit. Yet the nation is split on the issue, and Johnson is consequently Prime Minister, as if Brexit and “Global Britain” etc belong in the real world, the light of day, among the adults. Like Trumpism, they don’t. They are chaos running loose. And Labour should not engage with the present puerile “deal or no deal” theatricals, because doing so would just add to those shadows on the wall, those phantom shapes playing in the nursery, claiming to belong under the sun. Brexit will disappoint at best, deal or no deal. Then at last we shall meet reality, rather than continue to waste our energies arguing over a bunch of projected shadows. Let reality do the talking. And let Labour have its powder dry for when that reality has sunk in and people can see it for themselves, see the lie and the fraud and see the liars and the fraudsters. Then there will be work to do.

    One other thing. That “Red Wall” argument. Erstwhile Labour supporters have joined the delusion, bewitched by this Etonian pied piper, with his wearisome smirk and hair akimbo. And it is almost certainly they who will be hit hardest of all by Johnson’s wretched take-away Brexit wrapped in his fantasies. But Labour’s role is absolutely not to join this ghastly dance among the shadows. That would not be true “listening,” nor “Democracy.” It would simply be betrayal. Betrayal of the truth. Betrayal of what Labour really stands for. Betrayal of all its supporters.

    In conclusion, here’s a proposal I have made before : we have surely seen by now what the Lie can do, in the mouths of unworthy “leaders” like Trump and Johnson, felon chancers, leathery narcissists rising to the surface in these times of (highly justified) anxiety, when people are perhaps more prone than usual to follow the false. Let Labour make it policy for lying in politics to become illegal. The Nolan Principles are essentially toothless. Let at least the sixth principle be given teeth. There is no sufficient alternative and, post-Brexit, this would surely be a vote-winner.

    Best wishes

    Rogan Wolf

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  • Let’s Hear it from Janus on the Union

     

    The Roman god Janus had two heads, two faces. They are usually depicted as looking in opposite directions.

    And the UK has a Gaffe man and a lying Toad for Prime Minister. He says, “Call me Boris” but perhaps “Call me Janus” would ring a little truer. And those two heads are not only turned in opposite directions – all too often their voices are articulating opposite views both at the same time, both dishonest.

    And there he was with his two heads at Prime Minister’s Questions the other day, each head with its studiously unruly mop of straggly yellowness on top, speaking about the union of nations and the dangers of nationalism. Really ?

    He was talking to the Right Honourable Ian Blackford (SNP Leader at Westminster) and was referring with curious pride to his own time as Mayor of London. He said that, as Mayor of a devolved administration, he had focussed on the real priorities of the people of London – not on constitutional issues.

    Absolutely, Mr Toad. That’s just the ticket. Focus on the real priorities of the people. Constitutional issues aimed at severing union and bound to make co-operative action harder are an unforgiveable irrelevance and distraction, a mutual weakening of capacity. Absolutely, Mr Toad, our straggly Janus.

    And, still facing in a Scottish direction, this pro-union Toad went on to lecture the Right Honourable Blackford that what the UK does collectively is far far better that what it could do as a group of separate and competing nations. The union has shown its value and will continue to show it value, he said.

    Well, Mr Toad, you said it again. What any union of nations does collectively, what the European Union does collectively, is far far better than separate nations can ever do, acting alone.

    He’s so right, you know, Or is he right only in that northern-facing, Scottish direction ?

    And then the Toad said that the SNP would take Scotland back into the European Union ! Horrors ! What could be more appalling that to join a union of nearly 30 countries ? What a massive surrender of POWER, said another of those straggly Janus heads. You lose POWER when you join a Union, said the head.

    And little England will be squeezed in the middle, whispered another of Toad’s heads. All through history, being caught between France and Scotland has been one of little England’s nightmares.

    And the Right Honourable Keir Starmer seemed none too impressed with this Lying Toad, our fraud of a Prime Minister with his several straggly heads, each muddly and duplicitous. And the Right Honourable Keir Starmer asked across the dispatch box, do the collective straggly Toads opposite all not agree that, actually, Scotland needs more devolution, not less ?

    And one of the straggly heads declared that Tony Blair had admitted that devolution was a mistake, that Blair had not foreseen that nationalism, would rise up on the back of it. And who wants nationalism, said the straggly head ?

    We want nationalism said another head perched on the same body. But only our nationalism, not your nationalism. Only our union. Not your union. And our control. Not yours. And our POWER. Not yours. Nor Parliament’s. Nor the People’s. Not the British. Nor even the English.

    MINE, said Janus, speaking with one voice at last.

    Rule Britannia. Rule my Make-Believe Britannia. Rule Toad’s Britannia. The chaotic and shameless immorality of Toad’s Toyland.

     

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  • What a Funny Time to say Goodbye to the Chaos Maistro

     

    So now, suddenly, it’s off with his head, the maestro, that shiny hate-filled spear-head of Brexit. He conducted his own removals, exiting through the front door of course, in full view of the cameras, delivering insult to the last. Not so long ago, a raucous parrot I know, a “bird of paradise” who insists on the liberty to speak, had some short, sharp comments to make on that genius familar perched on Mr Johnson’s shoulder (without whom our Mr Toadie thought he could not do). Here below are six of them (and they even rhyme) :

     
 
 

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  • Two Poems for the Autumn

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  • Facing West Towards America

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  • The Beast Outside the Citadel

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  • Waiting 2020

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  • Words for an Earthquake

    The United Kingdom has left the EU. We have vacated our seat at the high table and it is laid now for just 27 places. We’ve “got it done.”

    Or “gone and done it.”

    In recognition of the significance of this momentous step we’ve taken, whatever it may mean, I am uploading here a selection of 53 stand-alone short rhyming stanzas, commenting and reflecting on events and developments in the UK through 2018 and 2019, up until Britain’s official withdrawal from the EU on January 31st 2020.

    The selection is taken from a much larger total. Through all the suspense of that time, I was writing these stanzas partly as a record, but also as a kind of personal safety valve. I uploaded them one by one as soon as they were written – almost 170 stanzas in all.

    Their format is a seven-line stanza called “rhyme royal,” introduced to English literature in the fourteenth century by Geoffrey Chaucer. And a great deal of their imagery is borrowed from a long satirical poem written a century later, in the early part of Henry 8th’s reign, called “Speak Parrot.” This was written by John Skelton – in rhyme royal stanzas.

    The earlier and much larger total of stanzas can still be found here, in chronological order, with notes at the back, which provide a context.

    In making the selection, less than a third as many as in the original series, I have taken out most of the story line, several characters and, of course, the suspense. What remains is chiefly a set of reflections on the main themes and concerns of the time – such as the essence of democracy, what it needs to survive and recover, the issues of truth telling and worthy leadership, the relevance of honour and our sense and defence of the sacred.

    The picture at the top of this post is of the Tyndale Monument, overlooking the Severn Estuary. William Tyndale was alive at the same time as Skelton and took even greater risks for the “liberty to speak.” He was executed for doing so. Skelton’s parrot is still alive and has done some more speaking in these stanzas. But now  he has retreated to the top of the tower in this picture. The parrot is a bird of paradise and needs a home and stand-point in which he feels secure and of which he can be proud. Tyndale’s tower provides that home and the parrot now looks out from there, watching for worthier times.

    The collection represents a kind of distillation in hindsight, a serious attempt to look back into and through the fog, chaos, upset and disarray of those two years, to learn whatever can be learnt from this wanton act of juvenile destructiveness which we have accomplished.

     
     
     

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