- The Observer
In my view 11.08.19 55
William
Keegan
@williamkeeganI
continue to recommend
re-reading Joseph Heller’s
great novel Catch-22 for
those of us who want to
avoid being driven crazy by
this Brexit farce.
As we are told that the cabinet is
operating on a “war footing” and
that frantic preparations are made
for the austerity and hardship that
would follow no deal, my mind goes
back to the shortages I witnessed
as a small boy during and after the
second world war.
But they were not self-infl icted.
The prospect of no deal is. In
Catch-22, Milo Minderbinder bombs
his own men: “ He had landed
another contract with the Germans,
this time to bomb his own outfi t .”
There is no getting away from
it : this is a rightwing coup. I agree
with Ferdinand Mount, once head
of Margaret Thatcher’s policy unit
at Downing Street in what now look
like less disturbing times. Writing in
the current London Review of Books ,
Mount sees echoes of Mussolini’s
rise to power, in that “yes, [Johnson]
has come to power by strictly
constitutional means”; it is what
happens after that matters, and the
do-or-die approach of Johnson and
his warlord Dominic Cummings is
truly disturbing.
As my former Observer colleague
Neal Ascherson says in the same
vintage issue of the LRB: “ Wehave leading Tories – not only
Johnson – apparently prepared to
suspend a sovereign parliament
in order to force through a Brexit
meant to restore the sovereignty
of parliament .”
In Heller’s tale, Minderbinder
did it for the money. Most of
this country is going, one way or
another, to suffer fi nancial loss if
these usurpers have their way. I say
“most”, but not everyone: there is
a small clique of unpatriotic hedge
fund operators who are fi nancial
backers of Johnson and who, like the
spivs of the second world war, stand
to profi t from the chaos they have
contributed to. They have reportedly
profi ted by going “short” on the
pound and making huge sums
in the process – the current run
on the pound being the fi nancial
markets’ natural reaction to a policy
designed, in the former chancellor
Philip Hammond’s phrase, “to make
the country poorer”.To less fi nancially sophisticated
Leave voters – if there are any
still prepared to read this anti-
Brexit column – I say, citing the
old Chinese proverb: be careful
what you wish for, especially as you
contemplate the foreign-exchange
cost of holidays abroad.
The media are now replete with
speculation about how the Remain
cause might be able to thwart
Johnson and his gang. But we are
told that Cummings has come up
with the idea of a “people versus
the politicians” election. This is a
classically absurd phrase, not least
because all the evidence is that
there has been a slow but steady
movement among the “people” in
favour of Remain as the damage –
current and prospective – becomes
more manifest.
In which context I was delighted
recently to meet a Cambridge
undergraduate, Lara Spirit ,
who is a leading light behind a
countrywide movement to energise
the young in protesting against “the
government’s intention of forcing
a hard Brexit on our generation
without our consent”.
By needlessly infl icting the
referendum and all that follows
on this nation, David Cameron has
occasionally (and often not jokingly)
been labelled “the worst prime
minister since Lord North” – the
man who is historically blamed forlosing the American colonies. We
now seem to have reached the stage
where, in their obsession with the
chimera of a satisfactory “trade
deal” with Trump’s America, the
present cabinet wishes us to edge
closer to becoming, more or less,
the 51st state.
Which brings us to the geo-
political implications of the current
situation. It is becoming increasingly
obvious that the foundations of
the post-1945 era of economic
cooperation – designed to counter
the kind of economic protectionism
and beggar-thy-neighbour currency
policies that led to war – are fi nally
vanishing, having long been
undergoing a process of erosion.
The present tariff and currency war
between the US and China is, in the
words of a seasoned observer of the
far east, now taking the world into
“uncharted waters”.
Conservative ministers have in
recent years been trying to ride
two horses – kowtowing to both
Washington and Beijing. With the
world economy losing steam, and
central banks seemingly running
low on ammunition to ward off the
threat of a world recession, the trade
and currency war between America
and China could get much nastier.
At the moment, the UK still enjoys
the protection of European Union
membership. Why on earth chuck
it away?Brexit was
becoming a
farce. Now
it is turning
into a coup
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