Section:OBS 2N PaGe:48 Edition Date:190804 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 3/8/2019 17:27 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
- The Observer
48 04.08.19 Comment & Analysis
The new government
has set itself against
conformism, but it really
hates reasonable doubtLike an enraged bull
charging a matador, the British
right is putting its head down and
stampeding towards a no-deal
Brexit. It has to keep moving. Were
it to stop and consider where it was
heading, it would never take the
risks it is taking with Britain’s future.
The left fails so often because
it thinks it is enough to hate
Conservatives and say they are
wicked, rather than understand
Conservatives and show them to
be dangerous. I cannot emphasise
strongly enough that on its own
terms the right ought to know that a
no-deal Brexit is an act of epic folly
and that Boris Johnson’s talk of a
new golden age for merrie England
is as much bullshit as bullish: the
drivel of a man and a movement
that have nothing but empty
bravado to sustain them.
If Tories meant what they said,
they would not govern as they do.
They believe that the civil service has
failed the country. Yet they assureBehind the Tory claims of bold
action is nothing but empty bravado
the public that same civil service
can complete the most complicated
operation Britain has attempted
since D-Day. They believe that
markets possess more knowledge
than the state. Yet they ignore
the warnings from the currency
markets that Brexit could push us
into a sterling crisis. They deride the
conformism of millennial snowfl akes
and the mindlessness of the Corbyn
cult. Yet they are the upholders of an
ideology in which reasonable doubt
has become as heretical as denying
the divinity of Christ.
Like Jordan Peterson or Noam
Chomsky, Dominic Cummings
specialises in sweeping assertions
that fall apart when you ask that
simplest of questions: “So what
should we do?” You won’t fi nd
coherent answers in the series
of polemics he wrote before he
joined Johnson in Downing Street.
Thinkers in the Cummings style
are performers who play to their
audiences’ prejudices. They cover the
play-acting with a cloak of learned
references so their listeners can
pretend they are hearing something
more substantial than pub talk.
Cummings appeals to two
Conservative prejudices: EU
membership cripples Britain and
the state bureaucracy is fi lled with
incompetent time-servers. “Duff
people are promoted to the most
senior roles and the thousands
of able people leave,” Cummings
says of Whitehall. Although many
fi nd it possible to damn Brussels
in one breath and the public sector
in the next – indeed, if you add
the damning of immigration, you
have the sum of what passes for
conversation in Tory circles – it
is impossible for a serious manor woman to hold both beliefs
simultaneously.
Brexit must lead to an explosion
of investment in and reliance on
the Whitehall bureaucrats the right
despises as time-wasters. The
Institute of Government reports
that at least 16,000 offi cials will be
working on Brexit by the autumn
and numbers are likely to rise
after no deal. Whitehall will have
to impose direct rule on Northern
Ireland as the dilettantes of the right
unravel the Irish peace process. A
long-term shift towards corporatism
seems to me to be inevitable. The
answer to the question: “So what
should we do?” can only be to
increase the power of the state to
help struggling businesses, manage
the tensions in the union and strike
a trade deal with the EU that will be
far harder to negotiate once we are
pleading for help from the outside.
As it is, Tories who once said there
was no magic money tree behave as
if they have discovered an enchanted
forest where notes fl utter down
to the state’s coffers like autumn
leaves. For propaganda purposes,they are conning the country that
the hundreds of millions they are
spending on no-deal preparations
are an emergency measure. They
pretend Brexit is like a freak storm. If
we are prepared, we can “get through
it” and then stride on to the bright
Johnsonian uplands. It’s not just that
Conservatives and Faragists don’t
tell the public Brexit will trap Britain
in a rolling crisis that will continue
well into the 2020s – and that the
harder the Brexit is the deeper the
crisis will be. It’s that, as the chair
of the public accounts committee
said , the spending splurge is all for
show. There is not the time to recruit
and train staff if the British bull is to
crash into the Halloween deadline.
The pieces Cummings wrote
between working for Michael Gove,
running the Vote Leave campaign
and going to Downing Street
are peppered with references to
every authority from Homer to
Einstein. The displays of erudition
conceal the contradictions in his
thought. For Cummings , science
and markets have mechanisms that
governments lack, “to build reliable
knowledge”. You cannot respect his
intellectual integrity when he and
the wider right have nothing to say
to the majority of British scientists
who think Brexit is a national
disaster and take no notice of the
panicking markets.
Cummings took TS Eliot’s poem
The Hollow Men as the title for
his musings on the failures of
Westminster and Whitehall. “We are
the hollow men. We are the stuffed
men. Leaning together. Headpiece
fi lled with straw.”
Our hollow governing class
“ruthlessly weeds out people who
are dissenters”, Cummings said as he
implied that the radical right would
allow freedom of speech. It’s a joke
and a sick joke at that. The right has
forced out Sir Ivan Rogers and Olly
Robbins , successive ambassadors
to the EU, for speaking truth to
power. Johnson has built a cabinet
of sycophants and helped push our
ambassador to Washington to resign
for offering his frank opinions. If you
want to see hollow men leaning on
each other gaze at Johnson, Farage,
Gove and Raab egging each other on
as they drive their country towards
a calamity.
Eliot closes with: “ This is the way
the world ends. Not with a bang but
with a whimper .” How apposite. The
failure of the right to be honest with
itself, and live by its own rules, will
leave the British whimpering for as
far ahead as anyone can see.Football
crazy
As Harry Maguire breaks
the record transfer fee
for a defender, moving
from Leicester City to
Manchester United for
around £80m, here are
some of the previous
record signing fees paid by
British clubs.Trevor Francis, £1m
Birmingham to Nottingham
Forest, February 1979. Th e
fi rst million-pound player
repaid the fee, scoring
the winner in the 1979
European Cup fi nal.Alan Shearer, £15m
Blackburn to Newcastle,
July 1996. Won league
with Rovers in 1995 then
returned to Tyneside.
Became Premier League’s
record goalscorer with 260.Andy Carroll, £35m
Newcastle to Liverpool,
January 2011. Enjoyed a
fl ying start at Anfi eld with
11 goals in 19 league games.
Now a free agent after
injury-hit West Ham stint.Paul Pogba, £89.3m
Juventus to Man United,
August 2016. Left Old
Traff ord for Turin on free
transfer in 2012. Re-signed
for what is still the largest
fee paid by a British club.Nick
CohenThey pretend
Brexit is like a
freak storm. If
we’re prepared,
we can get
through it
Illustration by
Dominic McKenzie^ @NickCohen4РЕЛИЗ
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