Rachel Sylvester has a piece in The Times today arguing for the replacement of Priti Patel by Michael Gove as Home Secretary. Yes of course Patel needs to be replaced and yes there is a case to be made that she is the worst of a truly awful Cabinet. The most illiberal Home Secretary in living memory is also incompetent and very nasty. But if competence was the main criterion of judgment none of her gruesome colleagues should stay in office either.

The crunch is that Conservative politics has become an extreme form of Margaret Thatcher’s “Is he one of us?”. The only essential characteristic is to be loyal to the Great Leader and, of course, to the destructive nationalism of Johnson’s politics. The appointment to the Cabinet of the revolting Lord Frost was perhaps the ultimate expression of this.

I was once invited to an event at which Michael Gove was the main speaker. I asked an acquaintance who knew him well what he was like and was told he was good-mannered and polite. His address was pretty shabby with gaping holes in its logic. I asked Gove about these deficiencies and he turned on me with venom. I had, I think, been courteous. Gove certainly was not.

The point of replacing Patel with Gove is not that it would be marginally preferable (it probably would) but that the core of her policies would not change. Xenophobia is at the heart of this and it stands in the way of Britain’s European trade dilemma. The case for being a member of the Single Market and the Customs Union is overwhelming but the EU would require that we sign up again to the Four Freedoms to do this. Patel wouldn’t do this and I doubt that Gove would either.

If substance and style and intellect really mattered who in Boris’s band of brothers and sisters would survive? Sunak perhaps but Williamson, Hancock, Truss – no way. The blessed Margaret, to her credit, did tolerate dissidents in her cabinet. Johnson does not. Not one of his motley and sub-standard crew stands up to him or even mildly hints at his manifest inadequacies.

So if Patel is kicked out it will be fine to have a quiet cheer. And Gove would be a superficial improvement. But the event would only be a minor wobble to Johnson’s hegemony. A Pyrrhic victory.

I am in favour of the census and like many, I’m sure, have used previous census records in researching my family history. But I very much doubt that today major political decisions are made using census information.

We live in a data rich society. We don’t need a census to tell us about the gross inequalities in Britain and yet our politicians have consistently failed to do anything about it. Did you know that there is a high correlation between wealth and COVID ? The richest postcodes have the fewest number of cases. The poorest the highest. It’s not a secret, but have you heard a government Minister mention it let alone propose to do anything about it?

Then there’s education, where there is a clear North/South divide. The postcodes with the more expensive homes (mainly in the South of England) are also the ones with the better performing schools and pupils. Are you aware of a levelling up policy that seeks to change this?

Virtually every demographic reveals that there are two Britains just as much as there were in Disraeli’s day. ‘Twas ever thus you might say but does it have to be? Consumer research is highly sophisticated in our digital age – there need be very little we don’t know or can’t find out. But data collection is one thing, taking action is another.

Our nation has a collective obsession with secrecy. The preposterous but successful campaign against ID Cards was driven by absurd notions of privacy. We accept the need for a driving licence but try and expand that a tad into an ID Card and the faux-libertarians take to the streets.

So I will willingly fill in my Census form and have no secrets to withhold. But will there be any actual action based on analysis of census data that will make my life better? I’m not holding my breath.

If there was a logical solution to the “Northern Ireland problem” even successively and increasingly dysfunctional Conservative governments would surely have grasped it. There is a logical long term solution actually, but the consequences are unthinkable. That solution is a United Ireland.

It’s unthinkable because a significant proportion of the population of Northern Ireland think that they are British. That thought is driven not by some genuine patriotism but by the rawest “loyalist” sectarianism. Even if the majority in the province put their Irishness ahead of their Britishness (they may now do this) the Unionist minority is in no mood to compromise.

The Conservative Party has always been unionist and many of its members were unenthusiastic about the Good Friday Agreement. Some of them are close to the current Government. The reunification of Ireland will happen one day, but not under the current Government’s watch.

So there has to be compromise as there was in the GFA. But the unique cross border enlightenment which astonishingly, and admirably, had Gerry Adams in a coalition with Ian Paisley Snr cannot survive the Brexit we now have. When Britain and Ireland were together fellow members of the EU, and therefore the Single Market, all was well. But now that binding is absent.

Brexit, as negotiated, is binary in everything – not least in the island of Ireland. There is no grey area that can work. Not when the Orangemen gear up their provocative marches (or worse) there isn’t.

Britain is already suffering from its withdrawal from the Single Market and the Customs Union and aside from Ireland there are sound pragmatic reasons for a rethink. If the need for a credible solution to the NI problem is to rejoin the Single Market and the Customs Union there would be no downsides, other than a bit of loss of face by the hard core Brexiteers. It was always likely that a Norway or a Switzerland outcome would emerge.

President Biden could be the key along with our friends in Europe – we do still have some. Washington could, along with Brussels, broker an arrangement that would be WIN/WIN for Orange and Green as well as Red, White and Blue.

There was an article of such mendacious delusion by James Forsyth in The Times yesterday that one wonders whether it was drafted in Tufton Street* – it almost certainly was. The facts are very different. Abandoning Freedom of Movement from and to Continental Europe is overwhelmingly negative for Britain.

Twenty-seven sovereign members of the European Union, and two or three others which also benefit from Freedom of Movement, look across the 30 kilometres of water that physically divide us and see again evidence that we’ve taken leave of our senses.

Established working relationships for Brits in continental Europe and for Europeans from these countries here have been shattered by Brexit and by the policies which have been implemented to enforce its xenophobic absurdities.

Forsyth argues that opening our doors to those freeing repression in Hong Kong shows that our immigration policy is now “liberal”. Preposterous nonsense. In the main Hong Kongers worried about the increasing restrictions on their freedoms will look not to perfidious Albion, the once colonial master who let them down, but to welcoming countries like Canada and Australia. The Chinese communities of Vancouver or Melbourne are familiar and offer infinitely better cultural, family and employment options than Little England.

There is ample research to show unequivocally that Brexit was won on the platform of anti immigration prejudice and xenophobia – especially anti Muslim. Lies were told about the threat of Turkish immigration, for example, which hugely helped the Faragist anti Islam cause. It is no exaggeration at all to say that one of the decisive factors in the “Leave” vote was the sexual crimes of Muslims in Rotherham – something with no Europe connection at all.

The mutually beneficial freedom of movement between Britain and our then fellow members of the EU had no downsides at all. At every level – from surgeons to fruit pickers – it worked. And the other way of course. A new generation of young Brits is being denied the opportunities their elder siblings and parents had to travel freely, live and work in thirty European countries. What an utterly bigoted and foolish country we have become.

* Tufton Street (or roads nearby) is the home of nine hard Right “think tanks”. Most have strong links to the Conservative Right. All are pro Brexit and variously anti-immigration and “libertarian”. They are:

• The Adam Smith Institute
• Brexit Central
• The Centre for Policy Studies
• Civitas
• The Global Warming Policy Foundation
• The Institute for Economic Affairs
• Leave means Leave
• The Office of Peter Whittle (The New Culture Forum)
• The Tax Payers’ Alliance

Magnificent achievement. The Chancellor of the Exchequer manages in his Budget statement not to mention Brexit once. And yet whilst the virus is certainly an economically lethal shortish term hit on the economy Brexit is a growing and disastrous very long term malignancy. And probably an incurable one.

There is no aspect of our economic and financial health that the cancer of Brexit isn’t eating away at. Manufacturing, financial services, hospitality, the Arts – virtually every sector is taking a hit. The physical necessities of moving goods into and out of the U.K. is hampered by bureaucracy and regulation replacing free movement. The recruitment of people at all levels from surgeons to fruit pickers is frustrated by immigration rules uniquely restrictive.

Financial Services, once a jewel in our crown, is taking a huge hit as companies move to less restrictive and more welcoming locations. Amsterdam has already overtaken London in some areas, other cities will follow. In modern times there is no precedent for the isolation that Brexit creates. “Global Britain” is the antithesis of the reality.

A modern economy to be successful has to be open and flexible. Adam Smith centuries ago helped us understand the workings of Land, Labour, Capital and Enterprise. Economic groupings, of which the EU is by far the most important and successful, free up the factors of production and optimise them across borders. The Single Market and the Customs Union backed by the four freedoms unquestionably did that. Britain walked away and we can already see the costs of that foolishness.

Like many malignancies only a radical intervention will make a difference. But a Government that doesn’t even mention Brexit in its annual budget is unlikely to have any plans to ameliorate its effects. Only deep-seated prejudice could have forced Britain voluntarily into a situation where we have abandoned the single market – serious European economies, like Switzerland, have not done that despite being outside the EU.

Britain “contra mundom” will be a sad place. The delusion that being outside the EU improves our prospects with the rest of the world is offensive in its mendacity. The nonsense of the “Anglosphere” rumbles on in some quarters but being an island alone hardly improves our bargaining power and the old Dominions aren’t exactly queuing up to help.

Britain will need to restructure its economy to cope with Brexit – that means cope with it being smaller. A smaller economy means one with reduced taxation and reduced public services. You can’t run a world class health service or education system on hot air. When interest rates start to creep up again, as they will, deficit financing will become less attractive. Lower taxes and increased borrowing costs are a long term consequence of Brexit.

Government statements are often more revealing for what they don’t say than what they do. Rishi Sunak is a Basil Fawlty Chancellor – “Don’t mention Brexit” is his “Don’t mention the War”. He won’t get away with it for long surely ?

You cannot isolate taxation from a discussion of spending and, especially, borrowing. In modern history there has never been a time when Government borrowing has been so cheap. True borrowing increases debt but if servicing debt costs virtually nothing then expanding deficit financing is responsible.

The National finances are not comparable with those of a household – or a business for that matter. Restricting the money supply when interest rates were high had its merits. But when rates are close to zero the monetarist case fails.

Increasing tax in a time of unprecedented economic threat – the double whammy of COVID and Brexit – throws petrol on the fire of economic uncertainty. At a simple level taxation is a limiting factor on expenditure and therefore on recovery. Growth is created by consumption and that is restrained by higher taxes.

Over the long term balanced budgets are a reasonable goal. But as in the 1930s spending an economy’s way out of recession in the medium term would work – and today at modest servicing cost. A major public expenditure initiative on healthcare facilities, transport, education and infrastructure is a better option than increased taxation. Time for Keynes not Thatcher.

I am the same age as Benjamin Braddock. Remember him? He was the graduate in “The Graduate” the superlative coming of age movie of the 1960s directed by Mike Nichols from Charles Webb’s novel of the same name. And starring, of course, Dustin Hoffman in his first major film role.

To be 21 in 1967 , the year of the film’s release, was – to coin a phrase – very heaven. But Ben Braddock and I were in rather different worlds. He was in Southern California and I was in Ealing. Ben had completed his studies and I was just starting mine. And, unlike me, Ben had a Mrs Robinson.

We, that’s Ben and me, were the lucky generation, albeit on different sides of the Atlantic. He had an Alfa Romeo and I had a Fiat 500. Italian chic and a car which resembled a metal hen house on wheels. But we were both mobile and what if his wheels were a bit classier than mine?

Those undergraduate days were characterised by stimulating studies and roaring hormones. The sixties did swing in London (of course) as well as Santa Barbara. And Paul Simon reached out to us all

“Got no deeds to do, no promises to keep
I’m dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep
Let the morning time drop all its petals on me
Life, I love you, all is groovy”

And there was plenty that was “groovy” even in Ealing. You see our generation was ready for something if we didn’t move too fast and made the morning last. But in the US something that was moving fast was troop deployment in Vietnam – almost half a million, and rising, in 1967. That war didn’t feature in “The Graduate” but even this side of the pond we could see that more dangerous to Ben Braddock, even than Mrs Robinson, was the possibility of being drafted.

In 1966 Simon and Garfunkel had signalled the dangers of escalation in Vietnam in their extraordinary “7 O’Clock News/Silent Night” song on their “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme” album. The choice of the duo to do “The Graduate” sound track helped place the film subtly in the protest movement genre. Ben Braddock’s protest was understated and subtle and personal and his rebellion was against social convention rather than being anti war. But under the surface – not least at Elaine’s university Berkeley where “The Times They Were a-Changin” as Bob Dylan had signalled they would back in 1964.

Ealing College was not Berkeley but we did our bit. It wasn’t a bad time to be on the cusp of adulthood and to have the self-confidence to tell our Parents’ generation that they were messing things up. 1967 was , of course, “The Summer of Love” and that for me was marked by the Beatles “All you need is love” which had just been released when I took a student holiday by train to Athens. It must have been played a hundred times as we made our way rather slowly (two days) from Boulogne to the Greek capital.

“The Graduate” was a story in which one young man and, eventually, one beautiful young woman took charge of their own lives. Me too in a more understated way. I didn’t have an Alfa Romeo (😢) or a Mrs Robinson (😢😢) . But in 1968 I was to find my own Elaine in Ann – no less beautiful than the gorgeous Katherine Ross !

Fifty years on “The Graduate” has lost none of its power. Hoffman, Ross and the extraordinary Anne Bancroft created a story that was so much more than light comedy, at least for my generation. It was the coming of age film of my generation because it overtly said “Your time has come”. It had.

When Boris Johnson clambered on his bulldozer in the 2019 General Election and chanted the “Get Brexit Done” slogan he knew what he was doing. We were Brexit weary and most of us did indeed want to be rid of the thing. So eighteen months later, and with the worrying matter of a killer virus very much still with us, it’s hardly surprising that Brexit is less top of the mind than it was, as reported in The Times today. But it is very premature indeed to think that the consequences of Brexit have gone away.

Normal politics has been pushed to the side whilst our fellow citizens have been dying all around us. Coping with the gargantuan adjustments required of Britain alone and “contra mundum” at the same time as coping with COVID-19 is a multitasking beyond many of us. One thing at a time.

Boris Johnson hasn’t yet said “Get COVID Done” but give him time. And when he does it will be no more true than his Brexit slogan. Complex things in his rhetoric have to be reduced to the binary and, of course, Brexit is far from “done”. The impediments being put in the way of British businesses by our leaving the European Union appear in the newspapers every day. And when people start to travel again the realities of the personal inconveniences of no longer having freedom of movement in Europe will hit home as well.

That Britain is becoming a pariah State in Europe and the wider world will start to dawn on us once we stop worrying about whether Granny will die of COVID. And for the surviving Grannies the fact that our teenage grandchildren face a future without the freedom to travel, work and live in 30 countries across the Continent will dawn on us as well. The Brexit “Deal” may nominally be done. Its consequences we’ve hardly truly addressed let alone resolved.

Party politics became irrelevant in the Age of COVID. Johnson and Co. didn’t mismanage Britain’s response to the virus because they were Conservatives. They messed it up because they were incompetent. That the drivers of Brexit were profoundly political you need to be a bit of a student of Right Wing politics to understand. That is why the “Leave” proponents didn’t talk about them but stuck to faux-patriotism, preposterous WW2 metaphors and references backed by downright lies.

Whether the Government will be punished for its mismanagement of COVID is doubtful. If the herd immunity strategy behind the rapid vaccination programme works all will be forgotten. When we have all either had COVID , died from it or have been vaccinated against it we can move on to other things.

Sir Keir Starmer is criticised by many for not only having abandoned opposition to Brexit but for having been mild in his criticism of the Government over COVID. In my view he had no choice. The Government plays the patriot card at every opportunity and puts out the flags everywhere. Starmer knows that among the many things that scuppered his predecessor were accusations of a lack of patriotism. He’s not going to take that risk and will himself flag wave frequently.

It’s likely that “normal” politics will not return in this Parliament. The traditional debates about the ideal mixed economy, or about taxation, education or even healthcare are parked at present and will remain so for a while. Once we are back in the pubs, the clubs and on our charter flights to Benidorm again we’ll be so grateful we won’t want political discourse to spoil things.