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.

O, wad some Power the giftie gie us

To see oursels as others see us!”

A new book by the ex French Ambassador to Britain is reviewed in an interview with the author, Sylvie Bermann, in The Times today. She is seeing ourselves as others see us, not least the fact that we have chosen to have a liar as our Head of Government

From Biden and Obama to Merkel and Macron “others see us” as, frankly, fools. Ms Bermann has the insights and the courage to say and explain why. National pride and delusion (not to mention personal ambition) has stopped our leaders (or most of them) from telling the truth about where we are. Up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

In 2016 after the disastrous Referendum vote and the obscenity of the American election putting Trump in the White House I was talking with an American friend – a rather “drowning our sorrows” conversation. “You can get rid of the monster in four years” I said. “We will be stuck with our insanity for twenty” . “Don’t bet your house on it” he said regarding Trump and he was nearly right. But that worked out alright in the end, thank God. Brexit, of course, not.

The problem is that we never took a collective pride in our Europeaness . We should have. At an intellectual level a United Europe was something from Churchill onwards we approved of. Whilst, like Churchill, our continued Imperialism and fantasy about the “Special Relationship” made us think that Europe, in some way, stopped at Calais, the geography, and reason, should have told us otherwise.

The British sense of humour is indeed one of our assets – especially the “self-mockery”. I have been re-watching “Allo Allo” in lockdown and one of its themes is the gentle but affectionate laughing at the British. The French and Germans are mocked as well of course but this quintessentially British comedy is never unkind. Even to those with swastikas on their arms.

I think it’s insecurity which makes us so faux-patriotic and which prompts the obsessive flag display of our leaders. From time to time we are told the truth by our friends – as here by Ms Bermann. And we do have among us those who are honest as well. Peter Oborne’s “The Assault on Truth” documents forensically the mendacity of Boris Johnson that she refers to here. It’s a best seller, but it won’t change anything – not that Peter thought it would I guess.

Robbie Burns would lament that for all too many of us no “Power” has gifted us self-awareness. Had we had it a few years ago we would have seen the benefits of being a major player in Europe. Back in 2012 a French athlete in the Olympic Village told me that “London was the Capital of Europe”. It was. It could still have been. 😢

Right Wing polemicist Gerard Baker has a go at “Right On” artists like Bruce Springsteen in The Times today. Burned any books recently Mr Baker? OK a slight exaggeration that, maybe, but once you start dictating what artists can or cannot do you are on the censorship road and that leads to only one place and that is authoritarian control on artistic freedom.

If a novelist wants to write a new story highlighting climate change they will. What may be denigrated as a “consensus nostrum” by the philistines could tell a story that makes people think.

The “prevailing mandates of the age” are not determined by a committee of woke folk deciding what they should be believe. Throughout history great art, verbal and visual, written and spoken , has recorded and displayed the opinion of the artist.

Art doesn’t tell me what to believe it tells me what the artist believes. I can choose to agree or not. Political communication is different. Remember the anti EU message on the bus ? No self respecting artist would do anything as crass as that. Propaganda uses the same tools as Art – the camera, symbols and the word – but in a civilised society the people will see through it. Many are seeing through Boris Johnson’s addiction to the Union Flag for example.

Art does not have to be iconoclastic. For every ground-breaking Beethoven symphony there are celebratory paeans to convention – the lyricism of Debussy or Elgar for example. The greatest artists can be light, comical or pastoral and then tear down barriers in successive works for example. That Shakespeare fellow did a bit of that.

Two people looking at the same scene will see different things, at least on the margin. The “creative type” Mr Baker sneers at might express what they see with different words and fewer brushstrokes than you or me. The poet might use a few words where the journalist might need paragraphs.

Artists are not following convention even though they may come independently to the same conclusions as their fellows. They flourish if they have untrammelled freedom to express themselves. The goal has to be their perception of the truth.

At a time when the veracity of leaders is questioned daily to seek the truth is a noble cause. If the reality is that Trumpism and Brexit were in no small measure consequences of ignorance the artist may choose to say so. If telling this truth is interpreted by the Right Wing as “villainisation of the reactionary working class” then so be it.

What a complete shambles our school system is. If education is a human right then in Britain it’s one offered with staggering inconsistency. Pretty much anything goes. Schools open to all, others that are selective. Single sex schools as well as mixed ones. Faith schools of any denomination or religion. Schools that you can attend if Mummy and Daddy are rich enough. Comprehensive schools which completely replaced Grammar schools – except in the 163 cases where they didn’t. Very good schools in the higher rollers’ postcodes, Dodgy ones where the poor live.. And so on.

Ah, you might say, we have freedom of choice but in the main this freedom only applies to those that can afford it. 7% do that and their kids get a fine Private education as a result. Many others with the resources to do so move into the postcodes where the best state schools are.

I see zero prospect of change. Levelling up the poorer schools requires investment and expenditure we don’t have. Faith schools will continue to narrowly indoctrinate children when they should be broadening them. Private schools and Grammar schools will be available to a tiny few where family wealth or student ability at eleven allows it. Of course some pupils overcome difficulties and triumph – but in the main it’s a lottery where the outcome is predetermined.

Oh , and I nearly forgot, Gavin Williamson is the Secretary of State for Education.

There is an outstanding report on Afghanistan in The Times today by Anthony Loyd. But what a continuing tragedy this godforsaken country and western involvement in it is.

The driver of the post 9/11 military action in Afghanistan was revenge against Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. But the bringing to justice of this terrorist and his brutal gang required the defeat of what was effectively the de facto government of a sovereign state – the Taliban. America showed it had learned nothing from Vietnam and the developing failure in Iraq. Overwhelming military power is not enough to beat guerrilla armies that disappear overnight into the jungle or the desert hills.

Negotiations with the likes of the Vietcong or the Taliban (there are many other examples in history) always end in failure. The military structure of rebel armies is different to that of conventional national forces. The latter are subject to political control to start with. We knew where we were in 1918 and 1945 – our enemy, political and military, had been defeated. The same does not apply in Afghanistan. Whilst ostensibly legitimate political governments were put in place in Kabul the Taliban didn’t go away. They took a long term view knowing that their time would come again. And it has.

The hard truth is that the West does not understand Afghanistan. The culture and ideology of the people is singular and not open to the entreaties of a western government or diplomacy. Charging blindly, guns blazing, into a conflict between competing parties none of which you understand had fatal consequences. As in Iraq the defeat of conventional forces was straightforward. The defeat of guerrillas as impossible as the task of winning hearts and minds.

America has an arrogant belief that might is right – and it certainly has plenty of might. But the reality is that the use of this might in modern times, in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been an unmitigated disaster. Time to go.