“And my vision for Britain is simple: I want this to be the best country to grow up in and the best country to grow old in.” Sir Keir Starmer

Keir Starmer is making a dramatic difference to the Labour Party and clearing the Augean Stables of the toxic stink of Corbynism. He’s not there yet but the signs are promising. Until yesterday I thought that as well as returning common sense and coherence to the Party he was eschewing the vulgar populism that so infects our body politic. Now I’m not so sure.

Flying the flag is a pragmatic necessity for politicians of ambition and sometimes this can be a bit gruesomely faux-patriotic. But to have the ambition to make the United Kingdom the “best country” in the world – as the quote from Starmer’s speech at the top of this blog does – goes way too far for me and crosses the line into populist claptrap.

We are accustomed to political sloganry and often it doesn’t really matter. But we live in an interdependent world and one in which all nations have their individual national character. When we judge them, which inevitably we do when we visit, we do so from our own perspectives. We are entitled to have “favourite” countries but surely not to suggest a “good, better, best” ranking.

My personal perspective is likely to rate culture, scenery and cuisine highly. And my favourite countries tick all the boxes though I have to say Germany, which I love, doesn’t feature strongly gastronomically! The point of course is that every country is a complex mix. There can perhaps be “best” countries for aspects of a nation but even that is subjective. The frankfurter has its stout defenders.

The aspiration for Britain to be the “best country” to grow up in or grow old in actually suggests that there are measures available to allow targets to be set and progress to be measured. There are not – except at a very detailed level. We probably can measure our education or transport or healthcare systems against others. And my gut feel is that we don’t do very well. But to decide how our combined provision of public services across the board can make us the “best” would be a pointless and subjective task.

Of course Sir Keir may just have been indulging in populist jingoism with a touch of flag waving thrown in but I’d have preferred something a bit more forensic. To aim to be a “better” country (e.g. in respect of public services) is an admirable goal, providing it is detailed, specific and measurable. But to throw out the generic and bombastic “Best country” is too redolent of the mock exceptionalism of Flanders and Swann for me:

“The English, the English, the English are best
I wouldn’t give tuppence for all of the rest”

It’s high time we grounded the Spitfires. High time we started looking forward rather than backwards. The past is a foreign country – we did things differently then. Yes there was heroism and at times no doubt people did believe that we were a land of hope and glory. But study that past closely and you’ll find that glory was often tarnished. But the more important question is not to try and record and define what we once were – though that is worth doing. No the issue of the day is to decide what we want to be.

British “Patriotism” is nearly always defined in symbols of the past. But if I am to have national pride I want to have it because of what we do in the here and now, and what our future plans are. That my father was brave in 1942 or my Grandfather in 1916 is a source of retrospective pride. But it means nothing today.

If I was German I’d have no problem – how ironic is that ? The achievements of successive post war German governments, culminating in reunification after 1989, would make me proud and patriotic. In my lifetime Germany has gone from a cesspit and a defeated pariah state to become an economic, political, cultural and uber-civilised state of which I would be proud to be a citizen. If only !

Would I rally to the Union Flag if asked – well yes, if I believed in the cause. But I emphatically do not believe in “My country right or wrong” and over the years I’ve said so. Though I was young at the time I thought Suez was nonsense. I actually supported the Falklands War at the time which I now regret but it did seem, at the time, something I should be “patriotic” about. I opposed Blair’s wars though strongly and said so . And the last ten years of preposterous faux-patriotism and jingoism around Brexit have made me sick.

So if you want me to be a patriot don’t talk to me about the Empire or about events that happened before I was born. Give me something to be proud of now. It happened at London2012 where I was a Gamesmaker. We did it well and I was proud of that. But then the Union Flag which I’d waved in the Olympic Stadium became tainted.Suddenly patriotism became negative – it became the preserve of those who opposed rather than a celebration of the positive. Most of all the jingoistic absurdity of “Sovereignty” entered the national vocabulary.The arrogance of the premise that only we British could take good decisions – not Brussels but only Britain. That in the EU we participated collectivly in the governance of Europe became, absurdly, a negative.

So in post-Brexit Britain have I anything to be proud about? I have not. Too many of my fellow citizens are bigots or bozos. I have a Government of breathtaking incompetence. My country is the laughing stock of the world. And almost every week there is some distant “triumph” to celebrate. These celebrations are doomed attempts to imply that we still matter. Trouble at the Mill? Send up a Spitfire. Need to take people’s minds off the ghastly daily realities. Give the old codger who walked 100 times around his garden a Knighthood.

Rally round the flag boys, rally round the flag.

Boris Johnson read these words from Philippians 2 in Westminster Abbey today :

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”

It is, of course , possible that Johnson was set up and didn’t realise it. But if you wanted to find somewhere in the scriptures a text which best referenced the malignant personality and failed leadership of our woeful Head of Government you really couldn’t do much better than this.

“Selfish ambition” and “conceit” are the drivers of Johnson’s life and he is where he is because of them. He is an under-achiever throughout his adult life except that his ambition and self-regard have somehow delivered him privilege and high office. What has he done to deserve this? You will struggle and fail to find anything tangible. His private life is littered with deception and moral turpitude and his public life is much the same. This is a man you would not trust as far as you could throw him.

It was once the case that politicians who had grown up amongst privilege and advantage recognised this. “Noblesse Oblige” was sometimes a characteristic of Etonians but as author of “The importance of being Eton” Nick Fraser put it in 2005 “Etonians are the ultimate pragmatists, totally free of ideology. Other than the imperatives of getting – and gaining – power, no conspicuous motives inspire them”

But with the pragmatism there is rarely humility and never, ever, a tendency to “regard others as better than yourselves”. Eton is the top of the scholastic pile and it’s pupils know it. They may not always call those lower in the pile “Oiks” – as Johnson and Cameron called George Osborne (St Paul’s and Magdalen) at Oxford. But they know there’s no one better than an Etonian.

“Looking to [his] own interests” is indisputably what Johnson has always done. Marriages are abandoned if he decides that the pleasures of a new partner are what he wants. Loyalties, both private and political, are abandoned almost at a whim. Fidelity and honesty don’t enter into consideration – screw the “interests of others”.

Johnson wouldn’t even see the hypocrisy of reciting the words from Philippians 2 today. Words are just slogans to him without the uncomfortable need to ensure that they are true for himself, or said with genuine moral meaning. Momentarily there maybe the conceit that what he says is principled but should he need to contradict them – well there’s always another principle to choose.

The American political journalist Michael Gerson says that political hypocrisy is “the conscious use of a mask to fool the public and gain political benefit”. Today the mask slipped but no doubt tomorrow the sycophants will provide another one and Boris Johnson will live to pose and lie for another day.

“…believe that the history of the relationship between Britain and its colonies needs to be constantly reinterpreted” Trevor Phillips in The Times.

Imperial Britain did not have a “relationship” with its colonies. It invaded them, killed First Nations peoples, sent slaves to them, sequestered their land, exploited their natural resources and governed them in what was essentially a totalitarian and wholly undemocratic way.

Garry Sobers himself has written that a black man needed to be a three times better cricketer than a white man to be selected for the West Indies. His childhood in Barbados was one in a racist society deeply divided between the white man with the house on the hill and the black man cutting the sugar cane.

The imperial model of British exploitation and racial division was replicated everywhere though in the Dominions of Australasia and Canada once the natives were dead of disease or discrimination (or corralled into camps) the white invaders became the majority and, being white, were permitted to govern themselves.

The problem is not our tendency to re-write our imperial history but our failure to tell it. The building of the British Empire was one of the most significant features of the second Millennium but the story is inadequately recorded and taught. There is no “Museum of Empire” telling the story anywhere and surprisingly few good academic histories which comprehensively tell the story.

There are apologists for Empire and even those who will tell you it was a good thing. They are being challenged and the preposterous row over patriotic songs at the Proms may have woken a few people up to the iniquities of Empire. The use of the “Black Lives Matter” slogan and the phenomenon of “taking the knee” the same.

When the world officially condemned colonialism and effectively outlawed it via the United Nations declaration after the Second World War an end was put to what was for centuries a scar on humankind. But the legacies of Empire live on in many countries, including Britain. That many of the children of Empire have prospered is hugely to their credit and that some once colonies have emerged as successful countries in modern times likewise. But English exceptionalism, that arrogant presumption , based on Empire, that in the hierarchy of nations Britain is at the top prospers still in our post Brexit world.

History does not need to be rewritten it needs to be debated and told, glorious or otherwise. What happened needs to be related both in the context of the norms of the times when it took place and from a modern perspective. We cannot trade back, what happened happened. It cannot be disguised by flag-waving jingoism – we need to “learn from the Germans” and confront our past and where appropriate atone for it.

There is an extraordinary article by the Right Wing Editor of The Spectator James Forsyth in “The Times” today. I responded to it by saying that If I want to read puff pieces praising Boris Johnson I’ll go straight to the press releases of Conservative Central Office – I don’t need the middle man. And if I want updates on Green energy I’ll read scientists not political hacks. And the idea that political interests can be “genetic” is as wrong as it is lazy journalism. It’s nurture not nature !

In Northern Europe there is a dependence on Natural Gas for home heating which is unlikely to change for the foreseeable future – certainly 50 years probably much longer. What we can do, and are doing, is burn our gas more efficiently. Conservation via improved efficiencies and home insulation is far more practical than some fantasy about burning hydrogen in boilers! And as well as using less we can, and are reducing emissions.

Boris Johnson will spout any old rubbish that he thinks people want to hear. I don’t think that he “really does mean it on Brexit” because there is scant evidence that he has any coherent beliefs about anything except himself. His “views” are those of those who advise him. If Dominic Cummings thinks an environmentalist pose is politically advantageous he’ll write the speech.

This is is a Little Englanders article praising one its kind. And the idea that Britain can “push other countries to go further” on environmental matters is utterly preposterous. For example the British Isles are connected into the European Gas grid and rely on that grid to manage gas supply. A country on the fringes of Europe is not going to have much influence on the thirty other independent countries it has turned its back on. Europe’s continued focus on environmental matters will be driven collectively by the EU and debated in the European Parliament.

Whilst the correlation is not perfect there is a good overlap between Euroscepticism and Climate Change denial. On the political Right to be pro Brexit often means that an individual also derides those argue for urgent action on the environment. And a Britain impoverished by COVID and by Brexit is unlikely to be able to afford the huge investments required anyway.

A dominant characteristic of today’s ugly Britain is our tendency to defend or revere the sentimental whilst failing to understand that our relevance as a post Imperial power demands that we do well what we can do well. By 2016 we had actually done quite well as a participant in the European project. Our language was the lingua Franca of the European Commission and European Parliament. Our commissioners were in the main respected and sound and our MEPs, the UKIP rabble aside, effective and active. We did being European quite well – so obviously we had to let a group of bigots and bozos force us to change and stop doing it.

The parallel between our European insanity and the BBC is precise. The bigots and bozos have it in their sights – of course they do. That the Corporation is the world’s greatest broadcaster is surely undeniable – it has no rivals. It’s strength is it’s ubiquity, it’s innovation and its value. Just look at what you get for 50p per household per day – its astonishing. Subscription broadcasters have their place in modern society but they don’t come cheap. I pay more to watch cricket on Sky than I do for all of the BBC’s output !

I can and do watch the BBC “Free to Air”. I need no special equipment nor cable nor satellite dish. I plug in and play. The same applies to the excellent ITV and Channel Four of course. Which brings us to the crux of the matter. ITV is funded by advertising and sponsorship as the BBC could also be. But an element of my 50p a day is to give me advertising free radio and television. Commercial interests do not call the BBC’s tune and their programming is uninterrupted. Again a unique and valuable model.

Does the Beeb do some things it would be better to leave to commercial broadcasters ? Probably. Are there things it should do but it doesn’t ? Probably again (international cricket on TV for example). Is a review called for – undoubtedly. Do we need to pay our 50p per day in a more modern and equitable way with choice to opt out? Certainly. So by all means look closely at how the BBC works – but let’s avoid vulgarising and complicating it at all costs.

We walked away from Europe despite doing it well. For heaven’s sake let’s not make the same mistake with the BBC. It’s the jewel in the crown of our media – a unique institution admired around the world for its quality. It’s not perfect and aspects of it are anachronistic – including the licence fee. But in the same way that our friends around the world look askance at our present day petty nationalism and our dysfunctional governance so they would consider us insane if we destroyed the BBC. At a time that we’ve little to be proud of as a nation let’s protect and where possible improve something of true value.

The intricacies of the English class system are hard to unravel – Cameron and Johnson called Gideon Osborne an“Oik” despite him having changed his name to George. Poor George, you see, wasn’t an Old Etonian. There are few greater sins. Like George I also went to a a “Minor Public School” but when I moved on from my school to the real world I occasionally met my betters from Eton or Harrow or Winchester. They were always polite and often went into Margaret Mead mode and studied me as an anthropological freak.

The problem with Etonians, or today’s ones in politics anyway, is that they may know their Ancient Greeks but they don’t know their Modern Brits. David Cameron glided effortlessly into Number 10 without ever having been to Hackney or Hounslow, let alone Hull or Huddersfield. Though he said that he did meet a black man once.

It is almost unique in the world for the English to create hierarchy whatever they do or wherever they go. The Swires are a Taipan family who were born to rule Hong Kong. I met some of them when I lived there. They were very posh. The graduations of “Honkers” were complex but the Taipans of Swires or Jardines we’re firmly at the top.

Etonians don’t usually run things, they own them. They always find a “dear little man” to do the actual work. Johnson uses Michael Gove and, of course, Dominic Cummings in this way. They aren’t colleagues, they are servants. That’s the role of the Tory MPs as well. Their job is to vote – that’s it. Jacob Rees-Mogg makes his Etonian superiority clear to all of the hoi polloi . He lounges on the front bench and tells them to go and vote.

The posh boys aren’t really interested in ideas, though a passing reference to some obscure Classical poet might occasionally enliven their language. What they do like is power. This may be “soft power” , oiling their way around to achieve their goals almost invisibly. Or it may be very hard power indeed. Johnson is exercising the latter at the moment and the servants, sometimes against their better judgment one suspects, are delivering.

What we have at the moment is Government by Sycophantocracy. Many of the newer Conservative MPs seem very surprised indeed to be in the House of Commons. Moggy tells them what to do – rather like the Duke of Norfolk once telling his estate workers how to vote. Then they get told how to Tweet which they dutifully and consistently do. Lobby fodder with, it seems, a shortage of brain cells. Not a rebel in sight.

The main thing missing from all this is competence. Accidents of birth and expensive education may have told the Swire Brigade how to behave but it didn’t teach them to put out fires. The cartoonish Johnson never, ever, looks as if he’s in charge. David Cameron assumed that having got power the little people beyond the castle gates would do what he told them. Sadly for Britain the occasion the people told him to go boil his head was in the 2016 Referendum. It was an unexpected revolt and a fatal one, and not just for Dave.

There may be a revolution but I doubt it. They may dump Johnson, but I doubt that as well. When it all goes belly up it won’t be the power holders or the sycophants’ fault. It will be the EU’s fault, or our fault or the Oiks’ fault. The new Battle for Britain will have been lost on the playing fields of Eton. The mercenaries may die along the way – the Generals will go to the House of Lords.

When I was a schoolboy (a while ago !) the most heinous crime was not to break the rules but to blame somebody else for it. Maybe it was different at Eton because our mendacious Prime Minister always has someone else to blame for his failings – and it seems to be catching among his acolytes. Show me an honest man and he won’t be anywhere near today’s levers of power.

There is no rationale for EU negotiators to do anything but apply the Union’s well established, and well documented, rules. That’s what their 27 members expect them to do. The consequences of Britain choosing to leave the Union have not suddenly been made apparent. Whilst there are points of detail to hammer out the broad parameters have been known from the start.

To leave the EU does not mean we have to abandon our existing trading arrangements and many enthusiastic Brexiteers have said in the past that they favoured staying in the Single Market. One of them, Daniel Hannan, is now one of the Prime Ministers trade advisers. He should remind Johnson of what he said.

Once we agree to stay in the Single Market the bickering can stop and we can start to rebuild our reputation for common sense. The planned Lorry Parks can be returned to the farmers, and Mr Frost to whence he came from. And the Irish on both sides of the border can start to live their lives again.

Sometimes there are tanks in the streets when the dictators take over but sometimes it is more stealthy. Gradually the basis of power shifts almost imperceptibly from democratic to totalitarian and the people only realise it by the time it’s too late to do anything about it.

What Sir John Major and Tony Blair are responding to is one of these shifts. It’s not the first under Boris Johnson’s authoritarian governance of Britain and unless an earthquake happens it won’t be the last. And, as in Germany in the early 1930s, we the people brought it on ourselves. Sufficient of us decided in 2016 to choose to scapegoat the EU for imaginary evils to kick off Brexit. And then after three years of shambles last year a weary Britain gave the keys of a bulldozer to Johnson to “Get Brexit Done” – more fool us.

When the rule of law gets in the way of power dictators ignore the law. When the Courts decide a course of action is extra legal they ignore the Courts. The checks and balances inherent in proper democracy fail. The Conservative Party in the House of Commons is packed with sycophants some of whose public pronouncements are staggeringly dim – but they can be relied upon to stagger through the right lobby. Follow my Leader.

We are trapped in a maelstrom of hopelessness. We are victims of a coup and we are stuck for four more years without being able to do a thing about it. Governments with majorities of 80 don’t fall. Boris Johnson may fall off the deck but someone equally, but differently, ghastly will replace him. And Dominic Cummings will still be casting his spells and stirring his cauldron.

Before the 2019 General Election two separate wings in the Conservative Party in Parliament were discernible except that they weren’t called “Internationalist” and “Libertarian” (James Forsyth in The Times today) they were called “Remainers” and “Leavers”. The former were culled in various nights of the long knives and only the latter were left. They were all “Leavers” now.

Michael Howard showed yesterday that the issue over whether Britain honours the obligations of a recently signed treaty is not about Brexit, it’s about the law. So if the Government continues on its current path a vote in Parliament on the Tory side will divide between sycophants and those with a sense of their duty as a representative of the people. The sycophants are likely to win and the rebellion will be minuscule.

We no longer have an elective democracy we have an emerging dictatorship. Power resides in some shady corners and is exercised by unelected chancers and by barely qualified yes men and yes women. When was the last time an incompetent Minister resigned ? It is generally recognised that we have the least competent Cabinet of modern times at a time when we are wrestling with some of the most challenging governance issues in our history. The perfect storm of disaster is with us.

If the strings of government are pulled by shady people in a Downing Street basement there is no accountability any more. The Ministers nominally in charge of advising on or exercising due legal process , like Attorney General Suella Braverman, have had to defend a client head of government despite knowing that what their client wants to do is extra legal. Career-first priorities and sycophancy have so far prevailed over justice.

History teaches us that when a nation is governed by decree and when protest is sat upon then disaster is around the corner. In fact it’s arrived. The formalities of democracy in Parliament may still be followed but that’s not where the action is. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

None of us should be sanguine about where we are. Taking to the streets in protest will be ignored even if we could rally enough people to do it in a time of lockdown. It is maybe (just) too early to say we’ve lost Hope as a nation. But there’s not much Glory around any more.