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I
hope you will pardon me for saying so, but it seems to me that the politics of
our Western (which is to say, capitalist) world, which have always been held
out to us as the most reasonable, the most tolerant, the most humane, the least
violent and the most successful ever practised, have in the last few years
become not merely bizarre, but frankly
berserk.
Anyone who doubts this should look
for a moment at the governance of the United States of America, which Americans
never tire of calling the wealthiest, most powerful and most advanced republic
that has ever existed, but whose government has staggered along for most of the last thirty years under the
leadership of, first, a dim-witted former Hollywood actor, who seemed to have
fallen into dementia in his last few years in office (two terms); followed by an undistinguished father-and-son
act, the son especially being a man with no achievements either intellectually
or professionally, whose only previous experience running anything had been a
failed baseball team (three terms); and finally it lies in the hands of a narcissistic,
impulsive, petulant and inexperienced, business tycoon who managed to survive his
repeated bankruptcies, and became well-known primarily for playing a role in a
television reality show (one term so far.)
If you are not convinced by this catalogue
of disastrous leaders, examine the situation in the United Kingdom, where a
scion of the privileged classes, anointed in office as it seems such people
always are, decides to hold a referendum on the question of whether Britain
should or should not cancel its 40-year membership of the European Union, a vote
he held with the intention of putting in their place the radical right-wing
members of his Conservative party along with their campaign to leave the Union.
This bold exercise in party management entirely blew up in his face, when
discontented voters, whose needs had been long neglected by a string of Conservative
governments, voted to leave, not at all the result he wanted.
The Prime Minister in question, David
Cameron, cheerfully threw in his towel, resigned from politics, and left it to
someone, anyone, who cared to take on the job, to stick-handle, as they say in
hockey, through the ensuing mess.
So arrives in office unexpectedly an undistinguished
minister called Theresa May, who could hardly believe her good fortune at being
catapulted into the top job, since she had been a notable failure in her
previous job as Home Secretary. She was actually in favour of Britain staying
in Europe, but she wasn’t about to let a small thing like that stand in her
way, so she set about with a will, announcing that from now on she was treating
the result of the referendum vote as a sacred trust because it represented the
voice of the people, however damned silly she may previously have thought it.
She’s a bit of a ditherer, is Mrs.
May, and she spent a long time trying vainly to emulate the governing style of
the man she so very much admired, her failed predecessor David Cameron, the
nineteenth graduate of Eton College to have been British Prime Minister, and who, in a peerless demonstration of the
art of inclusion, had surrounded himself in his Cabinet office with fellows he
had known at school. He was perforce required through the exigencies of politics
to include in his Cabinet as deputy PM a graduate of the less elevated private
school (known as public schools, in Britain) Westminster, and to name a bounder
from St.Paul’s private school as Chancellor of the Exchequer. But these appointments being more or less forced on him, he took care to
surround the beggars with sounder chaps from the old school, his own chief of
staff, his Chancellor’s chief economic adviser, the Cabinet Office minister, and the Chief Whip,
all coming from his dear old school (as, indeed at the same time did the
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Mayor of London and the political editors
entrusted with reporting on the world of politics for the BBC, as well as the major Conservative newspapers,
The Times, The Daily Telegraph and
The Sun).
Eventually the lady got around to
negotiating with the EU the terms of Britain’s exit, but by the time she had
her deal ready to put before her nation, the ministers she had given the job of
negotiation to had quit --- one after the other, count them, one, two three ---
saying her deal would be no good for Britain. This did not for a moment deter the
determined Prime Minister, who, after a debate in Parliament in which it became
clear that she could not muster the votes needed to approve her deal, decided to
cancel the promised vote in December, and delay it until the second week of
January. Meantime, she said, she would try to get clarifications and understandings
from the Europeans that would make her deal acceptable to the House of Commons.
After the holidays, when Parliament
resumed, it appeared she had received no clarifications sufficient to quell the
objections of her parliamentarians. It
is quite clear that if all members of her own party could be depended upon to
vote for her deal, all would be well, but when the required 48 Tory MPs declared
by writing letters to the necessary authority within the party requesting
a challenge to her leadership, she won that vote, although no fewer than 100 MPs, almost a third of the total number, voted against her continuing leadership. In normal
circumstances, this would have led to a resignation, but Mrs. May is not the resigning
type. She has ploughed on against all discouragements, and as I write, within
two days of the vital vote, it appears to be certain that she will lose. Of
course, one can never be entirely certain about these things. The elderly French-Canadian
man who reads the newspapers alongside me in the coffee shop downstairs, still
has complete faith that she will fulfil the finest of British traditions, namely,
that she will, somehow, muddle through. But that opinion --- also expressed on
TV over the weekend by a reporter from the New York Times in discussion on the
BBC, --- is held by a diminishing minority.
Meantime, in two procedural votes, Mrs. May has been defeated: and again, these defeats
have not persuaded her to quit. In one of these
votes, MPs decided that in the event of her deal being beaten she would have
only three days in which to produce a Plan B (no such plan has ever been mooted to
this point). The very holding of that vote aroused a controversy against the
speaker, John Bercow for even allowing the vote. I heard his response: “I am
not here to represent the wishes of the Executive. I am here to represent the
wishes of the House of Commons,” an amazing declaration of independence that
might almost restore one’s faith in democracy.
This
morning, within two days of the vote, apparently, Mrs. May has declared that
the defeat of her deal would be catastrophic for Britain.. Addressing the
electors by way of a Sunday Express article,
she declared: “When you turned out to vote in the referendum, you did so because you
wanted your voice to be heard. Some of you put your trust in the political
process for the first time in decades. We cannot – and must not – let you down.
Doing so would be a catastrophic and
unforgivable breach of trust in our democracy. So my message to parliament this
weekend is simple: it is time to forget the games and do what is right for our
country.”
So there she stands, a leader who can’t
persuade her followers to follow her, declaring her undying faith in the glory
of democracy.
You can’t deny it, with Britain and the
United States in the throes of joint crises that have virtually brought their
governments to a halt, things are not looking good on the capitalist side of
the equation. Donald Trump, a leader
whose progress through politics might be compared to that of the traditional bull in a china shop, has ---- like a kid
denied his favorite toy --- held a large part of the United States government
closed down now for almost three weeks because the Congress won’t pay to build
his promised wall along the Mexican border, and people in high places must surely
be wondering if the time has not come to move him aside, if possible.
The answer to these two dilemmas will come in
the next few weeks, one hopes.
Meantime, all I can say is, to fall back on
my current mantra, “Wot the hell, wot the hell, toujours gai,toujours gai.”
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