Last week was not one of the finest David Cameron has enjoyed during his six-year tenure at No.10. After a disastrous budget, the resignation of IDS and a faltering Remain campaign had all served to add to the PM’s woes, then came the files of Mossack Fonseca. Confirmation of something everyone already suspected was exacerbated by his evasive attitude, eventually coming clean and releasing his financial records to the press when he realised his earlier avoidance of the truth made him look as though he had something to hide. As his Cabinet colleagues (or at least those not in the Brexit camp) have been constantly reminding us, Dave didn’t do anything legally wrong by profiting from his father’s offshore banking business; but it doesn’t look good on a moral scale. Then again, who associates morals with Honourable Members?
On the opposing benches, Jeremy Corbyn has stirred from his afternoon nap and has started adding his voice to the chorus of criticism as the Labour Party furtively clutches at any straw that might be to their advantage. I can’t remember a previous Labour leader in opposition so averse to getting his face on camera; if Iain Duncan Smith was the Quiet Man during his brief spell as Tory leader, then Corbyn is the Invisible Man. Does he believe that doing a Howard Hughes somehow gives him alluring mystique or has it yet to dawn on him that being a party leader means giving up the kind of preaching to the converted he indulged in for all the decades he was a professional backbencher? Corbyn might have a long-standing personal interest in the various ‘anti this or that’ factions operating on Labour’s fringes, but giving a speech at a rally before those for whom he can do no wrong as Keeper of the Socialist Flame is not what the rest of the country wants from an opposition to an unpopular government.
The narrowness of the Labour vision under Corbyn, with his brief experiment of a Shadow Cabinet airing opinions contrary to his own having been quickly discarded, appeals solely to nostalgic veterans of the 80s who worship the memory of Tony Benn and gullible novices too young to remember life before Blair. Labour has become the political equivalent of a band who were once chart-toppers and are now a cult act that nobody bar the diehard fans are remotely interested in. The new recruits in particular display the obstinate refusal to accept another point of view to their own that is characteristic of the tribal teenager and are responsible for the endless desperate online petitions demanding the resignation of Cameron every time he puts a foot wrong. Some are also guilty of worrying anti-Semitism of a kind that blames Israel for every ill in the Middle East, despite the fact that none of the mass murderers of Middle Eastern descent that have brought carnage to the streets of Europe in the past year or so practice Judaism.
The SNP in their Third Party shoes seem to imagine that simply pointing to their impressive numbers is enough, as though that is the beginning and end of their contribution to the Commons bar the occasional token grumble. Mind you, they are hampered as a powerful collective voice by the absence of their leader from Parliament, content as she is to play in the Scottish Premier League, wiping the floor with a glut of weaker and smaller teams like a Holyrood equivalent of Celtic. A big fish/small pond scenario suits Nicola Sturgeon because it makes her appear more important than she actually is, but it does somewhat reduce the potential of her party at Westminster.
And then there’s the Liberal Democrats. Oh, dear. What can one say of the depleted Lib Dems and their leader? Tim Farron is almost as invisible as Jeremy Corbyn, though I would imagine this isn’t through choice. I can picture Farron constantly trying to get on television and in the papers, yet being denied access to the enclosed VIP section of the political club by a burly bouncer telling him ‘if your name’s not on the list, you’re not coming in’. It’s hard to envisage what difference a party with a paltry eight MPs can make with the exception of a crucial Commons vote; the real strength in depth for the Lib Dems is in the Lords, where they have shown they can do considerable damage to unpopular government proposals. Not that this has much effect on day-to-day business in the House that really counts, however.
David Cameron announced last year that he had no intentions of running for a third term as Prime Minister; whether or not he foresaw that a humiliating defeat at the EU Referendum could force a premature departure is debatable, but a good deal personally hinges on the outcome of events on June 23. If the Brexit camp claim victory – something the majority of Fleet Street would certainly favour – Cameron’s position could be untenable, more so than it is courtesy of ‘revelations’ of his pre-Downing Street tax evasion or even of his alleged adolescent penchant for inserting his private parts into porcine orifices.
Any cloud-cuckoo Corbyn groupies who think Dave’s downfall will open the door to their Messiah, however, clearly haven’t considered a certain wild-haired Mayor who is no doubt reciting a winning speech in Latin as we speak. One could advise them to be careful what they wish for, though I’m guessing they’d probably respond by calling anyone daring to dispense such advice a homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, corporate Zionist elite-loving Tory scumbag.
© The Editor
Who’d have thought it? Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, arch-advocate of cutting benefits to the bone for the best part of a decade, has resigned on the pretext that the cuts to disability benefits proposed by the Chancellor in the Budget went too far. Yes, you heard right. I know it sounds about as plausible as Nick Griffin regarding Oswald Mosley as someone who was a bit extreme, but that’s what ‘the quiet man’ said in his resignation letter as he walked out of the Cabinet.
‘The Power of Nightmares’, the groundbreaking 2004 Adam Curtis documentary series in which archive footage was woven together to form a tapestry of terror that illuminated the message of the narrative, dealt with the changes in political sales pitches over the past half-century, from ‘I have a dream’ to ‘I have a nightmare’. As ever, Curtis’s eye-opening dissection of a particular subject lifted the complex veil that those who stand to benefit from it erect to prevent the public from receiving the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In the current climate of in/out EU media mania, the truth is as hard to locate as it ever was. Both sides of the argument claim ownership of the truth, but only one can be telling it. At the moment, I feel as though a twelve-week-long edition of ‘Call My Bluff’ is being serialised on our TV screens every evening; and all that’s missing from the picture is Robert Robinson chairing proceedings with linguistic pomposity.
Think of this as a trilogy. Providing a running commentary on something in the air means it’s hard to pick up much else on the old antennae this week other than the story that has comprised the last couple of posts, so bear with me one more time. But let’s take a different route with this ‘un and remind ourselves of where we were on the last occasion in which the people had a say in the Great European Experiment that went from economic cooperation to gravy train in the space of a generation. Thinking about it, nationwide exposure to the continent was pretty prevalent in the first half of the 1970s, thanks in the main to improvements in satellite technology and Britain’s membership of the European Broadcasting Union – even if technological improvements hadn’t progressed to preventing British TV commentators on European events still sounding as though they had socks stuffed in their mouths. In a way, however, that distinctive sonic effect was all part of the exotic alternative that Europe represented then.
Stuart Hall wetting himself at the sight of oversized figures banging into each other on ‘Jeux Sans Frontieres’; Terry Wogan’s wry commentary on the Eurovision Song Contest; European football featuring English clubs up against bent and bribed match officials (Salonica 1973 and Paris 1975 are dates to avoid if confronting a long-term Leeds United supporter); and, of course, BBC1’s school holiday dubbed mainstays of ‘The White Horses’, ‘Robinson Crusoe’, ‘The Flashing Blade’, and ‘Belle and Sebastiane’. The 1972 Olympics and the 1974 World Cup Final were both held in Munich – with European athletes and footballers claiming the cream of the headlines and the accumulated memories, whether Olga Korbut, Franz Beckenbauer or Johan Cruyff. Even the charts were infiltrated by a distinct Euro take on the British and American pop template – everyone from Focus and Golden Earring to Abba and Kraftwerk.
It seems only fitting that the UK was welcomed into the European economic club on New Year’s Day 1973; after the US-dominated pop culture of the 50s and the switch to Swinging England in the 60s, eyes turned to Europe in the 70s. Even before David Bowie relocated to West Berlin with Iggy Pop, the continent separated from British shores by the slim body of water that is the Channel was very much on the tip of Albion’s tongue. It’s always worth remembering that the initial admirable motivation of greater European integration emanated from the generation that had fought the Second World War (and, in some cases, the one that had also fought the First). If economics could prevent Europe from degenerating into a third conflict in the space of fifty years, so be it; yes, there was the not-insignificant factor of a certain wall dividing east and west, but perhaps the symbolic impact of that construction served to persuade the Western European powers a union was in everyone’s interests. After all, there was already a military link between them in the shape of NATO, so why not take the pact one step further?
The protracted withdrawal from Empire was something many European nations experienced in the 50s and 60s, and though France had a particular problem with Algeria, even they didn’t have the sheer number of humbling adjustments Britain had to make as one-by-one, the Union Flag was lowered throughout Africa, the Far East, the Middle East and the Mediterranean. We needed time to come to terms with our diminishing role on the world stage, and de Gaulle was especially attuned to our half-hearted commitment to Europe, vetoing our efforts to join the fledgling European Economic Community in the early 60s. Future PM Edward Heath’s place at the negotiating table during Macmillan’s tenure at No.10 remained paramount in his thoughts, so much so that when he eventually ascended to the pinnacle of power, Heath was determined to sign on the dotted line. That he did so without offering Parliament a debate on the issues involved, however, served to sow the seeds of mistrust and suspicion over precisely what he had achieved.
The Labour Party was particularly aggrieved that it hadn’t been able to pre-empt Heath’s success during the 1964-70 Government, and opposition between 1970 and 1974 presented Harold Wilson with a problem in that he instinctively had to challenge the Tories even if he secretly applauded what his nemesis had achieved. The solution to this dilemma came with the two General Elections of 1974, when Labour first promised a renegotiation of the 1972 terms of entry and then an unprecedented in/out referendum. To Wilson’s credit (albeit under pressure from his Industry Secretary, Tony Benn), the October 1974 Election promise was delivered and the first-ever national plebiscite was scheduled for the following June.
By this time, Heath had been toppled from his position as Tory leader by Margaret Thatcher, though the pair managed a rare moment of harmony when sharing a platform in the early days of the campaign as both advocated the ‘yes’ vote. At the time, the Conservative Party was largely united on its commitment to Europe, whereas it was Labour that possessed the most visible divisions. Although Wilson himself kept a discreet distance from the frontline, his highest-ranking Ministers, Jim Callaghan and Roy Jenkins, were prominent in persuading the people it was in their best interests to remain part of Europe. The latter even went so far as to stand alongside Heath and Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe, an experience he found liberating from Labour in-fighting and perhaps played a part in his eventual decision to breakaway and form the SDP a little over five years later.
In contrast to today, Fleet Street was more or less unanimous in its support of the ‘yes’ campaign and in an era when the dailies held a greater sway over public opinion than they could dream of in 2016, painting the ‘no’ group as a collection of untrustworthy misfits and renegades – everyone from Labour firebrands Foot, Benn and Barbara Castle to Enoch Powell and Ian Paisley – planted immense seeds of doubt in the minds of the electorate. When the vote finally took place, a unique departure from General Election traditions saw England and Scotland represented by their various counties rather than Parliamentary seats. As the overwhelming thumbs-up to continued membership of the Common Market emerged into the spotlight, only Shetland and the Western Isles rejected the proposition.
In retrospect, the 1975 EEC Referendum was the last hurrah for many of the political titans who had dominated British public life for the previous couple of decades. Politics was an impassioned playground in the 1970s, and the battle over Europe gave MPs confronted by a myriad of present problems the opportunity to point towards a brighter future, offering hope rather than the usual blood, sweat and toil. Heath never enjoyed such a high profile ever again (not in life, anyway), and neither did Powell or Castle; Wilson and Thorpe were both gone within a year (one went voluntarily; the other was forced to jump), and Jenkins’ failure to capture the Labour leadership in 1976 saw him scurry off to Brussels. It was the full stop on a tumultuous and turbulent period in not just the political but the social life of this country. What the fate will be of numerous public servants in the wake of this year’s referendum remains to be seen; but history does occasionally have a habit of repeating itself.
So, Bo-Jo has gone and done it. The darling of the anti-Cameron right has once again highlighted his canny opportunism by coming out and declaring his pro-Brexit stance, thus enhancing his credentials as a potential PM in the eyes of the Sun, Mail and Express when Dave calls it a day – something that may come sooner rather than later if the Great British public goes with the ‘no’ vote. Of course, just as there’s more to Cameron’s pro-EU position than simply wanting to remain attached to mainland Europe, there’s a hell of a lot more to Boris’s public declaration than promoting the referendum we now know will take place on June 23.
Are you bored yet? I was certainly heading that way last week, when I switched on ‘Newsnight’ and was confronted by the EU as the lead story every single evening. The EU, the EU, the bloody EU. Apparently, nothing else was going on in the world – or perhaps it was a means of arresting dwindling viewing figures for the programme by specialising on one subject five nights running as a canny gimmick. After a week in which David Cameron has done his best Jim Hacker, dashing from one European bigwig to another and emerging before the cameras declaring he’s won a groundbreaking deal for Britain that nobody but him seems to understand, the PM has finally announced the long-overdue date of D-Day, the date when the Great British public have their first opportunity to decide on their European fate since 1975.
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