Two nations - and more

Benjamin Disraeli wrote a novel which I haven't read, but I will, called Sybil, or The Two Nations, and this is the most famous quotation (never "quote" please, girls!) from it.

Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets. The rich and the poor.
 

Well, now we know, don't we! In this country it's the educated and the uneducated, and it's the same; we don't know each other. We hardly visit each other's websites - even though it's easy to do so - because they are so unattractive each to the other. I accidentally went to a website called Right Lad and I was really disgusted by it - jeering hatred of a tearful liberal woman. ("Her period will stop and she'll forget all about it.") And this is triumphalism, which they are good at (not that they know the word) because they have won the referendum. The level of their comments ranges from "Suck it up you whining bastards" to "Don't you get it, losers, it's a democracy!"

At present the situation which most worries me is the potential for a split between Scotland and England - another two nations. This is such a small island that to break it apart makes no sense at all, except for the Europe question. Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, that this thing had to happen at all. How gloriously happy and blinkered we have been. Of course, often when I wrote about my life I said we were lucky and that many people in the U.K. are not so lucky, and I jeered at myself in a way, because I am not entirely unfeeling about that.

London voted to remain - in large numbers - and they are pretty angry with the situation. London is interesting. It is becoming politically active. It supports Jeremy Corbyn, whose parliamentary party is trying to oust him as leader - resigning in huge numbers - really with no reason as most (62%) Labour supported voted to remain, the same as Nicola Sturgeon's Scottish Nationalists. There is another binary split between the lefties outside parliament (pro Corbyn) and those inside (anti Corbyn) and why on earth should those inside entirely ignore the wishes of those outside whom they are supposed to represent? Anyway, a mob came out to show their support of Corbyn on Wednesday. The London mob! It hasn't been seen for centuries.

Parliament Square, Wednesday

Sadly, not so many at his last meeting yesterday in Bloomsbury.

The reason why all these people support him is because he is not at all glossy and tailored; he can't be bothered about his image; he is just himself - a conviction politician who has been active all his life for the things he believes in - veteran of anti -apartheid, anti- nuclear protests; you can go back decades and see him protesting. When you look at the last Labour leader, Ed Miliband, you can appreciate the difference. He was part of the political machine - he lived and breathed Westminster - it was very hard to identify with him because he was such a rarefied species. I never felt he'd been to anything like a protest where he might have to rub shoulders with the common people! For me, he was Blair's man, so I loathed him the way I loathed Tony Blair.

Of course, Miliband has said that Corbyn should resign!

In the Tory party there is also a great deal of infighting as they try to decide who will take the leadership from Cameron. If it is Boris Johnson he will split the party as he is not respected or trusted; he doesn't seem to have convictions and he has not served much time as an MP. When he was an MP he did it part-time as he was still a journalist, and was editing the Spectator at the same time. He delegated his MP work to some secretary. Not much commitment, then, no time to make connections or to form judgments of his fellow Tories. However, the people seem to warm to him. They think he is a real Union flag, Brexit man like themselves, who wants to close the borders (he doesn't).

Some people want Theresa May, who is a natural successor to Cameron, but she was in the Remain side and some people say the new leader must be someone who was in the Leave side. (Theresa May has no moral scruples. There was a programme on Parliament and it showed her pushing through an important piece of legislation by tabling it at short notice at the end of the day so there was no time for a debate on it. She swept in with her acolytes and looked like an Empress with her courtiers. She didn't look as though it had occurred to her to represent anyone but herself and her own glory.) Well, the Tories will like that, I suppose.

Another thing about Corbyn is that he does want to represent the ordinary man who voted for him. I don't think this is laughable. I think he correctly understands his function!

When I see Owen Jones trying to be brave and encouraging us all to make plans for the future, I still feel terribly sad, and reading all the comments I see that everyone else feels the same. We are like headless chickens.

Deutschland 83

This was a very gripping programme, slow to start but gradually more absorbing. It took time to establish Martin's character - young, cheeky, fond of his mother. Then, we had to watch him in considerable jeopardy, sent by the East German secret service against his will to spy on the West German military. He brilliantly improvises his way through some terribly risky situations: It becomes more and more apparent that his spymasters care very little about the jeopardy he is in, and Martin's talents for self- survival are put to the test over and over again.

However, although I was glued this was really down to the great performance by Jonas Nay as Martin, because there were enormous holes in the plot and it was very difficult to understand why the East Germans seemed to want everything to escalate out of control. Even in the last episode I was wondering which of the characters had committed suicide  - or maybe it was murder? I really don't know. But I do rather hope that there will be more. Poor Martin.

Here is Jonas Nay in an interview with Owen Jones; who seems to have a bit of a crush on his lookalike, heehee.

The Conference season, October 2015

Owen Jones attended the Tory conference to report on it for the Guardian. He gets a good reaction from everyone who knows who he is, which must be quite pleasing for him. (he is very baby-faced and disarming: Have a look at his interview with Jacob Rees-Mogg)

"On Tuesday, Theresa May incurs the wrath even of the Telegraph because of her inflammatory inti-immigration keynote speech, a tirade somewhat oddly entitled "a beacon of hope". Many of the delegates are happy with it, but there are exceptions. When I ask 25-year-old Rory White-Andrews - a corporate finance lawyer in the City - how he feels about it, his response is instant and brutal. "Disgusting. I think immigrants contribute a huge amount to this country and frankly we need more people coming in. I thought it was horrible."

"The atmosphere is peculiar. "It's remarkably flat, complacent", says White-Andrews. Nearly everyone I speak to admits to having been deeply surprised when the Tories pulled off an absolute majority in May. Conor Allcock, 17, says he felt "smug" about it.

"Liam Fox, an ex-minister and a flagbearer for the Tory right... [said] "The task in the second half of the parliament will be holding the party together in the referendum, and that very much depends on how we treat each other. People who want to stay in the EU are not traitors to the country, and people who want to leave are not idiots."

Owen found many Tories who were intensely opposed to Osborne's stance on Tax Credits - (and when finally the Lords did the huge favour to us all of throwing that policy out, Osborne wisely decided to drop it).

"Truth is, protests aside, there isn't much buzz at conference."

Frankie Boyle attended all the conferences in order to be witty or at least humorous about them. He is an unlikeable man but his comments were very perceptive:

"After the second world war, Melanesian islanders formed cargo cults near abandoned airfields. They thought that if they carried out the rituals they had observed the troops performing at the American air force bases, planes would land. So they would march up and down in improvised uniforms performing parade ground drills with wooden rifles, believing that if the rites were performed correctly the planes would return and bring them cargo. I only mention this as a useful point of comparison for the Liberal Democrat conference. An isolated tribe going through the formal motions of something they think will bring votes, failing to understand that their actions are meaningless and vestigial. ....

"Labour's conference featured quite an impressive run-up by Jeremy Corbyn, tackling TV interviewers like a soothing GP talking to a hypochondriac. There was remarkably little infighting at the conference, as happens when a party realises it needs to put divisions aside and show solidarity to become electable, or, indeed, when two separate halves of a party loathe each other so much that they have to go to different sets of meetings.

Listening leadership

"Corbyn took to the stage with his head like a haunted tennis ball, and the general air of a pigeon that had inherited a suit. ... The new Labour leader insisted, "Leadership is about listening." If leadership were about listening, the great political speeches would have been a little different. Churchill saying "Can you tell me what you'd like to do on the beaches?"...

"Corbyn has had trouble persuading his MPs that nuclear weapons are bad. Then again, he hasn't had much success persuading his MP's that Tories are bad. There seems to be a real split on Trident in the party between extreme elements who don't think we should recommission it, and more moderate voices who want to retain the ability to heat hundreds of thousands of people's skeletons to the surface temperature of the planet Mercury, in case 1970s Russia tries to attack us through some kind of Stargate.

Jobs - or nuclear holocaust?

"Len McCluskey announced that the union Unite would block plans to scrap Trident in an attempt to protect jobs. It's a tough call, jobs over a potential nuclear holocaust. But perhaps McCluskey is right: if there is an accident, there will be jobs aplenty. Full employment for the six people left in the UK. And they'll be happy to pay their Unite dues when they find out they have got a job for life (which may only be for less than a week) as they become their own farmer, cook, builder, doctor....

"There are obviously huge differences between Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn, and it's refreshing to see a leader mess up some of his speech not because he's a freakshow, but because he simply doesn't care. As I watched the standard conference procedure of people applauding things they would fast forward on YouTube, it occurred to me that this conference may have accidentally stumbled upon the one message that might reassure British voters: that you can have enormous change without puncturing the boredom.

The conservatives

There was a ring of steel around the conference. Ironically, it's the last steel the north will be seeing for a very long time. Tory conference seemed to be all about saying how much you believe in British values, then immediately contradicting yourself: "This country has always welcomed migrants ... but we're full up."

The first big hitter to take the stage was George Osborne, a man who is not afraid to bark at his hairdresser "Demented syphilitic emperor!" and his tailor: "Prom night at Slytherin!"

The hair

The suit

"Osborne insisted that the Conservatives are the "party of labour" to a television audience largely consisting of the unemployed. ...

"Of course, it's absurd that we trust the Tories with our day-to-day reality, as so many of them don't really inhabit it. Why elect people to run our schools and hospitals who choose not to go to those schools and hospitals?..."

"Admittedly, the Conservatives are generally more persuasive orators than their Labour counterparts, perhaps a skill developed by spending school holidays trying to lure father out from behind his Daily Telegraph. Jeremy Hunt said that he wants Britain's workers to work harder, like the Chinese. Hunt's wife is Chinese and is often heard muttering, "Christ, this is hard work."

"Then came Theresa May, a woman who exudes all the compassion of stage 4 bone cancer, talking of her party's "proud history" of helping vulnerable people...

"The whole sorry season finished with David Cameron, of all people, giving a speech about equality. A speech blatantly at right angles to everything he has every said or done...

"It was a speech he could give because he knows it simply doesn't matter. TTIP be will coming in soon and all of this will be rendered symbolic. Our new rulers will be corporations. Looking down at Britain from business class, all the party conferences - and the protesters marching up and down outside them - will look like little cargo cults. We will be allowed to keep our political rituals because they have an entertainment value, and because somebody needs to give speeches and answer questions. That's not something our new rulers will be doing. They will be glimpsed only occasionally, stepping briskly into waiting cars. Our elected officials will soon fill a function much like the one the media fills now, as mere agents of a greater power. With no other role to play, our politicians will continue doing what they know: waving to the cameras, forcing a smile, hoping to keep us paying attention to their strange, dull ceremonies."