steepholm

The current state of the Brexit negotiations are complicated, but also very simple. In short, the DUP is in favour of these three policies:

a) Maintain integrity with the rest of the UK

b) Leave the customs union

c) Keep an open border with ROI

It's easy to get any two of these, but impossible to have all three without a contradiction. Which will be renounced? (Or rather, since this is a matter of diplomacy, which can most easily be dressed up in vague and ambiguous language to look like its opposite?)

I've no idea what was Mrs May on, thinking she could sacrifice a) when she's at the end of Arlene Foster's leash. b) is impossible for her too, because she's also on the leash of her own right wing.

Ergo, she will sacrifice c).

But no! Because the Irish government will veto further talks in that case.

But actually yes! Because ROI will be under pressure from the other member states, who want a deal, and will also be aware that if there is no deal a hard border will come into existence by default in 2019.

Also, c) is the most amenable to being dressed in vague and ambiguous language. Once phase 2 talks begin, the Irish lose their veto, and Mrs May (if she's still in office) will begin to backtrack by degrees. They don't call Albion perfidious for nothing - but actually, in this case it's the Tory party, who will sacrifice not only their own country to stay in power but also their neighbours'.

Last year I spent some time on Facebook arguing with people who thought that the "Rhodes must fall" campaign was wrongheaded because it was erasing history.

I suggested that putting a statue up to someone was generally (and in this case undoubtedly) not intended as a dispassionate recording of the fact that such-and-such had occurred, but rather a celebration of that person's life and deeds. In this case, the statue of Rhodes marks the approbation of the Oxford college he had endowed with some of his very ill-gotten African spoils.

True, came the reply, but that approbation is itself a historical artefact, and to take down the statue is to erase it. Well then, why not put it in a museum, along with the other historical artefacts, and stick a label on it detailing exactly how Rhodes came by the money to endow colleges and scholarships? Why keep it in a place of honour, thus perpetuating the honour done to Rhodes?

Of course, taking down a statue can never be more than a symbolic act, any more than raising it, or indeed keeping it. Symbolism is the currency of statues. To try and pretend that they are naturally evolve into some kind of historical resource is profoundly disingenuous. (In the case of Rhodes, I don't think anyone tried to argue that the statue was a thing of beauty, but aesthetic arguments fall into much the same category.) Museums and art galleries are themselves far from politics-free zones, obviously, but at least they make some overt attempt to defuse and reframe such things as historical and/or aesthetic objects rather than direct political statements.

In the end, Rhodes stayed of course, because Rhodes's successors (the college's current donors) threatened to withdraw funding if it was removed. ("Now I see, I see, / In Fulvia's death, how mine received shall be," as they put it.) As ever, money shouts.

Anyway, I was just wondering to myself how the people I was arguing with on FB last year (nice liberal types, every one) feel about Trump making exactly the same arguments this week? Were they nodding along? If not, why not?

As a tangential postscript, I gave my friend Haruka a lift to Brighton yesterday (I was helping my daughter move some of her things back to Bristol), and we stopped in at my mother's for a cup of tea en route. Haruka took this picture of my mother. It was only after five minutes that I noticed that it also includes her care assistant, Haawa. Talk about hidden black history!



Can you spot her, readers?

I mentioned on Facebook the other week that one of my pet marking peeves this year (they operate on a strict rotation basis) is the habit of saying "it could be argued that X", rather than simply "X". It always strikes me as evasive, a way of saying "I'm going to float an idea, and if you agree with it I'll take the credit, but if you don't then I wasn't advocating it, okay?"

Thanks to stormdog I just saw the perfect illustration of this tactic, although not using that exact phrase, from Nigel Farage - who I bet scattered "It could be argued that" all over his school essays. It's in this article about the reaction to the London bombings on Fox News. Were internment camps a good way to go, mused the incisive analysts of Fox? (For the benefit of those reading outside the UK, no mainstream British politician - by which for this purpose I mean a politician from a party with more MPs than zero - has suggested it.)

Who better to ask than Nigel Farage? Like one of my bet-hedging students (Farage was a professional bet-hedger when he worked in the City, trading commodities, and the instinct is still strong) Farage doesn't call for internment. He says (of people on police watch lists) "if there is not action, then the calls for internment will grow" and, "unless we see the government getting tough, you will see public calls for those 3,000 to be arrested".

Did he just call for internment? Of course not - how dare you suggest such a thing! He was merely acting as a commentator! (Unless it happens, and then he'll be able to say he was brave enough to float the idea.)

And then of course, along comes Katie Hopkins of the Daily Heil like the organ-grinder's monkey, repeating his sentiment but minus the hedge, proving Farage's words true in the process: “We do need internment camps.” What a double act!

A few people on Facebook were bemused by my dislike of "It could be argued that", implying that it was perhaps a bit over the top. This is why I try to drum into people that it's a cowardly and dishonest tactic, whether you're talking about the date of a sonnet or the best reaction to an atrocity.

Nigel Farage uses it, for heaven's sake!

I don't believe in posting just because a) you haven't for a few days and/or b) something important has happened that you feel you "ought" to comment on. Nevertheless, that's what I'm doing - partly as a data point so that I can remind my future self what I was thinking now.

So, I think this is obvious and dull, but here goes. The most striking thing about Theresa May's announcement of the election the other day wasn't the fact that it was a U-turn on all her previous promises not to hold one; nor that she rather ridiculously talked about "strong, stable government", stealing a line from David Cameron, Britain's most chaotic Prime Minister ever; nor was it even... Oh, but I think this could turn into a very long list, so I'll refer you to point-by-point analysis and cut to the chase.

The most striking thing was the way in which May evidently regards any effective Parliamentary oversight of the Government's actions as an unjustified infringement on the prerogatives of the executive. Far from opposing her at every turn, Parliament has in fact been extraordinarily accommodating, letting her Brexit bill pass with a three-line Opposition whip in support, and no amendments from the Lords. How much easier could they have made it? For May, however, even having to go to Parliament was an indignity, and she wasted a lot of taxpayer's money trying to avoid it.

I can't help wondering whether Erdogan's victory in Turkey wasn't more of a spur than the invigorating air of Snowdonia in inspiring her to go to the polls, asking for a majority that would effectively free her from democratic scrutiny. Okay, it's not quite being made President-for-life (even Trump has fought shy of that so far), but like Erdogan and Trump, May has that dangerous combination of entitlement and paranoia that makes any criticism, or even any constitutional check or balance, appear illegitimate, whether that be a federal judge daring to do his job in Hawaii, or a Parliamentary opposition doing its job in Westminster.

She's a very stiff-necked person, I think, when what we need right now is an Olympic gymnast. (I'm not saying Corbyn's that, but he can at least manage a forward roll.)

Back in the bubble, why does the Guardian think "Brenda from Bristol" requires subtitles when none of the other people in this clip do?

I've been otherwise occupied over the last few days, but I couldn't help but notice, in the middle distance, quite a bit of fallout from the last Thursday's by-elections. In one, Labour conceded Copeland to the Tories - a poor result indeed, but, especially Corbyn's hostility to nuclear power, not particularly unexpected or out of line with historic trends: the Labour majority had been eroded steadily over the last 20 years, to the point where it was only some 2,000 in 2015. (The Tory vote was greatly boosted, too, by the collapse of UKIP.)

In the early stages of the campaign, far more attention was paid the other election, in Stoke. For here, it seemed, was the perfect storm which would set up UKIP to replace Labour in its heartlands. Here was a city that had voted strongly for Brexit, a left-behind old-industrial city that might reasonably resent the London-centric elite personified in its public-school-educated MP Tristram Hunt, a place where UKIP was moreover fielding its highest-profile parliamentary candidate, party leader Paul Nuttall. Early reports from the constituency were full of vox pops of people talking about switching from Labour to UKIP. You could hear the press licking its lips.

Then it all went a bit quiet. It became clear that UKIP weren't actually doing that well after all. In the event, Labour held the seat comfortably, and UKIP were humiliated - effectively destroyed, indeed, as a political force. If they couldn't win here, in these circumstances, then they can't win anywhere. Yet this story, of the destruction of a party on which the media have lavished so much attention and air time, was told in a strangely muted way, and in press reports was hugely overshadowed by the other election, where Labour lost.

Or so it seems to me, in the middle distance.

Though justice against fate complain,
And plead the ancient rights in vain;
But those do hold or break
As men are strong or weak.

There was a catch in my voice as I read these lines to a hall of first-year students yesterday, in the course of a lecture comparing Marvell's "Horatian Ode" with Horace's Ode 1.2 (in translation, naturally). I'd been asked to give a couple of lectures on rewritings, and this was the first: next week, The Owl Service and "Math ap Mathonwy"!

If there's one thing you take away from this lecture, I said, or words to that effect, remember those words and take them to heart. Rights aren't out there sitting immutably in some Platonic realm: they're human creations, and have to be protected by humans. (Pace the Declaration of Independence, there's nothing self-evident or innate about them.)

A little off-topic, perhaps, but it was hard to avoid the contemporary resonances of both poems at a time when Europe and America appear to be in the process of being "cast... into another mould". Not that either Trump or Farage (or any of the various continental Faragistes) has a scintilla of the genius of Octavian or Cromwell, but I fear that in today's world they don't need it.

On a side note, though, I noticed for the first time that this poem does the same thing that Trump does in his speeches, shifting register and providing self-translation or additional comment as if for his deaf granny. The long couplets tend to use an elevated register, full of abstracts, personifications and Latinate words, which is supplemented by a demotic, everyday, occasionally cynical register in the short couplets. You can see it clearly in the lines quote above, but they're not unique. Take, for example:

’Tis madness to resist or blame
The force of angry Heaven’s flame;
And, if we would speak true,
Much to the man is due,

The first two lines are elevated, the second a kind of water-cooler village pump conversation, mulling over the recent news. Or, immediately following:

Who from his private gardens where
He liv’d reserved and austere,
As if his highest plot
To plant the bergamot,

The first two lines are serious, the second two parenthetical whimsy. In a more muted form we find the same contrast here:

He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene,
But with his keener eye
The axe’s edge did try;

Nor call’d the gods with vulgar spite
To vindicate his helpless right,
But bowed his comely head
Down as upon a bed.

Elevated language in the long lines, with the short lines devoted to a) a piece of witty black humour, or b) a homely simile, in both cases free of non-English words. Well, that's by the by, but I record it here as an aide-memoire.

It's a common meme amongst people who hate Jeremy Corbyn that his supporters are all cult-like devotees who are obsessed with their hero; but in recent months the only people who seem obsessed with Corbyn are his critics, who can't seem to shut up about him. To judge by the Facebook pages of some of my friends (friends only in a Facebook sense, in some cases), all the woes of recent times have been Corbyn's doing. You'd think that he had called the referendum; you'd certainly think that he had campaigned for a Leave vote; you'd think that he had insisted on leaving the single market - and now, apparently, the real significance of the Government's curtailing of the Dubs amendment lies in Corbyn's failure to stop it (in some unspecified way). For a leader of the opposition whose MPs have been in open revolt from before the moment of his election, he apparently wields an amazing amount of power.

Of course, if push came to shove my friends would admit that all these acts were actually perpetrated by the Tories, but it seems that they couldn't have done it (despite having a parliamentary majority) had Jeremy Corbyn not allowed them. That enrages them far more than the acts themselves. At any rate, they never post against the government but only against the opposition.

It seems to me that this constant blaming of the opposition for the acts of the government is the very essence of letting said government off the hook - the very thing, in fact, that they blame Corbyn for. It's bizarre; but it's been the pattern at least since last June, when the Labour rebels chose the moment of greatest Tory disarray - the aftermath of the Brexit vote - in order the launch their bid to replace Corbyn as leader. What a friend the Tories have in the PLP - and in their cheerleaders on Facebook and elsewhere (The Guardian, I'm looking at you).

A curious coda: in the tradition of Schroedinger's Immigrant, who simultaneously steals your job and lazes on benefits, we have recently begun to witness attacks on Schroedinger's Opposition Leader - who is both the great betrayer of the Remain voters (for voting in line with the referendum result), and the darling of the liberal metropolitan elite, hopelessly out of touch with Labour's working-class heartlands. But clearly any stick will do, as long as it draws attention from the evisceration of the NHS, the betrayal of refugees, the uselessness of Trident, the shambles of the Brexit ministers, and such like minor matters.

Anyone doubting whether Trump's instincts were fascistic will I hope have had those doubts satisfied by his first week in office. Terrible as the events at the airports have been, in Pollyanna mode I'm hoping that they will have given serious second thoughts to people thinking of voting for Le Pen in France. This (and worse) is what you'd be voting for: don't say there's no way you could have known.

If Le Pen is defeated - better, humiliated - it may stop the populist right in its tracks in mainland Europe. If not - well, après elle, le déluge.

The old mobile phone advertising slogan, "The Future's Bright, the Future's Orange" has been going through my head for the last day or so - can't think why...

Anyway, idly searching the phrase on Youtube I came across this 1999 advert, imagining a dystopian future world in which Orange has become a vast, all-controlling panopticon, micromanaging the lives of everyone and interposing itself in human relationships at every level.

Although at one point (0.51) we read that Hillary Clinton is running for the US presidency, the news is greeted with scornful, uncomprehending laughter by the complacent white family at the film's centre, who are unaware of how their autonomy has been usurped by the all-powerful Orange Corporation.

It's nightmarish stuff - complete with creepy clowns (4.05). Watch it (and then live it) if you dare...

I'm rather stupid. It only just occurred to me that for many of my friends here the move of LJ's servers to Russia is also the move of LJ's servers out of their own country. The latter aspect could be quite as unsettling as the former, I imagine. Whereas for those of use who have always written our home thoughts from abroad it is, from that point of view, business as usual.

Of course I don't trust Putin's government, but nor do I Trump's. In terms of LGBTQI issues, for example, I'm not keen on either trawling my locked posts (no nor Mark Zuckerberg neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so). Although, to be honest, they'd probably be bored to death if they did.