Achievements need to be remembered, shared and celebrated. In mid November, for Nigel Farage this meant a reception hosted at the Ritz with him as guest of honour. Between backslaps from the Barclay brothers and Jacob Rees-Mogg he spoke to the room, declaring “For those of you who aren’t particularly happy with what happened in 2016, I’ve got some really bad news for you – it’s going to get a bloody sight worse next year.”
On reading these words I set down my gin and tonic and took pause to reflect on the year. And so, my remote chum this blog continues. When I briefly paused from its writing the year was but half way through. In the UK, we’d gone through a tedious and alienating referendum vote but what else could the year throw our way.
And scene!
It’s summer. OK, summer for the UK which means more rain but it occurs in longer hours of daylight. The majority have spoken with the referendum vote being 52-48% in favour of the country leaving the European Union. Democracy prevails. David Cameron, channelling Little Lord Fauntleroy to the end retreats on to his own stumps and triggers resignations across the spectrum. Roy Hodgson and Sam Allardyce take turns at resigning from the England job. Len Goodman retires from Strictly. Mel and Sue walk away from Bake Off.
As the aftershocks from Brexit continued the Euro 2016 football tournament proved a welcome distraction albeit briefly before Wayne and the lads maintained the theme of the year. As Roy sat alone in the changing room practising his resignation speech with significantly more rigour than his team had done with set pieces, his ears surely must have filled with the sound above of a reasonable proportion of the Icelandic population synchronising impersonations of viking seagulls. I wonder if he, like those who also fell away this year, reflected on the chain of events that led him to his downfall. There was no option for him but to stop passing the port. You can't be responsible for burning the aspirations of a nation on a pyre of inanities and expect to turn up to the FA with a song in his heart and a vision of the future. These are the preserve of the victors. For the losers a bitter point settling autobiography, an appearance on the One Show in a sweater and an inability to look anyone in the eye ever again awaits. For the triumphant Brexiters they...they...hang on, they resigned too! Michael Gove and Boris Johnson, surfing the wave of brexit took the opportunity to turn on each other like cornered dogs. Nigel Farage stood down from UKIP citing job done and a desire for his life back. Whilst writing this at some months distance allows for a retrospective “see later” at the time we were left with replying that we’d like our country back. In the days following Brexit there were reports of laminated cards with hateful messages being pressed into the hands of immigrant children, with similar messages being daubed on entrances to immigration centres. Team Hate’s electorate Pandora's box was fully open, giving certain sections of the population license to share their true feelings for people looking a bit not from around here. The 48%, soon to be rebranded “remoaners” briefly sought ways to visually identify themselves to each other through the wearing of safety pins. It makes travelling on public transport a calmer affair if you’re reasonably confident the person sat next to you isn’t on their way to a nursery to smear dog excrement on its door.
David Cameron hadn't even put his Aston Villa (or was it West Ham) scarf in the bin before prospective replacements began to thrust themselves into the media glare. Like a crypt releasing the afterthoughts of Hades the Conservative party put forward its greatest and best candidates. Within days of Dave stumbling back to Oxfordshire, the eldritch forms of Liam Fox, Theresa May, Andrea Leadsom and something called Stephen Crabb crept into the daylight. Politics own dead cat bounce mascot, Boris Johnson, always one to play his hand last also circled the pit. As the deadline for submitting nominations drew closer Boris unexpectedly announced that he would not be standing. He hadn’t blundered into the career wood chipper unaided and it was seen as being beyond coincidence that across town at the same time Michael Gove was announcing his own candidacy. Pre-press conferences Gove had been known as a Johnson supporter but in his speech declared that he had “come reluctantly to the conclusion that Boris cannot provide the leadership or build the team for the task ahead”. The last time someone was betrayed to the extent Boris was by Michael Gove involved Mufasa and his brother Scar. Gove’s treachery poisoned his own campaign. Crabb withdrew as no one even in his own party had heard of him. Andrea Leadsom, a relatively recent member of the back benches went on a charm offensive, repeating in interviews that she could become “the new Margaret Thatcher”. It gives genuine insight into the Conservative Party that such a proposition is presented as a positive marketing decision rather than a threat from history. The MPs voted and it quickly became apparent that there was a clear standout leader in the polls. The country would have its first zombie Prime Minister, Theresa May, representative of the undead for at least the last decade. The bloodless coup was over and an unelected Prime Minister would lead a country with an unelected cabinet with a mandate built on interpretation of a single issue referendum rather than any manifesto commitments. Everything that had brought the conservatives to power the year before was now moot, as were its figureheads. Chancellor George Osborne, David Cameron’s replacement in waiting for 2020 quietly exited the stage.
The country was slowly tearing itself apart. There was a need for clarity, an emboldened vision for the new course the country was heading upon in response to the referendum. The City of London, whilst enjoying the plummeting pound needed to know whether it was relocating its banking operations to Frankfurt, Paris or the Cayman Islands. Foreign nationals needed to know whether they could stay in the country, as did people from the UK living across Europe. Petrol prices were rising as were other goods. There was a supermarket war over marmite. A strategy of what was going to happen and when needed to be outlined. Theresa May stepped forward as Prime Minister and spoke to the world. “Brexit means Brexit” she intoned. In the hours and days that followed this detailed pronouncement commentators marvelled at its brevity, its reassurances to the 52% and that it wasn’t giving too much away to those dodgy types over the channel and the coming negotiations. It was only as the weeks mutated into months that we realised that she was providing the complete Government policy on the matter.
Fortunately for us her new cabinet would fill out these gaps and collectively take us forward. Why with Liam Fox, normally best suited to being led from a crime scene with a bag over his head being now Minister for International Trade and David Davis, a man who in other times would be shot by his own men before the start of battle acting as Minister for Exiting the European Union the country’s future surely cannot be in doubt. Round this out with Philip Hammond in the Treasury, Amber Rudd in the Home Office and of course Boris Johnson in the Foreign Office and it’s a stella cabinet to be sure. Sorry, let’s wind that back. Who’s is the Foreign Secretary for the UK, the head of all ambassadors, the lead diplomat? It surely can’t be the man who associated the EU’s policy on unification as being akin to Napoleon and Hitler, Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing or described Hillary Clinton’s appearance as a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital. Of course he’s our foreign secretary. This is 2016. Since taking up his ministerial role he’s largely kept his head down and only once accused Saudi Arabia of abusing Islam and acting as a puppeteer in proxy wars. As he’s settled into his leather office chair there’s been less talk from him of the promises made during the referendum campaign. One of them, that an extra £350M could be spent on the NHS every week if we left the EU was very popular and Boris and co toured the country in a bus sporting it on its side in very large letters. With the culling of tweets and web sites many promises evaporated shortly after June 23rd but this one was hard to remove from the public consciousness. The new government were quick to distance themselves from promises that they weren’t involved in making. Like many politicians, Boris comes across as at best ambivalent on policy but definitely pro power and office. There's a strong culture of debating in some of our better schools. There is an art to arguing a position even if you have no personal investment other than to win the debate. The problem with politics is that every now and then you are called to actually give a shit. As the implications of the referendum vote hit home Boris came across as someone looking for a house trophy rather than the mandate to invoke article 50.
So far, so Conservative Party. But what of the official opposition? The Labour Party. Born out of the trade union movement, an institution, rightly or wrongly that a generation of workers are separated from the party was increasingly isolated from its electorate and the politics of the day. When the need for a strong voice challenging the Government was at a paramount it was instead inwardly focussed on a battle between the Parliamentary wing and Trotskyist Momentum. Jeremy Corbyn had come to power as a result of activism from below, he was an outsider to the Parliamentary wing. He was a fantastic campaigner within his own party but less so representing it in Parliament or putting his message across to the whole electorate. His lukewarm campaigning to remain in the referendum resulted in further instability and a new leadership election. He won again, by a clear margin. He offers very little in opposition or to non-hard left voters. The traditional Labour heartlands are preyed upon by others, be it Scottish National Party call for independence or UKIP’s messages of hate. This is 2016. An unelected Government is running the country to their own agenda and the official opposition is provided by ex-England captain Gary Lineker on Twitter.
INTERLUDE:
It’s spring. I’m parked up in a car in the middle of nowhere, well. Nidderdale actually. I’ve got a Duke of Edinburgh group out in the field on an expedition. If I’ve calculated things right they’re going to walk by me in the next half an hour. It’s a sunny day but cool. Easter was only last weekend. My tent was frozen over this morning. As I lurk in my car the radio plays the Sunday afternoon football game. Leicester City, improbable league leaders were, in season terms, heading into nosebleed territory. Everyone was waiting for them to fold under the pressure. We’re deep into the match and the score is 0-0. Not enough. Time ticks down. Pressure mounts. A long ball is punted upfield for Vardy to chase. He scores. Then someone else does. They win. They keep winning. It’s 2016.
It’s Autumn. After months of campaigning the American presidential election is drawing towards the only thing that ever mattered, the vote. Whilst we’re distant, removed and should treat it no differently to the upcoming French and German elections the shadow the US casts across the globe causes us to hold our gaze. It’s sport and spectacle too. The personalities, the politics, the issues are all fabulously grotesque. That people should be denied access to health care. That women should denied access to abortion clinics. That mass shootings occur with such regularity that if they make the news it’s at the end after a story about an animal giving birth in the local zoo AND the answer is to give more people guns, not take them all away. And and and. It’s a very right wing country, conservative, in love with a white picket fence myth of the past that probably never was. How a country of over 300 million people ended up with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton as the “best” two people to vote for is worthy of significant retrospective inspection. Perhaps it was because he had no policies, no political back story or just a weakness in the Republican Party that had pervaded it for a decade that resulted in Trump gaining its reluctant nomination. Clinton was the reverse, part of the party machine, serving in office at different levels, steeped in politics. He could do no right but suffered little in doing so. Whether it was insulting racial minority groups, religious faiths, the disabled, women or grieving parents of the armed forces his polling fluctuated but always rallied. Clinton was always the clear leader in the polls. A safe pair of hands. Nothing inspiring. No vision but neither a crass idiot. For the every pussy grabbing real fire the Trump team had to put out Clinton’s team had to cope with an increasing wave of fake fires. That she used private email whilst secretary of state looks plain dumb but is ultimately dull. There’s more mileage in linking her to a paedophile ring. Or a puppet of the Islamic founder of ISIS, President Obama. And so on. Whilst Trump had a Cambodia Year Zero themed closet full of skeletons I’m sure both sides resorted to peppering each other with fake and real assaults. Clinton was always ahead in the polls but Trump was getting closer. Whether the Billy Bush audio recording came out too early, or the pop-up FBI investigation into emails was perfectly timed we know one thing. It’s 2016. Clinton won the popular vote but Trump got the votes distributed in the states where it mattered and he is the the president elect. There are just enough white people in the country to hold the conservative line, to buy into making America great again by revoking decades of globalisation, ripping up free trade agreements, that manufacturing can return and a 32 year old woman in Wyoming can earn a good living and make t-shirts cheaper than a 10 year old child in Vietnam, that global warming is a myth and coal should be dug up out of the ground and burnt with abandon and principally that the enemy is without and they can be held back, repelled and crushed keeping the within, the myth the same. As the outsider candidate Trump has trimmed his sails to more establishment winds. His cabinet is a list of big corporation chums and billionaires. The election wasn’t just for the presidency, other seats in Government were up for grabs too. The Republican party now control the presidential office, and both the senate and congress. They can pass any act. The far right are in power and there is no redress.
Considering he wanted his life back it was somewhat surprising to find Nigel Farage in the US speaking on behalf of Trump at election rallies. His message was that as with Brexit “real people” could have a voice in elections and get what they wanted. The aftershocks of 2008’s financial crash continue. Whilst City traders might have had their bonuses capped for a few years there are many in the country who have seen their pay frozen and with inflation seen household budgets fall year on year. For this treading water/slowly drowning majority any life jacket, even a search light across the water feels welcome. The message of the right compels. Our lives would be better if it wasn’t for them coming over here, stealing our jobs, our homes, our school places, our status quo. Everything repeats. We’re in the 1930s. WARNING WARNING could we please, please not repeat what came next. Let’s not schism and fragment. The EU’s mission may well have mutated over the years but one if its original visions was to create political and economic stability, to integrate and prevent the conditions that resulted in two world wars been fought across it in 40 years. Hello Brexit. Is that bells I can hear ringing?
And so, dear reader, safe in your tropical retreat, aware of earth’s peril like the Tracy family but with the phone of the hook, now that I’ve warmed up my fingers again I sense that 2017 might warrant more regular updates. 2016 has been a year or political storms, upsets, celebrity deaths, mass terrorism and long running wars. 2017 awaits. We pause. It can’t be as bad as 2016 can it?. Can it?
