Redoubled Efforts
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Saturday, 24 May 2008
So, I’m back. Long story, won’t go into it now. Will fix the software sometime. Meant to do it before posting, but ... well, you know.
Nick Cohen formerly of the New Statesman, still of the Observer (but for how much longer?), recently came out against Berthold Brecht. Brave man, that. Don’t just wait until they’re dead, wait until the worms are properly bloated and there’s practically nothing left, and then weigh in. Napoleon probably had a line about catching your enemy unawares, and you can bet Brecht wasn’t expecting that one!
I’m not the Brecht enthusiast I used to be. Age is a little like spinal injury: you feel less than you used to. But Brecht came up with three great aphorisms for me. First: "Bread first, then ethics." I’ve always been a little dubious about this; it’s both obvious and yet has a flavour of self-exculpation.
Second: "Only the rich win on one side of a war; the poor on both sides always lose." I remember this because I stuck it into a poem (it’s not theft, it’s (post) modernism). A simplification, sure, but the leftist case for pacifism in a nutshell.
Third, the greatest of the lot: a poem called The Solution which ends "Would it not be easier/In that case for the government/To dissolve the people/And elect another?" There are lines deserving of immortality. At least, they apply today.
Ms Dunwoody said: "I think my mother is turning in her grave.
"She would have respected the democratic decision of the people, but she desperately wanted Crewe and Nantwich to stay with Labour".
We could say - I’m certainly about to, anyway - that the people of Crewe and Nantwich weren’t given the choice. Chris Brooke called that part of their campaign violently grotesque; John Harris had it thus: The tactics of Crewe expose a truly nasty party: Labour. The best that Labour can hope for now is that Stephen McCabe resigns. PS: the Guardian really doesn’t like him. And rightly so. Repugnant Nazi is about as nice as I can manage.
Even the usually impregnable prose of Martin Kettle has turned on Labour:
In reality there are only two ways of getting rid of any leader. One is to overthrow him. The other is to force him to quit. The trouble with the first option is no cabinet minister can challenge for the leadership without resigning, while any backbencher who attempted to challenge would be dismissed as a wrecker. Few Labour MPs have the taste or the nerve for this. Moreover the process would be bloody and protracted, and its eventual outcome is uncertain. For all these reasons it seems unlikely to happen.
Have we become the 51st state while I was away or do we still have a nuclear deterrent? Because if we have, it’s the Prime Minister who makes the call on the red phone or whatever the process is. No one actually dies in a political coup. It’s not "bloody" at all. Yet MPs voted on a war which has cost over 600,000 lives in Iraq. And none of them has the ’nerve for this’. I agree with Kettle for once.
I used to be a Brownite. I’m sure I voted for him in a Labour election. (Did he stand against John Smith? I’m sure I remember a Brown/Beckett ticket. If so, I voted for it. If not, I’ve lost my marbles.) I gradually lost my faith. I didn’t vote Labour in 2001 (I’ve forgotten the actual reason now, but the behaviour of the Labour Party in Wales had something to do with it[1]). Even so, I kept my membership, hoping that Brown would succeed. But then I started to worry about this succession thing. It didn’t seem very democratic. The grass roots voted for not one but two leaders, and perhaps GB would embrace the precedent and nominate his own successor. Democracy the clean way! Don’t consult the people - they’re wishy-washy and know nothing anyway. In the years that followed, Brown stayed Chancellor. All politics is a disaster waiting to happen; it’s the cartoon character walking off the edge of the cliff. The smart operators (until they can be kicked upstairs no further) do the cat on a hot tin roof act and move on - ASAP. Brown started in the Treasury at a good time. Fine for him; now time and tide and all that ... Move, you fool! Before the economy cycles. It was like King Canute (the one of legend, not the real one) going down to the beach as the tide was going out. "Go back, sea, I command thee. Go, and return no more." You’ve made your point, now run! But Brown stuck, limpet-like, until things changed. This is not wisdom. Brown could and should have moved to the other big offices: just because Blair was a naif in 1997, doesn’t mean he’d be excused. He should have learned about our foreign relationships, seen our forces rather than examine their expenses, talked to policemen and women about more than pay. I suspect others lost faith too.
[1] Note to self: if I see Rhodri Morgan in the Farmer’s Market opposite the Millenium Stadium tomorrow, I must pass on my regards to his wife for her contribution to the abortion debate.
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