The B-Word two years on, and a book to remind you....

 

I watched that chancer Johnson's less than sincere apology in the House the other day when the Grey report dropped, with a mixture of amusement and disgust.  I'm not sure anyone in the country was fooled for a minute, especially after May and Starmer and Blackford dismantled his posturing - the man is clearly the most damaged of damaged goods.  His response  to Starmer's initial rebut was disgusting in the extreme - raising the memory of Jimmy Savile in a crude and inaccurate allegation against the former DPP to deflect criticism away from himself was uncalled for and rightly criticised by most - even some of his own allies - , and I can't remember ever seeing a Member looking as angry as Starmer rightly did.  Johnson's subsequent "apology" was even less sincere than anything he's said in the wake of Partygate (if that's possible).  So much for the disgust.

The amusement came when he started reeling off his achievements since becoming PM, led of course by "getting Brexit done" (as if that is something to be proud of....) and defeating Covid (which is still raging across the world, in case he hadn't noticed, even if less virulent than before: and the improved situation is completely down to scientists and health workers, NOT Boris Johnson!).  The claims would be laughable if they weren't so tragic.

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But the purpose of this piece in not to give Johnson another flogging (even though he deserves it) nor to go over the old ground of Brexit - as Johnson rightly points out, it's done.  Whether people agree with it or not, nothing will change for a generation.  I have not a shred of doubt in my own mind that the Leave vote was the biggest electoral mistake in the country's history, and the worst is yet to come.  Many of the economic effects have been masked by the measures that had to be taken over the past couple of years to manage the Pandemic, and in this respect Johnson and his co-Brexiters have been very fortunate.  But that will not last forever: as the economy opens up again, and the empty shelves, rising prices and supply problems that are becoming increasingly common (ask any trucker stuck for up to 16 hours on the M20 this week) start to bite.  It will get worse before it gets better.

I suppose this Parliamentary pantomime struck me particularly strongly as I was at the time finishing reading an excellent book, "Middle England" by Jonathan Coe.  Based in and around Birmingham, the novel charts the fracturing of an ordinary working class family, largely through the unexpected viciousness that characterized much of the 2016 Referendum campaign.  It's an excellent book, well researched and well written, and covers all the key events leading up to the vote and the chaos the result led to (and indeed is still being faced by people across Britain to this day).

The politics isn't forensically examined but there is no need for that: probably everybody in the country still has them fresh in their minds.  The few real life characters referred to by name - notably Cameron and Corbyn - do not come out of it well, nor do they deserve to.  Cameron is blamed and slated, rightly in my view, for being a wealthy Old Etonian Tory with a very light grasp on working class Britain, for calling the Referendum in the first place, then complacently expecting the Remain side of the argument to win right up until the last few days of campaigning, then being cowardly in resigning within hours of the result being declared, despite insisting throughout the run-up to the vote that he would never do such a thing. In doing so, he created a power vacuum that May and Johnson have so far failed to fill.  Corbyn, meanwhile, comes across as an ineffectual and incompetent Opposition leader whose politics (whether Marxist, Communist, Trotskyist or a mix of all three) turned out to be both irrelevant and outdated, and incapable of making any kind of commitment one way or the other - all of which I would suggest is completely true.

The increase in racism and xenophobia that characterised much of the Leave campaign - something else Johnson should be ashamed rather than proud of - is well described, as were the Birmingham riots a couple of years earlier, and the increasing sense of alienation felt by older people (that I recognise from within my own family), as well as the brutal and unnecessary murder of Jo Cox, are all movingly woven into the tale.  I would strongly suggest that none of these societal problems have been solved or even addressed by Brexit, nor are they likely to be resolved by this Government: it's something else that will take a generation to unwind (if it ever is).

But the book is not all doom and gloom - there is humour there too.  The vacuous individuals that came to the fore in government circles during Cameron's two terms (the coalition with the LibDems and his own Tory majority) are brilliantly illustrated by the recurring character of a slimy Deputy Press Secretary from Cameron's office, who speaks contradictory nonsense in as fine a selection of sound-bites as I've ever seen in one place.  He is picture perfect, and meets a suitably humiliating end with Cameron's demise and May's ascent.  There is also the bumbling would-be author struggling to finish his meisterwerk and find a publisher - now that one really rang true! - who ends up opening a writing school in rural France without any students to speak of, but still manages to get long listed for the Man Booker Prize.  And there is his best school friend, now trying to make a living as a children's party entertainer engaged in an intense and ultimately violent rivalry with another clown.

The blurb on the cover describes it as "the Brexit book everyone should read".  I'm not sure I would put it that strongly, but it is a very very well written and entertaining piece of work that should resonate with  anyone who, like me, lived through those turbulent times  It would also make a damned good movie or tv special, that I would certainly watch.

I'm not sure Our Leader would share my view, though - but then the man has no taste.