two cheers for the EU (oh ian mcewan)

I’ve noticed over the years that every time something happens – 9/11, Iraq War, swine flu, Trump – the Guardian tells us what Ian McEwan thinks about it. On Brexit, Ian describes us Remainers as “good-natured” (not a word to use about oneself, surely) and “the left-behinds” (I’ve not been left anywhere, Ian, I’m in the midst of things). He’s exactly right about the “grins perfected during the last years of the Soviet Union” (I’m always a sucker for a Soviet Union analogy) but as for most of the rest, it sounds like he’s auditioning to be the Centrist Dads’ Centrist Dad. Didn’t he write ‘First Love, Last Rites’ once upon a time? Perhaps we should just be glad that the Guardian and Ian McEwan are keeping each other in work; maybe they should get him to do the weather.

I’ll say this, though – and I’m saying it as an Oxbridge-educated (using the word ‘educated’ lightly) person who’s also worked at the sharp end of homelessness, mental health and the rest: uber-Remainers give uber-Leavers a run for their money where stupidity’s concerned. Don’t misunderstand me: we all know that some Brexiteers are thick. Bigoted, self-satisfied, angry/ insecure and thick. We’ve heard them on radio phone-ins, we’ve seen them on the TV news. Trump, Bannon, Farage and Cambridge Analytica have weaponised their stupidity; such is life. (A good friend throws the phrase “you won; get over it” at these foot soldiers on social media, in an attempt to confuse them. Sometimes works).

Some Remainers, though – despite their typically greater level of verbal articulacy and access to cultural capital – are just as thick, in the sense that they’ve never really questioned their own core assumptions. You’d think that the last five years would’ve forced them to; apparently not. While I feel that Brexit’s a profound mis-step – we’re in every important sense a diminished country as a result; the prospect of tackling challenges like poverty and climate change is set back, not advanced – waving Erasmus scholarships and the rest in the faces of those with an altogether more hand-to-mouth set of priorities is just not going to cut it. I’m not saying, by the way, that Erasmus doesn’t matter. It does. I’m saying that some Remainers ought to have worked harder, yes, even in the face of an increasingly depraved right-wing media, to link such things (first inwardly, and then out loud) to ordinary people’s concerns.

(I outed myself as being ex-Oxbridge a moment ago. Is that relevant or just showing off? Well, the reason I’ve mentioned it is that, arriving at Cambridge nearly thirty years ago, I met plenty of fellow students who, as it turned out during those “what A-Levels did you do?” conversations of Freshers’ Week, had gone straight from very good schools – Eton, Harrow, St Paul’s – to socially-useful gap year work in, say, Thailand. Commendable – and there’s nothing deterministic about where you went to school and what you turn out like - but in some cases, I then got to wondering whether they’d ever had a meaningful conversation with a working class person in their own hometowns. I won’t pretend to analyse the mixed motives that impel me to share this with you, or pick apart whether it was socialist idealism, ‘good nature’ or deep-seated personality flaws combined with chronic lack of ambition that led to me spending my own gap year in Birmingham; that's for another day of autofictional nonsense – but it does feel relevant to what we were talking about).

It’s a bit late now to make any kind of pro-EU campaign. I’m hoping that we rejoin but it’s too early to see how that might come about. In the meantime, it’s surely time for those of us who care about such things to re-engage with Left Euroscepticism (your Tony Benns, your Dennis Skinners – and for intellectual ballast, your E.P. Thompsons) and with the views of former Centre and Left arch-Europeans who have been on a journey (David Owen; Gisela Stuart). Two main reasons for this: first, we might actually learn something and wouldn’t that be fun; second, there’s surely more mileage (in England and Wales, anyway; in Scotland and Northern Ireland this isn’t the only game in town) in contesting the meaning and terrain of Brexit than there is in waving our EU flags around and awaiting rescue.

One other thing Ian McEwan’s right about, incidentally: he mentions nationalism and xenophobia as drivers of Brexit. Well, sure – though there have always been conscionable pro-Brexit positions on both right and left that haven’t arisen from such motives. (It’s also fair to say that Brexit narratives and rhetoric have enabled racism - not in every single soul, no, but on aggregate). He misses the mark, however: in his commitment to remaining ‘good-natured’ and ‘herbivorous’ (oh, please), he ends up sounding like Mr ‘Love Me I’m A Liberal’ from the Phil Ochs song. Would that we were hearing, in his words, a more robust sense of how to combat racism and bigotry through action rather than just by ‘deploring’ (and look where that kind of thing gets us) - and for my part, I wish I could walk him through how we did things when I ran a Sure Start Centre; we had a proper discussion amongst the team of our own experiences of racism and discrimination before then rolling up our sleeves and organising a Multicultural Festival for local families, because it's important for us all to understand what the stakes are. (Multiculturalism includes the nations and regions of the United Kingdom, of course; I made sure we displayed large maps of both the U.K. and the world, inviting children to place stickers indicating where family or friends lived. Look at all the places we're from!).

Where necessary - on that occasion and others - we educated and challenged one another, not in a commissar sense (despite my love of historical analogy, I’m not into cosplay), but with evidence of (for instance) what best supports children from bi-lingual homes in learning to read. None of this was perfect, some of it didn’t come off, usually it wasn’t usually super-serious (try organising a sociological lecture season for the under-fives; see how far that gets you), but it was an example of paying critical attention to race, gender, demographics and so on in order to achieve practical, measurable outcomes. Ah, Sure Start Centres: those were the days.

So, to summarise: Remainers can be annoying. Britain’s left the EU and in that sense the battle’s lost; however, there’s still a world to win (as someone once said). Combating bigotry is a team struggle rather than a spectator sport and… did I forget anything? Oh yes: while I’m not a Centrist Dad, I do pride myself on my fair-mindedness… so I’ve noticed that you could chant ‘Oh Ian McEwan’ to the same tune (Seven Nation Army) as ‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn’. There: my gift to you. Take it to your next pro-EU rally/ vigil/ historical re-enactment.

bristol, graveyard of ambition

The reasons why this Spectator writer doesn't like Bristol suggest the reasons why right- (i.e. left-) thinking people should.

See also Adam Smith on market towns (clue: 'market town' is a misnomer, 'cartel town' would be more like it, as there's one garage, one bakery and everyone basically knows everyone - come on, Adam, you're saying that like it's a bad thing; of course, I'm paraphrasing).

For other examples besides Bristol of a radical milieu flourishing in a place with an ugly history, see also West Berlin, 1970s & 1980s - at least, as described in Frederick Taylor's 'Berlin Wall'; West Berlin as, simultaneously, an embattled, militarised 'listening station' surrounded by the Communist East and the place you head for if you're a young West German who, for ethical or personal reasons, doesn't fancy completing your otherwise-compulsory military service (if you're in West Berlin, you're exempt; a legislative holdover from the four-power division of the city in 1945). This book generally is full of insights into the complex four-partnered U.S., Soviet, East and West German dance during the three decades of the Wall's existence, as well as vignettes of ordinary life in the two Germanies and, especially, the two Berlins: recommended. 

What got me thinking about Bristol in this way? Why, the Financial Times - the paper every good socialist ought to read ("because you've got to know how the enemy thinks, comrade; and the Guardian's gone badly downhill recently; besides, it's for liberals*") - specifically Tim Harford's recent opinion piece about 'harbingers of failure,' an actual marketing category as it turns out, the opposite of 'early adopters'. "[Harbingers] simply adored the Ford Edsel, the Betamax video format... these people thought nothing cried out 'sophisticated lady' more loudly than a packet of Bic disposable knickers."

What gives these harbingers their odd knack of choosing the 'wrong' thing? Are they of Walter Benjamin's party without knowing it? "He aimed to disclose history through its refuge and detritus, studying the overlooked, the worthless, the trashy... [in order to] adminster a kind of shock effect to awaken us from our illusions" - Stuart Jeffries' 'Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School'.

These fragments &c.

Oh, and the Aquarium's nice.

Plus I bought my favourite retro arcade game t-shirt in a Stokes Croft charity shop so there's that.

---
[Talking of Stokes Croft, do read Tim Maughan's Infinite Detail - near-future dystopian SF about life in Bristol and New York just before and in the days and years after a massive DDOS attack takes out the entire internet: recommended (the novel, not the procedure). / Review in LARB].

*I'm a liberal myself, of course; I just know all the old show tunes.