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dwestfieldblog · 3 years

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A VERY REMOTE ENGLISH TEACHER

Where meditations, rants, reverie and absent seizures cross over... closer to one gun with one bullet, the rose of ruby and the cross of gold...uff, and MENTACIDE IN THE TIME OF MASQUES. Although I have never suffered from the guilty masochistic torture of ‘pleasure anxiety’, Bacchus hath indeed drowned more men than Neptune. So I stopped drinking for 18 days to fool myself I was doing something positive and threw away enough things to be minimalist again. Arf. Beauty and/or function uber alles.

Been treading water for three years and trying not to drown...big round of one hand clapping for the former poet. Meanwhile, in this temporary world and perception I have created of it, I am looking at a very possible exile one way or the other...my ‘plan’...a long phased withdrawal or hasty retreat. My wish is to stay, but once I leave, it might well be very hard to return. Read as many metaphors as you want into that but in spite of my dislike of the conservatively minded Aristotle’s ‘either/or’ nonsense, there do indeed appear to be only two this time. And appear is the operative word. Appearances can be deceptive and emotions (unless raised and focused) cloud over what should be clear. Pain has a tendency to breed worry and fear too but let’s draw a veil over that for now eh? Suppress, suppress, release comes later...breathe deep and try not to cough, onward we go where the game gets rough...Just like Tom Thumbs Blues 65.

Remember Roman Protasevich...As Lukasenko himself said...‘Belarus stood at the edge of an abyss and I helped it take a step forward’. Look good on your tombstone that will Al. Fecking outrageous the Indian PM only admitted in May that covid was transmitted in the air. He needs removing... as do two thirds of all the other world leaders East and West. Hello Bollsanaro. People are very easy to manipulate when they’re are scared or angry...and right now the world majority are both. But, ‘there is a crack in everything... that’s how the light gets in’... and ‘things could change’, doesn’t have to be for the worse. It can take decades to realise this as actual truth, but still nice to read and try internalise the following last week.’The odds actually favour the optimists, since dissipate structures are more likely to evolve into more information rich (intelligent?) forms than into primitive or chaotic forms.’ All my friends bar my best one are optimists..Hello you:-)

Ever onward deeper downward with Orban in Hungary and his mission of ‘Christian values’, which involves a familiar routine of arresting, beating and disappearing dissenters in the name of Christ and taking over the universities to replace professors with those who understand on which side their bread is buttered. Decent judges long gone. Nice fascist communism...and ex soldiers in France and the Czech republic warning of civil war...

And now spiraling we go into the black hole vortex of Disaster capitalism, ‘Let the bodies pile high’. There’s gold in them thar ills....ISLAND PARANOIA and PERFIDIOUS ALBION! A country which demands a contract, agrees, signs to it and then refuses to honour it. We look worse than ridiculous, we look deceitful. Gentlemen, your places please. Boris Johnson is a clumsy, inept, disgraceful charlatan, con merchant and LIAR. A blustering master bullshit artist, the only decent thing about his recent secret wedding is that now he legally has one less bastard child.

Recently I read that British people are displaying signs of Stockholm syndrome...in that they dislike those who hold power over them and make the rules but during the time of pandemic, they are the ones who will release the saviour vaccine and get everything moving again. So rather than rocking the boat and daring to express dissent at the DIABOLICAL handling of the last 18 months, they have mostly kept quiet and voted for the same endlessly failing, corrupt and venal politicians who made a bad situation far worse. (That said, it bears repeating that there are a few million in the UK who didn’t quite understand that that the spread of a highly contagious airborne virus can be slowed by the wearing of masks/applying basic hygiene and even took offence at being told what should have made sense to any adult homo SAPIENS half capable of cogitating for themselves. Morons and scum. Same where you are?

By the way BBC...the colossal dearth of stories about the endless government failures in relation to Covid, death, corruption and the NHS...ever since they blackmailed you with threats of revoking the TV licence fee and got you to change Directors has been noted. Long may Have I Got News For You continue the satire and balance needed in a DEMOCRACY. Obey your public servants? Why, when they do not serve few but themselves? Power OF the people? Which ones...the mob? The same bleating pricks who follow populists?

Four eyed beanpole fop Rees Mogg, with his wonderful line that the benefits of Brexit will be seen ‘over the next fifty years’...well yes, that is why most people vote in democratic elections eh?...So they will be dead or ancient before the change they hoped for comes...and the politicians who lead them now, will have all long moved on to revolving door chairman of the board offshore limited liability company paradise. Bread today jam tomorrow fairytales. What I tell you three times is true.

O, but the English do so love to be told what to do by dumb posh boys who treat them like dirt. Some are forelock tugging and some are self flagellating middle class upper class wannabes who will never get there but still feel proud they are not street level proles. Doby the house elf alien hamster Michael Gove found guilty of breaking the law. Nothing. Internal inquiries run by those connected to the money changing hands find nothing illegal. Corruption for all to see...and ignore. ‘Well, what can we do?’ The uselessly inept serial failure Dido Harding to be in charge of the National Health Service? (she of the collapsed Woolworths, Talk Talk and the 22 BILLION pound loss of the Covid Track and Trace program where non working consultants/insultants, were paid 1000 pounds a day). American style privatisation is coming where only the wealthy or criminal can afford to be repaired and well. Sick.

Meanwhile, All our imported nurses out, and all the lobster red fat Spanish costa de la sol criminals back in. Great exchange, fair trade and forward thinking. The Kremlin are manipulating/supporting Scottish independence... I read years ago about their base in Edinburgh for Russia Today (the foul insert in The Daily Telegraph) and they were already encouraging it. Rees Smug has accelerated and supported their freedom with his snobbish utterances on countries in the UK other than England and their ‘foreign languages’. With every patronising, arrogant pronouncement, the Eton trifles fuel the fire in Scotland which has a long bitter history of being tortured, murdered and subjugated by their southern masters. Perhaps the chumocracy in Downing Street believe the Celts to be as easily cowed as the middle and working classes down south. Here’s hoping not. ‘Rebellious Scots to crush’? Not this time pal.

As for the future of Britain? A dystopian open prison where the lower social classes toil only at the pleasure of their masters. The higher caste getting richer and all others cast into a living Hell of debt, crime, and sickness. Serve until you die and be thankful we allow you to exist. Increasing in utter irrelevance to the world, other than as an example of how wrong a former democracy can go. This future started decades ago...its baobab roots truly deep now. Better education and critical thinking for the masses in the UK (or anywhere else) is highly unlikely now. Optimism huh? As long as I am not in England, I will still be able to tap into it, but once enclosed long term in the group mind there...trapped in a grey quagmire. Keep smiling...

Several weeks ago, I watched a video on YT of apparently English protestors running after the police in London, some attacking and throwing things, one pulling off the pandemic mask of an officer and all shouting abuse at the outnumbered cops who had to keep pulling back. As always, to get my caffeine rush of fury going, I read the comments and was surprised to see two or three from Chinese names. Almost all comments were against the government (fair enough) and dumb against the lock down, masks, vaccinations etc. Checking again, I saw the video had been posted by CGTN...a media company owned and run by the communist party in Beijing...and not one author of diatribes had mentioned this, nor speculated with a critical thought as to why such an organisation might enjoy turning people against their own democratically elected government (however mind rippingly foul and corrupt they are).

I copy pasted the Wikipedia paragraph about the company onto the page and hoped someone else would make the connection. I wouldn’t mind so much IF there were a credible and decent alternative other than the diseased populist poison for which the demonstrating goons chant. China really cares about the standard of democracy in Britain eh? Persuade your enemies to weaken themselves. Destroying countries by encouraging their ‘patriots’.

(That was written on the anniversary of Tienanmen Square...a few days later Xi Jinping gave a speech saying ‘...a lovable and respectable’ China must be presented to the world and must ‘expand its circle of friends’. Tell that to your teenage ‘dissidents’, Muslims, Falun Gong and Tibetans being tortured and brainwashed in prisons or being used for organ harvesting. Tell it to Hong Kong and Taiwan.)

Unholy America...against abortion and the pill, sex education’s not Gods will and in the Name of Christ they kill...if truth be known, we’ve failed the test...but Jesus was a Socialist and Republican conservatives hate them. The founding fathers of America were Very clear about separation of church and state with damn good Reason. Another part time Christian, Mike Pompeo wants to be president. Q Onan deepstorm morons/Kremlin stool pigeons aka POLEZNYYE IDIOTY continue to push for Trump and his Big Lie...He with the brain where ‘In the left, nothing is right and in the right, nothing’s left.’ Arf.

Over the last two decades, the dumb have been finding their voice and are now louder and prouder of their dumbass ignorance. 74 million in the US alone, their egos unable to retreat in the face of endless evidence to the contrary, they all double down. Like children sticking their fingers in their grimy ears sing songing ‘la la la can’t hear you’. 74 million versions of Eric Cartman, loud, proud and wrong. And uuff, Megan Markle, Majorie Taylor Greene, walking Picasso collage (bad car driver) Caitlin Jenner and Ivana Trump in politics...not exactly holding a proud lantern for women eh? I’d like to buy them for what they are worth and sell them for what they think they are worth. Not very PC?

That was the point. Could easily been written about all of the men written about here too. Next examples follow...

Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones compete for who can be as mentally ill as trump. The Miami school where the husband and wife directors told teachers not to return if they had HAD their vaccine shots because their proximity to students was interfering with menstrual cycles and uuuufff...The sickness of utter mind buggering stupidity. I had my first shot, now waiting to turn reptilian when the 5G masts triangulate my position. Fnord. Covid appears to be killing more overweight meat eating males than females...perhaps testosterone is not useful for the coming Race of non binary mutant hermaphrodites...and look out for the end of the Y chromosome, coming to a temporary universe near you...in 4.6 million years. Yes, really.

Glad Netanyahu is out at last, smug corruption is never a good look unless one is a rich criminal. Ha. The Promised land of Israel...If I was in court for serial murder, breaking, entering and stealing and then defended my actions by saying that God had told me to do it, would the Judge; A. Call for a psychiatric report, B. Disregard the statement as unprovable and pass the appropriate sentence, C, say Ok mate, you’re free to go, good luck to you. ? Moses had a good schtick.

The law is only to punish the poor, do you feel as if you suffer from empathy? Once you know, you no longer need to believe. What does ‘reality’ seem to be? The more certain you are, the stupider you get and belief is the death of intelligence. The machine is running the engineers. What is the definition of rationality...the quality of being based on or in accordance with reason or logic.

Nothing is, but thinking makes it so. Epicurus.

EVERYTHING NOT COMPULSORY IS FORBIDDEN.

The glamour illusion of the mass of pointless hot influencers needs a constant renewing of the Banishing Ritual as much as all the pigslop bile coming from Fox News and Sky. Bloody long haired commie liberal faggot they cry against any not identical to them. Some days I have only flamethrowers of hatred for these idiots. Other days...not exactly self doubt, just questions...most of us seem to believe our opinions are more valid when there are emotions connected to them. Including me. Again, this seems like a very weak version of ‘truth’, unless disciplined, channeled and focused to a certain end.

Life appears to exist in order to become via chaos.

Most of us are working only not to be homeless, some because of the joy in our chosen work regardless of finances. Until ‘reality’ kicks in the door...the bondage gets tighter when you struggle. How much hardship is the individual willing to endure these days by choice? Surrounded by a universe of distraction and destruction, Maya mewling for our attention. Five years of Trump, rampant populism and Brexit doing a Hexagram 23 on democracy, compounded by the pandemic...all on top of ‘normal’ daily life. The ego feeds and the immune system breaks down. Hard to ignore without being on a mountain or in a parallel dimension and emotion free other than compassion. But BY GODDESS IT CAN AND WILL BE DONE. Ladies of Life Nin Khursag, Isis, Kali, Aradia...Love one, Love ALL. At very least have respect for thyself but be not thou proud of thine arrogance nor thy suffering.

Or just Remember where you came from, what you were, seem to be and will become.

Heal, heal, more work to do, more love to give, more love to feel, Heal. Stay in drugs, eat your school and don’t do vegetables. Impose your own reality upon and through yourself, breathe, exhale, repeat, and continue, LOVE UNDER WILL. Experience and absorb but ‘It’s a house of tricks, ignore the world’’.

Stay well, be seeing you:-)

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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In the Earth: Ben Wheatley Explains How COVID Changed Horror Movies

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British filmmaker Ben Wheatley had his Rebecca remake in the can and was in pre-production on the sequel to 2018’s Tomb Raider reboot (which he is now no longer attached to) when the coronavirus began tearing its path around the globe. It would soon shut down almost all film production in addition to all other aspects of society.

At first stunned and frightened like everyone else, Wheatley — whose iconoclastic filmography also includes the nerve-rattling Kill List, the psychedelic period piece A Field in England, and the satirical crime thriller Free Fire — did what all creative people always do: channeled what was happening into a completely new idea for a movie.

One year later, Wheatley is out with In The Earth, his first horror movie since Field and, after Rebecca, a return to his low-budget roots. Set during the aftermath of an unspecified pandemic, In The Earth follows a scientist named Martin (Joel Fry) and a park ranger named Alma (Ellora Torchia) who head deep into a remote forest to check on a researcher named Dr. Wendle (Hayley Squires).

The journey turns nightmarish as they are menaced by both a mysterious presence and Wendle’s ex-husband Zach (Reece Shearsmith), who has a bizarre agenda all his own. In The Earth touches on themes that Wheatley has examined before, including the unknowable power of nature and human beings’ penchant for obsession, cruelty, and shocking violence, all within an eerie context we know too well from the horror show that was 2020.

Wheatley remains one of the most distinctive and surprising filmmakers on the scene, zigzagging from one unusual project to another, and in fact when Den of Geek caught up with him to discuss In The Earth, he was at work on another big-budget Hollywood sequel, this time to 2018’s hit monster movie, The Meg.

Den of Geek: Let’s talk about the inspiration for this, which has clearly been our current predicament for the last year or so.

Ben Wheatley: The whole thing from writing it to the cinema is exactly a year. I started writing this in the first week of lockdown in the UK, which would have been about the First or Second of March, something like that. I wrote it as a way of just trying to process what was happening but also just to try to feel optimistic about the future, so there was something to aim for going forward. Then it started to develop into something else, and as I was writing it, I started to see all sorts of different patterns inside it.

I started talking to Andy Starke, the producer, and we realized that we might be able to make it. If we timed it right, we’d be able to get it done. Maybe there was an opportunity just as the first wave stopped, before the big movies came back in, or big television came back in and sucked all the crews and actors away. Plus everyone was basically sitting on their hands, having not worked for three or four months. So that was the beginning of it, a slightly cheeky plan to get something done.

Also, every project I had was folded at that point in March. I almost felt like I was never going to work again, for a split second. It’s like, “Oh my god,” which I’m sure was a common worry for everybody. So it started to come out of that. That was the beginning of it.

Was it difficult to write something in a way that wouldn’t also instantly feel dated six months later?

I don’t think that’s a worry so much. It’s almost like I’m more excited about making something that’s in the moment. My film Happy New Year, Colin Burstead has a similar set of issues where it was made about a political situation, it was around Brexit, and all those things are important to it. Kill List was as well, and Sightseers to a slightly lesser degree, but Kill List was a very particular moment in British history and world history, as well. So I’m not worried about that stuff.

In a way, the idea of things becoming dated — I watch a lot of movies from the ’60s and ’70s, it never bothers me about the political situation being different from now. I think dated is more like attitudes are dated, and that can be unfortunate when you watch something and go, “Oh god, did people really think like that then? Things have moved on slightly from that.” But also, when I was writing this, I was thinking, “This is not going to go away. I don’t think it’s going to go away for years, is it?”

There was something about watching TV and watching movies and going, “All these films feel like they’re so in the past now.” The stuff that was released after the lockdown, the concerns of these characters would be completely different now, in any contemporary film. Anything that was period was all right, but anything that was contemporary, you just went, “This feels weird.” Even just watching Tenet and going, “Look at all these people at a concert.” It felt weird. I was like, “This feels like from another time,” and I think that was part of the thing that spurred me forward, going, “I want to make something that’s in this moment.”

Movies

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Your previous film was Rebecca. Was this in a sense going 180 degrees from that? Rebecca was made for a large company, with big stars and a certain amount of gloss. This is a return to your roots in a way.

All the films are like that though, they’re all very different from each other. But if there hadn’t been COVID, I’d have done Tomb Raider 2 next. And then you could have the same conversation there as well. That’s very different from Rebecca, but it’s a different type of different. So I think that that’s always the hope, is that they’re different, because you don’t want to end up making the same thing again and again.

I’ve been lucky enough to be able to do those kinds of lower budget films. I think that films only hae a problem with their budget if you’re trying to make a high budget film for a low budget, or the wrong budget. But if you know what the budget is and it’s integrated into the script, it’s happy days, and it’s always good fun. There was no particular stress on In The Earth because of the money, because it was written specifically for that money, so it was never going to be anything else.

Talk about the logistics of making the film. You shot it in 15 days? How did you deal with the protocols of shooting during a pandemic?

The protocol stuff was a worry. We were the first film back that was a new production. Everything else filming around that time was big stuff like The Batman and Mission Impossible, and they were just restarting [after pausing filming]. So we had the eyes of the UK production industry on us, because if we screwed it and had to shut down straight away that would be a massive roll-on effect to everybody else. So we were very nervous about it. But, more importantly, we were nervous about the crew, because we didn’t want to risk anybody, didn’t want to get anybody sick. So a lot of time was spent thinking about it.

But then, in the end, the actual filming of it wasn’t too bad. There was a lot of money spent on PPE [personal protective equipment], sanitizing, masks, and things. But the pace of filming was exactly the same as all the other movies. Fifteen days, which is about the right amount of time for a genre horror movie, I think. A lot of it had been inspired by seeing schedules for Halloween, which I think was 20 days or something like that. It’s pretty lean and mean. We looked at that and went, “Wow, this is it. They’ve got a similar amount [of time].” I think the budget was similar to the budget that we had as well, the Halloween budget, adjusted for inflation. If you can’t make something good with this amount of money, then you’re doing it wrong. So that was inspiring as much as anything.

This connects to a film like A Field in England, because they’re both about something inexplicable in nature having an effect on human beings. Are those ideas that percolate in your head a lot when you’re writing a film like this?

I think Field is a horror film, [but it depends] how you define horror. My definition is reasonably broad, I think, for horror. Anything that is trying to make you uncomfortable and afraid, I think, is horror. But then, with my own definition, that would include musicals. The structure for In The Earth, there’s an unknowable something that’s living out in the woods, and various factions are trying to communicate with it, to varying levels of success. It’s a thing that is alien and can’t be communicated with in a traditional human way, but they’re trying to find a way through it.

I kept thinking about the thing that makes us different from other creatures, which is narrative and how narrative is our main technology, and putting ourselves in the middle of stories and trying to make stories around everything to make them make sense to us. That felt to me like that was Zach’s story, the story of a narrative. It was that he was desperately trying to make sense of these bits of information, but getting it hideously wrong. It’s the things around the creature which are the most dangerous, not necessarily the creature itself.

I read that Clint Mansell actually wrote the score before you started shooting, so you were able to play some of it on set to help set the mood?

Yeah, totally. It was one of the weird bits of luck that the whole COVID situation had brought, because I got to spend a lot more time on the score than I would have done for a film this size under normal circumstances. So Clint and I were talking about it while I was writing the script, and then those demos were bouncing backwards and forwards all during the summer.

The same goes for Nick Gillespie, the director of photography. We did a lot of testing, though we didn’t even see each other until two days before we shot the film because we’d been isolating. There was a lot of work that happened, because the pace of everything had slowed right down to a snail’s pace. You could drill into a lot of things that you never would do under normal circumstances.

Neon

The violence and the gore in your movies always strikes me as visceral, fairly abrupt, and almost matter-of-fact. Which I think makes it more horrifying. Is that something you aim for?

Yeah. That’s the reality of when you injure yourself. That feeling of, “Oh,” and you look at it and it doesn’t quite look right, and you’re like, “Oh no.” But it’s also the rhythm of using prosthetics and using wounds and stuff, it’s a similar rhythm to the way comedy works as well, with setup and punchline, and then response. They’re keys you’re basically playing within the scenes that are very specific and planned. Certainly the stuff in In The Earth, the scene in the tent, what I wanted to do is slow time down. Really slow it down so people were just like, “Oh, god.” They know they’re going to see something, and they know it’s going to be bad, but they know the situation can never stop. It’s like a proper nightmare.

There are things in the film that are graphic, but it’s a lot less graphic than many, many other films. It’s tonal — it’s not making light of the stuff. It’s going, “This is serious,” as opposed to just being throwaway. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s a whole different type of agenda. But with this, I wanted to raise the pulse of the viewer and make them sweat.

Is The Meg 2 next in your sights? Are you actively working on that now?

Yeah, I’m storyboarding at the moment on Meg 2. It’s been going on for four months, five months of boarding. It’s my happy place. I love storyboarding. I’m cutting storyboards and watching animatics, and slowly constructing the movie. It’s really exciting. It’s just action on a massive, massive scale.

Did you have a hand in the script?

No, the script is by the Hoeber brothers who wrote the first script, so it’s kind of a continuation on from that story.

Who is coming back from the first movie?

I don’t think I can say at the moment what’s going on, the ins and outs of it. But guaranteed, there will be a Megalodon… maybe more than one.

Are you still trying to get Freak Shift [Wheatley’s long-delayed underground monster movie] off the ground?

It bounces around. That’s the film that never goes away. I was thinking about it, I remember being in LA trying to get a meeting with Charlize Theron and then being told, “Oh no, she can’t do the meeting, she’s flying off to Africa to do Mad Max.” I was like, “Oh.” When we had that script originally it was quite a bold gender thing with a female hero. Now it’s 10 years later and it’s quite straightforward, which is good, but at the time it was quite radical. But hopefully one day.

How far did you get on Tomb Raider 2?

We were storyboarding and we were pretty close. We delivered the script and everything. Then it was almost that week where we went into the lockdown, and it was just like, “Oh, it’s not going to happen.”

In The Earth is in theaters now.

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theoptimisticpatriot · 4 years

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Three progressive arguments about patriotism.

This podcast with the NoMansLand blog was recorded in early July. Steve O’Neill summarised one section in the blog below. After that you can read a transcript of the entire broadcast.

Three arguments on patriotism: NoMansLand blog

“Racist, colonial, anti-immigrant, xenophobic” — these are some of the things many of my progressives friends say about patriotism.

I have never seen patriotism as something problematic or right-wing. I’m proud to be British, and English, because we are a tolerant country which champions democratic rights, decency and the rule of law. Of course, many progressives do not see it that way, and my attempts at making the argument that patriotism can be progressive have tended to fall flat. That is why I was keen to speak to Professor John Denham for our podcast in April. Since leaving Parliament, John now leads The Centre for English Identity and Politics at Southampton University. He is somewhat of an expert on ‘optimistic patriotism’ as he puts it. So I asked him “what should I say to my progressive friends who dislike patriotism”?

John gave three answers which I think are pretty compelling. So if you, like me, think that we can be both proud of our country and progressive, you might find these talking points useful then next time you broach the subject.

Most people are patriotic.

Living in London you would be forgiven for thinking that only a small minority of Brits consider themselves patriotic. That is the wrong way round, most people are patriotic to some degree. Around 60% of people say they are patriotic, and almost 70% are ‘proud to be British’. In England, for four of five people say they are strongly English, and three out of five are proud of that identity. Of course, our devolved nations have strong identities too. John’s first response to the anti-patriotic would be as follows:

“So when you say you dislike these things will you at least start from an acceptance that most people don’t think like you”.

John goes on to say that people are entitled to have a negative view of patriotism, as of course, they are — yet pointing out that so many are patriotic might just give your audience pause for thought. Some might respond that this just shows the extent of antiquated views in the UK. (They would be conveniently skipping evidence that many more people are patriotic than seem to exhibit racist views). This brings us to the second point.

Patriotism is inclusive.

Much of the dislike for patriotism comes from the notion that it is exclusive; that it is a view that leaves out people who are not white British. Yet, only a small minority of people think you have to be white to be English or British. Indeed, the left should be careful about promoting stereotypes of exclusive identities when the general public moved on years ago. As Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, told the Guardian last year:

“An inclusive England may be symbolised by Raheem Sterling and Nikita Parris scoring goals for England, or Moeen Ali taking wickets in the World Cup, but it also reflects the lived reality of who most of us now think of as English”.

So John’s second response to sceptics is that far from being exclusive, shared stories of nationhood bring people together. There are countless examples of this, from the fervour of supporting the England football team, the spirit of the 2012 Olympics to the solidarity shown with the NHS and within communities during the Covid-19 pandemic.

There are also stories that address race in Britain more directly. John, for example, recounts an anecdote of discussing shared family histories of the Second World War with a young Sikh councillor. In a later podcast, we spoke to Sunder on the same topic. He made the point that many BAME Britians are patriotic and would like more, not less, recognition for their part in our history and the wider story of Britain. Indeed, such shared stories of British and English identity actually answer that old racist trope “where are you really from” with an emphatic here.

You need shared stories for progressive change.

The first two points lay the groundwork for a bigger one for progressives. It is all very well to moan about the state of the nation, but if you are ever going to bring about progressive change you need to bring people with you. As John puts it:

“Doesn’t the whole idea of any type of social democracy or socialism depend on a collective sense of common interest, a willingness to work together, a willingness to share things together, a willingness sometimes to sacrifice things together? If we are all individuals why should a metropolitan graduate in London give a toss for somebody living in Hartlepool?”

Without a shared sense of national identity, you are going to struggle to build the coalition you need for a progressive platform. Nationhood and patriotism, and the shared stories they give us, are a vital part of that answer.

So, next time you find yourself challenged on your patriotism on progressive grounds, I hope you might be able to challenge back, by saying:

1) Most people are patriotic.

2) Patriotism is inclusive.

3) You need shared stories for progressive change.

By Steve O’Neil, with thanks to John Denham.

Podcast Transcript (uncorrected - check against broadcast)

Martin: Hello and welcome to the No Man’s Land Podcast. Patriotism has had a bad reputation in recent years. Covid-19 will have many effects but one could be the impact it has on how we see each other and our country. So, the week after St. George’s Day we welcome Professor John Denham to discuss patriotism, English identity, and politics. John, welcome. Would you please introduce yourself and your work with The Centre for English Identity and Politics?

John: Yes. I’m now Professor John Denham, I was for a long time a Labour Member of Parliament and from time to time, a minister under the last Labour Government but since I left parliament in 2015 I have developed the work of The Centre for English Identity and Politics which is now at Southampton University. And the reason for doing it is that over the past 20 years the political salience of national identity in our politics has become ever more important and I’m interested in that in general. What it is and why there is a connection between how people describe themselves in terms of their national identity and the political choices they make. And I have a particular interest in English identity and its political salience. There is a real paradox. England and the English are barely talked about in our national, political debate. We obviously have no national, political institutions, people usually say Britain when they mean England. And yet, our entire politics has been reshaped, particularly over the last ten years in England, in the UK and in Europe. So we are leaving the European Union largely because of the votes of people who emphasised their English identity. Boris Johnson’s big election victory in 2019 was achieved almost exclusively his majority came from people who identify as more English than British. So there is a paradox. Our politics has been reshaped by the politics associated with English identity and yet, we still don’t talk about England or the English. So I’m interested both in what’s going on amongst people who feel English and people who feel British but also what it is about our political system, our media system that actually keeps England and the English out of the national, political debate.

Martin: Great, thank you very much John. Steve, welcome. You are very keen to talk about this topic on the podcast, can you tell us why?

Steven: Yes, of course. So the tagline for our podcast is not dug into political trenches and in line with that, we’ve often talked about the different issues that divide people in the UK and that was particularly true when it came to Brexit. However, in those conversations I felt we kept coming back to the fact that differences were not so much rooted in issues themselves, they were more to do with the current cultural, emotional, and tetanic factors behind them. So I think we’ve been missing somewhat a discussion of national culture and values that might help us make sense of some of the divides. Particularly when we come to the question we’ve come to a few times of how you might bring people together to make a broader 0:03:30.0. So I was very interested in this topic for those reasons.

Martin: Okay. Let’s start with patriotism and English identity. John, I’m going to come to you first. Who are the English?

John: Right. Well let’s start with the basic picture which often surprises people about people who live in England. I mean, if you’re from outside England you probably talk about the English as though it’s everybody who lives in England but actually, our identities are more complicated than that. Most people who live in England, 90% of them will happily place themselves on a scale that runs at one end from I’m English, not British, to the other end of I’m British, no English. And between that you get sort of more English than British, equally English, and British and so on. So there’s a spread across that scale of how people measure or talk about their national identity. And what you find when you do that sort of survey is that about 30% of the people who live in England say in one way or another they are more English than British. About 40% say they’re equally English and British and about 20% say they’re more British than English. That in itself usually surprises people if you talk to people on the Left or people who are in London who tend to think that they are British, not English and everybody else must be the same and everybody else is in some way a bit odd if they’re English. Actually, the country leans towards its English identity more than it leans towards its British identity. So that’s the first thing. When I talk about the people who are English I’m primarily in this conversation talking about the people who are more English than British and to some extent, the people who are equally English and British. So between them, about 70% of the population of England.

I think there are two ways of looking then at who those English people are. One would be in terms of demographics, the second is in terms of how do they view the world. So let’s just start with demographics then come back a bit to how they look at the world. Demographically, they tend to be somewhat older although plenty of young people are more English than British. They tend to be somewhat more working class. They live in greater concentrations or in greater proportion of the population, in villages, towns, smaller cities than they do in the big metropolitan cities or the more prosperous city centres in places like Manchester or Leeds. They are somewhat less likely to have been educated to university level. In some ways, quite a broad statement you could say that they’re more likely to be people living in places that have seen economic and social demographic change go against their interests over the past 30 years or so. I don’t use language like left behind or that sort of thing, but these are not the sort of places that have been at the cutting edge of booking economies, new opportunities in the global economy over that period of time. So it’s that group of people that I think are particularly interesting.

Martin: Thanks, John. Steve, why has patriotism received such a bad rap and got such a bad reputation in recent years? Why has it become so strongly linked to the right or the far-right and the more modern alt-right?

Steven: Well, I think the first thing to say actually is of course that this is perhaps not a brand new thing. I was reading George Orwell’s Essay, England, Your England the other day on St. George’s Day and that was 1941 he did the famous quote which was – “England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectual are ashamed of their identity”. So it sounds like these conversations have been going on for quite a while. That said, I think there are a couple of points of conventional wisdom at least around why patriotism got such a bad rep recently and I think the story goes something like that the difference of experience between the so-called kind of metropolitans, often called metropolitan liberal elites and things like that. And on the other hand, the more communitarians who are generally perceived to be more rural and more northern, their difference of experience has sort of led to some of these perceptions, particularly with the metropolitans looking down somewhat at the patriotism of the communitarians. So the story then goes on that this has sort of led to an opportunity for the likes of Nigel Farage to kind of whip up resentment and he’s 0:08:30.2 some of these divides which makes people look further down on patriotism and associate it with things like being anti-immigrant, racist and the rest. I don’t really have evidence to how much of that’s true but I still think that’s the conventional wisdom story for why it’s got a bad reputation.

Martin: So John, people often talk about reviving patriotism as a progressive political idea, we’ve heard these terms like civic patriotism, progressive patriotism or even the term that you use which is optimistic patriotism. So what do all these terms mean? Can you reclaim patriotism from the right? It seems that a lot of people think that you can’t.

John: Well, what’s really interesting is the whole framing of the assumption behind your question – that patriotism is a problem. If you look at the available evidence both on English identity and British identity, about 60% of people who live in England say they’re proud of being English, 60% said they’re proud of being British, obviously that’s sometimes the same people; they’re proud of being both. You’ve got some who are indifferent. The number of people who are not proud of their national identity is around 1 in 10. So the really interesting question is why is that 10% of the population that doesn’t have a national pride so insistent that patriotism is a problem and it’s associated with the far right? What you’ve actually got is the very noisy voices of a small minority insisting that patriotism is odd. The vast majority, the great majority of people, the clear majority of people living in England don’t have a problem with patriotism. And unless you’re going to try to tell me that 60% of the people who live in England are fascists or the far right or neo-Nazis you’ve got to say it’s the people who keep saying patriotism is a problem are the problem. Now, if you go beyond that you say let’s dig a bit more into these ideas I think there’s three things that really come out. One is this group of people that aren’t patriotic, they believe they are far more typical of the population than the population as a whole. So they assert their own prejudices against the majority of people in the country. The second thing is an idea has grown up that patriotism is necessarily ethnically exclusive. Now of course, that is not true and all the evidence is that both understandings of British identity and English identity have been becoming steadily more inclusive over past years and past decades but there’s a group of people who they start by saying that patriotism must be related to an ethnically exclusive idea of national identity and therefore, if you are patriotic you’re going to be a racist. Now, there’s a complete logical flaw in that argument but that is often how it is constructed, particularly amongst the middle class left who don’t want to be accused of being racist, and sometimes by some activists within BAME communities who also, if you like, see that as a way of asserting a different type of identity that doesn’t have to take into account historic identities within this country. So there are issues of race associated with it but in general, it is just a misnomer to say that most people have a problem with patriotism. A small minority of people have a problem with patriotism.

Now, if I go beyond that, you talk about patriotism as a progressive idea, it is obviously true that ideas of national identity and of patriotism can be contested and they are contested and that’s not surprising because many of the traditional identities that people took for granted, for example, working class communities with small work places, with unions, with good jobs – those older working class identities have gone and so people turn to identities of people, nation and place. And clearly this is undoubtedly true, right-wing politicians have moved in there to try to defy any form of patriotism that goes with the right. Generally speaking, the left have simply walked away from the debate and said no, you can have patriotism. And then you can try to define it in a racial way and in an ethnically exclusive way and in an authoritarian way but that only happens because people on the left refuse to accept this as a legitimate area of discussion. I would see progressive patriotism as framing left politics in terms of the interests of the great majority in the nation and that is how the Swedish Social Democrats did it historically, that’s how the 0:13:25.8 government did it after the Second World War. Indeed, it’s very hard to find a life-centre government anywhere in the world that have not based it on a progressive idea of nation.

Martin: Sorry, I just wanted to come in very quickly because I know Steven wants to ask a question. If it’s not ethnic then what is it? Is it just a case of we happen to be in this same place at this same time, we live our lives next door to each other, we go to work together and therefore we are a unit, a nation, a group of people together? If it’s not ethnic then isn’t it so open that it’s kind of meaningless?

John: Well two things. The debate gets confused because in common parlance, race and ethnicity gets used interchangeably which of course is actually wrong. Race relates to a specific set of physical characteristics. Ethnicity properly is much more about culture, belonging, stories and histories and so on. So you can have an ethnic sense of identity or to cut away from the terms, a shared set of stories that do not belong simply to people of race. Now, against that is often posed the idea of civic identity. Sometimes people use that when all they mean is, I don’t want a tubthumping nationalism but again, strictly speaking, a civic national identity purely means an identity based on the idea of a shared legal citizenship which is what you were touching on there. And that of course doesn’t give you a national story at all. It is simply – I happen to have the same passport as you but beyond that there’s nothing that draws us together. And the difficulty about that is that is far too thin an idea to build a sense of nation and of national interest.

So, the challenge we’ve got here is two-fold. One is you have got a set of people, the people who feel most English who are excluded from the national story very often but also we have to understand that in a diverse nation like ours, traditional ideas of Englishness cannot be the complete national story, we have to have national stories that actually belong to everyone. Now, this is where I think you can…it’s called diversely look at history and it is of course a history of the union and it is a history of empire and actually say look, the one thing we’ve all got in common is we’re primarily here because of England’s history and that includes a history of exploitation and empire but that is why we have the diversity we do. So we ought to be able to tell a story that includes, if you like, long-standing English families who can trace their roots for hundreds of years and people who are relatively recent migrants who are all in this same place and all building a country together because of those shared histories. Now, that is a neglected area of activity but any progressive patriotism has to start telling the stories that we share.

Martin: Steve, I know that you wanted to come in.

Steven: Yes. I was hoping John could help me with a bit of an anecdote of mine. So I was thinking about this issue of patriotism being more progressive and getting way from some of the negative connotations last week about St. George’s Day. So I tested some of the ideas with some friends of mine in a WhatsApp group, and they are generally people I think you’d say are on the liberal left. I’ve got to say, it was a very hard sell, it really went down badly, they had very, very bad sort of opinions of patriotism and any kind of nationalism. And I was going to ask a question back to John and say you must talk to people on the liberal left who dislike patriotism, what do you say to them to kind of bring them round to this view that you’re explaining to us now?

John: Well, there are two types of conversations. One is actually do you realise what a tiny minority you are of the population? So when you say you dislike these things will you at lest start from an acceptance that most people don’t think like you. So there’s nothing wrong in feeling the way you do, there’s no must about identity, there’s no should, you are entitled to feel the way you do about your identity but the first thing I ask for is just some acceptance that being against the idea of patriotism or our national identity puts you in a small minority of people, even if all the people in Steve’s WhatsApp group happen to feel the same way about it.

The second thing is that I say look, it’s not that difficult to find the stories that actually bring people together. An anecdote of mine a few years ago comparing a St. George’s Day festival with a young Sikh councillor in Southampton. I happened to remark in the conversation beforehand that my uncle is on the War Memorial in Southampton, he was killed on his way to the Far East, and she said, my grandfather was in the imperial army in the Far East in the Second World War. Now, what the importance of that, and we used it actually in the show was that something that you couldn’t regard just as a history of empire and imperialism and war becomes a shared story of family engagement in war. In other words, you can tell your stories that bring people together and you don’t have to avoid questions about the history of empire and the rest of it but by looking at those shared human stories you can find them.

The third thing I’d say to those people is actually if you want to build a progressive society can you do it without an idea of a nation? Can you do it without the idea of a national community? Doesn’t the whole idea of any type of social democracy or socialism depend on a collective sense of common interest, a willingness to work together, a willingness to share things together, a willingness sometimes to sacrifice things together? If that is not going to be a sense of a national community where is that sense of community going to come from? If we are all individuals why should a metropolitan graduate in London give a toss for somebody living in Hartlepool? Where does that sense of belonging come from if you don’t have a sense of national identity in the national community? So I would then challenge those people and sort of say if they want their politics on the liberal left to succeed, they will struggle unless they engage with the idea of building a progressive national community.

Martin: Thank you very much, John. I know I want to use the idea of solidarity as the segue into the party politics of this. So as someone who has studied the Welfare State, it’s solidarity that really underpins it, it’s the idea of we are a group, a community together and that’s exactly as you say, why should rich people care about poor people, why should people who earn lots of money pay their taxes into a social protection system that means that people who earn far less than them can get the same kind of protection at the point of use. And the real embodiment of his is the National Health Service based of course, as I’m sure John will know, on the experience of Nye Bevan and his sort of local mining community and they’re all putting in knowing that they, as a community when someone fell ill they would need to call on a service where they might not necessarily be able to pay at that time but by all putting in together then they would be able to pull out or get out when they needed it and that idea of solidarity really underpins the whole sort of structure of the State that a modern left party tries to put into place.

But John, the Labour Party is failing appallingly to get these people on board. There is a perception that the left, the centre-left have a terrible problem with patriotism and that the Labour Party has been completely unable to pick up so many people who are English, proud to be English and as you touched on earlier on, the people who identify as English and feel strongly English have a set of political preferences that correlates to their identity. So, why is it that the Labour Party has been unable to capture these people? What role does the lack of patriotism play in Labour’s electoral 0:22:44.6?

John: Martin, can I just go back quickly on your point about welfare and the Welfare State?

Martin: Please do.

John: Because one of the things about national identities is they convey values. One way of putting it is how do people like us behave. One of the reasons the National Health Service is so popular and frankly, is popular even when it’s not performing that well, when it’s ben underfunded systematically over the years is that its fundamental value, we all pay in and it’s there, we need it, is to many of us, to most of us a statement about what sort of people we think we are, it’s not just a principle of health service funding. And it’s very interesting I think to contrast that with, for example, the Social Security System as it now is, heavily conditional, heavily means tested which doesn’t have that same collective buy-in, it is both unpopular amongst the people who have to rely on it, and it is also unpopular to the people who have to pay for it because they’re generally not going to get anything from it because I pay in all my life, it wasn’t there when I needed it which is what a lot of people say when they suddenly have to confront what Universal Credit is really actually like. So, your shared national values actually help determine what sort of political change is possible. And in my view for example, when it comes to the Welfare System, our shared national values push us far more back in the direction of a more universal, less means tested welfare system than the way the welfare system has been going in the past. So, I just make that point because getting our values right along with national identity can open doors for the left.

Martin: John, we’re going to come back to talking about Covid-19 and leave the issue around Universal Credit.

John: Okay.

Martin: That’s one of the issues that I want to get your opinion on for exactly the reason that you’ve just highlighted.

John: Okay, well come back to that. Shall I deal with the patriotism question?

Martin: Patriotism and the Labour Party, why does the Labour Party struggle to speak people’s language?

John: There’s a whole set of reasons. One is the Labour Party itself is largely made up of the sort of people who are least likely to feel patriotic. So, they don’t automatically emphasise with people who are shaking a bucket for Help for Heroes – to take an obvious example, if you like. So, one of the things is that the Labour Party very often can’t help giving out a message in what it does that it doesn’t feel patriotic. And very, if you like, stupid but symbolic things like not singing the national anthem, you’re going to have as many manifestos as you like, it undermines that sense of patriotic identity. Now, let’s just be clear about why this is important. Politics has always been about identity politics, in the most fundamental sense of will this party or this candidate stand up for somebody like me. And if I’m somebody that feels patriotic and I see a political leader of any political party who obviously disdains patriotism you can forget about the policies or the manifestos or your pledges, it’s the clearest possible sense that this is not a person like me. And Labour falls down twice over because it does not actually manage to convey an everyday patriotism in the way it talks about things. And secondly, it specifically will not talk about England. So, what was our slogan in the run up to the last general election in Scotland? Rebuilding Scotland. In Wales? Rebuilding Wales. In England – Rebuilding Britain. So, why deliberately not talk to that sector of the electorate that actually identifies probably as British but also as English too. Why write them out of the conversation?

So you’ve got a two-fold problem, one is about patriotism in general and then specifically about the relationship to England. Now, none of this means that if we are more patriotic and talk about England more people will suddenly flock to the Labour Party, it just means we’re in the conversation, we’re not having the doors shut in our face before we’ve even started the conversation or talked about policy.

Martin: Now, is that an issue of comms, the political communication of substituting the world England in for Britain or is it a matter of party composition? It’s not just that the right people are putting out the wrong message or is it that the wrong people are there whatever the message is. That the reason the messaging is a problem and the communications around it, it is because the people that make up the Labour Party as you’ve sort of touched on, are just not the kind of people that would feel comfortable or in fact let me actually rephrase that, not the sort of people who come from the communities that they’re seeking to represent?

John: I think it’s all of those things basically. There is a failure of communications but there is also a challenge that quite a lot of Labour Party activists as well as more senior people do not feel comfortable with the politics of patriotism in general and that of England in particular. So it’s quite a political task. Through a group called the English Labour Network who have been trying to work on this over recent years, it’s quite an uphill struggle but there are more and more people coming out right across the party from Corbynite left to the progress type people who actually will talk about their own personal English identity and actually, the people who don’t like it also spanned the Labour Party from progress to the Corbynite left. So the party is split like that but it’s a long job and we have to think about how to make that easier for people. There is the famous story of the Stoke Central Bi-election where the Labour campaign which Jack Dromey was overseeing actually used some simple George Cross branding in that constituency because it was clearly something where England had to be addressed, and the anecdotal story at least is a group of students from Cambridge who drove all the way to Stoke, which is a hell of a journey, got there, looked at the leaflets and drove all the way back to Cambridge because they weren’t prepared to put out leaflets with the St. George Cross on them. Now that may be an extreme example but it is quite a difficult one and one of the things I’ve done over recent years is go round the country doing Saturday morning workshops. When the parties started saying we’ll have a St. George’s Day bank holiday that was quite useful because we could actually get people having a workshop saying well, if there’s going to be an official Labour government St. George’s Day bank holiday, how are you going to celebrate it? And actually then people found there were ways of celebrating a progressive idea of England that they would be happy with but it’s a long job that’s ahead of the party.

Martin: Thanks John. So Steve, is there a link here to how Britain and England see themselves in the world? Is there a link, an impact then on foreign policy? So, given that the live issues about how people see themselves makes sense that we think about our place in the world, doesn’t it?

Steven: I think it does. And the first thing to say is a bit of an obvious point, perhaps. And it’s really about leadership normally, and what tends to be thrown out, I think as far as Labour leaders is if they are not patriots they wouldn’t be very good at standing up for Britain on the world stage, and this was talked about a lot in Jeremy Corbyn’s reaction to the Skripal poisoning affair and that was certainly the narrative around that. so I think that’s a very simple point to make. As you allude to Martin, I think there is a deeper thing as well, I think if you don’t have a story to tell about Britain being a force for good in the world or you’re quite negative in that story I think it can be hard to project a vision for what Britain can do, on the world stage. And I think the impression certainly is that some bits of the left, and maybe John will have more insights here than I do, are quite negative about British history and British values and it seems to me that some of the foreign policy projection becomes more of an apology and more of an inward looking thing than it is a kind of positive outward looking story.

John: I think it is a real issue and I think there’s a challenge here to tell a better story. You see, I don’t want the choice to be between Jeremy Corbyn and the idea that we’ve got to evade Iraq every ten years to show that we’ve got a place in the world. I don’t want either of those as Labour’s idea of Britain in the world. Whether it’s the exceptionalism of believing that we have an historic mission to impose our values irrespective of our knowledge of the circumstances or to simply assume that our country and our allies are always in the wrong whatever the issue is. But where I think we need to look more productively and I think we can learn from the failures of the Remain campaign was that too much of the argument in favour of Remain was based on the premise that the nation needed to be superseded by an international institution. That was very much the language of the Remain campaign and also particularly after that worse, were the People’s Vote campaign. The argument that actually a strong nation benefitted through international cooperation because together we can achieve more than we could do separately was very rarely put and very rarely put in an articulate and clear way. And so, the opportunity to tell a patriotic story about why we should be a member of the European Union was lost. And so, the other side was allowed, if you like, to scoop up patriotism by default. So I think we have got to articulate a different role of Britain in the world either from the one that’s been traditionally on the furthest left or the one actually that’s been traditionally associated with mainstream Labour or the Labour right, which still has too many roots in the delusions of imperialism. I think we can deal with our history. We don’t have to be triumphalist about our imperial history, nor would we have to say the only thing that defines us is our imperial history, what we can say is the nation we are today has been created by that history and everyone who has been here today is going to be a part of our future.

Martin: Thanks, John. I just want to ask you a couple of more questions to get your view on it and these are specifically about Labour now. The first question is about Labour and Englishness. Then I’m going to ask you a question about Labour that has absolutely nothing to do with Englishness, at least on the surface. So the first question I’m going to ask you is what claim can Labour have now to represent England when it is really a party of the cities? Only one of the six Labour lost to the Conservatives in 2019 was in one of the major cities, this is looking in the north, so former heartland seats of the old red 0:35:17.3? So the only one that was lost in the northern cities was Birmingham Northfield, but in Birmingham, in Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, Manchester, Newcastle these places are held by the Labour Party, so how can Labour reconnect with the rest of the country?

John: Well, we have to tell a story of our understanding of their lives that rings true. And that means doing something that we stopped doing 20 years ago. The Red Wall Election was only happening to the North of England. What happened in Southern England, in Kent, in Hampshire, my old seat in previous general elections where the same people were moving away from Labour. Go back further, the million people who stopped voting between 1997 and 2001 were primarily working class Labour voters. There’s another four million stopped voting Labour in 2005. Labour was losing its working class base because it wasn’t able to articulate all the things that were happening in those communities. It wasn’t understanding that the experience of those towns was different to the cities. It wasn’t understanding what it felt like to be in a place that used to have high status jobs that no longer did. What it felt like to be in a community that’s very different to a city when you have sudden and very rapid migration which disrupts the whole sense of community and knowing the people who are around you. Labour, instead of being able to empathise and understand and engage with those experience, either ignored them or simply condemned people. So if you said I’m a bit disconcerted about how rapid immigration is you are a bad person. So we slammed the door on lots of these people over a long period of time. So the only way to get back now is to find ways of telling stories about what has happened to those communities and what people want now that ring true with them that is basically what politics is about. Where we are at the moment, well we’re in Covid-19 but I’ll come back to that in a moment, where we were after 2019 is that lots of places had finally decided they’d had it with us. We need to understand that. But on the other hand, it looked pretty unlikely that a Conservative government would be able to deliver for people in the way they hoped. So there was still a prospect of getting back in but if we just sort of pretend we’re going to have a radical economic manifesto and everyone will come round to us, without telling stories of their lives that they understand as true we won’t reconnect.

Martin: Thanks, John. Now I just want to expand on this particular aspect of what you’ve said or two elements of the story of what the Labour Party has to tell. Now, the first point is one made by Richard Rose which is that at the next election Boris Johnson’s story of how he owes the NHS his life will probably be more familiar to voters than Labour’s constant reliance on well, we invented and introduced the NHS which happened before most people were born. So what does the Labour Party have when it can’t rely on the NHS and the Tories have become the party that emphasises the importance of public services? And the second element of a story is that whoever wins the next election will be facing the highest deficit since the Second World War. There might be little fiscal scope for additional spending, Labour doesn’t represent the working class, it can’t rely on the NHS and it can’t spend lots of money – what’s the point of it? What’s the story that the Labour Party could then tell running up to a general election to ask people to make it the government?

John: Well, there’s lots of assumptions in there but we have to do what I’ve just been saying. We have to tell a story of this nation and where it’s going that rings true to people, and that means that we have to move beyond the idea of Punch and Judy party politics and it’s our turn next. We have to be very clear that the reason it looks tragically as though we’re heading for the highest number of deaths, the highest death rate, the highest level of excess deaths in Europe, I hope it isn’t true but that’s what the stats look like at the moment is not just because we had a Tory government, it’s about the whole way that England has been government for a long period of time, including periods of Labour rule, it’s because we have been obsessed by centralism, we have disempowered communities, we have brought in the private sector and market mechanisms to do what the State should do properly. It’s because we didn’t care which companies were owned in this or domiciled in this country anymore. It’s because we thought having productive capacity didn’t matter. Now, that’s actually where people are in this country. They have a sense of country that has lost its sense of direction. If we go into it thinking our job is simply to say we will be a bit better at the NHS than the Tories we will lose, and we probably deserve to lose. We need to have a more compelling national story. Now, I think it’s all to play for but we have abandoned that territory for 20 years and if we don’t get back on it soon then we won’t come back.

Martin: Well that seems like a great segue into Covid-19 and we will eventually be a post Covid-19 world. So John, is the experience of going through this together, all people from all sorts of walks of life, whether working in key jobs, whether neighbours looking out for each other, is this the sort of national experience which helps to forge the new Jerusalem?

John: We don't know and I don’t know. It will have an effect. Past history will tell us that the effect is not just what people remembered as happening but how it’s mythologised afterwards. We have plenty of examples from our own country but we can look across the channel to France and De Gaulle reinvention of France as a nation of people who resisted the Nazis ‘til the last man and woman after the Second World War was quite clever but it wasn’t historically true but it was a powerful idea of national resistance. One of the things that’s going to happen here is how will we remember it. Now, these very early days I would say two things – I think a narrative of we all pulled through together, we all did our bit is probably going to pave the way to the fastest return to the status quo because we’re not all in it together in the same way, there is no connection between the life of somebody whose middle class, rather enjoying working from home, got a garden and getting their groceries delivered every week and somebody with four kids in a tower block. Don’t want to go to work because they think it’s dangerous and I don’t just mean the people in the NHS but many other jobs but have to because their work said so or they can’t afford not to. The treat myth of saying we’re all in it together is that it suggests that all of those inequalities that we’re seeing somehow were put aside as we pulled through. I hope we can end up telling a story which is rather more along the lines of the people turned out to be better than the people who governed them, and I don’t just mean the Conservatives, our system of government. And this would be true up util this stage when we’re talking. The people did everything that was asked of them and more, the people defied the so-called experts and behavioural psychologists and nudge units who thought they knew how people would behave. People have done exactly what they asked but the people who govern them have failed to deliver PPE, failed to deliver the testing, and failed to look after the most vulnerable. So I hope we can tell a story where the people of this nation who actually did do the right things and that was pretty much across the board, let down by their system of government and the people who governed them.

And the second thing we have to say is that there was a moment, a national moment where we agreed that things must never be the same again. And that’s what is not being articulated effectively at the moment. It is said on the Left and plenty of blogs saying things will never be the same again but we know how quickly the nurses will be forgotten, the doctors and the care-workers will be forgotten, the delivery drivers, all the people who kept us going. So, I think we’d probably only come out of this better not as a sort of we were all in it together but actually as a story of the nation of the majority who were better than the government and secondly, if a nation who rich and poor, made a promise to each other that they would never let things get in this stage again. Now, whether that’s’ going to be articulated by whom, I don’t know.

Martin: So Steve, that seems a good time for you to come in and talk about the public response. How much do you think the country has come together int his crisis?

Steven: Well, I think I’ll caveat this by saying that I’m probably in the same camp as John to say I don’t think we really know how lasting this will be yet, but there certainly seems to be quite a lot of unity at the moment. When we were talking on last week’s podcast I think I mentioned a statistic which 93% of people at the moment are supportive of the effort of the government’s lockdown which is quite a startling figure. And we’ve certainly seen a lot of examples of sort of solidarity among different communities. So we have Clapping for Carers on Thursday evenings. The response to the NHS Volunteers was quite amazing in terms of how many times over the number was exceeded, and also as I’m involved and in touch with the various community groups that pop up all over the place trying to help each other, it does seem that there’s a real sense of people in various different ways coming together but it’s only been about a month or so since we’ve really been experiencing this and I think with these crisis often there’s a sense of rallying around the flag but what comes next is very uncertain. So I think it’s too early to say but there are some signs I think of people coming together for now.

Martin: Okay, so to draw all this discussion to a close, starting with you, Steve, what do you think the leaders do need to do to be able to sort of on the one hand, capitalise on the crisis but on the other hand, utilise national identity as a way to carry on bringing people together, carry on unifying and forging a sort of national story?

Steven: Well I doubt I’ve got a really compelling overall answer for this. The thing I think I’ve taken away from this discussion more broadly is the sort of facts of the case, the facts of this pandemic won’t necessarily determine how it’s remembered or how it’s mythologised, as John said. And actually, I was thinking back, we saw something similar to that in the financial crash, I think there was one narrative people thought the financial crash would show that the free market had failed and that the kind of growing moderation as they had called, wasn’t actually built on such certainty that there used to be and then that would be an opportunity for the Left. But actually it turned out very differently, it turn out to be the seed in this country at least that it was too much spending that got us into the trouble when actually, the evidence for that is very weak.

So my takeaway from this conversation and those kind of examples is that actually, this could go either way and so, what the more sort of progressive and centrist leaders need to do is make sure they have a narrative that is as emotionally and culturally compelling as the things that will come from the alt-right we talked about earlier, so they need to have something that is going to speak to you more than the kind of things you see from the likes of Farage to kind of blame China, blame globalisation, blame immigrant stuff. I don’t know if I can quite articulate what that is but I think some of the things John is talking about might be the start of an answer.

Martin: Absolutely. John, is there anything you would like to say to close the discussion?

John: I think Steve is right, particularly about 2008, and I’m reminded of that every time I read an article saying things will never be the same again, it’s exactly what the Left told itself in 2008 and the Right came out not just in this country but around the world, came out with more compelling stories than the Left did. So, the Left this time has to have compelling stories but they have to ring true with people, we can’t just say for example, the current fashionable thing – I’ve always thought universal basic income is a good idea so now I’m going to tell everybody that universal basic income is a good idea. We have to conjure up images and ideas that speak things to people. I was thinking of one last night, this is hardly a national story but where I live in Winchester last night the rotary club’s motorised Christmas sleigh, you can just about imagine it, can’t you, was coming around collecting boxes, bags of food for the foodbank in what is a middleclass part of Winchester. And in a sense, somehow what the politicians have got to do is capture that sort of thing and say actually, that tells us everything that is great and everything that is wrong about our country in one go. On the one hand you’ve got the social solidarity that was determined to ensure that nobody in Winchester would go hungry. But on the other hand, you had this very real possibility and not just because of Covid-19, that people in Winchester go hungry every day. And I think it’s the ability to come up with those very visual things and say we can never let this happen again. We don’t go all anti-China but I don’t think there’s much of a mood in this country for people to say let’s happily go back to being entirely dependent on sourcing so much of our stuff on the other side of the world and having no supply chain and no manufacturing capacity here. It’s those symbolic ideas of how we’re going to do things differently in the future that are going to be absolutely critical. So, the prize goes to the people who can draw the right lessons for this. The danger is the story in two, three years’ time will be we all pulled together, we bore our losses bravely as we did do before and that’s what makes us a great nation. And all of these things that we found out about ourselves gets swept about under the carpet. In those circumstances the rescue packages will all tend to have favoured international companies that don’t even pay their taxes here, and other people will be set back exactly where they started.

Martin: I think that’s a very good point. We touched on Universal Credit earlier and I wonder whether we might see a change in the way that things like the Universal Credit are received. That in the past it’s maybe been the case that people think, people who see themselves as less likely to need things like Universal Credit will think well, I work hard, I’m deserving, I’ve never let myself get into that position rather than those sort of wasters who are on it when they don’t really need it, of course it should be at punitive level when actually, a lot of people would have seen their jobs disappear overnight through no fault of their own and then you contrast that with someone like Richard Branson calling for a bailout for his Virgin Airways, given his multibillion pound fortune, his private island and as you very rightly touched on, John a number of large organisations that make a very good profit who do not pay all the tax that they should do, if they were to show a bit more solidarity. So we shall see where all of this goes but John, thank you for an absolutely fascinating discussion.

John: Thank you, Martin.

Martin: I really enjoyed it. Thank you John.

John: Thank you Steve.

Martin: Thank you very much, Steve. Thank you very much to everyone and anyone who has listened to this, I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as we have being part of it. This has been the No Man’s Land Podcast, thank you very much for listening and goodbye.

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