Lyndsey Stonebridge Jess Phillips on her The Dunkirk delusion on the meaning and family lockdown David Reynolds Why the myths of 1940 value of work in the Amelia Tait on the are still haunting Britain 80 years later age of coronavirus art of wasting time

Enlightened thinking in dark times 22-28 May 2020/£4.75 THE GREAT MOVING LEFT

SHOW 21 How the pandemic is transforming

our politics By Andrew Marr 9 771364 743179

2020+21 The great moving left show.v2 TG coverlines.indd 1 19/05/2020 19:25 20-19_ads.indd 5 05/05/2020 14:21:38 Established 1913

The big left turn

n 2008, as the financial crisis afflicted the West, many Under David Cameron and George Osborne in 2008, the progressive politicians, notably Ed Miliband, spoke of a Conservatives opposed the fiscal stimulus introduced by the “social democratic moment”. Unprecedented state in- Labour government, before ushering in an “age of auster- terventions, such as the bank bailouts, prompted talk of ity”. By contrast, the present Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has a new economic settlement. It did not amount to much. provided economic support of £330bn and, through the Job Indeed, as we warned at the time, such hopes were al- Retention Scheme, is paying the wages of 7.5 million people Iways naive. The centre left was complicit in the deregulation (a quarter of the private-sector workforce). and financialisation that precipitated the crash. In Europe, it The crisis has accelerated the Conservatives’ pre-existing championed the single currency and the creation of a mone- retreat from austerity economics. Under Boris Johnson, the tary union without a complementary fiscal union. When the party had already committed to higher NHS spending and to system inevitably faltered, social democrats could not cred- borrowing for investment (embracing a version of Labour’s ibly pose as its saviours. Instead it was the right that thrived 2017 fiscal rules). Though the right has been wedded to free- by harnessing anxiety over immigration and by reframing a market economics since the private sector crisis as one of public debt. neoliberal turn of the 1980s, A decade later, as the state once more intervenes to under- big government conserva- write the economy, commentators are again asking whether tism was never previously a this could be a progressive moment. “It’s a wonderful time to contradiction in terms. be a social democrat,” the Dutch historian and author Rutger For this reason, among Bregman says on page 16. And in this week’s cover story on others, the left should re- page 22, Andrew Marr asks whether the Covid-19 crisis could sist the temptation to claim mark “the start of a big left turn”. ideological victory. Rather The essay’s title – “The Great Moving Left Show” – is an al- than resolving the contra- lusion to the late cultural theorist Stuart Hall’s January 1979 diction between Mr John- essay “The Great Moving Right Show”. At a time when many son’s national conservatism on the left dismissed Thatcherism as an aberration, he un- and his embrace of a free- derstood that the right was engaged in a potent mission not wheeling “Global Britain”, just to win electoral power but to redefine “common sense”. the pandemic has deepened it. Once the crisis has passed, the There is no equivalent movement on the left or the right temptation among many on the right will be to retreat to the today to the Hayekian New Right, but we can ask whether familiar territory of tax cuts, deregulation, limited govern- the crisis, like the collapse of the Keynesian consensus in the ment and privatisation in pursuit of growth at any cost. 1970s, represents a historical turning point. The former French president Charles de Gaulle once de- In 1996, at the height of liberal triumphalism, Bill clared that it was his political mission to reconcile the left to Clinton declared that the “era of big government is over”. the state (or authority) and the right to the nation (or democ- His message was echoed by social democratic parties across racy). In the wake of the 2008 crash, even as living standards the West. Yet in Britain, confronted by the threat of the fell, the right marginalised the left by claiming the mantle of largest recession since 1709, the state has returned to the nationhood. By intensifying focus on questions of borders centre of economic life. Like the 1918 Spanish flu, which and citizenship, the Covid-19 crisis could provide a similar spurred the creation of the egalitarian Swedish welfare opening. If we are witnessing the beginnings of a new con- state, the Covid-19 pandemic is remaking the case for social sensus, the left must not merely hail the return of the protec-

SÉBASTIEN THIBAULT security as a form of collective insurance. tive state – it must respond to the return of the nation. l

22-28 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 3

2020+21 003 Leader.indd 3 19/05/2020 19:51:47 Editor-in-chief Contents Jason Cowley Deputy Editor Free thinking since 1913 Tom Gatti International Editor Jeremy Cliffe Managing Editor Will Dunn Political Editor Stephen Bush US Editor Emily Tamkin Creative Editor Gerry Brakus Associate Editor Michael Prodger Senior Online Editor George Eaton Features Editor Kate Mossman Culture Editor Anna Leszkiewicz Special Projects Editor Alona Ferber Britain Editor Turning left: Andrew Marr on post-pandemic politics 22 The quiet radical: Ailbhe Rea meets Anneliese Dodds 28 Anoosh Chakelian Commissioning Editor Gavin Jacobson Culture Assistant Up Front Observations The Critics: Books Ellen Peirson-Hagger Special Correspondents 3 Leader 12 In the Picture 42 Leo Robson looks at how Harry Lambert 10 Correspondence 13 Comment: some of the greatest writers Sophie McBain Political Correspondents Lyndsey Stonebridge have used plagues as material Patrick Maguire on Hannah Arendt and the for literature Ailbhe Rea Columns meaning of work in the time 46 Colin Kidd on the economic Head of Production of Covid-19 consequences of Scottish Peter Williams 7 Jason Cowley on tragedy at an 14 Commons Confidential: independence, as explained Chief Sub-Editor Kevin Maguire Pippa Bailey Essex care home in John Lloyd’s Should Auld Senior Sub-Editor 9 Dr Phil Whitaker on what the The pick of the best gossip Acquaintance Be Forgot Indra Warnes return to school debate teaches from Westminster 48 Johanna Thomas-Corr is Designer us about evidence 16 Encounter: George Eaton intrigued by Rodham, Curtis Emily Black 19 Jess Phillips writes this talks to the Dutch historian Sittenfeld’s counterfactual novel Social Media Editor week’s Diary Rutger Bregman about Hillary Clinton Eleanor Peake Digital Culture Writer 20 Stephen Bush on why 17 First Thoughts: Peter Wilby 50 Ryan Gilbey examines Sarah Manavis Conservatives fear Keir Starmer on job cuts in the media Woody Allen’s troubling Editorial Assistant 21 Helen Thompson on why she 18 Trends: Oscar Williams autobiography Apropos Emily Bootle loves football but has not missed asks what the NHS’s deal with of Nothing the Premier League Palantir means for the future of Contributing Writers 39 Amelia Tait John Bew on learning to public health Chris Deerin appreciate being unproductive Matthew Engel 40 Jonathan Liew on the fan Martin Fletcher response to Saudi Arabia’s Articles John Gray takeover of Newcastle United Helen Lewis 22 Andrew Marr on how the Shiraz Maher Paul Mason coronavirus crisis could alter Adrian Pabst Britain’s political course David Reynolds 28 Ailbhe Rea meets Labour’s Leo Robson new shadow chancellor Brendan Simms Anneliese Dodds Ed Smith Amelia Tait 32 David Reynolds on the Johanna Thomas-Corr meaning of Dunkirk, 80 years on Erica Wagner Rowan Williams New Statesman Vol 149, No 5521 ISSN Please note that all submissions to the letters page, our competitions and reader offers are accepted solely subject to our terms and conditions: details available on 1364-7431 USPS 382260 request or on our website. Subscription Rates: (institutional rates in brackets): UK £120, Airmail Europe: €150; Rest of world Airmail: USA $192. Subscribers paying by direct debit will, after any initial offer, be debited at the standard rate. Syndication/Permissions/Archive: Email: [email protected]. Printed by Walstead Peterborough Ltd, tel: +44 (0)1733 555 567 . Distribution by Marketforce. New Statesman (ISSN 1364-7431) is published weekly by New Statesman Ltd, 12-13 Essex Street, London WC2R 3AA, UK. Registered as a newspaper in the UK and USA

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2020+21 004 Contents.indd 4 19/05/2020 20:11:37 Cover art direction Erica Weathers

What if: an alternative life of Hillary Rodham Clinton 48 Ode to a Grecian tavern: Greek wines in lockdown 57

The Critics: Arts Back Pages What’s happening on Subscribe + newstatesman.com 45 Anna Leszkiewicz finds 57 Drink Nina Caplan Save Charlie Brooker’s Antiviral Wipe 58 Down and Out Why Covid-19 might prove a more fury-inducing than funny Nicholas Lezard “Goldilocks crisis” 50% 52 Michael Prodger on the 59 Under the Influence Jeremy Cliffe talks to fantasy worlds of Dutch Sarah Manavis geopolitics guru Ian Bremmer Subscribe to the painter Nicolaes Berchem 60 School’s Out Alice O’Keeffe New Statesman for 54 Simran Hans finds joy in 61 Crossword, Subscriber of What Ivanka Trump “taking just £4.75 watching romcoms in lockdown the Week and NS Word Games the red pill” means £2.31 a week. 55 Television: Rachel Cooke 62 The NS Q&A Robert Webb The president’s daughter says Turn to page 63 travels through time and south she denies widely accepted for more about London with Monkman & truths, writes Sarah Manavis the offer, or go to: Seagull’s Genius Adventures Artwork newstatesman.com/ 55 Radio: Antonia Quirke on Why the next stage will be subscribe the making of music legend Cartoons, photographs difficult for the SNP Just £120 for a one-year print Little Richard and illustrations by Alex After its popular Covid-19 subscription – even cheaper for students! Brenchley, Andrew Evans, response, the party faces tough Ellie Foreman-Peck, Kristian choices, says Chris Deerin Subscription inquiries: Hammerstad, Rebecca Hendin, digital.subscriptions@ Ryan McAmis, Ian McGowan The NS Podcast newstatesman.co.uk 0808 284 9422 “Wasting time can be and Sébastien Thibault good for you – feeling Each week, Stephen bad about it isn’t” Graphics by Dan Murrell Bush and Anoosh Chakelian discuss Amelia Tait, page 39 the week in Westminster and beyond, and (try to) answer listeners’ questions about politics. Digital subscribers get an early, ad-free version of Head of Marketing each episode. Charlotte Mullock newstatesman.com/podcast 0808 284 9422 Marketing Manager Alfred Jahn

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20-20_ads.indd 3 11/05/2020 15:37:36 Jason Cowley Editor’s Note The tragedy of Tye Green Lodge care home is a parable of government neglect

n July last year an old friend who now such a matter of urgent national concern. 25 April, when Public Health England said lives in Brighton mentioned that he I made a note to follow what was happening it would test only “symptomatic residents”. Iand his mother, Margaret, were visiting at the lodge, which is built on former scrub- Since then, all residents at Tye Green Lodge Harlow for the first time in many years. land – once known locally as the Orchard have been tested and, a spokesperson for He and I had grown up in the Essex town – where as children we used to hang out Quantum Care told me, the home is now and he asked if I wanted to return with my and climb trees. in a state of “recovery”. mother so that we could all meet for din- ner. It was a nostalgic and poignant home- **** **** coming for Margaret, who would sadly die From late March, over a four-week period, Why does this small story matter? It mat- only a few months later. 17 residents of Tye Green Lodge and one ters because it reveals in microcosm much One of the places she visited during that member of staff died. Seven died in hospital deeper problems. First, it reiterates how trip last summer was Tye Green Lodge care after testing positive for Covid-19; the oth- slow the government was to respond to the home in the old village of Tye Green, which ers are believed to have died with or from coronavirus emergency, especially in care long pre-existed the new town. There, Mar- the disease but were never tested. The trag- homes. Second, it reveals that what hap- garet reconnected with three former close edy of Tye Green Lodge is a parable of what pened at Tye Green Lodge (and other homes neighbours: one was now blind and two was happening in many of our care homes like it) was not an aberration but part of a had dementia. She told us over dinner that in the early weeks of the pandemic. pattern of long-term neglect: all UK gov- night about the visit, and it was moving to As the government equivocated and ernments, in recent decades, have evaded find out what had become of people I used floundered, and pursued a policy of what responsibility for the crisis in social care, to know and in whose gardens I played amounted to benign neglect, patients were preferring short-term fixes to the difficult sometimes during the summer holidays. discharged from hospitals to care homes – choices that are required to grapple with as Dr Phil Whitaker reported in these pages one of the defining challenges of our times. **** – with often lethal consequences. There More than this, with each passing month, In his original masterplan for Harlow, was no testing in these homes and many we understand more about the effects of Frederick Gibberd, the chief architect- staff did not even have adequate personal the Cameron coalition government’s wit- planner, was careful to preserve the long- protective equipment as some of them less austerity programme on the social established villages and hamlets that were moved from home to home as itinerant fabric of the country. Ideological austerity subsumed into the west Essex new town freelance workers. starved the public realm of investment and, (the original settlement of Harlow fea- according to the Marmot Review published tures in the Domesday Book). Even today, **** by the Institute of Health Equity in Feb- though much has changed from when Could the deaths at Tye Green Lodge – and ruary, created a “lost decade”. We are liv- I lived in the town for the first 18 years of many other care homes – have been reduced ing with the consequences, but this time my life, Tye Green just about retains some- or perhaps even avoided altogether? It’s the Conservative government has no one thing of the character of a village. And hard to know from the outside exactly what else to blame, unlike when Gordon Brown whenever by chance I hear mention of it, was going on in the home in March, but the and Labour were blamed for the post-crash I can still picture the old houses with big catastrophic outbreak there does seem to debt crisis of 2008. gardens that we used to think were haunted have been exacerbated by a failure to test and the working farm where my parents and trace, and by the government’s woeful **** bought eggs and cream. mixed messaging. The years ahead will test our national In March my interest was piqued when, Quantum Care restricted all non-essen- resilience and whether we have the stam- on the BBC regional news, it was reported tial visitors to the home on 17 March, and ina to address the interconnected crises that Tye Green Lodge, which has 61 beds two days later it wrote to all local Conserva- exposed and accelerated by the pandemic. and is owned and operated by Quantum tive MPs – there are no Labour MPs in Essex As the philosopher Michael Sandel put it Care, a self-described “not-for-profit care or Hertfordshire – appealing for staff and in a recent New York Times piece, “We need provider”, had been quarantined after an residents to be urgently tested. The first to ask a basic question that we have evaded outbreak of coronavirus. This was before lodge resident to test positive for Covid-19 over these last decades: what do we owe Boris Johnson belatedly locked down the did so in hospital on 25 March, by which one another as citizens?” And, one country on the evening of 23 March and time it was already too late. Worse still, no might add: what are we prepared to

IAN McGOWAN before the crisis in care homes had become testing was offered at the care home until do about it? l

22-28 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 7

2020+21 007 Editors Note.indd 7 19/05/2020 19:32:21 It survived the Middle Ages, Henry VIII and two world wars. How will it cope with coronavirus? AFTER HUNDREDS OF YEARS IN EXISTENCE, the future of churches is now threatened by the impact of the coronavirus. They face a signi cant loss of income and cannot complete urgent repairs, putting the very fabric of these cherished buildings at grave risk. At the same time churches continue to play a central role in our nation’s response by supporting vulnerable people and local communities. As a Friend of the National Churches Trust you will help us to restore churches in every sense of the word. YOUR ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION goes towards urgent repairs and vital improvements and will ensure that when current restrictions are eased, churches will be able to continue to provide the support that so many people will need. PLEASE JOIN TODAY for just £30 per year via Direct Debit at www.nationalchurchestrust.org/friends, or send a cheque for £35 by completing the coupon and returning it to the National Churches Trust, 7 Tufton Street, London SW1P 3QB (please ax a stamp). When we are able to meet with our Friends once again, we will be delighted to invite you to enjoy unique events as part of a growing community helping the nation’s rich heritage of For people who love churches and chapels survive for future generations. In the meantime, do follow us on social media. church buildings @nationalchurchestrust @NatChurchTrust @nationalchurchestrust

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20-21_ads.indd 3 19/05/2020 11:45:22 Dr Phil Whitaker Health Matters The issue of reopening schools is vivid proof that our theoretical science has failed us

he UK government’s plan to begin As time has gone on, the UK modelling has likely to contract the virus, or whether they gradual school reopening from 1 June been adjusted to try to incorporate the em- acquire it at the same rate as adults but rela- Thas provoked huge controversy. Some pirical data that has become available about tively few of them develop symptoms. We teaching unions have opposed it and have Covid-19. A seismic shift occurred in mid- also don’t know whether, or for how long, been joined, in a significant intervention, March, when real-world data, including children are able to transmit the infection. by the British Medical Association. Local from Italy, was fed into the model the gov- The second certainty is that, notwithstand- government leaders in parts of Manchester, ernment was using to inform policymaking. ing a very few tragic cases, the infection Liverpool, Hartlepool and Tyneside have The resultant, dramatically upscaled predic- rarely causes serious disease in younger indicated that they do not intend to comply, tions for deaths and hospitalisations led to age groups. Insofar as anything in life can and none of the devolved nations appears the sudden, panicked introduction of lock- be said to be safe, sending children back to willing to follow England’s lead either. down and the breakneck drive to expand school will be safe for them. But whether it To counter the growing rebellion, promi- ICU capacity, establish Nightingale facilities will be safe for teachers and other adults in nent cabinet ministers have been deployed and empty hospital beds (which had the ef- the school environment, and indeed for the in the media, asserting their confidence in fect of discharging coronavirus-spreading communities into which pupils will return both pupil and teacher safety while simul- patients into care homes). at the end of the day, is currently unknown. taneously invoking a quasi-military “duty” We know from government pronounce- on the part of teachers to return to the class- ments in early March that its modelling room. As ever, we’re told the government The UK modelling predicted that school closures would not is following the science (while appearing was based on make a significant difference to transmis- reluctant to submit it to wider scrutiny). sion rates. But a group led by the Norwich The debate about school reopening pro- influenza viruses Medical School has evaluated the outcomes vides a backdrop against which to examine of different lockdown measures imposed in these claims to scientific legitimacy. It’s im- Britain has suffered an appalling level of 30 European countries. While girded with portant to draw a distinction between two mortality, but the shocking predictions of caveats, their conclusion was that school types of science going on here. One is theo- late March, showing NHS capacity being closures were the most effective measure in retical, meaning it is based on models that exceeded many times over, never came to suppressing transmission. attempt to predict how things will behave. pass. The modelling must either have se- The widespread resistance to the early The other is empirical, meaning it is based riously overestimated the strength of the reopening of schools has its roots in our on observation and experience of how surge, underestimated the transmission- demonstrable overconfidence in theoretical things have actually behaved. dampening effect of lockdown, or failed to science to predict how Covid-19 will behave To begin with, facing a novel disease like anticipate how many fatal cases would occur in the real world. Ministers cite the example Covid-19, there was no empirical data. All in nursing homes and the community rather of Denmark, which has successfully reo- that was known was: it is a coronavirus than in hospital – or most likely a combina- pened primary schools in socially distanced that can cause a potentially fatal respira- tion of all three. The conclusion that ought format, to justify their policy. This entirely tory distress syndrome. Countries such as to be drawn from this is quite how poorly ignores glaring differences between our two Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea based the theoretical science is performing, yet the countries. Denmark suppressed its outbreak their strategies on the nearest empirical government continues to follow it seem- through early, widespread TTI and border “fit” – their experience of dealing with past, ingly without question – something that controls. Danish schools are reopening in a serious coronavirus diseases such as Sars. prompted the former chief scientific adviser, completely different and safer context. Testing, tracing and isolating (TTI) cases Sir David King, to establish a scientific advi- There is now ample evidence globally as and contacts was at the heart of their ap- sory group in order to give voice to alterna- to how best to counter Covid-19. We should proach from the outset, as were border tive perspectives and approaches. acknowledge that our theoretical science controls to limit importation of new cases. How does this affect the question of has failed us, and continue to further sup- Countries such as Britain relied instead schools reopening? At time of writing, press the epidemic while emulating the sys- on theoretical modelling to inform their there are just two things we can say with tems that experience abroad has shown to response, but these models were based certainty about Covid-19 in children. First, be effective, including greater freedom for on influenza viruses (for decades, the as- out of every 100 symptomatic patients, specific regions to modulate their response sumption had been that the next pandemic only two will be children. We don’t know according to their local conditions. That

IAN McGOWAN would be a flu virus). whether this is because children are less would truly be following the science. l

22-28 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 9

2020+21 009 Phil Whitaker.indd 9 19/05/2020 19:30:41 Correspondence [email protected]

too far. Under Theresa May’s LETTER OF THE WEEK Allied, not alone premiership there was regular David Edgerton is right to questioning of the Brexit argue against “The myth of In search of a national story deal. And just recently BBC ‘Britain alone’” (15 May) in the In promoting Strong progressive nations reporters have been asking Second World War. But I have internationalism above the are the building block for any ministers why the government some additional observations. national politics of “home, internationalism that is not is sticking to its timetable for No one can dispute the belonging and identity”, the dreaming of a global left leaving the EU in the face terrible losses and courage of Jeremy Cliffe will repeat elite. Cliffe writes as though of Covid-19. the Red Army. But if Stalin’s the mistakes of the defeated the left has tried progressive John Boaler USSR had not instructed Remain and People’s Vote patriotism for the past decade. Calne, Wiltshire German communists to refuse campaigns (World View, The left has largely spurned any united front against Hitler 15 May). Of course, there the idea of the nation, which Simon Jenkins is right to (because Social Democrats cannot be any effective is why its attempts to engage draw attention to the media’s were “social fascists”) the challenge to the power with public concern on failure, but it is more than Nazis might well have never of global capital without immigration, the EU or the just a question of “if it bleeds, taken power. The Nazis’ racist progressive internationalism. town-city divide have been it leads”. The problem is policies (Slavs are slaves) meant But the current crisis has ineffective. If the left has the media make no more the Russians were forced to shown that the idea of the no national story, the right distinction between “hard” fight. If the Nazis had pursued nation and their governments will win again. and “soft” science than the a “charm offensive” as they remains powerful among Professor John Denham politicians – and the science did in France, Stalin might have electorates around the world. Via email the government has been found it harder to mobilise insisting it is following could his people. not be much softer. The war was not simply of these atrocities, despite government is pitted with One consequence of the fought by an alliance of states. other information being well “us” and “ours” vs “them” failure to see this distinction Many thousands of Germans reported during the conflict. and “theirs”. Patriotism is a clearly is that, as Jenkins organised and fought against Of course, individual slippery concept that will be points out, it has taken the their own government, both Catholics, including priests, used to justify anything. press weeks to realise that inside Germany and in the acted bravely in trying to save Keith Maton something might be amiss French Resistance. Jewish lives. And in other Crickhowell, Powys with the “science” by Ian Birchall Christian denominations, in which we are being led to London N9 Germany and elsewhere, there David Edgerton overlooks unnecessary deaths. was also silence, or worse. the strongest argument for Professor Brian Winston A controversy arising from It would, however, be widely his proposition. Between University of Lincoln the Second World War does welcomed if the Vatican at the October 1940 (Italian invasion not seem to be going away. highest level acknowledged of Greece) and May 1941 A document discovered by a that not speaking out then (surrender to the Germans of Trump’s childhood small group of historians, who against such murderous the Allied forces in Crete), I would suggest that the were allowed to look at the barbarism was shamefully Britain had an effective critique of Donald Trump Vatican archives just before wrong and a betrayal of fighting ally against the as childish is, rather than the lockdown, is likely to raise common humanity. Axis powers – Greece. an attack on children, an again the silence of Pope Pius David Winnick, Paul Watkins attempt to analyse his XII during the Holocaust. former Labour MP London NW1 character and behaviour It reportedly revealed that in London NW10 (Correspondence, 8 May). 1942 reports were received by From what I have read of his the Vatican telling of hundreds David Edgerton’s article was Defending the BBC upbringing, there may have of thousands of Jews massacred spot on. Unfortunately, “spin” I agree with most of Simon been extreme emotional in Ukraine and Poland; the is nothing new, as he points Jenkins’s essay about the BBC dysfunctionality within the response was such information out. Many of us will remember News coverage of coronavirus family, which may have led could not be relied on since the ugly rhetoric in confronting (“The BBC and the journalism to his famous defensiveness Jews tended to exaggerate. In Argentina during the Falklands of fear”, 8 May). But his claim as well as the self-promotion, fact, that information did not War of 1982. The Thatcher that he has “never heard a stubbornness and failure to come from Jewish sources. government was determined BBC reporter ask why a adapt, cooperate and focus. The crux of the matter to use any means possible to minister is not doing less” Of course, this is only remains why the pope did not promote its case, including the must be challenged. one part of the picture, but speak out during the war when emotional strains of using an BBC journalists frequently most dysfunctional people millions were being murdered exaggerated patriotism, seeing pressed Treasury ministers on with political power have because of their race. At no Falklanders as “our” threatened whether George Osborne’s complex psychological stage was there a condemnation people. The language of austerity measures were going backgrounds. Appropriate

10 | NEW STATESMAN | 22-28 MAY 2020

2020+21 010 Letters.indd 10 19/05/2020 19:25:44 help in their early years might under Keir Starmer, but 15 May), Jan Zielonka and Now is the time for us to have changed history. faces appalling odds in our Stefania Bernini write that the come together and insist on Patricia Cooper electoral system. If we are to risk of contagion has deprived a new curriculum for young Budleigh Salterton, Devon engage the more community- us of the ability to dispose people that values the based delivery of services freely of our private time. power of nature. that Professor Collier rightly I suggest that for many of us Sarah Backhouse Lockdown life espouses, Labour needs it has unexpectedly enabled Lullington, Somerset My copy of the New Statesman to embrace other political more than it has deprived. came a day early last week and parties that support a Sally Litherland It was good to see Tracey Thorn reading it lifted my spirits. community-led approach. Salisbury, Wiltshire is a fan of Mary Oliver’s poetry A standout insight was from Trevor Cherrett (Off the Record, 15 May), but Suzanne Moore (Diary, Devizes, Wiltshire there is no need for an atheist 15 May), who wrote: “I miss Nature’s healing to subside into prayer. Try the presence of possibility, Jason Cowley (Editor’s Note, The past three issues of the NS Oliver’s “Wild Geese”: the anonymous pleasure of 8 May) is right: we will all be have all included articles about Whoever you are, no strangers together. That’s what changed by the crisis. But if the deep-healing “power of matter how lonely, ‘going outside’ really means.” the values that have come to green”. Last week there was the world offers itself to That’s how many of us feel the fore are to endure, there Tracey Thorn’s column your imagination, about life in lockdown. also needs to be deep (Off the Record, 15 May) with calls to you like the wild Liz Storrar structural change. Paul Collier quotes from Mary Oliver’s geese, harsh and exciting – Oxford implicitly draws attention poem “The Summer Day”. over and over announcing to one example: the income My daughter works for your place disparities between certain a mental health charity in in the family of things. Regional needs professions. There needs Bristol, also called Off the Graham Williams, Thanks to Paul Collier for to be greater fairness in the Record. They have initiated a New South Wales, Australia calling out centralisation distribution of income, scheme for 11- to 25-year-olds in England’s dysfunctional wealth and opportunity. who can self-refer to the political system (“Capitalism Only with these foundations charity in times of mental Music to his mouth after coronavirus”, 8 May). Our could a renewed sense of unease or crisis. Nicholas Lezard (Down and political party system favours social solidarity continue Among other outdoor Out, 15 May) recounts his centralised power, despite the to flourish. programmes, this scheme dreaming of “musical crisps”. concessions the Conservatives Michael Haskell provides planting kits, with Surely he has a subconscious have made to the state and Broughton, Flintshire information on the sowing craving for Quavers. “the science” to tackle the and care of the plants, and Sean Cordell coronavirus emergency. guidelines for healthy living. Manchester Labour has made a solid About time Within the first three days of restart with a commitment In “Pandemics and the politics its launch in April the scheme l We reserve the right to a more regional approach of time” (Observations, received 1,000 applications. to edit letters.

SUSPENDED ANIMATION BY REBECCA HENDIN

22-28 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 11

2020+21 010 Letters.indd 11 19/05/2020 19:25:52 IDEAS | PROVOCATIONS | TRENDS | PEOPLE Observations GLEB GARANICH/REUTERS

IN THE PICTURE by the BioTexCom are stranded in the reproduction clinic, clinic as travel bans Nurses care for in Kiev, Ukraine, due to coronavirus newborns at on 14 May. At least have prevented the Hotel Venice, 50 babies born to babies’ parents from which is owned surrogate mothers entering the country.

12 | NEW STATESMAN | 22-28 MAY 2020

2020+21 012 Stonebridge and Maguire.indd 12 19/05/2020 19:22:57 Commons Confidential Kevin Maguire offers his pick of the week’s best gossip from Westminster Encounter George Eaton speaks with Dutch historian Rutger Bregman First Thoughts Peter Wilby on the government’s daily press conference and job cuts in the media Trends Oscar Williams on the US company Palantir’s growing presence in the NHS

COMMENT In search of the active life What is “work” in the age of Covid-19? By Lyndsey Stonebridge

ccording to the to imagine that we graft away, government, we are striving for some imaginary A now supposed to be point at which we might be free getting back to work. But what of labour: in future automation does “work” mean in the time or artificial intelligence, for of Covid-19? Amid the debates example; or in the venal about how we might return to fantasies of super-richness; in work, what is being forgotten socialist utopias of common is that work is a crucial part of ownership that might liberate what the 20th-century political us from toil; or, if you are a philosopher Hannah Arendt Greek philosopher, in a life of called the human condition. the mind. For Arendt, it was The government’s Covid-19 the active life, the vita activa, recovery strategy, published on that we need to attend to, the 11 May, states that people will lives we live together with be “eased back into work” as others, now and in the future. into a dentist chair: carefully, Arendt’s vita activa has three and with face masks. components: labour, work The reason they need to and action. It is her distinction be coaxed is, of course, the between labour and work that economy. At one point in the should concern us now. document, it reads as though Labouring is simply what it is the economy, not people, we do to survive. We labour to that has been sick: “The longer eat, to keep our bodies healthy, the virus affects the economy, to keep roofs over our heads, the greater the risks of long- and to keep life reproducing. term scarring.” The economy All animals labour, with or needs ventilating, and people without coaxing, as do slaves are its oxygen. and women who, often Arendt would not have been literally, labour behind surprised by this commonplace closed doors. There’s nothing personification. From the special about labour, save for moral and political thought of the fact that without it we John Locke and Adam Smith would die. in the 17th and 18th centuries Work, on the other hand, respectively, to Karl Marx in gives collective meaning to the 19th century, left, liberal, what we do. When we work and right have all seen man as to produce something we both a labouring being, toiling away put something into and leave at getting machines, services, something lasting in the world: cash and liquid capital working. a table (Arendt, like many The economy “works” while philosophers, was fond of we “labour”. furniture examples), a house, In her 1958 book The Human a book, a car, a rug, a high- Condition, Arendt suggested precision piece of engineering

we think again. It is not enough with which we can order t

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t the days into time, or keep a lungs took precedence over COMMONS CONFIDENTIAL body breathing. the rasping of the guy who In short, what we work at had no choice but get on the makes up the human reality number 73 bus. Putting the Marx into marking that we all share. Work is part This was not simply a case Kevin Maguire of what Arendt called “human of maladroit messaging. It was artifice”: it means that we are a failure to recognise the value Bruised Boris Johnson to speak. Maybe the Tory rag more than mere nature, and not only of the work we have waffling in No 10 about confused her with NEU co- that we have made something to do, but of the work we do education, infrastructure general secretary “Kevin the that endures. We labour by together in order to be human. and technology as three Red” Courtney, a Welsh necessity; we work to create a This is why debates and pillars in Britain’s future firebrand who puts the Marx human reality. policies about how we get back is, muttered my snout, an into marking. Already in the 1950s, Arendt to work matter so much: we increasingly frantic attempt was worried that capitalist are also talking about what kind by the PM’s little helpers Strangers’ Bar will be minus consumption would transform of human society we are – or to paint their sugar daddy its most familiar face when work into sheer labour. If we want to be. as a chap of action and thus MPs finally return en masse: all make only to consume, we If taking the human value shield him from coronavirus head barman Will Conway leave nothing in the world, of work more seriously is key disasters. With UK-made retires this month after 27 and we lose that shared sense to a better politics, we should ventilators reported to be years pulling parliamentary of the world. Make burger, eat also grasp this opportunity running out of parts and pints. The quietly spoken burger, be burger. The collapse to think about what counts as testing chiefs complaining GMB union activist of the distinction between valuable work. that the first they heard witnessed heated arguments, work and labour really matters about Matt Hancock’s drunks falling over, arrests because without the meanings 100,000 target was on TV, and fisticuffs. As the watering work gives us there can be no The economy Johnson’s regime continues hole’s enforcer, Conway shared ground for politics – for “works” while to disintegrate. always insisted most regulars action, as Arendt called the were well behaved. I’m not third, and most important, part we “labour” Fresh derision was triggered surprised. Conceited new of her vita activa. by suggestions that the MPs who crossed him once This is why her example Arendt might show us the government intended the quickly learned never to do of the table is so important. way, but her philosophy only second word in that it again. A table is a solid piece of gets us so far. As feminists have much-ridiculed craftwork. It is also something noted, the labouring necessities “Stay Alert” All eyes turn people sit around, together of life Arendt described are slogan to be an to Liverpool’s and yet apart; being social also descriptions of traditional acronym. Labour first black MP, while keeping their distance. women’s work. The labour of culture vulture Jo Kim Johnson, Without the table, Arendt keeping human bodies alive Stevens accused whenever she said, there could be no forum over the past three months a windmilling appears on PLP for the politics of plurality that has, in the main, been done premier of secretly video meetings. she thought societies should by women and, at great cost, thinking “All Lazy She followed up be aiming for. For politics to BAME people. Employees Return what resembled a happen we need something Making a table is a great Tomorrow” whenever fluffy pink dressing gown that we can all gather around, thing, but the work of creating he mutters an “Alert” so with wearing a baseball but which also marks out the a dignified human being out confusing the only shock is cap indoors. The Labour differences between us. That is of an ailing, suffering, possibly that Johnson hasn’t translated community organiser puts what work gives us. dying body is too. The NHS it into Greek. Yet. in the shade her male, pale If people were upset when was set up to do that work. and stale colleagues in collar the government issued its What if instead of seeing Guffaws on the TUC general and tie. call back to work on 10 May, the NHS as a frail but plucky council after the Daily Mail perhaps this is because what thing that needs protecting, portrayed militant moderate Spinners Shaun Roberts and they heard was not a request to we thought of it instead as Dr Mary Bousted, joint head Sam Barratt quitting the Lib return to work, but a demand the table around which we all of the National Education Dumb campaigns ahead of for their labour. When, at need to get to create a really Union (NEU), as a Cuba- the inquiry report into Jo that point, it was obvious different – and possibly more lovin’ hard-left Corbynista. Swinson’s calamitous that neither workplaces human – political future? What Comrades recall the one- general election is a sign of nor public transport were if getting back to work might time English teacher in a party starting again. The “Covid-19 secure” (that is, safe also be a way of getting back to London, whose past pupils ex-leader is referred to as “Jo for human life) it was hard to the human condition? l include Labour peer Shami who?” by staffers who don’t escape the idea that we were Lyndsey Stonebridge is the Chakrabarti, calling socialist want to follow them out of not so much being coaxed back author of “Placeless People: union boss Mark Serwotka the door. l to work, as commanded to get Writings, Rights and Refugees”. an “effing supercilious prick” Kevin Maguire is the our bodies back into the Her forthcoming book on after he reminded Bousted to associate editor (politics) of service of the economy – Arendt will be published by wait to be called by the chair the Daily Mirror as though the scarring of its Jonathan Cape

14 | NEW STATESMAN | 22-28 MAY 2020

2020+21 012 Stonebridge and Maguire.indd 14 19/05/2020 19:22:59 CORONAVIRUS CRISIS APPEAL

LILI-MARIE WANGARI Maintaining physical distance in Kibera is almost impossible, as it is in many slum settlements around We are using nearly 50 years of experience IS MSF’S EMERGENCY the world. People live in tiny, overcrowded homes fi ghting epidemics to protect the most vulnerable COORDINATOR with few windows or other ventilation. Th ese and save lives. conditions make it easy for a disease like COVID-19 WE'RE SENDING MEDICAL TEAMS IN KENYA to spread, and very diffi cult for people to stay inside Our emergency medical teams are working alongside for long periods. local healthcare staff on the frontlines of the fi ght against COVID-19 in Europe, Africa, the Middle East Access to clean water is extremely limited, with only and Asia. From war-torn Syria to refugee camps in 200 water points for the 200,000 people who live Bangladesh and care homes in Europe, we’re doing all in the settlement, making regular hand-washing we can to fi ght the pandemic. almost impossible. WE'RE PROTECTING HEALTHCARE STAFF My greatest concern is that a large proportion of We're setting up life-saving infection control measures people here have underlying health conditions, such to protect patients and staff. as HIV and TB, and diseases, like hypertension and WE'RE SENDING MEDICAL SUPPLIES diabetes, that could put them at increased risk Our logistics teams are delivering protective clothing of developing severe COVID-19. and state-of-the-art mobile hospitals. WHAT IS MSF DOING? For the past two weeks, a team of MSF staff have THANK YOU been setting up a screening system in a tent at We can’t do it without you. Please donate now the entrance of a health centre in Kibera. We take to help us respond to the coronavirus crisis. patients’ temperatures and control the number of An MSF infection prevention and control supervisor measures disinfectant to people who come into the health centre at any one can pay for protective plastic goggles be used in cleaning an isolation area for COVID-19 patients in Likoni, Kenya. time. Should people have a fever, they go to see an £28 for four doctors Photograph © Yann Libessart/MSF MSF nurse for a more in-depth health check. We can pay for sterile gloves for 30 medics also have a clinical offi cer who manages an isolation £58 Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without room for suspected COVID-19 cases. can pay for fi ve protective suits to keep Borders (MSF) is providing urgent medical care £110 medical staff safe and support in more than 70 countries to counter Our team is also providing training and support for infection prevention and control measures. Th is can provide a hand-held ultrasound used the COVID-19 pandemic. In Nairobi, the Kenyan £864 for detecting underlying health issues capital, MSF teams are working in Kibera, one of includes making sure staff are wearing the correct the largest slum settlements in Africa. personal protective equipment, such as masks and gloves, and that there is a constant supply of water “Because we know Kibera, we know how catastrophic for hand-washing. an outbreak could be in this community. As well as making sure patients are safe, we want to DONATE NOW We’ve worked here for more than 25 years, through protect health workers. Without them, there will be CALL 0800 055 7985 the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s, when we cared for no response to COVID-19 and we could see a rise people at home, campaigned for access to treatment in deaths from unrelated health conditions. In the 24 hours a day, 7 days a week or and were the fi rst doctors to provide antiretroviral middle of this pandemic, we are determined that make your donation at: drugs to patients in a Kenyan public health facility. healthcare in Kibera will continue.” msf.org.uk/pandemic

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the same goes for shooting the enemy. We’ve got this fascinating evidence from the Second World War, and also from other wars, that most soldiers couldn’t do it.” But how does he reckon with the 20th century and the horrors inflicted by Nazism, Stalinism and Maoism? “I think we have to acknowledge that human beings are not only the friendliest species in the animal kingdom, they’re also clearly the cruellest.” Bregman is not, he emphasises, an optimist but a “possibilist”. All too often, he fears, pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. “What I’m trying to do is to redefine realism, I’m trying to say that actually the cynic is naive… If you look at empirical evidence then you find that assuming the best in other people gets you the best results.” He cites the pioneering Norwegian prison system, where inmate facilities include tennis courts, a sauna and even recording studios (music is issued by the Criminal ENCOUNTER Records label). “They have the lowest recidivism rate in the world [20 per cent, compared “Optimism is an alibi for to 48 per cent in England and Wales], these are the most complacency” effective prisons.” Bregman has spent Rutger Bregman on the human instinct for solidarity lockdown in the Dutch town of Houten in Utrecht. “Nothing By George Eaton really happens here, you could die on the street and people wouldn’t notice… My life hroughout the Covid-19 seeks to dismantle the thesis himself continually drawn philosophy is that you need a pandemic many people – formulated and popularised to fundamental questions of boring private life if you Thave been awed by the by thinkers such as Hobbes, human nature. want to have a more exciting displays of human solidarity. In Machiavelli and Freud – that Having once taken a public life.” (An echo of supposedly atomised societies, humans are inherently selfish. “relatively cynical” view, Flaubert’s dictum: “Be regular altruistic instincts have “I found a disconnect he was forced to revise his and orderly in your life, so that reasserted themselves (750,000 between my own view perspective as he interrogated you may be violent and original people have volunteered for the of human nature and the new evidence from “diverse in your work.”) NHS, for example). ideas I was advocating and disciplines: anthropology, In January 2019, Bregman One of those who was not this book is an attempt to archaeology, sociology, attracted global attention when surprised is the Dutch historian solve that,” Bregman, 32, psychology”. Far from humans he used his first appearance at and author Rutger Bregman. explained when I recently being predisposed to violence, the World Economic Forum in “Catastrophes bring out the interviewed him over Skype for instance, Bregman argues Davos to excoriate his wealthy best in people,” he writes in from London. His previous that the reverse is true: we audience: “Almost no one raises his new book Humankind: A book Utopia for Realists (2014) find pain immensely difficult the real issue of tax avoidance, Hopeful History. “I know of promoted policies such as a to inflict. “Most bayonets right? And of the rich just no other sociological finding universal basic income (UBI), throughout history have not paying their fair share. It that’s backed by so much solid a 15-hour working week and probably not been used feels like I’m at a firefighters’ evidence that’s so blithely global open borders. As he because soldiers just can’t do it, conference and no one is

ignored.” Over 463 pages he debated such ideas he found something holds them back… allowed to speak about water.” MATT WRITTLE / EYEVINE

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(Bregman was not invited to FIRST THOUGHTS this year’s conference.) He speaks animatedly of how the Overton window – the Government propaganda on the BBC, spectrum of policies deemed antibody tests and news industry carnage acceptable by voters and the political class – has shifted left Peter Wilby in the wake of the pandemic. “In the Netherlands we had our own prime minister [Mark The government’s daily press EconomistEc Group has cut Rutte] – a classic neoliberal – conferences, televised live 909 jobs. The business news who in parliament said I believe on BBC One, have become websitew Quartz has reduced in a big state and, deep down, little more than propaganda. itsi workforce by 40 per cent the Netherlands is a socialist Ministers recite dubious anda closed its London, San country. What is happening figures of tests completed, Francisco,F Hong Kong and here?” He notes that 70 per personal protection Washington, DC offices. cent of Europeans now favour equipment secured and The epidemic is the UBI (according to a recent poll). billions of pounds handed immediate cause of this pain, “It’s a wonderful time to be a out to show they are busy, ones made about tests. EExpectxpect but the malaise is deeper. social democrat.” competent and caring. to learn in September that 30 Upmarket or middle-market, But much the same was said Questions, from journalists million vaccines are in the post. paywall or open-access, after the 2008 financial crisis, and the public, are too aimed at middle-aged high- why should this time prove random to put them under Known unknowns earners or ambitious young different? “Progressives are scrutiny. Ministers thus build Ministers describe antibody hipsters, digital providers better prepared than last up political capital while tests, which supposedly reveal of serious news, thanks to time. I think after 2008 you opposition party leaders lack whether or not individuals Google and Facebook, don’t could see the alternatives were any comparable exposure. have had Covid-19, as “game- have sustainable businesses. not really there, but since then I cannot think why Labour changing”. Yet scientists tell us we’ve had Occupy, we’ve had MPs aren’t making more fuss that the presence of antibodies Smoke screen the rise of Thomas Piketty as a about this. The proper forum may not guarantee immunity The Daily Mail published rock star economist.” for ministerial statements from reinfection. And even an article by the artist David He must, however, feel is the House of Commons. if it did, nobody can know Hockney on the merits of less hopeful of a world of Cross-examination should whether the immunity lasts for smoking. Evidence from open borders? “You’re right come from honourable weeks, months or years. These France and China, Hockney and here I am outside of the members. There is no reason “known unknowns” must have points out, suggests smokers mainstream.” He warns of the why such sessions shouldn’t been evident in early March. are underrepresented consequences of long-term be on the BBC. Government So why did anybody think that among those infected with immigration controls: “Contact scientists could still hold aiming for “herd immunity” coronavirus. Researchers are is the best medicine against press conferences, presenting was a sensible strategy? looking into whether nicotine hate, racism and prejudice. data, but those fronted by offers protection against It’s something that we should ministers should end now. Vice squad Covid-19. The Guardian was be very wary of, the more “Platforms are not just taking offered the article first and segregation we have, the more Promises made a larger slice of the pie, but turned it down. The Mail of a problem that’s going to Alok Sharma, the Business almost the whole pie,” said Vice accuses it of censorship. be.” But he maintains: “It’s a Secretary, drones on in a Media’s chief executive, Nancy Let’s be clear about two bad time to be a xenophobe and monotone voice suitable Dubuc, as she informed staff of things. First, the research, a populist because the usual for presenting the mid-year 150 job cuts. The “platforms” which the Guardian has rhetoric from the Trumps of the results of a firm of chartered are Google and Facebook, reported, is into the efficacy world doesn’t seem to work.” accountants. So when I heard which take content from news of nicotine patches, not the In Humankind, Bregman him say 30 million vaccine websites but monopolise cigarettes that Hockney quotes Chekhov: “Man will doses against Covid-19 advertising revenue. still smokes in his eighties; become better when you could be ready by September, Dubuc’s complaint is doctors say that when show him what he is like.” I assumed I had nodded off echoed across the media smokers do get infected, The notion that we already and dreamt it. Then I saw the industry. BuzzFeed News, they are more likely to suffer have the capacity to radically next day’s papers. There were which seemed to have cracked complications. Second, improve the world is both an ifs and coulds in what Sharma the challenge of attracting “censorship” is something exhilarating and a daunting said, but there weren’t many under-35s to serious news, has done by governments, one. What if pessimism of those in the headlines. closed its UK and Australian preventing certain facts and is vindicated? Bregman Perhaps I shall be proved operations. The Financial opinions appearing anywhere. measures his words with wrong – in which case, I Times, despite gaining 50,000 Newspapers use editorial care: “Optimism is an alibi shall eat my mask outside digital subscribers this year, judgement, which the Mail for complacency while hope Loughton station – but I think has cut senior staff salaries would do if I sent it an article impels you to act; it’s about this promise will be like the by at least 10 per cent. The praising trade unions. l possibilities.” l

22-28 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 17

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agreements, while assessing deal did not go to competitive the balance between public and tender. Palantir has not “commercial interests”. previously worked with the Palantir and Faculty’s NHS, but has been developing involvement with the NHS expertise in the UK healthcare has drawn attention because space for at least two years. they have played a large The project’s defenders role in the project; Palantir say Palantir is well placed to provides the data engineering process sensitive data, given services collating the various that it is trusted by intelligence anonymised datasets, while agencies, such as the CIA. Faculty analyses the aggregated A more pressing concern data. But the scrutiny is also according to some observers is driven by the companies’ what the deal might mean for political associations. the health service’s future. The brother of Faculty’s “This goes beyond chief executive is Ben Warner, privatisation,” said Lina who reportedly worked with Dencik, co-director of Cardiff Dominic Cummings on Vote University’s Data Justice Leave. Warner used to work Lab. “What this will do… for Faculty and is now a data is to increase dependency science adviser to Downing on [Palantir’s] technological Street. Palantir, meanwhile, has infrastructure over time. been of interest to Cummings The implementation of these TRENDS since 2015, when he reportedly technologies are restructuring told Christopher Wylie, organisational practices in Secret data and the the Cambridge Analytica such a way that risks displacing whistleblower, he wanted to public infrastructure and build “the Palantir of politics”. the way policy is made. This future of public health Thiel also has close links gives [Palantir] enormous to the US government. A power in a different way to Why the NHS has turned to Palantir co-founder of Paypal and an typical outsourcing.” By Oscar Williams early investor in Facebook, he Such fears have been fuelled was one of the few figures in by the NHS’s complicated Silicon Valley to publicly back history with tech providers, Donald Trump, reportedly as well as reports that the n May 2003, the venture draws on 1,000 data sources donating $1.25m to support New York Police Department capitalist Peter Thiel and four per day, including anonymised his 2016 campaign. In 2009, he struggled to obtain analysis Ico-founders launched the Covid-19 test results and wrote that he stands “against in a standardised format from data-mining company Palantir. patient information, was confiscatory taxes, totalitarian Palantir after its contract came Named after an all-seeing conceived by NHSX, the collectives, and the ideology of to an end in 2017. crystal ball in JRR Tolkien’s National Health Service’s the inevitability of the death of Palantir did not respond The Lord of the Rings, and digital transformation unit, to every individual”. to a request for comment initially partially funded by the assess and predict demand. As NS Tech reported in April, about the dispute, but said that CIA, the company has secured NHSX hopes the project will 45 Palantir engineers have been customers’ “data and analysis a series of contentious but guide government strategy and working on the Covid-19 data are available to them at all lucrative public sector contracts allow hospitals to coordinate store, and there is speculation times in an open and non- in the US, covering predictive the distribution of ventilators that it can expect to win further proprietary format”. policing, migrant surveillance and other resources in the fight contracts after the crisis. Palantir’s relationship and the development of against coronavirus. NHSX has vowed that all with the NHS is likely to battlefield software. But 17 years The project may aid the the data processed by the thrive under the Johnson later, it is Palantir’s work with NHS’s response to the crisis, companies involved in the administration. In Matt the British government that is but there are concerns over data project will be destroyed or Hancock, it has a health now under scrutiny. privacy, lack of accountability returned to the NHS once secretary whose role as In late March, the BBC and the long-term impacts on the pandemic has passed. But cheerleader for the tech sector revealed that the company, the health service. a source close to the project has already raised eyebrows. which is valued at more than More than 8,000 people suggested Palantir could be In Cummings, it also has £9bn, was one of several have signed a petition for the retained by the NHS to provide a dedicated supporter who businesses, including Google, government to “release details similar data-mining services. would like to remould the Microsoft, Amazon and the of the secret data deals”. The Critics of the government’s state in the image of Silicon London data analysis company Department of Health said on project claim there is an Valley. The Covid-19 data store Faculty, that had been enlisted 14 May it would need another absence of accountability might be Palantir’s first deal to build the Covid-19 “data 20 days to consider whether around the contracts. It was with the NHS, but it won’t be l store”. The project, which to release the data-sharing reported in April that the the last. GETTY IMAGES

18 | NEW STATESMAN | 22-28 MAY 2020

2020+21 018 Oscar on Palantir.indd 18 19/05/2020 17:27:07 Jess Phillips The Diary My mother died nine years ago but she still received a shielding letter from the government

mbarking on writing a diary column spine to a lifetime of curvature, I have been Fred loves Jess, but Fathers 4 Justice. Noth- – in the only place where my children working on the endless amendments to the ing screams justice quite like non-essential E do not endlessly bother me, on the Domestic Abuse Bill. The legislation previ- criminal vandalism. left-hand side of my bed, sitting firmly in ously killed off by two elections and a pro- I do not hate fathers; I really like my own the groove I have sat in for weeks – is a little rogation is back and, unlike those it aims to and wish I could see his face. I am pretty daunting. My diary is not spilling over with serve, seemingly unaffected by the virus. partial to the father of my own children, exciting events. The easing of lockdown has The virus has shown the country, in vi- too, and nearly every father I come across caused little in the way of easements in my brant technicolour, what it is like to feel un- who doesn’t abuse their family. Call me own life. I suppose I could go Bridget Jones- safe in your home. It has allowed people to picky, but aggressively attacking me and my style and write down my weight, which is recognise that for some, home is a prison – family kind of proves my point. certainly not a constant (in lockdown, what and if you couldn’t leave it, you would be at else is there to do but eat?). risk of severe harm and even death. The in- The heroism of healthcare workers I only have one parent now, so at least creasing number of domestic homicides in This week was my eldest son’s 15th birth- I didn’t have to make them undertake an this time and the enormously overstretched day. I shall pause while you gasp at how It’s A Knockout-esque tournament for my refuges and support services in this coun- someone so young could have a child so attention. My mother died nine years ago, try have, once again, put a spotlight on the old who is now three inches taller than her. though she did recently receive a shielding struggle of those who live in fear. I have been given pause for thought myself letter from the government. Worry not, she The bill as it stands is not ground- over the past week about the birth of my is already shielded by her urn. Sadly, my fa- breaking: at present it is just a shift- son, because of the death from Covid-19 of a ther is quite elderly, has blood cancer and is ing of the soil. Currently, it doesn’t help midwife who worked at the hospital where himself in the shielding group – so we won’t migrant victims, it largely ignores children’s he was born. Safaa Alam was 30 years old. be hanging out in the park any time soon. experiences and doesn’t go far enough to Her father had died only weeks earlier, and I have been able to take a walk with some improve our civil and family courts. I sit now her family have to face this loss. of my girlfriends, which, after weeks with here, safe in my home and surrounded by My son, Harry, was born with the umbili- only men and boys for company, has been kind men who do household chores and cal cord wound around his neck. He did not a precious relief. We had bumped into each bring me cups of tea, trying to create leg- cry when he finally emerged into the strip other before we knew we had to be “alert”, islation that will actually break ground for lighting of Birmingham Women’s Hospi- and were frankly terrified that by being those who are not so fortunate. tal. He was what they describe as “flat and together – even by happenstance – we blue”. I remember it vividly. The Lamar would suffer the eye-rolling of passers-by. Vandals for justice song “If There’s Any Justice” was playing I also went to Homebase, where I was At the moment I am out and about, on the in the theatre. A young porter was singing bombarded by shoppers wanting to know telly and in parliament, talking about vio- along, swigging from a can of Diet Coke and when schools would reopen and when lent perpetrators of abuse (spoiler alert: keeping me chuckling while the midwives we could expect a vaccine. I have as much they are often men). This means that this rushed my baby off to a capsule to breathe knowledge about this as I have about the week, some idiots thought that the way to life into his lungs. After what seemed like a plants I was buying, which will inevitably prove me wrong was to perpetrate aggres- lifetime, it became Harry’s lifetime: I heard wither within the month. sive abuse towards me. Slow hand clap. him cry. The air of calm that all the health- My children’s schools have been in touch I know what comes of speaking up; I liter- care workers had created stopped me, a asking if I want them to go back, though. I ally wrote a book about speaking truth to 22-year-old lying cold and paralysed on a am lucky they are in school years that may power. Yet it never fails to surprise me how slab, from losing my mind – and my son. return soon: my husband and I are due back aggressively people will try to silence me. While I sing “Happy Birthday” to a frank- at work and only have shielding grandpar- This week I have been treated to fake ly unresponsive and embarrassed teen this ents for childcare. As a working parent, pornographic images of myself, an online week, I shall wish that calm, professional I don’t see an alternative. Let’s hope this has group writing stories about the abuse and preparation for the worst had been afforded been better thought through than the non- murder of my sons, and people claiming to our healthcare workers, many of whom existent plan to protect care homes. that they have attempted to break into my will never see their children’s 15th birth- home, following an actual attempted break- days. Thank you. Clapping is not enough. l A long time coming, a long way to go in and the vandalism of my office, which Jess Phillips is MP (Labour) for

IAN McGOWAN While I sit in my bed-groove, damning my was daubed with “F4J” – standing not for Birmingham Yardley

22-28 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 19

2020+21 019 Diary.indd 19 19/05/2020 17:23:29 Stephen Bush Politics Keir Starmer doesn’t choose his battle before he knows he has won – and he has the Tories worried

n politics, the gap between a politician’s government publishes an exit strategy the reopening of schools, the Labour Party’s virtues and vices is measured only by from lockdown, has become the animating position is an exercise in avoiding blame. Isuccess. A few months ago, it was com- political question of the day. The challenge of life in opposition, espe- mon for Conservative MPs to claim that one The government remains ahead in the cially during this crisis, is: should Starmer’s of Boris Johnson’s strengths was that he polls, but the private consensus in both day-to-day priority be scrutinising the didn’t sweat the small stuff, which meant parties is that the global trend for voters to government, or constructing the case for Downing Street avoided being pulled into reward incumbents during the early stages its dismissal? Thus far, he has opted for passing rows that waste time and energy. of the crisis will begin to unwind. the latter – and because he looks to be on But in the present day, it’s hard to find Tory Starmer’s approach in the chamber rein- broadly the right track, most Labour MPs MPs who think that the Prime Minister’s forces a political narrative that might well are happy about that. lack of attention to detail is a strength rather help him ultimately defeat Johnson: that Starmer’s team of advisers is seen as than a weakness. the Prime Minister is a shallow dilettante “close-knit” rather than a narrow cult. But When Jo Swinson’s Liberal Democrats and the leader of the opposition is a seri- who really has his ear? His inner circle is, were doing well in the polls and her close at present, incomplete: the party is slowly personal allegiances with liberal-minded Starmer is often cited as hiring new parliamentary advisers and politicians across the Commons was help- policy wonks to fill its top posts. ing to attract defectors, she was guided by an inspiration for Mark Starmer has a tendency to recruit those a “close-knit team” of talented advisers. who broadly share his outlook and ap- Now, a damning report into the party’s Darcy in Bridget Jones proach. Morgan McSweeney, his chief of disastrous general election has turned a staff, has long been considered one of the positive into a negative: decisions about ous operator for difficult times. Starmer is finest strategic minds on the right of the par- the party’s future were made by an “inner frequently cited as one of the inspirations ty and has been spoken of as a future general circle” who brooked no dissent. for Mark Darcy, the love interest in Helen secretary for almost a decade. McSweeney, For the moment, Keir Starmer’s vices Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary (based on who was involved in Liz Kendall’s leader- are all virtues – at least as far as the average Jane Austen’s Mr Darcy). If he keeps it up, ship campaign in 2015, has spent much of Labour MP is concerned. For the first time you can see how the country might decide the past five years working out how to win in more than a decade, Labour has a lead- to exchange the flashy unseriousness of back control of the Labour Party. He put that er with a higher net approval rating than Johnson’s George Wickham for Starmer’s experience to good use during Starmer’s the party as a whole. Its prime minister- Darcy. There is an argument for the Con- leadership campaign. designate is, for now, an asset rather than servatives in due course to replace Johnson Simon Fletcher, Starmer’s campaigns a drag anchor. Starmer has made a string with a steady administrator of their own: a adviser, hails from the left – he was Jer- of impressive parliamentary performanc- role which either the current Chancellor, emy Corbyn’s chief of staff in 2015 – but is es, discomfiting first Dominic Raab, then Rishi Sunak, or his predecessor, Sajid Javid, similarly feted as a smart political strate- Boris Johnson at Prime Minister’s Ques- might, in different ways, occupy. gist. Claire Ainsley, Starmer’s policy chief, tions. And these competent performanc- Meanwhile, Starmer has correctly pre- is a former executive director of the anti- es have lifted morale after the discord of dicted what the big issues of contention poverty charity the Joseph Rowntree Foun- the past few years. will be, whether on the debate over schools dation. She defies easy categorisation, but Recent events have allowed Starmer to reopening or the relations between the de- those who know her use the same adjectives show off several of his good qualities. He is volved governments. But it’s less clear what that are applied to McSweeney and Fletcher: a master of detail, as one would expect of a his position is on those issues. “decent”, “competent”, “thoughtful”. former director of public prosecutions, and On devolution, Starmer seems to be What is not yet clear is which of Starm- is up against a prime minister who prefers characterised by opportunism, criticis- er’s inner circle has the most influence to use bombast and bluster in the Commons ing the government in Westminster for – because so far he has managed to navi- rather than to have his finger on the pulse having a different approach from those in gate the party across some tricky terrain of the government. Starmer is also adept Edinburgh, Cardiff or Belfast, but without without provoking major divides within at anticipating where the political battle- acknowledging that there are coherent pub- his team. It often takes a political setback field will be. “Keir doesn’t go to war before lic health reasons for the UK’s four nations to reveal a leader’s true influences and he’s won,” as one longtime ally put it. to exit lockdown at different speeds and sympathies – just as it takes a crisis to

His first political demand, that the with different strategies. On education and expose their vices. l IAN McGOWAN

20 | NEW STATESMAN | 22-28 MAY 2020

2020+21 020 Stephen.indd 20 19/05/2020 19:00:17 Helen Thompson These Times I love football but the whole rotten edifice of the Premier League has been exposed by coronavirus

or the past month or so I have been pre-Premier League football to wonder though I have never reconciled myself to wondering whether I really miss Pre- what it means to love a game that in its West Ham playing at the London Stadium. F mier League football. The first Sat- highest professional form has become so When I am there, I am sure I will enjoy it urday there was none, I rather enjoyed its bereft of any moral compass. because I still miss my match-day routines, absence. Being confined to the garden on A season that recommences without sup- my West Ham friendships. I probably miss a warm afternoon felt like a relief from the porters, where only those who can afford the arguments about which players are to relegation fear that has had me, a West Ham to pay for TV subscription channels on top blame for the team’s problems. fan, in its grip since our goalkeeper, Lukasz of their match-day tickets can watch, in But these past few months have been a Fabianski, tore a hip muscle taking a goal private, seems the Premier League taken to brutal lesson in what I have suspected for kick in late September. That afternoon West its commercial conclusion. some time. My love for the club and for Eng- Ham sat fifth in the table. When the season I remember West Ham playing Castilla lish football is now mostly about memory. stopped, they were 16th, separated from the (Real Madrid’s reserve team) in the “ghost The 10 May was the fourth anniversary of final relegation place by goal difference. match” of October 1980. UEFA ordered the West Ham’s final game at Upton Park and During this long football shutdown, I did second leg of the Cup Winners’ Cup tie to the 40th of West Ham’s 1980 FA Cup final panic at a headline suggesting a plan for five be played behind closed doors after some win when, as a second division team, they teams to be relegated, only to discover that West Ham fans had behaved appallingly in beat Arsenal 1-0. Reflecting on those two this proposal entailed no clubs being rel- the first game in Madrid. As I listened to the events, I unequivocally missed football. But egated this season and five the next. In tell- radio that evening, the stadium’s emptiness what I missed very deeply was football the ing the story to my West Ham-supporting way it once was. And when I go to football neighbour, I managed to alarm him as much now there is, somewhere around me, some as I had myself. But when a month later we What I miss very other match present too, another place con- ran into each other in the local park we didn’t deeply is football ditioning my emotions. discuss football for the first time in the near For the present, regardless of whether any decade we have known one another. the way it once was more games are played this season, I want But dread isn’t really an explanation for Liverpool to win the Premier League. But this absence of absence I experience each seemed pervasive. But the void was the fans’ that victory would feel like what the past weekend. Relegation struggles are one of fault, and back then BBC radio commentary demands, a Merseyside redemption story football’s visceral pleasures for fans. In their was an art form, an inexorable part of the that should be fulfilled. I would not have near unbearable tension – when four or five game’s cultural DNA, and not, like the tele- the same concern for “justice” if it were clubs’ fate can change with one comic mis- vision rights, an object of resentment whose Manchester City 25 points ahead. take or one moment of sublime beauty – lies gigantic revenue stream clubs must value The first time I experienced relegation something close to the soul of how support- more than the fans turning up to watch. as a fan I was ten. West Ham lost their last ers experience football. You won’t hear fans There have been moments these recent match of the season 2-0 to Liverpool, and singing with more conviction than when, months when my mind has cast the havoc I sat in my bedroom letting the commen- as they watch their club relegated, they belt the virus has caused the Premier League as tary on the radio dissipate, second by sec- out that they know they are, they’re sure the denouement of a long story, one where ond, the last drops of a fiercely held hope. they are, they’re their club till they die. the disease washes all the excess away and Four months earlier I had moved back to No, my problem isn’t West Ham go- forces English football to start again. It is, Nottingham, and the week before newly ing down. It’s the Premier League’s whole of course, an illusion. I know full well that promoted Nottingham Forest had improb- rotten edifice, which this lockdown has ex- human beings have succumbed to apoca- ably won the First Division title under the posed: the top clubs that wanted to use the lyptic morality since they first started leadership of Brian Clough. My parents said government’s furlough scheme; the play- telling stories about what happens when it would be understandable if I switched ers’ absurd arguments against wage cuts; pestilence, or the flood, comes. my allegiance to Forest. Rather pompously, that the broadcasting contract looms over If the football season does restart in June, I told them I was a West Ham fan for life. every move the Premier League considers; I also know I will watch all West Ham’s I was right. But I could not have conceived I and the offensive pretence that fulfilling games and that my relegation-fretting will would end up aware that I now support that that contract would financially support the return. I’ve cared for far too long about football club out of time. l lower-league clubs facing ruin. One doesn’t West Ham and football to stop now. When Helen Thompson is professor of political

IAN McGOWAN need to ignore the demons that haunted the grounds open again, I will be there, even economy at Cambridge University

22-28 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 21

2020+21 021 Helen Thompson.indd 21 19/05/2020 17:17:25 SÉBASTIEN THIBAULT

22 | NEW STATESMAN | 22-28 MAY 2020

2020+21 022 Andrew Marr.indd 22 19/05/2020 17:19:18 THE WORLD TO COME The Great Moving Left Show How the pandemic could transform British politics By Andrew Marr

s this the start of a big left turn? The imported foods and cut-price clothing? is an innate bias towards returning into the British death rate has been appalling. This is not really a Westminster story at all. old groove, which excited commentators The politics of easing the lockdown To try to think through its implications often forget. – higher taxes, blurred rules – are al- for British politics we need to hold in our We should assume that the political ready looking much harder than the heads two seemingly contradictory truths. world in September 2020 will feel very dif- Ipolitics of imposing it. The state has swol- The first is that there are a few events big ferent from the one of this spring and that len hugely. You might assume, therefore, enough to send political history in a differ- the pressure to pick up things much as they that the opportunities for Labour are real ent direction, and that Covid-19 looks like were before Covid-19 will be strong. Of and significant. To which the answer is a re- being one of them. everything that wily master Harold Wilson sounding: hold on; be very careful; maybe. The second is that of the “now-next said, “a week is a long time in politics” has Coronavirus has reminded everyone of illusion” – the trap of thinking that today’s slipped into ordinary speech because it is so the power of the state to act fast when it has vivid headlines are a good guide to the near usefully true. to; and the value to society of public sector, future. Think back over the past few years. The now-next illusion is a relatively banal mostly manual, workers. Obvious mistakes How long ago does the Cleggmania of concept, made interesting because of the have been made on Tory ministers’ watch. 2010, and the revival of Liberal Democratic tenacity with which our minds grab the The wider questions are more significant politics, seem? What’s the influence of the immediate, crowding out the near future. still. Does this global pandemic end a pro- dramatic Corbyn revolution of 2015 right An election result, a sudden rise or crash cess of hyperglobalisation that began in the now? Remember when Boris Johnson was in the opinion polls – or in this case, the late 1980s? Will economies that are now defenestrated in 2016; finally scuppered, it relative death numbers – can feel conclu- much more heavily borrowed behave very seemed, by Michael Gove? sive, even when we know perfectly well it differently during the 2020s? And above The pace of change in politics has been concludes nothing. all, are voters likely to revise their attitudes dizzying. Things have changed hugely in So how does this fit with that first truth, to the “sweet treats” of recent times – from the past couple of months, but they can that this viral epidemic can change every-

regular, cheap air travel, to out-of-season change back again almost as quickly. There thing? We must distinguish between t

22-28 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 23

2020+21 022 Andrew Marr.indd 23 19/05/2020 17:19:18 t important episodes in ordinary politics hoarded. The military was brought in to It looks likely that the inquiry will come (Cleggmania, the spike in Labour member- help. Cobra was summoned and Blair hur- from parliament, rather than being a slow, ship under Jeremy Corbyn), and transform- riedly returned to London to direct events. judge-led one. Tory MPs will be marking ative, or hinge, moments. The latter hap- Alastair Campbell recalled this in his their own ministers, which will make any pen when the intimate daily life of millions recent interesting, well-written philippic criticism more biting. The blame game has is directly affected in ways that don’t against almost everybody else in the New already started, with briefings against the then fade from their minds. The trans- European. But apart from those directly in- Health Secretary Matt Hancock. formative moments arrive in the home and volved, the fuel revolt has largely vanished But how will the public react? It’s still are remembered. from the national memory. The reason is early in the life of this parliament. The To- The overturning and rewriting of daily that public opinion, having been behind the ries are polling well. Ministers can’t stop the life during world wars is an obvious ex- protesters, turned as soon as hospitals were public looking at the records of other coun- ample, although in general I think the war threatened. The protest began to recede and, tries that are out of lockdown before Brit- metaphor for coronavirus is an awful one. quite quickly, the government introduced ain, and with lower death rates. But there Closer, more recent, examples include the budget help for motorists. The revolt was are similar mistakes occurring in France, 1974 three-day week under Edward Heath. something most people noticed for a couple Italy and even Germany. Britain has had her This lasted from the beginning of January of weeks in the media, perhaps provoking national successes, from the creation of the to the start of March, so a not-dissimilar them to fill up the car. But the government Nightingale hospitals to the dramatic fund- amount of time to the 2020 lockdown so far. listened. The anger faded. Life went on. ing of furloughing for employees. For the It too was a local response to a global prob- politically committed – Labour supporters, lem – the oil-price shock – and it too had a his crisis is, of course, much more in particular – the government’s failings direct impact on British households. Elec- dramatic. A UK excess death toll may be obvious. But for the majority the tricity rationing meant limited television standing at more than 50,000 situation may not be as clear-cut. and families using candles. Many workplac- people; the almost universal na- Today’s ministers have forms of personal es had to shut down for at least some of the ture of the lockdown, and the protection that earlier politicians did not. week. Many pubs closed. It was a moment Tpotential damage to the economy – £300bn First, they have leaned on scientists, who are when the politics “out there” walked into and counting, with big tax rises ahead, ac- themselves generally respected. The crucial our private lives. Heath was never forgiven. cording to a Treasury document leaked to issue will be whether there was a lackadaisi- People remembered. the Telegraph – make it more serious than cal, over-optimistic and not-quite-serious The winter of discontent in 1978-79 did 1974 or 1978, never mind 2000. attitude at the top of government when for old Labour what the three-day week had Both the three-day week and the winter the key decisions were made. But will the done for Heath. Again, ordinary, apoliti- of discontent changed the course of British answer to this question be clear enough to cal people noticed the rubbish piling up in politics, so it is logical to expect this cri- sway the view of uncommitted people in the streets, the closure of parks and public sis to do so as well. Although “now-next” the political middle ground? services, the shortages caused by the lorry is a useful cautionary corrective to keep in That is crucial in terms of the national mood and verdict because this has been a national effort. We have fallen back fully Government failings may seem obvious in love with the NHS together, clapped together, given up social events and meet- to the politically committed. But for the ing loved ones together, and we have been frightened together. majority it may not be as clear-cut But beyond that, we aren’t experiencing the crisis in the same way. Being confined in a high-rise flat is dramatically worse than drivers’ strike and much else. It destroyed mind, this event seems transformative, not being limited to a big suburban house with the government’s incomes policy and its “political” in the usual sense. a sunny, spacious garden. The gap between relationship with the trade unions. Again, it Might Boris Johnson’s Conservatives be those who might be expected to keep work- was remembered for a long time (not least able to ride this crisis in the way that Heath’s ing on short-term contracts in conditions because Margaret Thatcher made it a central Tories or Callaghan’s Labour government that make social distancing difficult and part of her rhetoric). could not ride theirs? That is quite possible. those who can work from a new computer One final crisis is worth mentioning, Nobody can say the arrival of Covid-19 was while sat at their kitchen table is a vast one. because it has been largely forgotten. I viv- Johnson’s fault. But then Heath was hardly The generational divide and the higher idly remember the fuel protest crisis of responsible for the price of oil, nor Cal- death rates for black, Asian and minority September 2000 because as a reporter I was laghan, personally, for inflation or a union ethnic Britons are other obvious divisions. travelling with Tony Blair when his motor- culture that had built up over decades. A politically brutal and angry time lies cade came up against lorry drivers bringing When the inquiry comes, it is hard to ahead, with a huge spike in unemployment motorway traffic to a near halt. As petrol imagine that today’s ministers will find and company bankruptcies over the next pumps ran out of fuel and refineries were it anything other than agonising. Keir year, while taxes could rise by the equivalent blockaded, panic-buying spread around Starmer’s charge sheet from his first Prime of 5p in the pound, if we go by proposals in the country. In many ways, the episode Minister’s Questions – that the government the leaked Treasury document. But there’s provides a useful parallel with events this was slow on recognising the scale of the also still an age before the next election. spring. The NHS had to cancel non-urgent threat and on the lockdown, tardy on per- There is a third factor which, to his many operations and was put on “red alert” by sonal protective equipment, and slow on critics, seems incomprehensible: Boris the government. Supermarkets warned testing – will form the core of any critique. Johnson has been, so far, a popular leader. that they might run out of stocks. Hoarders Care homes, too, will be front and centre. When he fell ill and came close to death in

24 | NEW STATESMAN | 22-28 MAY 2020

2020+21 022 Andrew Marr.indd 24 19/05/2020 17:19:18 We have all, meanwhile, rediscovered the importance of basic, public, physical work: the refuse workers and delivery drivers who kept going; the cleaners, the care home staff. A politics that speaks to them, and for them, is going to sound ever more patriotic and of the moment. All this seems to roll the pitch in Labour’s favour, even before the real political trouble for the government starts. That comes not when you are standing boldly at the podium during the storm, but when you’re coping with the wreckage later. Winding back state support will be agonisingly difficult. Very many companies still alive today will go un- der. Who to support with state money – and for how long – will start to divide Tory MPs. And then there’s an even bigger question about how this is all going to be paid for. The recent leaked Treasury paper discusses new taxes on incomes, ending the pensions “triple lock”, a public sector pay freeze, and renewed spending restrictions. Compared with a £55bn forecast deficit in the March Budget, it may rise to nearly £340bn. Even at low interest rates, this is an awesome extra borrowing burden, suggesting Brit- ain’s public finances are as weak as they The worst of times: rubbish piled on a London street during the winter of discontent, 1979 were when Clement Attlee took over from Winston Churchill in 1945. a London hospital there was a widespread stroppy people how to change their lives, in What to do? Johnson’s problems are go- sense of shock and grief. It wasn’t all con- excruciating detail – and be largely obeyed. ing to come from the right. He appears to fected by an unctuously hand-rubbing It can close down much of the economy, believe that a huge, animal-spirits revival “Tory press”. His recovery and the arrival and yet use its power to bring millions of of the economy will sort things out. That of his son were welcomed as good news people on to the public payroll, while sup- seems heroically optimistic. Conservative by people who don’t consider themselves porting individual companies in ways that MPs elected in former Labour seats in the natural Conservatives. His recent address would, in normal times, be regarded as a North and the Midlands will take one view, on ending the lockdown, however short on Stalinist fantasy. many radical Thatcherites the other. essential detail, showed him finding a new, Yes, the state has also made plenty of Johnson’s arguments after winning the more serious tone. He is a man who learns. mistakes. But in the end, it has shown its 2019 general election would point to major Johnson is also still a relatively new prime might. Privately run companies slash their public works programmes and borrowing minister. He doesn’t face the weariness workforces and beg for help: even under as the way out. A higher spending, higher people felt when they watched Edward Conservative control, the Treasury steps in. taxing Tory party certainly causes trouble Heath or James Callaghan. Starmer’s cau- Much of what traditional Toryism said for Labour. But reviving the activist state tious, more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger, dry- was impossible or bonkers – the huge rates causes internal problems for the Conserva- ly sceptical tone feels well judged. The left is of borrowing and spending, the new police tives too. On the right of the party they are frustrated that he has not gone straight into powers, the daily behavioural instructions talking about Covid-19 being Johnson’s Iraq “they are trying to cull the working classes” and the overt, frank, eager reliance on ex- War. He may soon find his 80-seat majority denunciation mode, but this is still the time perts – came about overnight, and with al- also gives rebels greater scope. Blair could for questions. most no dissent. Discussions about the role give him a warning about the political perils of the state won’t be quite the same again. of triangulation. ll of that is the case for the Beatrice Webb would be skipping around But nothing here is inevitable. Starmer coronavirus crisis not taking her garden, arm in arm with Sidney, singing will have to be remarkably adroit in re- Britain in a radically different secular hymns. minding people of the value of the state direction. Even so, I think it Meanwhile, the authority of the trade un- and the cause of poorer-paid workers, while will. Let’s turn to the other side ion movement may also be on the up. When levering open Tory divisions and exposing Aof the account. union leaders urge caution and safety-first Tory mistakes – without sounding like he Covid-19 is re-teaching us old lessons in the return to work, they are going with is simply hand-wringing or carping. This about the state – and here alone parallels the grain of recent government advice, and is indeed his moment, but only if he proves with wartime conditions are not completely nervous public opinion. Union criticism of himself bold, sharp and fast on his feet. fanciful. When it needs to, it seems that the the gig economy and short-term contracts Above all, he needs a big, serious, prop- state can act with remarkable speed. It can will have sounded more resonant in wor- erly inspiring cause. Labour does well when kit out huge, modern hospitals in days. It ried households up and down the country it sounds optimistic. The power of the t MAURICE HIBBERD/EVENING ARCHIVE/GETTY STANDARD/HULTON IMAGES can tell tens of millions of individualistic, during lockdown. state is only of any interest if you have

22-28 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 25

2020+21 022 Andrew Marr.indd 25 19/05/2020 17:19:24 Despite what you might think, human progress has been slowing since the early 1970s

‘Dorling compellingly shows how we can choose a more hopeful and humane future.’ – FRANCES O’GRADY

Out now in hardback and eBook from Yale University Press

_ads.indd 1 08/04/2020 11:35:37 t something you really want to do with it. A bruised and slowly recovering Britain, burdened by high levels of unemployment, salved by much larger amounts of state ac- tion than usual, will need a good reason to change direction. Post-Covid class politics won’t be enough.

ooking at profound problems in the eurozone, and public weari- ness over Brexit, I don’t see a “re- join” agenda being that big a cause. Quitting the EU without a trade Ldeal will cause a huge political row later this year. Companies bent under the pres- sure of the lockdown will protest loudly. But the economic catastrophe of Covid-19 may make it difficult for voters to deter- mine whether job losses have been caused by nation-state ideology or the virus – a near perfect camouflage for those who want the maximum possible break. Again, Starmer’s bland caution is eloquent; though a moment Essential viewing: David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet is due for release later this year will come when bland caution isn’t enough. Nothing that we have learned so far from can throw up coastal barriers, reconfigure greenery as a result of a brief cessation in the outbreak across the EU itself is terribly our energy system and promote much more pollution. Nature bounces back quickly. surprising. The Commission has been slow; sustainable farming and fishing. There is something here to celebrate. Build- national governments have been much As an added inducement, this is a rare ing a new green agenda needs optimism. more important; support from the richer policy shift that would not divide but reu- It must be more than the politics of doing northern nations to the poorer southern nite the Labour family. John McDonnell, less and saying no. It can only be achieved ones has been niggardly. Countries with the former shadow chancellor, is an enthu- by offering a brighter, better landscape and the best funded health systems, best edu- siast for the cause. A lively environmental- healthier life – clean air, revived local na- cated populations and most trusted officials ism goes back a long way in Labour, to the ture, more time – in return for less wearily have done better in suppressing death rates. early Fabians and before: this was William repetitive consumption. Perhaps, rather than advocating an earlier Morris’s movement too. Again, nothing is inevitable. It will need return to the EU, the left would do better to None of which makes it easy. Take fly- big leaders with considerable courage and open a discussion on “how can we be more ing. The extra delay and faff, and the greatly imagination. The first thing they will have like Germany?” Or, if that is too provoca- increased costs of air travel after Covid-19 to do is to distinguish pro-environment tive, the Netherlands. offers politicians a choice. Do they move localism from nationalism. This pandemic Yet still, none of this feels galvanising. La- Heaven and Earth to reopen the airports demonstrates the interconnectedness of the bour needs to think about the biggest threat and support cheap flights so that business modern world. It doesn’t matter to most facing Britain, and we all know what that is. traffic and holiday companies are function- of us where an effective vaccine is discov- The obvious approach is to use the enhanced ing next year much as they were in 2019? Or ered first. We have been learning lessons authority of the state, increased respect for do they seize this as a moment to change from countries as varied as South Korea and science and current feeling of solidarity to direction, asking us all to reconsider regular Sweden. Yet there are already the first signs, push a revived climate change agenda. Glob- flying as a basic human right? from the US to Austria and Italy, that a al warming, which may soon threaten food Then there is the geopolitics. In glob- pandemic spurs nationalism. It’s an obvious supplies around the world, is a far bigger al terms, Covid-19 has already ramped argument against open borders that the cen- threat to humanity than Covid-19 or even up the increasingly poisonous feud be- tre left will have to resist. the next “Virus X”. (An antibacterial-resist- tween Donald Trump’s White House and None of this is easy. Nor are predictions. ant pandemic would be something else.) Xi Jinping’s China. A global recession fol- But I would make, nervously, two tenta- At this point: a brief commercial break. lowed by a global trade war would indeed tive ones – an “if” and an “unless”. If the The World Wide Fund for Nature’s docu- make the echoes of the 1930s unbear- Tories try to pay for this by returning to mentary, David Attenborough: A Life on able. But to stop importing so many mate- austerity, hitting public sector workers Our Planet, will be released later this year. rial goods from the other side of the world disproportionately, they will destroy them- You are hereby implored to watch it. The would be an environmental win. selves, as well as making Britain an even film not only brings home the devastating angrier country. And unless Labour uses impact we are having on our thin planetary his may be the time to start think- this moment in politics – when the state skin, and the proximity of apocalypse, but ing about making such a change. has shown its power anew, and “we are it also offers ways out of this hideous di- This spring many of us have been following the science” has become a uni- lemma that are plausible, affordable and reconsidering our values – with versal motto – to put a revived and popular attractive to anyone with a streak of roman- life, friends and family matter- environmentalism front and centre, then ticism. A state that can throw up a Night- Ting more; travel and consumption less. We it will find getting back into power almost

NETFLIX ingale Hospital in a few days is a state that have noticed bluer skies and faster growing impossibly difficult. l

22-28 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 27

2020+21 022 Andrew Marr.indd 27 19/05/2020 17:19:31 THE POLITICS INTERVIEW “We can’t return to business as usual” Anneliese Dodds, Labour’s new shadow chancellor, has quickly risen from obscurity. So what motivates her? And how will she approach Britain’s deepening economic crisis? By Ailbhe Rea

t is a sign of the times that political means that the public knows little about was a kind of aspirational conservative at- interviews are now conducted over her. A former academic in public policy, she titude”. When recounting her childhood in Zoom or Skype. This is what I had ar- was a Labour MEP between 2014 and 2017, Scotland and university years at Oxford, she ranged with Anneliese Dodds, recently before being elected MP for Oxford East – does so with the hesitancy of someone who appointed to Keir Starmer’s new shad- where she lives with her husband Ed Turn- has never been interviewed about these Iow cabinet, when circumstances conspired er, an academic at Aston University special- subjects before. Born in Scotland in 1978, against us, and Dodds was unable to speak ising in public policy and the deputy leader she had a “happy”, “ordinary” childhood in over video call. Instead, I joined the shad- of Oxford City Council – in 2017. the Aberdeenshire countryside. “I suppose ow chancellor and her two young children Dodds also served on the shadow Treas- I was a little bit of a square peg in a round on their daily exercise. “I’m so sorry about ury team of her predecessor, John McDon- hole. When I was at primary school people this!” she said down the phone, the wind nell. New to Westminster, she was prepared thought I sounded very English because my catching on the receiver and the noise of her to serve under Jeremy Corbyn’s leader- dad was brought up near Manchester so I daughter and son in the background, as they ship, even though she is not considered a had a bit of his accent. Sometimes I got a lit- headed for their government-sanctioned Corbynite. She now finds herself close to tle bit picked on.” walk around Rose Hill in Oxford. the top of British politics during a pandemic She doesn’t mention her education at The scene encapsulated the strange cir- and an economic catastrophe. Robert Gordon’s College, a private school of cumstances in which Dodds has assumed So, who is Anneliese Dodds, and what will which another notable alumnus is Michael one of the most senior positions in British she bring to the role of shadow chancellor? Gove. What looms larger in her memory is opposition politics. As shadow chancellor, her first job when she was a teenager, in the she is leading Labour’s response to one of the odds isn’t from a political family. local pub, washing dishes: “Two pounds an worst economic crises the UK has faced for Her father, who worked as a char- hour, before there was a minimum wage.” centuries; as a parent, she is, like everyone tered accountant, she told me, Dodds’ politics partly comes from her else, trying to adapt to the “new normal”. “got annoyed by things that were first experiences of work. “I had a lot of Dodds’ rapid rise “from relative obscu- unfair, but not in an organised, friends who were doing the same kind of rity”, as some commentators have put it, Dpolitical way”. On her mother’s side, “there job that I started off on, but were looking

28 | NEW STATESMAN | 22-28 MAY 2020

2020+21 028 Ailbhe Annaliese Dodds NEW.indd 28 19/05/2020 19:02:14 forward to a lifetime of being paid £2 an coming across as a “Blairite”. Her relation- Contemporaries speak well of Dodds, as hour. That shaped my view of things. Then, ship to the Blair government was not un- one “deeply committed” to left-wing val- when I went to university it was just in critical, as photographs of her protesting ues and “incredibly intelligent”; “a rare JCR the run-up to the 1997 election and a time against the introduction of tuition fees in president who didn’t let her academics suf- of great optimism. I was involved with the 1998 attest. fer” (she was awarded a First). Her old uni- Labour Party from then onwards.” versity friends say she was deeply absorbed She studied politics, philosophy and eco- in her studies, and fascinated by the back- nomics at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, be- “I hate talking ground and theory of politics, but was still tween 1997 and 2000, which coincided with about myself. It’s a “someone you could go to the pub with and the early New Labour era. It was a “revolu- have a good laugh”. tionary time” of “incredible excitement”, a Presbyterian influence” A fellow JCR president remembered how university friend of Dodds’ recalled. “We she was “never afraid to make her point” in were all behind that [Labour] government.” It was a sense of being unfairly meetings, and possessed a “calm, thorough Dodds laughed uncomfortably at the advantaged that drew her to student poli- approach; a quiet strength and resilience suggestion that Tony Blair catalysed her tics, first as Junior Common Room (JCR) about her”. Becoming OUSU president politics. “It was the Labour Party and, president of her college, then as president requires a particular kind of ambition and I guess, the kind of heritage of Labour in of the Oxford University Student Union confidence. Did she have a sense of wanting Scotland and across the UK, rather than (OUSU, not to be confused with the Ox- to go into Labour politics? any one individual.” Like Keir Starmer, she ford Union, the debating society). “I felt it “I didn’t particularly feel like that at that is reluctant to define herself by Labour’s was extremely unfair that so many people stage.” Choosing her words carefully, she past. Only after our interview, when speak- weren’t able to have the kind of education continued: “I guess I’ve never felt inhibited ing with Dodds’ contemporaries from that I had, the kind of opportunities that about standing up when I think there’s an university, does it become clear that she I’ve been given.” Her main interest at the injustice. Certainly when I was at school could have discussed her political awak- time was improving the university’s out- I wasn’t frightened of doing that. I wasn’t t ELLIE FOREMAN-PECK ening in the New Labour years without reach work. frightened about what people might say.”

22-28 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 29

2020+21 028 Ailbhe Annaliese Dodds NEW.indd 29 19/05/2020 19:02:26 /ƨǴȕljĒƨljƅĒȕ̹Ťƨȕƅƨ̸Ēȕ ÔŤɂǴÔŤȕºɂůƅùůƖőǼ

ŤɂǴÔŤĒǼȕ ǴĒȕ ȤȕȤŤĒȕŤĒ ǴȤȕƨĴȕÔƨƏƏɂƖůȤůĒǼȕȤŤǴƨɂőŤƨɂȤȕȤŤĒȕIȕ ƖùȕŤ ̴ĒȕºĒĒƖȕ tƨƏĒȕőůĴȤǼȕ ǴĒȕĒ Ǽůƅ̼ȕ ŤĒƅljůƖőȕƅƨÔ ƅȕljĒƨljƅĒȕƂĒĒljȕǼ ĴĒȕ Ɩùȕ̵ĒƅƅȕùɂǴůƖőȕȤŤĒȕÔƨǴƨƖ ̴ůǴɂǼȕƅƨÔƂùƨ̵Ɩǚȕ yŤĒȕT ȤůƨƖ ƅȕŤɂǴÔŤĒǼȕyǴɂǼȤȕůǼȕùĒùůÔ ȤĒùȕȤƨȕȤŤĒȕǴĒlj ůǴȕ ƖùȕǼɂljljƨǴȤȕƨĴȕȤŤĒȕ ĴƨǴőƨȤȤĒƖǚȕ–ƨɂǴǼȕ̵ůƅƅȕ IDZǼȕÔŤɂǴÔŤĒǼòȕÔŤ ljĒƅǼȕ ƖùȕƏĒĒȤůƖőȕŤƨɂǼĒǼǚ KĒ ̴ůƖőȕ ȕőůĴȤȕůƖȕ̼ƨɂǴȕůƅƅȕŤĒƅljǼȕɂǼȕȤƨȕƂĒĒljȕȤŤĒǼĒȕljǴĒÔůƨɂǼȕºɂůƅùůƖőǼȕ ƅů̴ĒȕĴƨǴȕ ƅ ǼȤȕĴƨǴȕőĒƖĒǴ ȤůƨƖǼǚ ĴɂȤɂǴĒȕőĒƖĒǴ ȤůƨƖǼǚ

ĒȕƂƖƨ̵ȕůȤDZǼȕǼƨƏĒȤůƏĒǼȕù ɂƖȤůƖőȕȤƨȕƏ ƂĒȕƨǴȕɂljù ȤĒȕ̼ƨɂǴȕůƅƅǚȕyƨȕĹȕƖùȕƨɂȤȕŤƨ̵ȕ̼ƨɂȕÔ ƖȕƂĒĒljȕȤŤĒȕIDZǼȕÔŤɂǴÔŤĒǼȕ ƅů̴ĒȕljƅĒ ǼĒȕ Ô ƅƅȕƅ ůǴĒȕ ƅƂĒǴȕƨƖȕ͇ȹ͇ȕȂȹȹȹȕ͇ȋ͇ĽòȕĒƏ ůƅȕƅĒő Ô̼·Ɩ ȤůƨƖ ƅÔŤɂǴÔŤĒǼȤǴɂǼȤǚƨǴőȕƨǴȕ̴ůǼůȤȕƖ ȤůƨƖ ƅÔŤɂǴÔŤĒǼȤǴɂǼȤǚƨǴőȓƅĒő Ô̼ǚ T ȤůƨƖ ƅȕŤɂǴÔŤĒǼȕyǴɂǼȤòȕȂȕyɂĴȤƨƖȕtȤǴĒĒȤòȕKƨƖùƨƖȕtƹkȕȪoǚȕpĒőůǼȤĒǴĒùȕÔŤ ǴůȤ̼ȕƖɂƏºĒǴȕȕƹƹƹƛĚňĽǚȕ

Lauded by both the left and right, Michael Lind provides a bold new framework for understanding the turmoil in the West.

‘Book of the Year’ ‘Powerful’ ‘Brilliant’ EVENING STANDARD DAILY TELEGRAPH FINANCIAL TIMES OUT NOW

30 | NEW STATESMAN | 22-28 MAY 2020

20-00_fractional-ads.indd 30 19/05/2020 15:15:49 t Does she have a memory of making a contract in poor quality housing, and some- centre-left position in the party; ‘soft left’ is particular stand? She hesitated, then burst one in Glasgow in the same circumstances.” what it would be historically described as. out laughing: “I hate talking about myself Dodds stressed that she doesn’t have “all Anti-austerity, investment in public ser- as well. This is a kind of Presbyterian influ- the answers” when it comes to explaining vices, not on the [Bennite] Campaign group ence from my childhood!” Unlike many Labour’s declining fortunes in Scotland. side of the party.” politicians, she is reluctant to mythologise “It’s quite unhelpful when you have people Dodds defines herself “just as Labour, and her upbringing. from down south saying that they should that should speak for itself. I have been hap- dictate the situation in Scotland,” she ob- py over the years to work with people from odds has found her background served, adding that the SNP has “been very all the different wings of the party. There is as an academic helpful, “be- clever” in adopting “a lot of Labour’s appeal such a radical gulf between any variety of cause for many years I was used over the years, and that’s made it very hard Labour and the kind of approaches that we to standing up and speaking in for us to develop a distinctive narrative”. see coming from [the Conservatives].” front of people who didn’t really Despite having been an MP for less than Dwant to listen to what I was saying”. Her three years, Dodds is popular among col- fter the party’s worst election research focused on how public policy in leagues. John McDonnell has described defeat since 1935, MPs are cau- other countries could be applied to the UK. her as “a superb member of my Treasury tiously optimistic that Labour’s “In the UK we can be quite insular,” she team”, “really talented” and “conscientious prospects look brighter under told me. “What I think is quite interesting in all she does”. Dodds said she “learned a Starmer. After a series of robust during this crisis is that we are comparing lot” from McDonnell’s efforts to promote Aperformances at PMQs, the new Labour leader has overtaken Johnson in the opinion polls for the first time. Although another There is a fascination as to what her general election is a long way off, Dodds’ chances of becoming chancellor are by no “real” politics will turn out to be now means fanciful. How will she approach her role as shad- she is not serving under Corbyn ow chancellor, as the UK faces recession? “Every member of parliament has large numbers of people contacting them whose ourselves with other nations and looking Corbyn’s economic policy in towns and cit- lives have been turned upside down by at how we can organise things different- ies across the country. McDonnell “keyed what’s happened, whether it’s people who ly.” She spent her academic career “always into the need to have that authentic input are directly affected by the disease in hor- thinking, ‘Do we have to organise things in directly from people”. rendous ways, or people who have lost their this way? What can we do differently?’” But Although many of these policies were livelihoods, and who are struggling to keep she “always had one foot a little bit on the difficult to sell to voters – a reality borne a business afloat.” Her priority is “to make doorstep, and the other foot in academia”. out by Labour’s crushing election defeat in sure that we’re reflecting all of those con- As a former MEP, Dodds is often consid- December – those colleagues that I spoke to cerns continually to government, making ered an ardent pro-European, but “I was agreed that Dodds was “fundamentally loy- sure that people’s voices are heard as much never somebody who supported the EU al and hard-working to the team” in making as possible”. just for its own sake”, she explained. “It’s the case for Labour’s economic programme. Her other priority is “to ensure that we very much about what we can do, not just This gets to the nub of Dodds’ politics. She have a strategic perspective on all of this, through the EU but through international- served under Corbyn and has maintained making sure that we also have that chance ist engagement generally. My view was al- good relations with the left of the party, but to put forward our arguments for the future ways that we have multinational companies isn’t of that group. As with Starmer, there and how we come out of this. We can’t have which operate across nations and therefore is a quiet fascination as to what her “real” a return to business as usual.” we need political forces that can engage politics will prove to be. Dodds’ approach to politics has been in- with them. One colleague mentioned her pragma- formed by the Labour Party members and “I worked a lot on international tax issues tism: “Very much in the mainstream, a fairly activists she has known. They have taught and tax dodging, but also competition is- her, she said, “about commitment and what sues – enormous companies like Amazon. that really means, always being open to You look at their throughput overall and it’s people, and trying to get problems sorted easily as large as that which passes through out for people on the ground. That local ex- some smaller states. That means that we perience is something that I try to reflect in need internationalist political organisa- my politics, and in how I conduct myself in tion, and you achieve that through a range this new role.” of mechanisms. The EU isn’t the only one.” Is there not a distinction between front- As a Labour politician from Scotland, line politics and the politics of the grass- Dodds has found it hard to witness the roots? “I don’t think there is. The politi- left’s shift towards the Scottish National- cal point that I would want to make is that ist Party there. “Obviously, I’ve got a lot of in the Labour Party we always say that friends who would describe themselves as we’ve got to connect well with our grass- being socialist and some of them have a na- roots and work more with local councillors. tionalist perspective as well. I can’t see the We don’t always get it right, but we need difference between somebody who’s really “Po couldn’t believe the others had broken to get it right. That is what socialism

GEORGE LEIGH GEORGE struggling in Liverpool, is on a zero-hours lockdown rules without him” looks like in reality.” l

22-28 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 31

2020+21 028 Ailbhe Annaliese Dodds NEW.indd 31 19/05/2020 19:02:34 Stranded: winding queues of British troops wait to board the small boats that ferried them to larger vessels for transport back to the UK

32 | NEW STATESMAN | 22-28 MAY 2020

2020+21 032 David Reynolds-7pp.indd 32 19/05/2020 16:38:15 THE NS HISTORY ESSAY The Dunkirk delusion From our finest hour to the coronavirus crisis By David Reynolds

22-28 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 33

2020+21 032 David Reynolds-7pp.indd 33 19/05/2020 16:38:16 he story seems so familiar. Chris- Battle of Britain but also to the total revolu- incompetence of the High Command” but, topher Nolan’s gripping movie tion in global power politics that ensued in as befitted a doyen of the Annales school of of 2017 captured the highlights 1940-42. Exploring the world we lost along historical sociology, he found its roots “at perfectly. Lines of British soldiers the road to victory may help us better un- a much deeper level” in the society, values on a naked beach, praying for sal- derstand Brexit Britain in 2020. And life and and mentalité of a whole generation. Tvation. Enemy aircraft zooming in to bomb death under today’s coronavirus shadow Underlying this interpretation is the de- and strafe. Horror as Royal Navy warships may, in turn, offer a fresh perspective on lusion that great events must have equally are hit and the exhausted troops on board “our finest hour”. great causes, reaching deep into the past – frantically struggle to escape their metal If the French do figure at Dunkirk, it’s so that, in effect, the decisive moment has coffins. Intrepid Spitfire pilots going to the usually in a brisk side-story of predictable been decided long before. In reality, how- limits of their stamina and fuel to protect failure. Predictable because the German ever, 1940 exemplifies a different theory of the boats below. The “little ships” manned Blitzkrieg is seen as a demonically brilliant historical causation, featuring Machiavelli’s by old men and young lads who arrive in the masterstroke, cutting through the Allied Fortuna or what Frederick the Great called nick of time (cue Elgar) to help transport the forces “like a knife through butter”, or some “His Majesty, King Chance”. soldiers back to the White Cliffs of home. such cliché that fits British stereotypes In material terms, most historians agree, There, amazed, they are hailed as heroes. of ruthless Prussian military efficiency. there was nothing inevitable about what Dunkirk powerfully captures the fren- And predictable also because the French happened in May 1940. The German armed zy of battle and the anonymity of sudden seemed, well, “so French” – slow to react, forces in the West did not compare well death. It also brings alive the unpredictable still in shock after 1914-18, almost defeatist with those of France, Britain and the Low mix of courage and fear, panic and calm with from day one. Winston Churchill caught Countries. Hitler could deploy only ten which a group of human beings react to ex- that stereotype superbly in his war mem- Panzer divisions, with 2,439 tanks between istential crisis. Despite being a saga of Brit- oirs, writing about his visit to Paris on 16 them. They faced a French army that was ain and 1940, Dunkirk is a universal story May, six days after the German assault be- more fully motorised and with 3,254 tanks, (like the 2020 box office hit, 1917) in which gan, when he asked General Maurice Game- as part of an Allied force totalling more than time and place seem almost secondary. lin, the supreme commander of the French 4,200 tanks. What’s more, most German This is micro-history, detached from army, “Where is the strategic reserve? Où tanks were inferior in firepower and ar- the big picture. The film gives us little idea est la masse de manoeuvre?” With “a shake mour. Nor did Hitler have clear air superior- why these men are on this beach. Its open- of the head and a shrug”, Gamelin uttered ity: although France had been slower than ing captions simply state that “the enemy” just one word: “Aucune.” No strategic re- the RAF in converting from biplanes to has driven them to the sea. No mention of serve. Stunned, Churchill turned towards monoplanes, it had recently been reinforced the Germans. Only in the final shots do we the windows and gazed down into the by several hundred modern fighters bought glimpse two shadowy coal-scuttle helmets gardens of the Quai d’Orsay. There he saw from the US, and the overall balance again favoured the Allies (4,469 planes to 3,578). The Germans did have a definite advan- tage in some areas, such as anti-aircraft and To keep the Panzer drivers going night anti-tank weapons, but the idea that they enjoyed overwhelming superiority for and day for 72 hours, there were ample waging modern industrial war is a fiction. stocks of fuel – and amphetamines That’s why, in 2000, the Harvard histo- rian Ernest May, turning Bloch on his head, gave his own study of 1940 the title Strange on the edge of the frame. As for the French, “venerable officials pushing wheelbarrows Victory. Crucially, French leaders were un- they are background noise. Manning a road- of archives” on to “large bonfires”. The able to put themselves into the mind of a block near the start of the film. Or clamour- evacuation of Paris was already under way. man whose bravura desperation generated ing to join an evacuation boat and being It is a passage of consummate artistry. one of the most audacious gambles in mili- sternly told “English Only!” There’s also In a few deft word-strokes, Gamelin’s tary history. As a result of their failure, 1940 that laconic line from the Royal Navy opera- Gallic shrug and those “venerable” gentle- became the fulcrum of the 20th century. tions officer at Dunkirk (Kenneth Branagh), men evoke the faiblesse of the Fourth Re- In the wake of the Munich conference in “I’m staying, for the French” – a fleeting public. Watching the smoke from the bon- 1938, Hitler had concluded that the British allusion to the courageous rearguard who fire of French vanities, Churchill struggled and French were “small worms” who would helped gain time for the evacuation. with “one of the greatest surprises I have not stop him next gobbling up Poland, es- These lacunae expose the dangers of fo- had in my life”. pecially after his non-aggression pact with cusing on epic moments, pulled from their Stalin in August 1939. But the worms finally historical context. “Our island story” has fterwards, many in Britain turned and in September Hitler faced a war often been told in this deluded, myopic way, claimed they saw it coming in the west for which he was unprepared. not least the tale of what now seems the pro- because Thirties France was Yet he turned crisis into opportunity, boast- to-Brexit summer of 1940. Yes, we should obviously “rotten” to the core. ing: “In my life I’ve always gone for broke.” remember Dunkirk. But not just to honour The eminent French historian Aware that Germany had little chance of the heroism. We need to set the micro into AMarc Bloch, himself a veteran of May 1940, winning a prolonged conflict once the global the macro. That means situating Dunkirk in penned the classic indictment Strange empires of Britain and France had been fully the Battle of France that precipitated it, one Defeat a few months later, though the mobilised, he demanded an all-out offensive of the most astounding upheavals in the an- book was only published posthumously on the Western Front that autumn. It was “a nals of warfare. It also means treating the in 1946. The “immediate occasion” of the gamble,” the Führer told his generals. “I have Battle of France as overture not just to the debacle, according to Bloch, was “the utter to choose between victory and destruction.”

34 | NEW STATESMAN | 22-28 MAY 2020

2020+21 032 David Reynolds-7pp.indd 34 19/05/2020 16:38:16 Master strategist: Panzer general Heinz Guderian, who played a key role in reworking Fall Gelb, sitting in a military plane

The first version of Fall Gelb (Plan Yellow) Group A for the thrust to the Meuse. The maximum possible concentration of forces envisaged the principal thrust into Belgium other three would lead the feint into Bel- and maximum possible surprise. On the in November 1939. There the German army gium. Not one Panzer division was kept in flanks – Army Group B in Holland and Bel- would have encountered the main weight reserve. What’s more, in the first days of gium and Army Group C facing Luxem- of the French army (104 divisions) plus 22 the campaign von Rundstedt’s tanks were bourg and the northern edge of the Maginot Belgian divisions and ten British. But the stretched out in long columns on four forest Line – the plan, on Tooze’s calculations, start date was twice delayed and eventu- roads and would surely be detected by Allied conceded two to one superiority to the en- ally postponed until the spring of 1940. planes if the Panzers did not reach the Meuse emy. At the schwerpunkt – focal point – on Over those months the plan went through by 13 May. To keep their drivers going for 72 the Meuse, however, the Germans could several iterations, inspired partly by Hitler hours, there were ample stocks of fuel – and expect superiority of nearly three to one. himself, which shifted the centre of gravity amphetamines, known as Panzerschoka- By May 1940 Berlin’s once wary high some 70 miles south to the Ardennes and lade (tank chocolate). Even if the Germans command had been won over. The Sichels- then into France across the Meuse River at did get across the Meuse into open country, chnitt plan looked brilliant, on paper. But various points between Dinant and Sedan. they then would offer an exposed left flank wars are not won on paper. So, instead of a right hook, reminiscent to French reserve divisions along the Aisne of the fabled Schlieffen Plan of 1914, the river. Little wonder that one sceptic, General a Marfée looms over the west strongest thrust would now be a left hook, Feodor von Bock, claimed that Sichelschnitt bank of the Meuse. A steep massif codenamed Sickle Cut (Sichelschnitt), tar- was “transcending the frontiers of reason”. some 1,100 feet high, it’s a superb geting the weakest French divisions placed But the plan was also driven by a “mad viewpoint – looking out eastward behind the supposedly impenetrable Ar- logic”, to quote the historian Adam Tooze across the Ardennes towards Bas- dennes forest. What would happen if the in The Wages of Destruction (2006): the log- Ltogne, 50 miles away. Down below, to the Germans did manage to cross the Meuse ic of a man who saw the world as a struggle north, on the opposite side of the river, is was left hanging, but in the mind of Heinz between races and nations, in which only the town of Sedan, dominated by its vast Guderian – the Panzer general who, with the strongest would survive and conflict château-fort – a site of memory for French staff officer Erich von Manstein, played a was the mechanism of international selec- and Germans alike. On 1 September 1870 major role in reworking Plan Yellow – the tion. If war was inevitable and Germany’s the French army, led in person by Emperor logical end point of the left hook was quite relative position would only deteriorate, Napoleon III, was encircled outside Sedan clear: the Channel coast. it was therefore better to fight soon rather by the Prussians. Its humiliating surrender The risks were immense. Seven of Ger- than too late. Making the best of necessity, triggered revolution in Paris and the uni- many’s ten Panzer divisions were allocated Sichelschnitt actually followed classic Napo- fication of Germany. The Marfée was the HEINRICH HOFFMANN/ULLSTEIN BILD VIA GETTY IMAGES to General Gerd von Rundstedt’s Army leonic logic: achieving local superiority by headquarters of Helmut von Moltke, the t

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2020+21 032 David Reynolds-7pp.indd 35 19/05/2020 16:38:23 t Kaiser’s victorious commander. Fast forward nearly 70 years to Whit Sunday, 12 May 1940. The massif was now a strongpoint for the French 55th division, from which its observers watched in amaze- ment as columns of tanks belonging to Guderian’s XIX Panzer Corps emerged from the Ardennes to grind their way through Sedan, virtually undefended. By evening they had reached the east bank of the Meuse. But the French blew the bridges just in time, and their artillery on the heights opposite were now in position to destroy the enemy below. Yet the French command- ers rationed their fire, sure that it would be days before the Germans had enough engi- neers and artillery in place to risk a crossing. French confidence was not entirely un- reasonable. Getting the Panzers through the Ardennes had been no picnic. The four columns of tanks and trucks along the Franco-Belgian border – one of them snak- ing back 150 miles to the Rhine on 13 May – amounted to what the historian Karl-Heinz Frieser called “the biggest traffic jam known to date in Europe”. And operations in the north had been delayed by unexpected Dutch resistance, for which the inhabit- ants of Rotterdam paid a terrible price in the fire-bombing of 14 May. But Hitler’s overall strategy worked. In Marc Bloch’s image, the invasion of the Low Countries served as the matador’s cape, distracting the French bull, while the Panzers delivered the fatal thrust on the left. And Guderian’s lack of artillery Hero of today: a mural of 100-year-old veteran Captain Tom Moore, who raised £30m for the NHS – much of it horse-drawn and still stuck in the Ardennes – was to be redressed by Luftwaffe’s success – seized their chance to rhetorically) whether they should create a another terror weapon: tactical airpower. cross the river in rubber dinghies and push flank guard facing south against a possible From 7am on 13 May, Dornier Do 17s rapidly forward. By evening shock troops French counter-attack or begin the drive to bombed French artillery positions on the of the elite Grossdeutschland Division had the Channel. One officer (probably grin- west bank with mounting ferocity. Dur- battled to the top of the Marfée, not far from ning) quoted back to Guderian his favour- ing the afternoon they alternated with the site of Moltke’s old command post. As ite maxim, Klotzen, nicht Kleckern. This has squadrons of Junkers Ju 87s, the “Stuka” yet they had no tanks or guns. But young been translated by Alistair Horne – whose dive-bombers. The load each plane carried engineers, stripped to the waist in the heat, study of France in 1940, To Lose a Battle was small – a single 550lb bomb, often land- got the first pontoon bridge up by late after- (1969), remains a classic – as, “Wallop them, ing off target – but the psychological effect noon and built a 16-tonner, suitable for ar- don’t tap them.” Guderian issued orders to was devastating. The French could see the mour, overnight. By morning on 14 May the wallop the French all the way to the sea. Stukas assembling high above, circling like Panzers were chugging across. Over those crucial five days from 10 May, birds of prey, before they broke into line for- It was a similar story downriver at Dinant, France’s High Command had been pretty mation and hurtled down almost vertically, where Erwin Rommel – commanding the much out of it. Gamelin, a military intellec- amid a rising screech from their sirens. One 7th Panzer Division – got some of his troops tual with a priestly manner, kept his HQ in French officer on the Marfée recalled how, as across even earlier on the 13th. The follow- the Château de Vincennes, just outside Paris the first bombs came, “everyone tightened ing day, as the Germans consolidated their – close to his political masters, remote from his back, gasping, teeth clenched. The earth bridgeheads along the Meuse, the Allies the front. He didn’t even have a radio trans- shook, seemed to part.” There would be a began to fight back. French units mounted mitter. The chain of command was clunky, few minutes of respite, before new waves some piecemeal ripostes and dozens of Brit- communications were primitive and most of Stukas descended, again and again. In ish and French pilots sacrificed their lives in eyes were fixed on what was believed to be the end, he said, “we were there, immobile, support. But it was all too little, too late. the main battle in the Low Countries. Only silent, backs bent, shrunken into ourselves, By the afternoon of 14 May the Ger- on 14 May did the magnitude of the Meuse mouths open so as not to have the eardrums mans controlled the Marfée and the other breakthrough become clear at Vincennes. burst”. Not surprisingly, many French gun- ridges along the west bank, debouching London was no better. Churchill, who ners panicked and fled. on to the Bulson plateau beyond. Survey- had only become prime minister on 10 As French fire faded away, small groups ing miles of open country to the west and May, was preoccupied with the intricacies of German soldiers – intoxicated by the south, Guderian asked his staff (perhaps of forming a coalition government. He only

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2020+21 032 David Reynolds-7pp.indd 36 19/05/2020 16:38:38 an evacuation plan involving some 850 ves- easily be exaggerated. Neville Chamberlain, sels spearheaded by nearly one-fifth of the once the arch appeaser, took the PM’s line, Royal Navy’s 200 operational destroyers. and Halifax’s own position was coloured Between 27 May and 4 June some 338,000 by “despair” at the “frightful rot” Church- troops were rescued from Dunkirk. About ill talked “when he works himself up into a third were French, most of whom (includ- a passion of emotion” instead of using his ing Marc Bloch) were shipped back across brain to “think and reason”. Both men were the Channel to rejoin their army. Of the understandably living on their nerves. grand total, more than 70 per cent were It is also essential to remember that these evacuated from the East Mole (a concrete cabinet discussions were conducted during breakwater nearly a mile long), where they the early days of the evacuation, when the boarded destroyers and minesweepers. outcome seemed grim. On 26 May it was The fabled “little ships”, including pleasure expected that only 30,000 to 50,000 men boats, fishing vessels and Thames launches, could be evacuated; on 28 May Church- therefore played a secondary role. But they ill told his colleagues that if they could get were invaluable in ferrying men from the 100,000 away, that would be “magnifi- beaches to the big ships, and their impact on cent”. The final total of a third of a million national morale was immense. was not only a huge relief but also meant The British public was far behind their that Britain had saved what Churchill called government in waking up to the crisis. The “the whole root and core and brain of the end of May was just three weeks since the British Army”, despite losing most of its war in western Europe had begun (compa- heavy weapons. This totally changed the rable to the timespan in 2020 between Boris terms of the cabinet debate. Johnson proudly declaring on 3 March that On 4 June Churchill warned the Com- he’d been “shaking hands continuously” on mons not to delude themselves that a “de- a hospital visit and his announcement on liverance” was a “victory”, adding: “wars 23 March of a national lockdown). People are not won by evacuations”. Britain’s sur- were aghast at the unfolding news from vival in 1940 was the result of many factors, France and 26 May 1940 was designated a some of them British – such as the country’s National Day of Prayer. That helps to explain island position, the cutting-edge air defence the frequent allusions a week later to the system forged in the 1930s, Churchill’s “miracle” of Dunkirk. The dawning sense leadership and the heroism of the RAF – but that this was now a “people’s war” was per- we should also remember that “our island” fectly captured by those “little ships”. On his could still draw on the resources of the BBC radio “Postscript” on 5 June the author empire and that the Luftwaffe lost nearly JB Priestley said that the motley armada’s 30 per cent of its front-line strength in the grasped the danger on 15 May when awak- “excursion to hell” and back would feature Battle of France. ened in bed at the decidedly un-Church- in the story told to “our great-grandchildren, Whatever the reasons, that Britain illian hour of 7.30am by a panicked phone when they learn how we began this war by fought on in 1940 was of world-historical call from the French premier Paul Reynaud, snatching glory out of defeat and then swept importance. If it had succumbed, aside who shouted (in English), “We are beaten; on to victory”. The next morning the Times from the implications for this country, we have lost the battle.” The next day the was already enjoining its readers to draw in- Franklin Roosevelt could never have per- prime minister’s encounter with Gamelin spiration from “the spirit of Dunkirk”. suaded Americans that Europe was now in Paris confirmed that France’s will to fight was evaporating. Thereafter Churchill jug- gled desperately, maintaining some RAF fighter support for his ally while husband- As a result of Hitler’s audacity and the ing men and resources for “a certain eventu- ality” – Whitehall’s euphemism for French failure of France’s leaders, 1940 became capitulation. But by 26 May it seemed Brit- ain might well go the same way, with most the fulcrum of the 20th century of its army trapped on the Channel coast. In late May the inner war cabinet had con- their front line. The US would have stuck to t was against this background that sidered a French proposal to try to dissuade defending the Western Hemisphere instead events at Dunkirk unfolded. On 24 May Mussolini from entering the war. This of building up Britain as the base for liber- Hitler halted the Panzers – whose men broadened out into a discussion of whether ating Europe from Nazi domination. A dif- and tanks needed to regroup after their to use him to sound out Hitler’s possible ferent 1940, in short, would have meant no manic 150-mile dash – and entrusted peace terms. In 1999 the US historian John D-Day, no Marshall Plan, no Nato. . . Ithe Luftwaffe with the honour of finish- Lukacs built up these five days in May into Britain after Dunkirk therefore played a ing the job. He rescinded that order on the a moment that “could have changed the vital part in eventual victory. But only a part. afternoon of 26 May but by then the French world” – revolving around a “duel” be- Once again, the dramas of micro-history can and British had created a defensible perim- tween Churchill and his foreign secretary obscure the bigger picture, because the Fall eter and Admiral Bertram Ramsay, from Lord Halifax that replayed the Thirties ar- of France revolutionised the whole strug- PAUL FAITH/AFPPAUL his bunker at Dover Castle, had improvised guments over appeasement. The duel can gle, turning it into a true world war on a t

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2020+21 032 David Reynolds-7pp.indd 37 19/05/2020 16:38:38 t scale and intensity far beyond 1914-18. myth of white racial superiority on which his party’s ageing membership: “We have Throughout that earlier conflict, the French the European empires had depended. got to sound like we actually like this coun- had always maintained a Western Front. In The Fall of France turned the British away try. We have got to be patriots of the Britain 1940 the Western Front collapsed in four from the Continent, but it also triggered of now and not the Britain of 1940.” weeks; it was not created anew for four transformations of world politics that even- Of course, the national saga of 1940 was years. Amid that power vacuum, the war tually eclipsed Britain as a global power. remarkable and truly historic. It has also was transformed in three salient ways. What Churchill called a “special relation- grown more lustrous over time, together First, Mussolini did indeed enter the con- ship” with the US helped to shore up its with the reverence for Churchill. Yet in 2020 flict. After the fall of France, it seemed stu- international reach for a while but in 1973, this country is now in the grip of an existen- pid for Italy not to grab some of the spoils. by joining the EEC, the country seemed to tial crisis that will define the lives and out- Yet his army was unprepared for war – as have accepted an essentially European iden- look of all who survive it. This is also a “peo- proved by the Greeks and then by British tity. Yet that did not prove to be the case. ple’s war” in which survival turns on the empire forces in North Africa – and had to Brexit is an attempt to turn away from the heroism of medical staff, continuing to work be rescued by Hitler. But Il Duce had opened Continent and go global, without accepting despite inadequate protection, backed up by up a Mediterranean conflict that would dis- that the capacity to operate as a strong, in- thousands more in factories, shops, trans- tract Britain, and then the US, until 1944. dependent power is far more limited than it port and supply chains who keep essential Hitler’s triumph in France also changed was before the Second World War. services going. The “front line” dead are dis- his own position. Unlike the rumbles of dis- During this new twist in our national proportionately from the black, Asian and content in 1939, the German high command story, delusions about Britain Alone in minority ethnic groups who, unlike 1940, responded rapidly to his order on 31 July 1940 have often been on parade. Boris John- now make up around 14 per cent of the UK 1940 to prepare an invasion of the USSR son loves to drape himself in the mantle of population. And it’s going to be a long war. in 1941 – years earlier than planned. Having Churchill and to depict Brexit as the latest While the politicians fumbled, it was rolled over the French, they did not expect phase of Britain’s heroic efforts to stand up Britain’s nonagenarians who managed to the Red Army – still recovering from the against a German-dominated Europe. On speak to the nation. Captain Tom Moore bloody nose inflicted by little Finland – to 15 May 2016 the Daily Telegraph headlined became a household name by raising over pose much of a problem. But Operation Bar- one interview: “Boris Johnson: The EU £30m for NHS-related charities by push- ing his walking frame 100 laps around his garden ahead of his 100th birthday. His Today, while the politicians fumbled, wartime service in Burma and his advanced years could have justified sitting back as a it was Britain’s nonagenarians who member of the “greatest generation”, but Captain Tom said that in 2020 “the doctors managed to speak to the nation and the nurses, they’re all on the front line, and all of us behind, we’ve got to supply them and keep them going”. They were the barossa, which began in June 1941, proved a wants a superstate, just as Hitler did.” And “heroes” of today’s war. “I’ve always been very different story to the ten-day steeple- the saga of little ships has been deployed an optimist,” he added. “I do believe that chase from the Meuse to the Channel. The again in the Covid-19 crisis, as a shorthand the future is going to be much better.” German army was totally unprepared for a for the improvisation needed in a crisis for The country’s 93-year-old monarch also long campaign against a vast country with which the government was unprepared. struck an apt note in her speech on 5 April, at far greater resources. To quote Hitler’s biog- the height of the Covid-19 panic. The Queen rapher Ian Kershaw, the hubris born in 1940 n 18 June 1940, just as France was reminded the nation that she had experi- led directly to nemesis in 1945. The war end- asking Hitler for an armistice, enced 1940 first-hand, recalling in words ed with the Red Army in Berlin, facing off Churchill tried to rally his people and images her first radio address during against an Allied army in which the British with these words: “Let us there- the Blitz. She praised “the attributes of self- were junior partners to the Americans. The fore brace ourselves to our du- discipline, of quiet good-humoured resolve two new “superpowers” soon began their Oties, and so bear ourselves, that if the Brit- and of fellow-feeling” that “still characterise own contest for mastery of Europe. ish empire and its Commonwealth last for a this country”. And she expressed the hope The third transformation unfolded more thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was that “in the years to come everyone will be slowly but was global in scope. After Hit- their finest hour.’” Nine years later he used able to take pride in how they responded to ler’s victories in 1940, France, Britain and “their finest hour” to entitle the 1940 vol- this challenge” so that “those who come af- the Netherlands were in no position to de- ume of his war memoirs: exhortation was ter us will say the Britons of this generation fend their Asian empires. Japan started to now description. And by the end of the 20th were as strong as any”. move into French Indochina and in 1941, century the idea of 1940 as “our finest hour” All very low-key. No reference to Church- after the initial success of Barbarossa, To- had become a national cliché. ill, the empire or the next 1,000 years. Yet kyo’s military leaders decided that this was Yet consider the sense of “finest”: 1940 maybe her speech helps to identify a “finest their moment to go for broke, with a Pacific was the peak and it has been all downhill hour” experience for people of the 21st cen- equivalent of Sichelschnitt at Pearl Harbor. ever since. That also seemed to be the im- tury – for Britain now not then. Spoken by In time the Japanese, too, were broken, but plication of Johnson’s words on the 75th a leader who, like Captain Tom, knew 2020 not before their victories in 1941-42 across anniversary of VE Day earlier this month, and 1940, to a country that needs to value its south-east Asia and the Pacific had under- celebrating “quite simply the greatest gen- past and also believe in its future. l mined the old colonial order. Images of bony eration of Britons who ever lived”. Hardly a David Reynolds is the author of “Island British officers in baggy shorts signing the clarion call for the future. During the Brexit Stories: Britain and its History in the Age of surrender of Singapore helped destroy the debate Tory minister Matt Hancock warned Brexit” (HarperCollins)

38 | NEW STATESMAN | 22-28 MAY 2020

2020+21 032 David Reynolds-7pp.indd 38 19/05/2020 16:38:38 Amelia Tait Out of the Ordinary You can’t always be productive – now, more than ever, we should bask in the glory of wasted time

am both extremely good and extreme- entitled, “The Truth About Isaac Newton’s allows us to handle stress and also improves ly bad at wasting time. Good if you’re Productive Plague” in response to people job satisfaction. Conversely, a 2014 study Imeasuring success via the quantity of who were claiming that now is the per- from Johannes Gutenberg University, won- time wasted – I probably have about two fect time to write a novel/discover gravity. derfully titled “The Guilty Couch Potato: or three productive hours in an entire day. “The idea that the plague woke the bril- The Role of Ego Depletion in Reducing Bad if you’re judging via the quality of time liance in Newton is both wrong and mis- Recovery Through Media Use”, argued that wasted – though I spend my days playing leading as a measure of how well we apply when people feel guilty about consuming video games, diving into obscure internet ourselves during our own plague spring,” entertainment media, the psychological forums, and (on one occasion we shan’t argued the science writer Thomas Levenson benefits of leisure are depleted. In short: talk of again) watching episodes of Neigh- in the piece. But even though we are now wasting time can be good for you; feeling bours from 2002, I never fully enjoy my- beginning to accept that we don’t have to bad about it really isn’t. self. Instead, my brain spends every wasted produce works of genius during lockdown, Yet it’s difficult to reset our ingrained cul- moment reciting mean mantras: you are a I haven’t yet seen anyone go further and tural mindset. If you google “wasting time”, worthless idiot, you are a stupid bitch. argue something I’m increasingly coming to the majority of the results feature the words My time-wasting is so severe that I’ve believe: that it’s now actually quite impor- “how to stop”. Time-wasting has been con- been known to procrastinate leisure – to put tant to waste time. sidered immoral by everyone from Imma- off actually having fun. I might’ve finished nuel Kant (who saw self-improvement as a work for the day and want nothing more duty) to Charles Darwin (“A man who dares than to sit down and watch, say, Citizen Wasting time can be to waste one hour of time has not discov- Kane (this is a lie to make up for the Neigh- good for you – feeling ered the value of life”) to a curlicue quote bours thing), but instead I lie in bed watch- I once saw on Khloé Kardashian’s Instagram ing clickbait YouTube videos. Yes, although bad about it really isn’t Stories. This isn’t a universal problem: the I have an Olympian’s stamina for time Italian phrase “il dolce far niente” refers to wasting, I am a Year 8 pupil on Sports Day We don’t know, really, how long lock- the art of doing nothing, and perhaps this when it comes to enjoying my wasted time. down will last, and we don’t know what so- is the art we should be mastering with our This is becoming a bigger problem. As the ciety will look like when we emerge. Those extra free time. world remains (mostly) in lockdown, we of us who are lucky enough to stay at home After all, Darwin spent five years on the are realising, one by one, that we can’t be during this pandemic are currently playing a HMS Beagle and who knows how long productive for every hour of the day. Let’s waiting game – we have to run out the clock. drawing zoological images. If he’d had access say you used to wake up an hour before Many have already found that after baking to cheap plane travel and a phone camera, work to get ready and have breakfast, and a loaf of sourdough, painting a watercolour, perhaps he too would have seen the need to your commute was bang on the UK’s aver- or running 5K, there are still hours left in “dare” to “waste one hour”. But those who age – around an hour every day. Let’s say the day. The answer isn’t to bake yet more have studied Darwin’s schedule have found that after work you used to do something bread (which, after all, contributes to the that, on average, even he worked about four social for at least two hours – go to a film, ongoing flour shortage). The answer isn’t to five hours a day. Darwin spent his spare eat at a restaurant, have a few pints. That’s to beat yourself up. The answer is to bask time reading, writing letters, walking and at least four extra hours you now have to in the glory of wasted time and ignore the (hooray!) napping. Over the course of the fill every day. (For those with London com- mean voice in the back of your head. past few centuries, our attitudes to work mutes and complicated hair-styling rou- Psychologically, this is good for you. For have become grotesque: a 2019 study found tines, it’s more like seven. For those with years, employers have bemoaned “cyber- Britons put in the longest working hours in kids, sorry.) Surely we can all accept that it’s loafing” – the wasted time an employee Europe (around 42 hours a week). Though not possible to be productive in every single spends on Facebook or personal emails dur- we are expected to work eight-hour days, a one of these extra hours? And yet the self- ing work hours. Yet more recent research 2019 study by Ginger Research found that loathing thoughts don’t go away. has shown that cyberloafing is beneficial the average UK worker is productive for just I’m not totally alone in my point of view for employees. A December 2019 study three of these – and yet the world still turns. – almost from the very beginning of lock- from the University of Florida found that I don’t know how to turn off my negative down, people began to argue that a pandem- employees spend two hours a day using the thoughts, but if I manage to, then the most ic is not the perfect time for productivity. On internet for non-work purposes, and con- productive thing I will have done this pan-

IAN McGOWAN 6 April, the New Yorker published a piece cluded that this is a coping mechanism that demic is to learn to waste time properly. l

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2020+21 039 Amelia Tait.indd 39 19/05/2020 15:23:31 Jonathan Liew Left Field Newcastle United fans back the club’s takeover by Saudi Arabia. Do they bear moral responsibility?

“ eep your nose out,” one of the re- and a city having its sap steadily drained them, or Newcastle fans against Ashley’s plies warned. “Go home, woman,” from within. stewardship over the past decade or more, it K chided another. The insults con- Having craved Ashley’s departure for was on this basis: that a football club should tinued to pour in. “Bore off, pet.” “Move years, Newcastle fans are not prepared to be more than an investment vehicle. That it on and stop trying to cause problems.” get too squeamish about who might replace is irrevocably embedded in its community. “Bounce, ya Turkish spy.” “Piss off.” “Go him, or whichever grieving widows want That in some important sense it belongs to away, for fuck sake.” “You’re clearly be- to tug on their heartstrings in the process. all of us. ing used by Amnesty.” “Nothing to do This has, in turn, generated its own wave of It is an idea that feels less relevant now, with us.” condemnation. If, as human rights organi- with Newcastle’s takeover on the verge of Who, then, was this insolent provoca- sations believe, Saudi Arabia’s interest in completion, and fanciful stories already teuse, and what had she done to stir such Premier League football is driven primarily emerging of how the club might splash its scorn? She was Hatice Cengiz, and she by a desire to paper over its crimes, to what new wealth. As it turned out, Newcastle posted an open letter on social media urg- extent will Newcastle fans be tangentially fans’ beef with Ashley had very little to do ing the fans of Newcastle United to resist implicated? More broadly, to what extent with zero-hours contracts, labour rights, the takeover of their football club by a con- should fans be expected to bear a moral his eccentric business practices or that he sortium backed by the sovereign wealth responsibility that the game’s other stake- was the first Premier League owner to put fund of Saudi Arabia – the country and holders – players and coaches and sponsors staff on furlough, despite a club turnover of regime widely believed to be responsible and broadcasters – mostly are not? £179m and a personal fortune of £2bn. for the murder of her fiancé, the journalist Rather, his biggest crime in the eyes of Jamal Khashoggi. supporters was parsimony: a failure to Alas, Cengiz’s plea was largely ignored. Formerly engaged lavish his wealth with the sort of earth- “You have suffered a loss, but end of the day supporters are now scorching abandon that has rendered Ro- it’s not our problem,” was one of the typi- man Abramovich at Chelsea and Sheikh cal replies. Others suggested she was not passive and powerless Mansour at Manchester City virtually im- his real fiancée; one user that “[Khashoggi] mune to internal criticism. Even if the Saudi deserved everything he got, no sympa- This is the crux of the debate that has deal fails to go through (it is currently pend- thy here”. And although not all Newcastle been raging over recent weeks. When chal- ing Premier League approval), Newcastle fans would voice their disapproval in such lenged, Newcastle fans are quick to point fans have already shown their hand. And base terms, the vast majority disapproved out that Saudi investment touches our lives currently, it’s holding up a middle finger to nonetheless. Asked whether they would be in ways that barely occur to most of us. It the widow of a murdered dissident in the in favour of their club being purchased by a is merely football’s uniquely prominent hope of a few big signings in the summer state culpable for numerous human rights position in the cultural conversation, they transfer window. abuses and accused of a litany of war crimes argue, that has made them a target. This sounds like a blanket condemnation. in Yemen, 97 per cent of respondents to a There’s a sadly revealing aspect to this In fact, it’s merely an admission of where survey by the Newcastle United Supporters reasoning. Whenever we use Twitter or fans sit in the order of things. Shorn of any Trust said they would. Slack, order a taxi or food delivery via Uber, real influence, deprived of any meaningful This warm embrace of one ruthless tyrant watch a Disney show, or click on an In- stake in their club, shut out of their stadi- has its roots in the revulsion towards anoth- dependent article, we are using a product ums for the foreseeable future, perhaps er. In the 13 years since Mike Ashley bought funded in part by Saudi investment. But that it’s no wonder that so many have simply Newcastle, adding one of English football’s relationship is purely transactional, a simple plumped for the path of least resistance and most famous clubs to his stable of discount interface of business and customer. Tra- maximum gratification. The sadness is that leisurewear shops, he has become one of ditionally, the relationship between foot- what football once liked to imagine as its the sport’s most despised owners. If it was ball fans and their clubs has always meant engaged support is now better understood not the indiscreet Sports Direct branding something more. as a passive, powerless consumer base. It’s plastered all over their beloved stadium, it Certainly, when so many Liverpool fans ironic that in many ways, this was a pro- was the ill-advised coaching appointments, protested against the ownership of US cess that Ashley has spent 13 years trying the two relegations, the lack of investment businessmen Tom Hicks and George Gil- to perfect. l in the training ground and transfer market, lett a decade ago, or Manchester United fans Jonathan Liew is a sports writer at

and the general feel of tawdriness, of a club against the Glazer family takeover before the Guardian IAN McGOWAN

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2020+21 040 Jonathan Liew.indd 40 19/05/2020 18:06:17 ART | BOOKS | MUSIC | FILM | TELEVISION | RADIO The Critics JOHN M. HURLEY/THE BOSTON GLOBE VIA GETTY IMAGES Unburdened by Bill: an alternative life of Hillary Clinton. 48

BOOKS FILM BACK PAGES Colin Rewatching Sarah Manavis: the new email etiquette Kidd romcoms The NS Q&A: The troubled Simran Hans on Robert Webb future of Scottish the sugar high of Alice O’Keeffe on independence. 46 Noughties films. 54 writing in quarantine 22-28 MAY 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 41

2020+21 041 Critics Opener.indd 41 19/05/2020 16:20:41 THE CRITICS | CRITIC AT LARGE Infected by ideas For writers from Daniel Defoe to Susan Sontag, plagues offer a window on to a rapidly changing world By Leo Robson

s language a pestilence? Are bad ideas established as something that spreads and infectious diseases. Following the Black contagious? Is there safety in numbers? kills. (It’s believed that Apollo’s chosen vec- Death in the 14th century, outbreaks re- I Are emotions dangerous? Or will they tor was mice.) Acts of rage originate in other curred throughout Europe and the Mediter- keep us going? Is the species frail? Is the acts of rage, the airborne transmission of ranean for centuries. The spectre of plague species resilient and brave? Are we driven negative emotion being bolstered and abet- was significant not just in the history of by prejudice and suspicion? Or can we put ted by real-life biological warfare. medicine and society but of subjectiv- aside our grievances? Is love a disease? Is The literary epic migrated to Latin by a ity – how we see ourselves and especially love the only cure? If you believe the suc- process of contagion called “imitatio” or one another. Self-reliance became indistin- cessive claims advanced by the writing on “aemulatio” or, later, “tradition” (handing- guishable from self-protection. The whole infectious disease, the answer to all of the on) and “influence” (flowing-in). Homer’s Renaissance period, Langley explains, above questions is: yes. “You ne understand most notable successor, Virgil, didn’t con- performs “a philosophical flinch” – away allegory,” a young woman chides her cous- cern himself with epidemics – he was too from community and solidarity towards in, Pogge, in James Meek’s recent novel To busy with the line of genetic descent that “self-quarantined”. The network by which Calais, in Ordinary Time, set in the 1340s, culminated in imperial Rome. But scholars a virus spreads is built on the same principle during the Black Death. Well, if that’s still scratch their heads over the multifari- as intimacy. And so intimacy – or at any rate the case, Pogge would be hideously ill- ous symptoms and effects of the livestock proximity – must go. Shakespeare, some- equipped to confront the work of Meek and plague he depicted in the Georgics, apply- what inevitably, was in two minds about dozens of forerunners going back millennia. ing scientific thinking to a form of writing the validity of this position, understanding At the start of the Iliad, the founding that was more concerned with symbolism. the neurosis while emphasising the allure of work of the Western tradition, the narra- When the academic Eric Langley calls Troi- human engagement. tor commands the Muse to sing of the anger lus and Cressida “one of Shakespeare’s most The bubonic plague that raged in Lon- – “menis” – that emanated from the Greek notably plaguey plays” in his book Conta- don in 1665, almost exactly 50 years after warrior Achilles, killing countless men. gious Sympathies, he doesn’t mean that it Shakespeare’s death, exerted an inevita- Why did his anger have this impact? The concerns an epidemic but that its portrayal ble effect on literature, and especially the direct reason pertains to military strategy – of gossip and slander channelled prevail- new form that had emerged to reflect the you don’t want a hothead for a leader – but ing fears about communities being sites of rise of individualism. You might think that Homer also aligns anger with deadly infec- contamination. In Langley’s account, Troi- Daniel Defoe’s 1722 novel A Journal of the tion, and not just metaphorically. lus and Cressida bristles with a mixture of Plague Year, being set in London, would Agamemnon, who angered Achilles, real and figurative threats: “Atomic activity, offer a noisy, urban contrast to his island aroused the same emotion in the god Apol- invisible bullets, insinuating verbal volleys, story Robinson Crusoe (1719). But introduce lo, who vented his anger by cursing Ag- objectifying gazes.” the plague into a teeming metropolis and amemnon’s soldiers with a plague. By line Langley invokes the idea that the rise you’re soon left with silence. Folk memory

75 of the poem, anger has been thoroughly of individualism is linked to the rise of of what had beset Defoe’s home town t

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t when he was a small child enabled him as being akin to “plague-infection”. infectious enthusiasm about Merdle’s of- to compose another portrait of isolation In Charles Dickens’s work, the phenom- fer, Dickens explains that it “is the manner and estrangement. enon that he called, in A Child’s History of of communicating these diseases; it is the A Journal of the Plague Year begins with England (1851), “that terrible disease, the subtle way in which they go about”. Even an account of “word of mouth”: the news Plague” is a source of imagery for collective when Dickens was approaching the Great that the plague “was returned again in Hol- fevers. Bleak House (1852) begins with a sin- Plague as a historian, he wrote that it was land”, brought there, “they say”, from Italy, gle-word sentence that identifies both the urgent to cut off the dead from “communi- or the Levant, or Candia, or Cyprus. Testi- setting and the theme: “London.” And what cation” with the living. As metaphors im- monies vary. Voices conflict. The narrator, typifies Londonness? First, the deepening pinge on real life, so reality becomes a tissue HF, composing his history at a later date, is mud through which pedestrians jostle one of metaphors. looking back at a period where there were another’s umbrellas “in a general infection In Defoe’s third Robinson Crusoe book, no newspapers to “spread” rumours and of ill temper”. Then, the fog, which spreads Serious Reflections (1720), the narrator de- reports; it was letters from abroad that ger- up and down the Thames, catching in the fends symbolic allegory as being akin to all minated gossip at home. Though he is an “eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich fiction-making. He claims that “it is as rea- eyewitness to a historical event and trying pensioners”. In the chapter of Little Dorritt sonable to represent one kind of imprison- to construct an official record, the writing (1855) entitled “The Progress of an Epidem- ment by another, as it is to represent any- heaves with metaphors that suggest Defoe’s ic”, Dickens writes that a moral infection, thing that really exists by that which exists not”. If we’re allowed to make up things from scratch, then surely we are allowed to Social epidemics, Dickens writes, substitute a bed for an island, or represent confinement with shipwreck, in order to originate with wicked men but portray the feeling of loneliness. The next canonical novel devoted to portraying the soon reach good ones onset of a disease – this time, a rat-borne epidemic in an Algerian town – was Albert Camus’s The Plague (1947), which takes intentions are not purely documentary. “It like a physical one, can spread with the ma- Robinson’s creed as its epigraph. was a very ill time to be sick in,” he recalls. lignity and rapidity of the plague, and will It is striking that Camus felt as inspired Sometimes the figurative and literal are lay hold on people in the soundest health by Defoe’s allegorical method, pursued and divided by a mere semicolon: “The face of and develop in the most unlikely consti- examined in the Crusoe books, as he was things, I say, was much altered; sorrow and tutions. Human creatures, he reminds us, by another novel by the same writer on his sadness sat upon every face.” “breathe an atmosphere”, and it would be exact subject. (Like Defoe’s HF, Camus’s A century after Defoe, Mary Shelley a blessing on mankind if the tainted were narrator is an amateur historian working wrote, in The Last Man (1826), perhaps the confined or even “summarily smothered” from documents and testimonies.) But first speculative thriller about a plague – a before their poison can be “communicable”. then one of the things mobilised by plague tradition that exists to this day and seems to It’s that old word of mouth again. The is thought. The novel of contagion is al- have been unusually boisterous around 40 epidemic in question is talk of the remark- ways a novel of ideas. “This was where fear years ago, with Stephen King’s The Stand able financial return offered by the investor began,” Camus’s narrator writes after the (1978), Dean Koontz’s The Eyes of Darkness Mr Merdle. Where or from whom did the citizens of Oran begin dying, “and with it, (1981) and, at a lower level of cultural im- amiable and gullible Mr Pancks contract this serious reflection.” Camus was using the pact, Stanley Johnson’s The Marburg Virus prevalent disease? It would be no easier to subject to reflect on the impact of fascism (1982), which is being reissued this summer say, Dickens asserts, than if he had taken a – the “brown plague” that had so recently under the more putatively resonant title fever. Social epidemics, he says, originate infected France – and also the compound of The Virus. But mass pestilence became rare with wicked men but soon reach good ones. ideology and action known as colonialism. in western Europe, and there was no plague When Pancks begins to hold forth with Philip Roth restored the plague novel to novel that built on the innovations in the literal plane in his wonderfully intricate realist storytelling developed by Defoe and final novel, Nemesis, replacing the “194-” his contemporaries. setting of Camus’s novel with a vividly real- ised 1944, in which a polio outbreak claims riters were keen to invoke plague dozens of children in New Jersey. But even as a by-no-means dormant threat, here, in a book immersed in a time and place W or – more often – mine the sub- and a real set of fears, analogies of contami- ject for symbolism. Raskolnikov, in Crime nation soon pile up: fascism, American and Punishment (1866), imagines a pan- anti-Semitism, the pervasive impact of the demic that has no symptoms beyond hu- Second World War, and endemic flaws in man estrangement. In Middlemarch (1871), human beings. contagion is present in the realm of human Roth’s title could be translated as “anger”, thinking. Mrs Cadwallader realises that from the Greek goddess of revenge, bring- her opinion of Dorothea Brooke had been ing us back to the Homeric vision of the “infected” with her husband’s “weak force that – with the help of gods and mice charitableness”. Members of the Vincy – lays waste to humanity. (“Nemein”, in family exhibit an immunity to the evangeli- Latin, means “I spread”.) Roth explores the cal mindset that treated “the few amuse- question of what brings us down. This isn’t

ments which survived in the provinces” just polio or even European fascism. It’s the GRIZELDA.NET

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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT Antiviral Wipe

By Anna Leszkiewicz

his is a worrying time for all of “Tus, but it’s important to laugh!” Charlie Brooker sounds unconvinced as he says this, banging his homespun cardboard desk in frustration. So begins the coronavirus special of his comic BBC review show usually known as Charlie Spread the word: John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation tackles the Aids epidemic through gossip Brooker’s Screenwipe. Starting “2,000 billion years ago, or ‘January’ as I like to impossible decisions wrought by infection. Mars-Jones proposed “a customized form call it”, Brooker reflects on the weeks Bucky Cantor, a Newark teacher, decides to of the novel” – perhaps a footnote that in- before the pandemic hit the UK, the make a run for it and seclude himself in the terrupts and swamps the story. Susan Son- ensuing government reaction, and the Pocono Mountains, but we later learn that tag took a more conventional – though still surreality of the “new normal”. he had already contracted polio. As in Ca- powerful – route in her 1986 short story There are plenty of laughs. mus’s novel, a first-person narrator emerges about the beginnings of the Aids crisis, “The Beautifully, almost poetically mild from the community voice in the final sec- Way We Live Now”, portraying Chinese insults thrown at Matt Hancock tion of Nemesis, to suggest the porousness whispers pin-balling around New York: somehow make him seem a more of borders between the individual and the risible figure than any caustic barb At first he was just losing weight, he felt collective emphasised by plague-logic. Dur- only a little ill, Max said to Ellen, and he could have done. He is alternatively ing the half-century between The Plague didn’t call for an appointment with his described as “Health Secretary and and Nemesis, a whole sub-genre devel- doctor, according to Greg, because he your sister’s first boyfriend with a car, oped and to some degree faded out: fiction was managing to keep on working at Matt Hancock”, “Peter Pandemic”, “the about Aids. more or less the same rhythm, but he did estate agent boy”, and “this boy called stop smoking, Tanya pointed out, which Matt Hancock”, doomed to spend his ohn Guare’s 1990 play Six Degrees of Sep- suggests he was frightened, but also that days answering journalists’ questions aration is a plangent comedy about the he wanted, even more than he knew, to “like he was in a sort of call centre in Jproximity of everyone on the planet that be healthy, or healthier, or maybe just to hell”. (I was delighted by a cameo from gain back a few pounds, said Orson… employs a narrative method based on gos- the New Statesman’s very own Patrick siping: one character laments that she and “The Way We Live Now” is constructed Maguire quizzing the government on her circle of friends have “become these hu- almost entirely from telephone calls – gos- their economic modelling of various man jukeboxes”. So it’s an ironic touch that sip is being conducted not, as in the work lockdown exit scenarios, which Guare’s hustler character manages not to of Defoe and Dickens, in cafés or on street prompted a long pause and a polite contract the illness despite multiple acts of corners, but by people in different living murmur of, “Um, Chris, go ahead…”) unprotected sex in 1980s Boston and New rooms. “I’ve never spent so many hours at a “Apprentice finalist Rishi Sunak” and York. “I do not have it,” the hustler Paul tells time on the phone,” one character, Stephen, Chris Whitty (“Tintin prematurely his victim-cum-mentor Ouisa. “It’s a mira- complains, while Lewis says that “when the aged after watching his dog drown”) cle. But I don’t.” phone rings I’m scared to answer because I get their turn, too. Aids posed a challenge to writers. How think it will be someone telling me some- By focusing on the weeks before – as, say, a gay novelist writing in the 1980s one else is ill”. lockdown, Brooker exposes the – could you possibly avoid it? Alan Hollin- But while technology offers a parallel to government’s farcical inaction with ghurst did so in his 1988 novel The Swim- disease in the speed and ease of connection startling clarity. Certain clips – such ming-Pool Library, by portraying the “last – as a useful allegorical tool when telling a as the now-infamous moment Boris summer” (1983) before homosexuals were story about transmission – what it enables Johnson boasted of shaking hands wholly aware of Aids, relying on hind- in reality is distanced, “self-isolated” living. with coronavirus patients – seem sight to cast a dark hue over his portrait of So the route by which a virus spreads might incomprehensible. All this makes for hedonism. And how to confront it? In the be roughly akin to a network, but that’s an hour of television that is frequently introduction to his book of stories about as far as it goes. Sometimes a metaphor is more rage-inducing than funny. l l CRAIG SCHWARTZ the virus, Monopolies of Loss (1992), Adam really just a metaphor.

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peaking in the Commons in 1922, Winston Churchill reflected on the Schanges which the Great War of 1914- 18 had wrought across the globe. A “cata- clysm” had “swept the world”, drastically changing “modes of thought” and “the whole outlook on affairs”, while imposing huge strains on institutions in almost every land. But, notwithstanding this worldwide catastrophe, some things remained un- changed. “As the deluge subsides,” Church- ill famously remarked, “we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerg- ing once again.” The Irish Question that so preoccupied British politicians in the spring and early summer of 1914 hadn’t gone away. A century on, will the Scottish Question, which so exercised commentators in the months before the Covid-19 crisis, possess the same enduring limpet-like purchase on politics? Or will coronavirus last so long, and have such transformative impacts on society and the economy, that when it is over Scots will find they have little appetite for another bout of major upheaval? We have no idea. The recent Alex Sal- mond trial – puffed as the Scottish politi- cal sensation of the decade that would split the SNP – struggled for airtime as the media obsessed over coronavirus. Every Thursday evening Scots come out at eight o’clock to bang pots and clap for the NHS, just as they do in England – and with no perceptible sense that they are doing this exclusively for the NHS in Scotland. Rather an understated Britishness reigns. On the other hand, Nico- la Sturgeon has been a reassuringly compe- tent presence at the helm in Edinburgh, and the most obvious policy missteps have been those of the UK government in London. It is a standard rhetorical trope in nationalist circles to describe the UK as a “failed state”. Hyperbole, of course, but not without some traction in the bumbling Johnson era. John Lloyd’s devastating argument against Scottish independence is predicated on pre-Covid-19 economic and fiscal reali- ties. Of course, in our strange new normal Scotland’s heart these realities no longer constrain the UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak. But even when the surreal pertains, there still has to be an eventual accounting. What the pandemic of darkness has done is to make the question of Scot- land’s share of the UK’s ballooning govern- The SNP will not admit what it knows: that the ment debt paramount in any future calcula- tion of the viability of independence. economic consequences of independence are dire The economic prospects for independ- By Colin Kidd ence were already dismal – as the SNP lead- ership knows all too well, but is reluctant to Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot: share too openly with the public. Evasion, The Great Mistake of Scottish Independence spin and obfuscation of harsh truths are all, John Lloyd inevitably, part of the weather of democratic life; and there’s as much point in complain- Polity Press, 224pp, £20 ing about these as there is in moaning about ANDREW TESTA/NYT/REDUX/EYEVINE

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grey cloud and drizzle. But sometimes the that was enough to earn a few marks of loyd makes clear that economically untruths involved are so enormous, their disapprobation. the case for remaining in the Union consequences and implications so devastat- When the SGC report was formally L is a no-brainer. Why, then, have na- ing for the run of ordinary people, that the launched at the SNP’s spring conference tionalists and unionists been running neck articulation of a big lie comes at a psycho- in 2019, its chair was not invited to speak. and neck in the opinion polls? In December logical cost to the politician. Moreover, the party’s hard “Scexit” zeal- 2019, just before the general election, one The leading politicians of the SNP, Lloyd ots did not like the SGC’s recommenda- poll had independence on 46 per cent, and surmises, must experience this sort of fore- tion that Scotland ties itself to sterling for its opponents on 47 per cent. In late Janu- boding. For they know that the first decade the first decade of independence, and voted ary, independence was on 43 per cent, the or more of Scottish independence, as an to amend the report accordingly. Not that case for the union on 42 per cent. Why have infant state struggles to establish its cred- the currency question yields any substan- matters been so delicately poised, when the ibility with the markets, would necessarily tive positives for the nationalists. Profes- economic case seems so overwhelming? be an era of deep cuts in public services. In sor Ronald MacDonald, Scotland’s leading Partly it’s because of a complicated coun- particular, Scotland would no longer be the expert on exchange-rate regimes, forecasts terfactual calculus. Middle Scotland is at- recipient of Barnett largesse; under the UK that the Scottish economy’s balance of pay- tached to the Attlee welfare state; but how Treasury’s Barnett formula, Whitehall cur- ments deficit would produce a 30-40 per is that best preserved? In a UK where one rently funnels to the Edinburgh govern- cent depreciation in the Scottish currency wing of the governing Conservative Party – ment an extra £1,900 per head each year within five years of independence. The though not Boris Johnson himself – wants above English norms. An honest slogan for SGC’s commitment to a market economy to expose post-Brexit Britain to the full Scottish independence might be, Lloyd sug- also provoked howls of complaint from the gale of market forces? Or in an independ- gests: “It’s Scotland’s austerity.” nationalist ultra-left. The SGC report re- ent Scotland guided by social democratic None of this is a laughing matter for the mains the SNP’s dirty semi-secret: techni- principles? There is risk involved in either politicians involved. Certainly not for Nicola cally in the public domain, but marginal to option. How can Scots be sure that the Sturgeon, grimly obsessed with independ- the national conversation. Barnett formula won’t be scaled back as ence from her youth, but equally commit- Strangely enough, there’s another embar- the Johnson government attempts to con- ted to social justice. Does she ever wake up rassment that the SNP scarcely talks about solidate its position in the forgotten north in the wee hours of the morning wondering these days: oil. Whereas for half a century – of England? But would that be worse than whether the supposed long-run benefits of and as recently as the 2014 referendum – the the hair-raising trapeze artistry involved independence will make up for the certain SNP banged on about oil-based prosperity, in running Scottish public finances in the material impoverishment of so many lives in an age of Extinction Rebellion and with absence of the UK safety net? Although, as in the short to medium term? Lloyd asks the price of oil futures occasionally dipping Lloyd demonstrates, Scotland currently en- whether the brightest and best in the SNP into negative numbers, oil has slipped from joys the munificence of Barnett combined leadership “believe their vastly overconfi- the agenda, without so much as a mumbled with a wide measure of political autonomy, dent forecasts”. They cannot know whether apology. Yet, as Lloyd notes, if we remove the SNP never bothers to mention that the an independent Scottish state will provide the environmental issue from the equa- undoubted social benefits which nationalist anything like the standards of prosper- ity that its citizens now enjoy as part of the sixth-largest economy in the world. “The An honest slogan for Scottish prospect,” Lloyd conjectures, “for all their public confidence, must be, in reflective mo- independence might be, John Lloyd ments, terrifying for the party leaders.” This is the SNP’s heart of darkness, the an- suggests: “It’s Scotland’s austerity” tithesis of the gleaming Scandinavian-style social democracy it outwardly promotes. Yet the horror is not confined to private tion, the SNP was probably right to make rule has brought come “courtesy of a large nightmares. Conscious that the Pollyanna- the case for oil in the 1970s, when, in retro- subsidy from Westminster”. ish optimism of the Scottish government’s spect, there was an economically robust ar- Besides, we’ve already encountered the prospectus for the 2014 referendum – the gument for Scottish independence. Intoler- phenomenon of an electorate voting against 2013 white paper “Scotland’s Future” – had able as this must be to Scottish nationalists, its own interests in the 2016 Brexit refer- not convinced the electorate of the viability independence was once a viable choice, but, endum. Scotland is no different. There is of independence, the party commissioned crucially, is no longer: “Oil was the game a widespread desire to “take back control”. a further study from its own Sustainable changer which came too early in the game. The twist, of course, is that in the case of Growth Commission (SGC), headed by Its growth, and that of the nationalists’ sup- Scotland, it is EU Remainers that the SNP the former MSP Andrew Wilson and con- port, were out of sync.” If only the “political is wooing with the sorts of arguments that taining five academic economists on its 14- surge” had come sooner, or the “oil discov- Scotland’s double unionists – the 30 per person board. eries” had happened later, when the SNP cent of the voters who are pro-UK, pro-EU The report of the SGC, published in 2018, had become the Scottish party of govern- – rejected both in 2014 and in 2016. It is this contrasted with the SNP’s 2013-14 vision ment, then independence could have made group of voters that the SNP hopes desper- of a prosperous oil-based future. Rather Scotland, with prudent governance, almost ately to win over, but of which the John- the SGC charted a decade of difficult slog. as rich as Norway. But that is no longer an son government still seems casually and Although the SGC’s tilt away from milk- option. The long-term future for North Sea obtusely oblivious. Every time a govern- and-honey fantasy towards a grittier real- oil looks bleak, with high decommissioning ment minister plays to an English gallery ism was tentative, and still accompanied costs. How long, indeed, before we hear the of Brexiteers, a few small-c conservatives

by some selectively optimistic projections, disconcerting refrain, “It’s England’s oil”? in Scotland decide to risk the ride on the t

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t independence roller-coaster. While the Union still “serves Scotland best”, Lloyd believes that “Brexit strains it”. The problem derives ultimately from what Lloyd calls Britain’s “no-constitution constitution”, the loose ensemble of stat- utes, conventions, prerogative powers and unreflective practice under which the UK is governed. However unsatisfactory to the tidy-minded, Britain’s uncodified arrange- ments largely worked – until Brexit, the mo- ment when, as Lloyd argues, the long-silent English nation made itself heard. We did not realise that our multinational democ- racy was so fragile, that its continued suc- cess required pan-British competitiveness between parties, and the absence of stark democratic differences between Scotland and England. But that, alas, came all too vividly into focus the morning after the Brexit referendum. Worse still, first Brexit and now Covid-19 have sucked the wind out of constitutional reform initiatives. Moreover, as both La- bour and the Conservatives have become largely English-based parties, so their focus has narrowed. Does a Conservative Party strongly inflected with English national- ism really have the will, or self-interest, to unpick the UK’s lopsidedly Anglocentric constitution, especially in the wake of coro- navirus, when even Brexit finds itself rel- egated to the pending tray? Under Theresa May and so far under Boris Johnson, the Tory withdrawal from the EU has blithely ignored the fundamental prin- ciples of the 1997-98 devolution settlement: that whatever was not specifically reserved to Westminster under the 1998 Scotland Act falls within the remit of the Scottish parliament. Wavering unionists are under the impression – misleading or not – that Counterfactual the sovereign Scottish nation that voted on 18 September 2014 to remain in partnership with the rest of the UK has subsequently Clintons been, as nationalists believe, “dissed” and arguably demoted to the humbling condi- What if Hillary and Bill had never married? tion of England’s vassal state. Lloyd is right to be worried about the By Johanna Thomas-Corr polarising character of any future referen- Rodham: A Novel dum. Would a 50 per cent +1 decision give Curtis Sittenfeld an independent Scottish government the legitimacy to tackle the crisis in the public Doubleday, 432pp, £16.99 finances with which it would immediately be faced? Moreover, how does a binary ref- erendum even begin to capture the ambi- n the eve of the 2016 US presidential combative female journalist at the time of guities of the typical Middle Scottish voter: election, the American author Cur- the Democratic convention. It was a deli- pro-UK, pro-EU and shown nothing but Otis Sittenfeld published a short story cious, audacious, near real-time exercise in disrespect by Westminster since 2016, yet called “The Nominee”, which inhabited biographical fiction, teasing at the discrep- whose public services are cushioned by cen- the mind of a former first lady now run- ancy between Clinton’s public, pantsuit- tral government at an extra £1,900 a head ning for president herself. “It’s strange how wearing persona and her real feelings. At a per year above English levels? l much I feel and cannot say,” Hillary Rod- time when the whole world was looking at Colin Kidd is professor of history at the ham Clinton – for it is she – confides to the Hillary Clinton, here we were looking at the

University of St Andrews reader as she submits to an interview by a world with her. MCNAMEE/CORBIS/CORBIS VIA GETTYWALLY IMAGES

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By then, Sittenfeld – now 44 and the au- sound plausibly earnest – but plausibly dull. Thomas of sexual harassment. Meanwhile, thor of six novels plus the excellent short When Hillary meets Bill, the troubling Bill runs for the 1992 presidential race but story collection, You Think It, I’ll Say It idea that this is essentially fan-fiction be- drops out over similar allegations. In this (2018) – had already established a reputation gan to enter my mind, Sittenfeld the ulti- version, his marriage to a simpering wom- as a writer prepared to do a little psychologi- mate Hillary stan. The pair flirt by reading an, rather than hard-headed, legally trained cal breaking-and-entering in service of her out their CVs to one another. The attention “equal”, is what radically changes the align- fiction. Back in 2008, she published Ameri- of the swaggering, sax-playing Southerner ment of presidential history. Bill couldn’t can Wife, a thinly veiled “fiction” memoir unnerves the earnest Midwesterner. “It have done it without Hillary. about the former first lady, Laura Bush. In doesn’t make sense that someone like you Sittenfeld gives us a compelling account Sittenfeld’s version, her heroine is a book- wants to be the boyfriend of someone like of the career Hillary might have had, com- smart woman who secretly disagrees with me,” she tells him. plete with all the sexism and media chi- her husband’s policies but whose guilt- The story becomes more involving once canery she would have confronted on her ridden early years help explain why she Hillary and “handsome lion” Bill start to path to the Oval Office. Among the real-life silently stood by him through his disastrous sleep with each other, though the fan-fic at- characters she encounters is Carol Moseley handling of the Iraq War. mosphere still looms large in the lavish de- Braun, the first woman of colour to be elect- The novel, unfashionably sympathetic, scriptions of her “intolerable ecstasy”. There ed to the Senate. In this version, Hillary became a surprise bestseller. But Hillary are scenes of naked sax as he serenades her doesn’t believe Moseley Braun is organised Clinton was always a more obvious choice with marching songs. Sometimes the histri- enough to seal a victory and runs against for the Democrat-voting author. Sittenfeld onics just about work: “Falling in love was her, prompting some chewy reflections on has now returned to the defeated candidate. shocking, shocking, utterly shocking.” But racial equality. Again, she awards herself an all-access pass I suspect that Sittenfeld simply felt duty- It isn’t her only dirty decision (there’s an- to Hillary’s mind – beginning when she’s a bound to go there – “he blew on the mouth- other crucial one involving Donald Trump). student – but while events in “The Nomi- piece and held his fingers over the buttons” But Sittenfeld comes out squarely in de- nee” could conceivably have happened, in – in order to add the sex scenes that all the fence of her heroine as she weighs up the the novel we are in a historical subjunctive, memoirs and biographies missed out. human longings and moral reckonings that where after dating for four years, Hillary More interesting are the early intimations lead to such political compromises. “Some- never married Bill Clinton. We can’t take of Bill’s “simultaneity of appetites”. When times I think I’ve made so few mistakes that anything from 1974 onwards for granted. the pair meet late at night in a diner, he dips the public can remember all of them,” says “The present is the frailest of improbable French fries into her ice cream and, at the Hillary, “in contrast to certain male politi- constructs. It could have been very differ- offer to retreat to her room, orders more cians whose multitude of gaffes and trans- ent,” as Ian McEwan wrote in his own re- cent counterfactual novel, Machines Like Me. Sittenfeld’s protagonist echoes that Their relationship is fuelled by when she says: “really, it could have gone either way”. fierce intellectual connection but his The overall effect is very different from “The Nominee”. The short story was closer libido soon becomes a problem to a highly imaginative form of journalism than fiction. The question that kept you reading was: does this feel like Hillary? Re- food: “Wasn’t this moment about sexual gressions gets jumbled in the collective im- ality provided the context. After the first tension rather than eating? But Bill, appar- agination, either negated by one another or third of Rodham, the context is fictional. Al- ently, could be hungry for multiple things at forgotten in the onslaught.” While Hillary most everything rests on how far you buy once.” Their relationship is clearly fuelled by still faces a hostile media, Sittenfeld sug- into Sittenfeld’s wayward, rather wistful fierce intellectual connection but his libido gests that without the added baggage of Bill, vision of the past 40 years. The questions soon becomes a problem, despite Hillary’s she is able to nimbly dodge any lingering that keep you reading are hypotheticals: pragmatic attempts to develop a plan to deal scandal. Hillary could do it without Bill. will this Bill and Hillary eventually wind with it (“strategising made me feel as close There is much to admire in Sittenfeld’s up together? Will they make it to the White to him as sex”). She dutifully follows him writing. Her ear is attuned to inconvenient House – and, if so, in what order? But an- to Arkansas – he sees the governorship as truths and double standards, particularly other question nags at the enterprise. Is this a springboard to the presidency – but here misogyny in America. She specialises in anything more than liberal wish-fulfilment Sittenfeld starts playing loosey-goosey awkward encounters and surprise shifts in – a chance to right not only the cosmic with the facts. Clinton’s philandering ulti- power, and these elements feed into Hillary wrong of the 2016 election but everything mately sends Rodham her own way. and Bill’s story, both true and alternate. Her leading up to it? We now skip forward to the early 1990s, characters are usually more slippery than Rodham opens with an arresting pro- where Hillary, an unmarried law professor they initially seem but secretly yearn to be logue, in which diligent young Hillary de- at Northwestern, Chicago, is being courted unravelled, as we see in one memorably ex- livers the first-ever student commencement by the Democrats to run for Senate. She’s a cruciating scene with the pair in their 50s. speech at Wellesley College in 1969, a “brac- cautious, quick-witted professional, com- But it’s hard to see how Rodham frames ing”, “idealistic” manifesto of “constructive mitted to public service – her only sin is the events or issues in any new way – or protest” for a generation swept up in civil to be caught up in a fraught but touching- wouldn’t have been more truthful reframed rights and anti-Vietnam War struggles. But ly chaste affair with a married colleague. as fiction. It glimmers with relevance but the next 30 or so pages are stiff and flatfoot- Scenes of sexual tension unfold as they doesn’t ever justify its need to be written. l ed, cluttered with unnecessary detail about watch the Senate hearings in which Anita “Rodham” is published in e-book and audio, potluck dinners and legal aid work that Hill accused Supreme Court judge Clarence and available to pre-order in hardback

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2020+21 046 Books lead Colin Kidd + JTC.indd 49 19/05/2020 15:18:38 THE CRITICS | BOOKS

been exonerated after multiple investiga- tions into whether he molested his adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, when she was seven. Now 34, she stands by those accusa- tions, which were first made after Allen’s former partner Mia Farrow discovered he had been sleeping with her 21-year-old adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn. (Allen and Previn, to whom the book is dedicated, remain together: they married in 1997 and have two adopted daughters.) The cowardice of a powerful publisher, however, is altogether more egregious. Ste- phen King was among those who expressed alarm earlier this year when the publica- tion was called off. “The Hachette decision to drop the Woody Allen book makes me very uneasy,” he tweeted. “It’s not him; I don’t give a damn about Mr Allen. It’s who gets muzzled next that worries me.” Thank goodness, then, for Arcade Publishing, an American imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, which has put out into the world what is, in many respects, a lively and invaluable book – easily the best thing Allen has produced in at least 20 years – and, in others, a show- case for dismaying lapses of tact, taste and judgement that will sway anyone still on the fence about loathing Allen. The book’s first half is a blast, piling on the sort of glittering social and cultural de- tail familiar from Allen’s films Annie Hall and Radio Days, along with a wealth of vivid imagery. Allen describes his “weak, wan and degenerate-looking” uncle deliv- ering newspapers around Brooklyn until he “dissolved like a pale wafer”. His parents “disagreed on every single issue except Hit- ler and my report cards” while his mother always “made sure there was fresh cheese Coffin half-full in the traps”. His account of childhood cinema-going is steeped in ripeness and colour, with discontentment setting in only kind of guy once he discovers that Fred Astaire movies “were not documentaries”. Mortality pre- Woody Allen’s memoir, salvaged from the sents its own problems. “I had never agreed “#MeToo zealots”, is as witty as it is problematic to be finite,” he complains, describing him- self as a “coffin half-full” kind of guy. By Ryan Gilbey Chronology is largely respected, though the hope (on page 193) that his very public Apropos of Nothing: Autobiography scandals are “not the reason you bought this By Woody Allen book” would be more convincing had he Arcade Publishing, 400pp, £24.20 not gone in for so much appetite-whetting up to that point. He refers to “that whole oody Allen is a lowlife. A misan- his autobiography Apropos of Nothing. mishigas” as early as page 19, alludes to “the thropic imbecile, a second-rater, With self-esteem like that, who needs the Appropriate Police” 11 pages later, wonders Wa runt and a louse. An immature, critics, the public and what he calls the on page 62 whether a statue in his likeness maladjusted wreck, a fatuous dunce, an “#MeToo zealots”? has been “pulled down by irate citizens ignoramus, a schnook and a klutz. In a di- Or, for that matter, a lily-livered publish- with a rope like Saddam Hussein’s” and recting career spanning more than half a ing house. Employees of Hachette staged recalls thinking, when he made headlines century, he happens also never to have a walkout in protest over the acquisition in 1965 for a supposed bad-taste routine at made a great film. The source of this in- of Apropos of Nothing by the company’s Lyndon Johnson’s inauguration gala, that he vective is Allen himself, and it is in gener- Grand Central Publishing imprint: it was would “never again in my lifetime be on the

ous supply across the 400-odd pages of an attempt to censor an author who has front page of newspapers. I got that wrong.” MCAMISRYAN

50 | NEW STATESMAN | 22-28 MAY 2020

2020+21 050 Ryan Gilbey.indd 50 19/05/2020 14:52:44 THE CRITICS | BOOKS

Already prodigiously talented, and earn- actors turn him down flat: “Not working women who played them. Helena Bon- ing as an 18-year-old gag-writer triple the with me had become the thing to do – like ham Carter, we discover, is “wonderful combined wages of his parents, he blossoms everyone suddenly being into kale.” Some and beautiful”, Sharon Stone “very beauti- in Los Angeles while working under Danny of his former cast members atone for their ful”, Emma Stone “beautiful in an inter- Simon (Neil’s brother) at NBC in the 1950s. sins, among them Timothée Chalamet, esting way”. Léa Seydoux is “a ten plus”, The blissfulness of this era is equalled the young star of A Rainy Day in New York while Naomi Watts is “very beautiful” only by Allen’s relationship, around 15 years (streaming in the UK in June but still unre- with “the sexiest two upper front teeth in and two marriages later, with Diane Keaton. leased in the US), who allegedly tells Allen’s show business”, and Scarlett Johansson is Contrary to the general assumption, their sister Letty Aronson that publicly disavow- “sexually… radioactive”. Rachel McAdams romance is over before they are first seen ing the beleaguered director might help his “looks like a million bucks from every an- together on-screen (in Herbert Ross’s 1972 chance of winning a Best Actor Oscar for gle”, which puts her some distance behind film of Allen’s stage comedy Play It Again, Call Me By Your Name. (It didn’t.) Hillary Farrow, who resembles “a zillion dollars” Sam) and thereafter he counts her as one of Clinton refuses a campaign donation from when Allen first meets her in the early his most loyal friends. He writes with in- Allen and Previn, which leads the author 1980s; whether these figures have been fectious joy and vitality about this “female to wonder whether their offer of $5,400 adjusted for inflation we aren’t told. Mira Huckleberry Finn” who dresses “as if her would have tipped the election her way. Sorvino, who won an Oscar for playing a personal shopper was Buñuel” and loses her Allen can be convincingly poignant: porn star in Allen’s execrable 1995 com- job at a cinema concessions counter for eat- when he writes of the red and yellow au- edy Mighty Aphrodite, “couldn’t appreciate ing all the candy. That lip-smacking comic tumn leaves “dying but not going quietly”, how gifted and attractive she was”. A more detail reveals its unhappy flipside decades he is addressing more than just a change of empathetic writer might have wondered later when Allen reads in her memoir of the season. He is also very funny on his ma- in retrospect whether those feelings of in- bulimia she concealed from him. ligned Kafkaesque comedy Shadows and feriority were related to being harassed by It’s only to be expected that the book Fog (“Marketing tests showed it did not ap- Harvey Weinstein during this period. A should get bogged down in defensiveness peal to homo sapiens”) and his relationship gallant one would have avoided passing and explanatory justifications once it reach- with his wife (who considers him “some comment altogether. es his cataclysmic break-up from Farrow. kind of savant – I forget the full term”). The worst is reserved for Barbara Her- No wonder he quotes at length Previn’s al- Some jokes fail outright. When he specu- shey, who is “delicious to behold and gave legations of the physical and psychological lates that Cary Grant’s request for him to au- new meaning to the word eros”. Michael abuse meted out by her adoptive mother, tograph several books may have been moti- Caine, who took the role of Hershey’s lover or clings to similar testimony by Allen and Farrow’s adopted son Moses as though it were the Ten Commandments. What has Actors turn him down: “Not working been lost in much of the agitated discourse on this subject is that Dylan isn’t the only with me had become the thing to do – family member who claims to have been abused. Many opponents of Allen who have like everyone suddenly being into kale” been quick to believe that he is a paedophile have simultaneously turned a deaf ear to the accounts by Moses and Previn of Farrow’s vated by a desire to sell them on eBay, even and brother-in-law in Hannah and Her Sis- cruel and intolerable abuse. Can’t all three of dozy readers might consider this unlikely ters when Jack Nicholson dropped out, told them be telling the truth? given that Grant died in 1986, nine years Allen he felt that “if you just go up to her The one unambiguous fact here is that before that website existed. Other slip-ups and touch her, she would have an orgasm”. the Allen/Farrow domestic set-up was a are indefensible and self-sabotaging. He re- Did either man share this salacious conjec- crucible for suffering and dysfunction from fers to “poor Louis CK” and that stand-up ture with Hershey herself? We aren’t told. which no one has emerged unscathed. Ap- performer’s “harassment problems” – an Either way, she can read about it now along ropos of Nothing would have been a tougher unusual turn of phrase to describe a multi- with the rest of the world. Lucky her. book to write but a more rewarding one to millionaire comedy superstar who mastur- Admirers of Allen will be accustomed to read had Allen accepted his own part in this bated in front of budding female comics taking the rough (the past two decades of ugliness, rather than merely itemising the against their wishes. That pales alongside his films, say) with the smooth (most of the injustices, disproving specific allegations a mistaken-identity anecdote revolving work that precedes them), and any book that and scattering barbed one-liners on Farrow around a recent dinner invitation from didn’t contain its share of maddening flaws, ground (“I check to make sure Mia casts a Roman Polanski. oversights and insensitivity would scarcely reflection in the mirror”). Elsewhere it is Allen’s prose rather than be representative of him. The surprise is What he calls “the gale force of the sec- his circle of friends that lets him down. that he remains such a winning comic writ- ond wave of the hideous false molestation A phrase like “some leggy tootsie” is clear- er and chronicler, showing himself even in accusation” arrives in 2017 when, in a twist ly a stab at the Runyonesque, while the the closing pages to be the same sorrowful few screenwriters would have dared at- “stacked miracles” at the Playboy Mansion wit (“I’m 84, my life is almost half over”) tempt or anticipate, it is his own estranged and the “adorable birds in their miniskirts” and bruised romantic (on the high price he biological son Ronan Farrow who breaks on Carnaby Street in the 1960s constitute paid to be with Previn: “All worth it”) as he the Harvey Weinstein story, boosting the an attempt, however clumsy, to evoke an ever was, and no less inclined to love-bomb #MeToo movement and reviving the alle- era linguistically. life’s miseries with bathos. “Like Bertrand gations against Allen. For the first time, this But it is disappointing that a man who Russell, I feel a great sadness for the human has a calculable impact on his film-making. boasts of the juicy female roles he has writ- race,” he laments. “Unlike Bertrand Rus- Amazon reneges on its deal with him and ten can be so complacent describing the sell, I can’t do long division.” l

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2020+21 050 Ryan Gilbey.indd 51 19/05/2020 14:52:44 THE CRITICS | THE GREATS OUTDOORS Off to dreamland How Nicolaes Berchem offered his canal-side patrons vistas of a golden Arcadia By Michael Prodger

ohn Constable was not known for his At his best, Berchem deserves better. His to tie in with his change of direction. Arnold sharp tongue, but in 1836, in preparation mellow visions of Arcadia offered an alter- Houbraken, the Dutch Vasari who between Jfor a series of lectures he was to give on native to the austere and approved classical 1718 and 1721 published a collection of art- painting to the Royal Institution, he pro- landscapes of Nicolas Poussin and Claude ists’ lives called The Great Theatre of Dutch posed to do mortal harm to two fellow art- Lorrain, with their intellectually respect- Painters, said that Berchem took his name ists. In a note to a friend he announced his able myths and allegories. As exemplified from “berg hem” – “save him”. He needed intention “to murder Both and Berghem on by Peasants by a Ruined Aqueduct, painted saving once, when his fellow apprentices Thursday next at a quarter to four o’clock”. between 1655 and 1660, and now in the had to hide him from his irate father who What sparked his ire? National Gallery, Berchem’s pastorals rep- had chased him into the workshop to give Jan Both and Nicolaes Berchem were resented a form of innocent escapism and him a beating, and later when the young two lauded Dutch landscapists of the mid- they are in many ways utterly inconsequen- painter changed his mind at the last mo- 17th century whose work had found favour tial – except in their beauty. They are untrue ment about going to sea. In fact, Berchem is in aristocratic and royal collections across to nature, show neither reality nor allu- the name of his father’s home town. Europe, while Constable himself was an sions, they contain no narrative or tension, Berchem did not fully abandon the high- admirer, indeed a spiritual student, of the but nevertheless, these roseate views, full er artistic genres, and biblical scenes and Dutch school. Their crime, as he saw it, was of the poetry of tumbled buildings, warm mythologies appear throughout his career – that they were not Dutch enough. Rather scented air and silence, have a hinterland. as well as scenes of cavalrymen when they than stick to the naturalistic portrayal of It was long thought that Berchem’s Ital- enjoyed a brief vogue. It was, though, the the Netherlands’ waterways, woods, wind- ianate landscapes were the result of a visit Italianate landscapes that made his fortune. mills and meadows, Both and Berchem he made across the Alps in the early 1650s. He followed the patronage from Haarlem were among the artists who had turned However, no documentary evidence ex- to Amsterdam and back again, becoming a Italianate. They had swapped grey northern ists for such a journey and nor are there member of the Reformed Church along the skies for the golden light of the south and any topographical sketches to be found. It way and amassing enough money to be able exchanged the burghers of the Low Coun- seems rather that he invented Italy in his to buy a garden with an orchard and a “new tries for the rustics of an antique land. mind and painted that invention. Other and pleasant summerhouse” in a well-to- Constable’s faux-homicidal displeasure Dutch artists had made the trip, from Ro- do part of Haarlem in the 1650s. He also was a sign of changing tastes. In the 17th gier van der Weyden in the 15th century developed a thriving print career and could century Berchem (1620-83) was a painter to and Pieter Bruegel in the 16th to Pieter van make 100 guilders from an edition of a sin- be reckoned with. His limpid idylls fetched Laer, Berchem’s older contemporary. In- gle etching at a time when a master carpen- double the price of the earthier pictures of deed, so many Dutch painters gathered ter earned 200 guilders annually. his teacher Jan van Goyen and by the end of in Rome in the early 1600s that they were Regardless of the business side, Berchem’s the century they changed hands for three known as the Bentvueghels, birds of a feath- artistry is of a high order. He may have times as much. His paintings, of which he er. Berchem knew their work, in part be- painted innumerable variations of those made more than 800, were luxury products cause his father-in-law was a picture dealer, picturesque stock peasant figures, cows for the upper classes rather than for the as- and was heavily influenced by it. and hills, but he combined them poetically piring middle class that drove the art boom Not that Berchem lost himself in his Elysi- to give an echo of the happy countryman, of the Dutch Golden Age. By Constable’s um. He understood what the market wanted beatus ille, of Horace and the shepherds of time, however, they were beginning to be and he set out to provide it. His first teacher Virgil’s Eclogues. If he offered his canal-side seen as confected gewgaws when compared was his father, Pieter Claesz, and the young patrons the prospect of travel through time to the more authentic work of Rembrandt, artist initially wanted to paint history and and space to an Italian dreamland, then he Jacob van Ruisdael and Van Goyen. biblical scenes. His change of surname seems made sure they went first class. l

52 | NEW STATESMAN | 22-28 MAY 2020

2020+21 052 Michael's landscape.indd 52 19/05/2020 15:38:04 THE CRITICS BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

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2020+21 052 Michael's landscape.indd 53 19/05/2020 15:38:22 THE CRITICS

to Douglas Sirk’s 1955 melodrama All That Heaven Allows, released the previous year. This seems a little unfair given what direc- tor Peyton Reed (Bring It On) and writers Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake were going for. The film is glossy, goofy and lightweight by design; worlds away from Haynes’s care- fully wrought prestige drama. The premise of Barbara’s book suggests women substi- tute chocolate for sex; this is a not a serious movie. In the window of Barbara’s gorgeous penthouse is a skyline that looks as though it’s been painted on cardboard. McGregor delivers a monologue about his 16in… socks. There is a bizarre end-credits musical number called “Here’s to Love” (suppos- edly McGregor’s idea; he’d recently starred in Moulin Rouge, and Zellweger in Chicago). Perhaps naysayers were confused by the extraordinary mid-century production design, assuming that serious attention to period detail meant serious imitation rather than playful tribute. Barbara’s enormous apartment in particular is dreamily trans- FILM portive, with its fire pit and spiral stair- case (immediately after watching, I found myself googling “Champagne coupes, The sweet relief set of six”). So are the clothes, especially a frilly satin overcoat in bright, Barbie pink of romcoms (Mattel launched the doll in 1959) that Zellweger wears draped dramatically In lockdown, I’m craving romantic comedies – around her shoulders. Mad Men was still four whole years away. and 2003’s Down With Love is a pure sugar high An animated opening credits sequence Simran Hans is soundtracked by a Michael Bublé cover of a Judy Garland song; watching it 17 years after its release, the film is a bizarre, fascinat- he only movies I’m interested in The flirting, scheming and Sixties setting ing look at the Sixties filtered through early watching right now are romantic are lifted from the trio of beloved “bedroom Noughties nostalgia. And 2003 was a boom Tcomedies. I’m low-energy and crav- comedies” made famous by Doris Day year for the romcom, with genre staples ing something sweet, so I’ve been bingeing and Rock Hudson; the film is part hom- How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Something’s on the kind of films I loved as a teenager. I age to, part parody of films like Pillow Talk Gotta Give and Love Actually released rewatched Bend It Like Beckham (it’s about (1959), Lover Come Back (1961) and Send alongside a glut of wannabes (What A Girl New Labour) and Burlesque (it’s about the Me No Flowers (1964). With their double Wants, Intolerable Cruelty, Just Married, The recession), pondered the fall of Richard entendre-heavy dialogue and teasing split- Fighting Temptations and the universally Curtis, witnessed Diane Lane Eat Pray Love screens (Pillow Talk showed Day and Hud- panned Gigli, a vehicle for the then engaged her way across France (Paris Can Wait) and son taking a bath “together” in their sepa- Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck). Italy (Under the Tuscan Sun) in linen trou- rate houses), those films were suggestive A number of reviews wasted their word sers. But I was unprepared for the pure sug- about the appetites of their characters, ac- counts on scrutinising Zellweger’s ath- ar high I would experience after watching knowledging the sexual revolution without letic figure, not considering the ingenuity 2003’s Down With Love. It left me so giddy I fully embracing it. Like most conventional of her casting as a relatable good girl in the watched it twice. romantic comedies, bedroom comedies mould of Doris Day. In both Pillow Talk and The year is 1962 and Barbara Novak (Renée tended to end in marriage. Lover Come Back, Day played an unmar- Zellweger) is in New York City to promote Upon its original release, Down With ried career woman; Zellweger had recently her new book Down With Love, a girl’s guide Love was dismissed as cheap pastiche, with starred as the avatar for city-dwelling sin- to sex without marriage. Magazine journal- the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw arguing gle women in 2001’s Bridget Jones’s Diary. ist and “ladies’ man, man’s man, man about that it updated the original by “adding yet “I said women should refrain from love, not town” Catcher Block (Ewan McGregor) is more archness and irony, while subtract- sex,” says Zellweger’s Barbara, advocating determined to prove Barbara’s thesis wrong ing any innocence or unassuming charm for erotic fulfilment “a la carte” and walk- – and so he invents a plan to make her fall that might conceivably have made you feel ing with a wiggle. It feels like something in love with him, donning a pair of glasses affectionate about it in the first place”. Mul- Bridget might say. l and a Texan accent and disguising himself as tiple critics compared it unfavourably with “Down With Love” is available to stream in a gentlemanly astronaut named Zip Martin. Far From Heaven, Todd Haynes’s love letter the UK on Amazon Prime Video

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2020+21 054 Film, TV + radio.indd 54 19/05/2020 14:50:44 THE CRITICS

TELEVISION RADIO Nerds The making on tour of a legend Rachel Cooke Antonia Quirke

Monkman & Seagull’s Genius Adventures Little Richard: A Whop Bop A Lua – A Whop Bam Boom BBC Two BBC Radio 2 Somewhere in south London, Eric Monk- man and Bobby Seagull are sitting in a Oh, the mad mystery of rock ’n’ roll. Half sky-blue pedalo on a greenish municipal the fun of listening at the crack of dawn pond, gazing at an inflatable globe. Together, to this hilarious, uplifting documentary they’re trying to work out the longitude of (16 May, 4am) was hearing people trying to an imaginary island to which they have just Adventurers: Eric Monkman and Bobby Seagull work out how on earth a human being like travelled (yes, in their pedalo!) and, to be the late Little Richard came to be – sifting frank, it’s all a bit baffling. As anyone with though obviously they’re somewhat less for clues through his youth and influences. eyes can see, they’re in a suburban English funny. Their manners, like their clothes, Singing as an exhibitionist child to his park, not the north Atlantic. (“Westward, are quaint, which makes them seem older preacher father in 1930s Georgia, he imitat- ho!” shouts Seagull, pointing in the direc- than they are (both are in their thirties). ed the women in the choir to perfect his sig- tion of… where, exactly? I’m going for Nun- But they’re weirdly juvenile, too. “Which nature yelp. Having joined a travelling circus head, or perhaps East Dulwich.) But it’s also would you rather fight?” Seagull asked as a teenager, he met the female impersona- rather touching in its way. The only other Monkman, as they drove their blue Mini tor Billy Wright – all make-up and choreog- presenter I can think of who would not be down a country lane. “One hundred duck- raphy. He forced his own band to wear false utterly embarrassed by such a charade is sized horses, or one horse-sized duck?” eyelashes and to think of themselves as cho- Lucy Worsley, though she would doubtless Monkman took the question very seriously, rus girls. (“They hated it.”) This was Little have disguised herself as Emma, Lady Ham- not even allowing himself to be distracted Richard: ambitious, confident, staggeringly ilton, before boarding her stately vessel. by the Haribo in the glove compartment. camp. (“Sing like Ray Charles? I refused.”) Actually, Monkman and Seagull do “One horse-sized duck,” he said finally, In interviews, he is unstoppably amus- indulge in a spot of dressing up in this series after a period spent gazing at the horizon. ing. (“My idol was Moses!”) Clips of him in (18 May, 9pm), a travelogue inspired by the Their route comprises a kind of greatest original recording sessions defy aural logic. geniuses of the Industrial Revolution (they hits of British science and engineering: in “You seem to be straining,” complains were in London to visit the Royal Observa- Cromford, Derbyshire, they visited Richard the studio manager for “Good Golly Miss tory, Greenwich, home of John Harrison’s Arkwright’s cotton mill, the first to have its Molly”. Little Richard coughs, affronted. marine chronometer of 1759, the first time- shuttles powered by water; in Birmingham’s Then gives forth a howl: rococo energy in- keeper to allow a navigator accurately to Thinktank museum, they saw a James Watt carnate. You feel it in the back of your teeth. assess a ship’s longitude). In part one, they steam engine, later performing a bizarre I used to think of Sam Cooke live at the donned frilly shirts and false moustaches to interpretive dance to demonstrate its revo- Harlem Square Club as the benchmark for impersonate Nevil Maskelyne, the astrono- lutionary mechanism – quite how the nice audiences wild with excitement (listen to mer who was the first person to measure Brummie blokes watching on didn’t col- it on YouTube), but one session band mem- the Earth’s mass, and Joseph Priestley, the lapse into laughter, I’ll never know. It was as ber turns up here and declares gigging with chemist who discovered oxygen (or, as he if Raymond Baxter and Michael Rodd (kids, Cooke “boring”. Definitively, it was Little called it, “dephlogisticated air”). Mostly, these two were the redoubtable presenters Richard who’d inspired a whole new level though, they’re in mufti, which in their case of Tomorrow’s World back in the day) had of chaos and glee and shock. means a shirt and tie, items they wore even suddenly joined Pan’s People (kids, this was Or was it? The baffling history of music! when overnighting in a mountain bothy. a campy troupe of… oh, never mind). Those early encounters with people such Did Monkman, in fact, sleep in his tie, up on The show’s budget appears to be on the as Wright seem, to me, key. How close so that Scottish hillside? Who knows. But the tight side. Pitching up in Oxford for a ride in much great rock (and early film) is to vaude- sight of him trying to squeeze his sleeping a hot air balloon – it was from Christ Church ville and music hall. Chuck a brick out of the bag back into its sheath the following morn- Meadow in 1784 that pastry chef James Sad- window in the US in the 1930s and you’d ing was really something: he was St George, ler successfully flew up and away – our he- hit some original and strange entertainer and it the (lightweight, polyester) dragon. roes were told it was too windy for safe fly- who’d been touring since 1890 in perfume Wrestle the beast to the ground, Eric, and ing; the coffers apparently not allowing for and greasepaint. Bob Dylan is always going watch your glasses while you’re at it! an overnight stay, it seemed they could not on about Gorgeous George, the “Human Monkman, who is from Ontario, and come back another time. Disappointment Orchid” wrestler. Every time Little Rich- Seagull, who’s from Newham, met when flickered across their faces. But then they ard opens his mouth, as much as a whole they each captained teams on University clambered into its basket anyway. If you can complex hinterland of gospel music you Challenge in 2017. Since then, alongside sail the high seas in a fibreglass pedalo, you hear that particular American echo – of buf- academic careers, they’ve parlayed their can float high above the Cotswolds without falo tamers and sawdust under the trapeze. famously cheery nerdishness into a nice leaving the ground. Vroom! I thought of Of clowns being carted off across the Great little line in radio and TV. As a double act, two small boys in a driveway, happily pre- Plains to the barely controlled mayhem of they bring to mind Morecambe and Wise, tending to drive a parent’s stationary car. l the unsuspecting crowd… l

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20-18_ads.indd 2 28/04/2020 15:52:44 FOOD | DRINK | NATURE | CROSSWORD | COLUMNS Back Pages

with charcoal-grilled kohlrabi; an Assyrtiko from Crete was more austere than its lees- enriched Santorini cousin: the former suited marinated sardines, while the latter was better with smoked aubergine. Mavrodaphne by Rouvalis in the Peloponnese was savoury, almost salty, while my beloved Xinomavro crossed (by Chatzivariti) with Negkoska, which I’d never heard of, made a great pairing for octopus. Writing this, from lockdown in rural Burgundy, whispering those poetic, unpronounceable names, makes me want to weep. There probably isn’t a bottle of Greek wine for sale between here and Paris, but what is really inducing my tears are the freedoms that now seem as tragically inaccessible as Atlantis. Sharing an unusual Nina Caplan dinner, cooked by someone else; choosing from an exciting Drink wine list; or even jumping in the car and driving down through Italy to Greece itself. Wistful memories of my last meal out in London – I’d stop in trattorie, buy wine to bring home. Why did I never at a Greek restaurant full of interesting Greek wine – do this, when I could, and will I ever have the chance again? are all that’s feeding my imagination in lockdown Atlantis, claimed the philosopher Plato, was a utopia that foundered when he news that Greece is born of gastronomically may need to for many more. the inhabitants became lifting its lockdown – a suspect nostalgia for the I have long loved corrupt, greedy and immoral. Treward for acting firmly resin-sealed amphorae of Xinomavro, a northern red Its destruction, by a volcano- and swiftly, resulting in just Classical Greece would be as variety with the elegance and induced tsunami, resembled 150 deaths and the prospect of unfair as presuming that all restrained power of Pinot Noir. the biblical flood, and I like some kind of summer tourist Greek women sing, or throw Also Assyrtiko, the white to think that what survived season – prompted wistful tantrums, like Maria Callas. grape of Santorini, where and propagated were not memories of my last meal out Ampéli welcomed me with thirsty centenarian roots reach animals but grape seeds. in London. Early in March, a “new age” Retsina, made deep into volcanic rock, and Vines, flourishing on ancient I visited Ampéli, a new Greek from the Savatiano grape by the grapes shelter within volcanic soil, are a reminder restaurant that popped up Mylonas (they describe it as clustered vines that resemble that every apocalypse trails on one of those cosy little “fruity and herbaceous”), grounded birds’ nests. possibility in its wake. At the Charlotte Street spaces that but I preferred the same Assyrtiko makes a pure, centre of any inferno is a cool, seem to change hands every winery’s naturally sweet stony wine as dramatic as its calm stream of good wine, five minutes – a fate this place Savatiano, a delicately acidic birthplace: a rocky crescent made with a dedication that will, I hope, avoid. peach-and-apricot dessert formed during an enormous can outlast disaster, flavoured Greece’s famous wine wine. But here I have leapt volcanic eruption that some say with hope, capable of is Retsina, flavoured with from starter to dessert, which sank the city of Atlantis. conveying us to different pine resin, but judging the seems foolish as this meal has Gerovassiliou in Macedonia places and better times. l country’s impressive roster had to feed my imagination makes a sensually perfumed Next week: Felicity Cloake

MERETHE SVARSTAD EEG / EYEEM by a drink that was probably for the past three months, and Malagousia that danced lightly on food

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knows that fortunes told in bang on time for his turn in the eastern European accents are police box. considerably more accurate But now, as I look at my than fortunes told in any of growing, greying locks in the the variants of native English mirror, the Time Lord I now speech. (Unless, of course, see is William Hartnell, the they are threats made by first Doctor. I have very dim Cockney gangsters. Those memories of him from the first always come true.) time round; no one, I thought, I’m still friends with her, as could possibly be older. He it happens: a couple of years was certainly the most decrepit ago I brought up her prediction person I had ever seen on a and she laughed, saying she television screen. Even my had no recollection of it. Well grandparents, I thought, Nicholas Lezard of course she didn’t, she wasn’t looked younger than him. the one being told she was off I did a little checking, and here Down and Out to an early grave. (Talking of is my discovery: when Hartnell graves, today I learned that took on the role, he was two the Church of St Thomas à years younger than I am now. I have, over the years, resembled Becket in Box, Wiltshire, has a I had to have a little lie-down each incarnation of Dr Who, and grave with a pyramid-shaped when I saw that, and whenever tombstone on it, designed so as I think I’ve got over it, I find I how I wish I could turn back time to prevent the deceased’s wife haven’t and have to have a lie- from dancing on it.) down all over again. But if I really wanted to be But at least, touch wood, punched in the solar plexus I am not lying down y the time you read this are now very much more in the by tempus fugit, I don’t think permanently. I have been I shall, God willing, lower half of the hourglass, and I’m going to do better than a displaying quite a few of the Bhave celebrated my that it if you are going to make recent discovery. As I might symptoms of Covid-19; the harumphty-somethingth anything of your life, you’d have mentioned long ago, worst being some explosive birthday, which this year better get on with it. sheer accident has contrived to diarrhoea, which I didn’t even falls on Rogation Sunday. My The traditional benchmark make me resemble, in certain realise was a symptom until violent friend Ben – you know, for achievement is the age at respects, each incarnation of our own excellent (real) doctor, the one who likes breaking which Jesus died (there seems the Doctor since Christopher Dr Phil Whitaker, told us so in his own bones if he can’t to be quite a bit of religion in Eccleston. In his day, I favoured this very magazine a couple of break anyone else’s – wants this week’s column; what’s a leather jacket a bit like his; weeks ago. I’ll probably never me to join him, his wife and all that about?). That age is when David Tennant slipped know for certain if I’ve had it or some of his football hooligan now invisible in the rear-view into his Converse trainers, not, but if I had then I suspect friends and their wives on the mirror. I used to say to myself, I was already in mine, the gift it would have carried me off beach for socially distanced “Hey, no rush, Samuel Beckett of a lover who wanted to dress by now. Anyway, three more margaritas, but he wants to didn’t achieve fame until he me; my children put me in a days to go, as I write, until start at eight o’clock in the was in his late forties,” but my fez and bow-tie when Matt my birthday. Now, if you will morning, which means my forties have come and gone, Smith came along; and I was a excuse me, I have some serious getting up at 7am. If he thinks, and I have precious little to grumpy Peter Capaldi lookalike rogating to prepare for. l I tell him, that I’m getting up show for them – although a at 7am for any other purpose friend did drop me a line the than having a pee before going other day saying she’d been This All that glitters back to bed again, then he must doing a clear-out and had A fashion trends feature be barmy. Besides, Rogation found an old copy of the school England suggested readers “channel Sunday is a time for prayer magazine with a poem in it by Princess Stardust and dress red- and contemplation; and, of me. It’s been downhill Each printed entry carpet ready”. The intended course, rogating. ever since, I suppose. receives a £5 book reference was to the My The prayer I will probably Meanwhile, I grow old. It token. Entries to Little Pony character Princess skip, on the grounds that I is much better than the other comp@newstatesman. Twilight Sparkle. really don’t think my word thing – ie, not growing old at co.uk or on a postcard Correction in the Guardian counts for much Up There, all because you’re dead – but to This England. (Kate Rimmer) but I am sure there will be a still… My great-uncle Julien This column – which, lot of contemplation. There died on the operating table though named after a Virtual bleatings isn’t an awful lot else to do, at the age of 56. Thirty years line in Shakespeare’s An educational farm made and harumphty-something is ago a beautiful woman in “Richard II”, refers to up for loss of revenue during widely recognised as the age Warsaw read my palm and the whole of Britain – the lockdown by hiring out when you can’t kid yourself said that I would not reach has run in the NS goats for Zoom conferences. any more, when you finally old age, and that really since 1934. Cronkshaw Fold Farm in realise that the sands of time spooked me, for everyone

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“strange”, “unprecedented”, to labour over the perfect ratio or even “apocalyptic” times of exclamation points or how is one classic. Other common to make common phrases like openings will enquire whether “no worries if not!” appear less someone is staying safe, sane banal. It’s a lethal combination or secure during this pandemic of boring and pressing, and (the twee among us may refer its capacity to trigger self- to Covid-19 as “the C-word”). loathing is astronomically Now everyone’s digital disproportionate to what the correspondence begins like job actually is: communicating that of a Victorian gentleman: basic information over trusting that their message approximately three sentences. finds the recipient, and their This is exacerbated by our family, in good health. It seems present reality – while we’re Sarah Manavis inevitable that Gmail will make stuck indoors, the minutiae it a suggested auto-response of our lives is amplified. Under the Influence within the coming weeks. When your whole existence The response required becomes restricted to your Coronavirus has changed every from the previous staple of home, running out of milk or “how was your weekend?” a meeting running over can mundane detail of our lives – looks mercifully easy feel like the worst thing that compared to today’s has ever happened to you. including email etiquette mandatory coronavirus small What were once irritating talk. Instead of simply saying but ultimately minor tasks our weekend was good or become a Sisyphean hellscape. that, yes, we are glad that It may feel like a fresh email hope this column finds you of our lives. Since mid-March, it’s finally Friday, we must is landing in your inbox every (genuinely!) well in these inboxes have been filled with detail every element of our moment, each one demanding Iincreasingly uncertain nearly identical messages – a living situations – where we an immediate response. times. I also hope that you whole new set of Covid-19 are, how we’re doing, who is Sometimes it’s easier to and your loved ones are clichés. Our message previews immunocompromised in our give in to the clichés than to keeping safe throughout this now look like one long list of household, and how we’re fight them – especially when unprecedented situation. It’s the same virus-referencing finding working from home. our collective brainpower an extraordinary period that phrases – all somehow Our outboxes have become under lockdown is trending we’re living through, isn’t it? managing to induce both Dickensian chronicles of the towards zero. I hope you are staying sane eyes-glazed-over boredom dullest facets of our lives. While the more creative despite the crazy reality we’re and deep anxiety. You might be wondering types may avoid leaning on living. How are you getting While there are more why these conventions have these crutches, shirking them food? Do you have masks? creative options in the been adopted so quickly. The comes with its own set of Is everyone in your home coronavirus email canon, likely answer is that emailing conundrums. If I try to devise a practising social distancing? there are also the greatest is, even at the best of times, a unique, pandemic-referencing When lockdown started, hits. Hoping that someone mundane task. Trying not to opener, will I look like a try- email etiquette quickly became is actually well – or as well sound trite has always been a hard? If I don’t mention it at yet another monotonous part as they can be! – in these challenge, causing many of us all, will I seem insensitive or uncaring? Will doing either reveal that I might be Rossendale, Lancashire, being caught stealing items gardening gloves and overthinking it? Perhaps in the charges £5 for ten minutes, from his neighbours’ homes marigolds, which he takes form of a column, printed in a Dot McCarthy, 30, its owner and gardens. home to embarrassed owner national magazine? said. Email requests from as But the pilfering puss only Vikki Maddocks.Over a Many people will always far afield as Australia, New has eyes for one prize: swiping 12-month crime spree, Elmo find writing emails painful. Zealand and Canada are arriving has stolen 14 pairs of gloves And now, with so little at the rate of ten per minute, and a peg bag from residents pleasure to be had day-to- she added. McCarthy’s goats living in Belper. day, having to do it may feel have been booked for church Derbyshire Times even worse. But while these services, a top UK company and (Daragh Brady) coronavirus tropes could be a virtual rave in Berlin. seen as a menace, adding to The Times (Amanda Welles) Late to learn the repetitive nature of our “Our cleaner is working from current lives, using them Cat’s out the bag home. We have Zoom calls wisely could also be an A Derbyshire moggy named and she tells us what to do.” opportunity – finally, a way Elmo has been unmasked as Quote in the Sunday Times to autopilot through a long- l ALEX BRENCHLEY a real-life cat burglar after (Terry Timblick) dreaded chore. Next week: Tracey Thorn

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“The Viking Bible”, it says at the top, in his laborious joined- up writing. “Hmm. Nice title,” I observe. “I know,” he says. “It’s going 12 to have eight chapters.” “Good number.” I still don’t weeks know how many chapters my book is going to have, and I’ve for just been working on it for two years. Planning has never been my strong suit. “What chapter are you on now?” £12! He leafs back through several Alice O’Keeffe pages. “Seven,” he says. Well and truly shamed, School’s Out I slink off to make myself a cup of tea. We parents like to think we know our kids, but the Nobody can write a book in truth is we don’t have a clue. these conditions. Except, it Moe has always had a chaotic physical energy; he has never seems, seven-year-old Moe particularly liked reading, let alone writing. At school he struggles to concentrate; his teachers always say he lacks t’s 2pm, and I’m lying on my session. What are they up confidence, and he’s needed bed, staring at the ceiling. to? Eating all the biscuits? A special help with maths. I’ve IThe wind is whistling decade of parenting has taught reassured myself that he’s just down the street outside; it’s me that silence is usually a bad not the kind of boy who likes Exclusive online articles and columns by not park weather, which I’m sign. I dutifully heave myself sitting at desks; he’s built for all our columnists... secretly pleased about, because into a vertical position and running around in the woods. it provides us with the perfect trudge to the doorway. But by the time I have excuse not to leave the house finished my cuppa, he has Stephen

Bush Helen all day. In the early stages of scribbled “THE END” at the Thompson lockdown, we were desperate Perhaps Moe bottom of the page and thrown to go outside; we crammed his pencil down on the table in Jeremy could make this Cliffe Tracey long bike rides, walks and runs the manner of a Wimbledon Thorn into our hour of daily exercise. family millions champ tossing his T-shirt to What were we thinking? It’s so the crowd. “We can send it off much nicer and less tiring just “Larry?” I call. “Moe?” this afternoon,” he announces. to stay at home. No answer. Definitely the I pick up the book and give + The most insightful As I gaze up at the familiar biscuits. I head downstairs it a skim. It’s a ripping tale of political writing patterns of cracks and bumps, to the kitchen, where I find two Vikings, who have long I congratulate myself on the seven-year-old Moe sitting blond hair, wear shades and + Exclusive newsletters fact that I am not wearing my at the table, hunched over a fight their enemies using bone and podcasts pyjamas. It’s important, I feel, notebook. He doesn’t seem to nunchucks. Sure, it’s a little + Access to the NS to get dressed in the morning, notice me come in. trippy and disjointed in places, App via smartphone even when you don’t, strictly “What are you doing?” but it definitely has more speaking, need to. The day “Writing my book,” he commercial potential than or tablet we don’t get dressed at all replies, without looking up. anything I have come up will be the day we know “It’s going to be published with. I mean seriously, could lockdown has finally beaten by Bloomsbury.” The Viking Bible be the next Order at www. us, and all standards have been This is a blow to the heart. Game of Thrones? Perhaps, newstatesman.com/ abandoned. But for now we are The deadline for my own book if I handle this writing craze subscribe12 firmly on top of things. was supposed to be the end of right, Moe could be the one or call 0808 284 9422 I even brushed my teeth this May, but I’ve been struggling to to make this family millions. (+44 20 7030 4927 morning. Or did I? summon up anything like the He could buy Husband and I from outside the UK) It dawns on me that the kids focus required, what with the our golden-years house in the *12 weeks for just £12. Offer haven’t made any noise for a global crisis raging around us. country; clear up the tricky valid for UK subscriptions only. long time. This is puzzling. Quite clearly, nobody can write business of our total lack of Conditions apply. See online for Especially as the iPad is on my a book under these conditions. pension planning. You heard it other options. bedside table, so I know they Except Moe, it seems. I peer here first: lockdown could be can’t be sneaking in a gaming at the page in front of him. where it all began… l

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THE NS CROSSWORD 495 BY ANORAK

Across Down 1 Talks succeeded. Tops! (6) 2 Private secretary admits Roger’s 5 I’m back in easily-managed awful educational advance (8) home (8) 3 Poor deal. Bad idea for 9 Odd songs about Lincoln Australian city (8) coming back for lunches for 4 It’s the gap between mouth and horses (8) plate that’s the trouble! (9) 10 Some metal forgings returned 5 Not sausage, David, stewed – recently (2,4) it’s bad for you (15) 11 Pastor arrived and delivered a 6 Children, I note, following sermon (8) workers (7) 12 Small and cosy, eventually (6 7 Instantly enveloped (2,1,5) or 2,4) 8 At this hour, even the Left 13 Takes away some French panicked! (8) pamphlets (8) 14 Article on the only books on 15 Harris? Lewis? Just a little! (4) channel (3,6) 17 The legend of the lisping 15 In slack times Rocker’s rival spinster (4) may be pushy (8) 19 Tennis star with a very small 16 Crumpled coat in burning amount of time (6,2) case (8) 20 Two alternatives about one- 17 The speed of fashion will time soapbox speaker (6) become less intense (8) 21 Travel, travel back and travels 18 Dismiss tutor who wronged around inside for fruit (8) (5,3) 22 US inventor lacking arrogance, 19 Concern for the watchman (7) on reflection (6) 23 Mechanic works by hill (8) 24 Range of summer temperatures during this decade (8) 25 Online comments of small bird? (6) Answers to crossword 494 of 15 May 2020 Across 1) Full-circle 6) Bias 10) Viceroy 11) Premium 12) Monetary policy 14) Rotated 15) Catalpa 16) Deficit 19) Tomfool 21) Corporation tax 23) Infanta 24) Entwine 25) Null 26) Closed shop Down 1) Five 2) Lockout 3) Current account 4) Reynard 5) Lip-sync 7) Initial l This week’s solutions will be published 8) Semi-yearly 9) Decontaminated 13) Production 17) Forkful 18) Travail 19) Triceps in the next issue of the NS 20) Obadiah 22) Temp

SUBSCRIBER OF THE WEEK THE NS WORD GAMES 185: RIA TO RIM BY ANORAK Peter Berry Each definition leads to a RIH Comic verse containing solution which includes the the name of a famous What do What would you like to trio of letters indicated, person you do? see more of in the NS? successively. RII Entrance to a Japanese Retired. I’m happy with the varied RIA Percussion instrument Shinto temple Where do content as it is. RIB Without force or vitality RIJ Location of the national you live? Who are your favourite RIC Simple crane with lifting art collection of the Leicestershire. NS writers? tackle slung from a boom Netherlands Do you vote? Nicholas Lezard, Jeremy RID Kitchen white good RIK My goodness! Yes – Labour. Been a Cliffe and John Gray. RIE Sequence RIL Tiny shrimp-like socialist all my life. Who would you put on RIF Bitter rivalry crustaceans eaten by How long have you the cover of the NS? RIG Warship, smaller than a whales been a subscriber? David Attenborough. destroyer RIM Bitterness, behaviourally Just over a year. With which political figure What made you start? would you least like to be That the NS was refreshing, stuck in a lift? open and honest in its Any member of the cabinet. reporting. All-time favourite NS article? Is the NS bug in the family? My latest is Erica Wagner’s No. Just me at the moment. interview with Grayson What pages do you Perry: a man to be admired for flick to first? his principles and kindness. Cover to cover, like a book. The New Statesman is… How do you read yours? Informative, both in breadth I make it last the week. and depth. l

NS Word Games answers crikey!, krill, acrimony krill, crikey!, Triangle, moribund, derrick, fridge, series, strife, frigate, clerihew, torii, Rijksmuseum, Rijksmuseum, torii, clerihew, frigate, strife, series, fridge, derrick, moribund, Triangle,

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chose “The novels of Ian McEwan” and came third. Only Sir Clive Sinclair did worse and he had chosen the rather more ambitious “British inventions since 1945”.

Which political figure do you look up to? John Smith. As smart as Blair and Brown but more unifying, hugely personable. He would have made a great prime minister.

What TV show could you not live without? I don’t feel that way about any current TV show but I would be a worse person if I had never seen The Young Ones.

Who would paint your portrait? I’d like to be the subject of a deeply unflattering nude by Lucian Freud, hung in the front room to titillate visiting relatives.

What’s your theme tune? Anything by Toto.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received? “Anyone in the creative industries who is going to achieve anything is probably out of bed by 10am.” This was at college from a friend who was in a band. I nodded grimly and contemplated the sacrifices ahead.

What’s currently bugging you? A few months ago I replaced cigarettes and alcohol with exercise and ice cream THE NS Q&A (net effect on weight: holding steady) and I don’t get to go out for either as often as I “I’d like to be the subject of a would like. What single thing would make your very unflattering nude by Freud” life better? An extremely large garden.

Robert Webb, comedian When were you happiest? Whenever I’ve had the feeling I’m in the right place doing the right thing. My first term at university would be an example. Robert Webb was born in Lincolnshire in What book last changed your thinking? 1972. One half of the double act Mitchell and The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction is In another life, what job might you Webb, he is best known for the sitcom “Peep Not a Disease by Marc Lewis, a cognitive have chosen? Show” and is a regular comedy panellist. neuroscientist and former addict. It’s a The problem with “another life” questions convincing explanation of addiction as a is that once you change one thing you’ve What’s your earliest memory? pattern-making mental process. changed everything. In another life I grew A washing line on a sunny day in Dolly up in different circumstances and would be Patchett’s garden. Dolly was a friend of my In which time and place, other than your a different person, maybe even one who is grandmother’s and used to look after me. I own, would you like to live? less precious about questions like these. feel sure my view of the drying clothes was I can’t say I’m keen to go back in time at all. from a pram. I’d have to take me with me, which would Are we all doomed? spoil it. I suppose Steventon in Hampshire On an individual level, yes – life is lent to Who are your heroes? in the 1790s so I could hang around trying us by nature so no matter how early, we As a child, Steve Austin, closely followed to become friends with Jane Austen. have to give it back. As a species, though? by Han Solo and Zorro. I’m not sure I have You’d have to ask an expert. l an adult hero but I could build a reasonable What would be your Mastermind case for saying my wife, Abigail Burdess, is specialist subject? Robert Webb’s debut novel, “Come Again”,

the best person I’ve ever met. As it happens, I went on the celeb version, is published by Canongate KRISTIAN HAMMERSTAD FOR NEW STATESMAN

62 | NEW STATESMAN | 22-28 MAY 2020

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