Well worth a read, many points I agree with from the Times)
The left will never really love this country
Philip Collins
Post a comment
Print
Share via
Facebook
Twitter
Google+
Published 1 minute ago
Jeremy Corbyn’s petulant refusal to sing the national anthem tells you all you need to know about his true sympathies
How strange that silence should reveal so much more about a man than anything he says. At the Battle of Britain commemoration in St Paul’s cathedral, Jeremy Corbyn stood in silence as the national anthem played. Without uttering a word, he showed that the left has a fond idea of authenticity but is not fond of Britain. Which is something of a problem for a man auditioning to be prime minister.
To observe Mr Corbyn is an encounter with my adolescent self. I remember bucking the system by ignoring the headmaster’s orders to do up the top button of my shirt. I once stood in silence while all the losers sang lustily a song that celebrates monarchy rather than the nation. When I was ignorant of all history, I snottily declared that poppies simply celebrated war rather than peace. As a fledgeling radical, I declared loftily that, when the Queen inducted me into the privy council, I would not bend my knee.
A small part of me that is for ever radical still believes some of this. I am much closer to Mr Corbyn on these issues than most people. But since I first had these thoughts I have gone through a process I recommend. It is called growing up. It involves understanding that the etiquette of a public occasion demands respect and good manners. Mr Corbyn is absolutely at liberty, of course, not to sing the national anthem. Everyone else is at an equal liberty to draw their own conclusions.
It was a moment that spoke to the nation. It was, first, a reminder of a brutal political lesson that the Corbyn supporters are learning in public, at the expense of the Labour party. If you have spent your political life moving from a rally of the persuaded to a march of the already aggrieved, there is no need to persuade. An act of assertion, even if it is conducted in silence, is all that is ever required. However, as soon as you enter democratic politics you suddenly find that authenticity comes at a price.
The best illustration is another one of the surprising number of questions on which I agree with Mr Corbyn. I’m going to have to be careful about this — before long I’ll be wearing my fountain pen in my top pocket. I do, however, broadly approve of Mr Corbyn’s liberal position on immigration. However I weigh that authentic liberalism against the clear view of the people, especially the English, that immigration is imperilling a sense of nationhood. My authenticity and granite integrity might land me in trouble with people attracted to Ukip in the north of England. There are consequences I will not like. There is a choice here, which takes you into the realm of politics, a land Mr Corbyn has never before visited.
The country he lives in is not the same as the rest of us. These gestures, or absence of gestures, are not as trivial as Mr Corbyn’s supporters suggest. On the contrary, they are an eloquent reminder of an intellectual tradition on the left that disdains Britain. It is a literature I once found intriguing. Martin Amis once said of Philip Larkin that he lived a miserable life so that you didn’t have to. I offer the same service with respect to Marxist histories of the nation because they provide the script for Mr Corbyn’s silence.
The far-left account of the nation comes from the theorist Perry Anderson’s 1964 essay Origins of the Present Crisis. With apologies for the language, Anderson denounces Britain’s “ferruginous philistinism and parochialism”. By missing out on a bourgeois revolution like Russia, we failed to properly evolve. This failure allowed the aristocratic establishment to reinvent itself and, to this day, the British state retains its feudal aspect. At its head, the monarchy personifies the exclusion of the people from real power. You find the same assumptions in Christopher Hill’s biography of Bunyan. I used to love that book. These days I think a history of bunions would contain more political wisdom.
The belief that Britain is the site of a class war that the workers have lost can lead a man astray. I am ashamed to be a member of a party that has room for such as John McDonnell near its summit. There has always been a choice on the left, to support Sinn Fein or the SDLP. Mr McDonnell’s remarks about the IRA derive from his belief that Britain has never cast off its imperial ambitions which, as the empire shrank, it visited upon Ireland. Mr Corbyn and Mr McDonnell, if pressed, do not regard the institutions of the British state as entirely legitimate. The whole panoply is part of a conspiracy, with the media as its mouthpiece. Hence Mr McDonnell’s belief that the road to socialism does not need to pass through parliament. Ed Miliband has been replaced by Ralph Miliband.
Even when confronted by nationalism, as it is in Scotland, the Labour party has tended to believe it can be bought off with more socialism. Failing to grasp the nature of the nationalist assault, Labour will shift to the left in Scotland and make its predicament worse. At the same time, failing to respond to what EP Thompson called the peculiarities of the English creates an opening for Ukip. Labour has usually struggled in England. Wilson and Blair won majorities there but, for most of its history, Labour has relied on votes from Scotland and Wales, from whence its greatest heroes, Hardie and Bevan, have come. Labour’s weakness in England explains why it is so suspicious of an English settlement in parliament.
Despite the recent efforts of John Denham and Jon Cruddas, Labour has rarely picked up Orwell’s challenge to marry socialism with national identity. When Peter Mandelson devised a television advert that contained a British bulldog it felt like the last refuge for the Labour party. It would have seemed a bit crass but entirely commonplace on the right.
On all this, Mr Corbyn will maintain his silence. He has already, under duress, proclaimed his love of the those parts of the country he regards as just. He is happier, though, lamenting that it is too class-bound, not far enough along the Marxist historical trajectory for his liking. It must be hard for him to be confronted with choices after so long in the comfort zone. Can you really govern a nation whose anthem you would rather not sing? It is a disconcerting sight to watch a man uncomfortably saying nothing but who claims he wants to speak for the nation.