COVID-19: OUR MODERN MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH

I've written about the Corona Virus, Covid-19, in terms of Edgar Allan Poe and the Masque Of The Red Death. Poe never conceived of Trump or Boris Johnson, but I suppose he never had to. It's up at Medium, and you can link to it, bypassing the paywall, here.

JOE BIDEN, JEREMY CORBYN & THE US ELECTION: MY ARC DIGITAL ESSAY

I did another piece for Arc Digital on Joe Biden's claim that being 'too far' left cost Labour
the election in the UK and would cost Democrats the election in the US. Is he right? Use this link
and you can read the article on Medium without enrolling....
https://arcdigital.media/american-corbyns-does-labours-electoral-catastrophe-disqualify-the-american-left-ecc7033ad70?source=friends_link&sk=05b48ee257a3c1b585e350a07c78f4f7

FAKE NEWS AND THE BRITAIN TRUMP: MY ARC DIGITAL ESSAY

I've written a piece for Arc Digital about the links between Boris Johnson's election campaign and its following the Donald Trump/Steve Bannon blueprint. It was originally going to be much longer and delve deeper into the 2016 referendum, but there just wasn't room. Check it out, this link ought to get you in without the paywall!

BREXIT: A MODEST PROPOSAL My suggestions via Arc Digital

I've written a piece for Arc Digital suggesting an easy way to make the current conundrum over Brexit something more bearable, entertaining and successful for all concerned. The piece was recommended to readers on Medium, in their World section, and they have provided a link by which you can read it and laugh without necessarily having to subscribe there, though that's not a bad idea. You can find that link here....happy reading

THE IMPORTANCE OF NOT BEING EARNEST: A VERY ENGLISH STORY

In today's Torygraph we learn that Boris Johnson went on an Oxford Union debate beano to the USA in 1986. In the team of four was also the incoming head of the NHS, Simon Stevens. Over to theTelegraph:

"Boris Johnson, an Old Etonian, has been the centre-Right president of the Oxford Union, employing his waggish charm to cultivate loyal 'stooges' hanging on his every word. Simon Stevens, on the other hand, was from a Birmingham comprehensive, a member of the Labour Club and was far more earnest in his approach to student politics."

What more does a Telegraph reader need to know. As Kate Fox (and George Mikes before her) has pointed out, one of the first principles of Englishness is the importance of not being earnest.

But it gets worse: when they debate the Yanks, the debating styles were, according to the third member of the Four Englishmen of the Apocalypse,, Angus McCullough (now) QC, "glaringly different...the English relied on being entertaining, there was no greater sin than dullness, while the (Yanks were) seething with facts and statistics but tended to be turgid."

Oddly enough, however, the fourth member of the team was one Frank Luntz a double-ringer in that he was an American and also a graduate student, having already received his degree from Donald Trump's alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania. Luntz is now, of course, a leading political pollster, and frequent pundit on the BBC (obviously unconnected with that time at Oxford).

The article says Luntz is said to 'speak regularly with the Prime Minister*'. Although it identifies Michael Gove as one of the Stooges, it does not confer that honour onto Luntz. Note too, in the picture above which accompanied the article, Boris is actually dancing with his future first wife, Allegra Mostyn-Owen, but the paper declines to remind its readers of that. No need to be turgid.

THE BREXIT OUROBOROS: BORIS JOHNSON, TRUMP & BREXIT

I've done another Brexit piece for Arc Digital, this one about Johnson's ascendancy to No. 10 Downing Street, his relation to Trump, and the future for Britain and Brexit. Just a few small topics. You can find it here. The ouroboros title went by the wayside, but it was all I could do not to call it the Ouroboris, the worm that eats its own tail. Which is basically what Britain is doing via Brexit. And Boris. Give it a clap if you enjoy it.

I actually has a paragraph comparing Johnson and Trump to King Gorice and Goldy Bluszco (you can guess which one is which, I hope) from E.R. Eddison's Worm Ouroboros, until I realised that if no one would know what ouroboros meant, even fewer would have read Eddison's fantasy novel (now you know!).

BORIS JOHNSON, FINTAN O'TOOLE AND ROGER BARLOW: LITERARY EXEGESIS OF AN ALTER EGO

Fintan O'Toole, whose essay about Boris Johnson, titled 'The Ham Of Fate' (in the current issue of the New York Review of Books, you can link to it here) goes full Gore Vidal in a literary exegesis of Johnson's only published novel, Seventy-Two Virgins (2004). O'Toole calls it, generously, a 'somewhat un-flattering self-portrait', but that is all part of the 'Boris' shtick, public schoolboy humour combined with the famed self-deprecation which, as any student of George Mikes would recognise, is actually a celebration of the innate superiority of the English, or at least the English upper-class, over those of lesser character who insist on speaking honestly, straightforwardly or worst of all, as O'Toole quotes Kate Fox reminding us, earnestly.

O'Toole's coup de grace is an analysis of Johnson's dropping in of the Greek word 'akratic' to describe his protagonist. Johnson uses it alongside describing a 'thanatos urge', or death-wish to those of us who didn't study Greek at Eton. But most educated readers would recognise 'thanatos', which makes 'akratic' worth O'Toole's analysis. He explains that 'akrasia', according to Aristotle, is the opposite of control, a  weakness of will, incontinence, a person who, O'Toole summarises, 'knows the right thing but cannot help doing the opposite'.

The 'studied careless' of those English upper-classes Johnson (from, as O'Toole notes, a rather bohemian bourgeois background) apes leaves messes for others to clean up. He is of course both 'genuinely clever' and 'quite self-aware', and in the familiar tracing of Johnson's indecision over his stance on Brexit (choosing the one with the clearer, but risky, path to leadership) or his mendaciousness as a Brussels journalist ('he understood a vivid lie is more memorable than the dull truth'). Read the article, because O'Toole is equally sharp tracing of Boris' efforts to re-invent himself as a bumbling, betraying Churchill is part and parcel of the worst, and the comparison to Trump and America (remember, Boris was born in the US and a dual national, until the Americans invited him to remember to pay the taxes US citizens owe).

But there was one small bit of literary criticism he missed, which I find irresistible in the lack of subtlety of its sub-conscious revelation, and not exclusively about Johnson's private life. His alter ego in Seventy-Two Virgins is named Roger Barlow. Roger is British slang, still used (especially by the upper classes) to mean penetrative sex or by extension, so to speak, being dominated to someone else's advantage, as in 'he was well and truly fucked by that'). Roger, then, with the Bar set very Low: does that not describe perfectly both the 'romantic' Johnson as well as the political one?

CLAUS VON BULOW, THE MALE GAZE, THE LAWYER AND LAW & ORDER

Seeing his obituaries this week reminded me I met Claus Von Bulow once. It was almost exactly 20 years ago, in July 1999, at the annual Spectator garden party, at the offices in Doughty Street, back when Boris Johnson was the editor and I was writing the occasional outre review for the estimable Mark Amory, the books editor. As always, it was crowded and warm and the champagne was flowing. I found myself in a group with someone I knew and two other men, one of whom was Bulow. It was all pleasant enough, in a sort of dismissive English upper-class way. Then a woman walked past, attractive with a rather large chest. "Look at those tits," Bulow said, or words to that effect. And a few minutes later, when the same woman walked past again, he called her over, and pointed to me. "My friend here was very complimentary about your breasts, my dear," he said.

I blushed, and stammered some sort of denial, and while he was being charming to the woman I turned to my friend and said "He did it."I did not hang around him much longer; oddly enough I later spoke with the woman, explained, presented my theory as to Sunny Bulow's murder, and we wound up going out for dinner a few weeks later. Nothing came of it, but I thought of her a few years later when David Cameron came to prominence. She did PR for Carlton, as did Cameron, Cameron and Boris were both Bully Boys from the Bullingdon Club, and it occured to me at that point that might have been why she was at the Spectator party. I haven't written for the Speccie in a while; in fact I believe the last party to which I was invited was the one of 7 July 2005, which was cancelled after the bombings at Kings Cross.

There's no need to rehash the case now; but that night it seemed clear to me that 'von' Bulow was a perfect fit for at least one portion of the crowd at a Spectator party. That kind of exclusive club person who's distinctly aware of his own distance from the rest, somewhat creepy if you weren't impressed by what passed for charm. I could see where he would be entertaining, how he'd be invited to parties even without the notoriety. But the notoriety made him irresistible; hosts using him just as he was using them.

It's interesting that his attorney who won him a second trial was Alan Dershowitz, whose book Reversal Of Fortune formed the basis of the movie. Jeremy Irons won his Oscar for that one in large part for being able to project ambiguity, but there was a more interesting version of the murder made as an episode of Law & Order, series 4 episode 5, called 'Black Tie' (1993). It is basically the same insulin-based murder case, but the sexes of victim and suspected killer have been reversed.

The victim is the husband, the accused is the wife, who despite her protestations of being blase about their separate lives, knew her husband was planning to divorce her for his mistress. It presents the issues clearly, most importantly Dershowitz's main point was that evidence obtained by investigators hired by the children had no right to search, as they were acting as de facto agents of the police. The Law & Order casting was perfect: Caroline Lagerfelt was her icy best as the wife; the amazing Viveca Lindfors was the maid who suspects foul play, and Beverly Johnson was good as the mistress. John McMartin, whose face you would recognise, is the family lawyer, and Jeffrey DeMunn plays the Dershowitz figure: a law professor whose recurring part on L&O was as the 'disinterested' lawyer who is always hired by rich clients and proceeds because he allegedly is pursuing points of law.

DeMunn is an elegant, sharp-edged actor, with an intense gaze that can make him seem haughtily detached; he and Lagerfelt made a good pair. In fact,  Dershowitz has been remarkably well-served on screen, with Ron Silver playing him in Reversal, all noble energy, more private eye than law professor, and Evan Handler in The People vs OJ Simpson perhaps not quite so flattering, but very small-town (Harvard) academic. That's interesting, once you throw DeMunn into the mix, because not by their actors but by their clients you shall know them.

TALKING TRUMP TRANSATLANTIC ACROSS THREE COUNTIES

I guested briefly on the morning call in show on BBC Three Counties radio, adding a non-Republican perspective (listen from the start if you want to inflict that on your ears) to the Donald Trump, US embassy, official state visit 'controversy'. I come on about 20 minutes into the show. And oddly enough, the first thing I needed to do was put Trump into some sort of trans-Atlantic context. Like most things American, Britain has their own much paler (no fake tans) versions of the worst of America.

Here's the link  The fill in host was named Tim. I'm come in around the 20 minute mark, but you might want to listen to Andy, just before me....

SOCCER SOVEREIGNTY: BREXIT AND THE MANAGER OF ENGLAND

The other day I read a tweet from the estimable historian Tom Holland, saying 'Yes, David was able to kill Goliath - but he could never have pulled the same trick twice" - Israeli general. To which I replied, 'He could have if Goliath had played for an English manager'. A couple of days earlier I'd written the following essay, but it passed the editors' desks unrequited...

LESSONS 'LEARNED' FROM ENGLAND'S FOOTBALL BREXIT 

Sometimes it is difficult to determine whether sport imitates life or life imitates sport or whether they are both intent on becoming artistic parodies of themselves. The confluence of the United Kingdom's Brexit vote with England's (though not Wales' or indeed Northern Ireland's) abject departure from the European football championship was widely noted. As if not satisfied with this, at virtually the same time new Prime Minister Theresa May appointed Brexit's Field Marshal, Boris Johnson, to be her foreign secretary, the Football Association was asking Sunderland's permission to interview their manager, Sam Allardyce, for the England job.

You can argue Allardyce's relative successes and failures within English football all you like. As it happens I met him last summer, and despite his place in the endless line of Big Rons, Big Mals and Big Eteceteras, Big Sam seemed relatively progressive in his thinking. This may have impressed me, but it will not be the ultimate criterion upon which his appointment will be judged. In a stark and not surprising reflection of the late referendum, it is all a question of Englishness.

The argument follows much the same twisted logic of 'sovereignty' that was the rallying cry for Brexit. Paddy Barclay, the Scottish football scribe on the Evening Standard, wrote a column recently rubbishing the idea 'Englishness is not essential' for an England manager. As he put it, 'Germany's successes have been designed by Germans, France's by Frenchmen and Spain's by Spaniards', he wrote. 'So find one'.

I am tempted to interpret that as meaning 'find a German, or a Frenchman, or a Spaniard. But it doesn't, obviously, and therein lies the rub. Paddy listed a number of candidates (Harry Redknapp 'would be fun') including Allardyce. But part of his job description includes 'anyone willing to contemplate an igominious end. Anyone English that is. To be serious: people will look at rugby and reach for the quick fix but, in the long term, principle counts.'

Ignoring his self-fulfilling prophecy of failure, and ignoring also that the long term in international football rarely extends beyond the next major tournament, the question of principle is exactly what drove 52% of voters to Brexit. And as with the referendum, it's important to note that principle is seen through rose-tinted national health spectacles.

In football, England have always ignored the rest of the world to their own great satisfaction. The 1950 loss to the American part-timers (read about it here), perhaps a bigger upset than the loss to Iceland, went ignored at home because basically no one was in Brazil to notice, and the news when it got back to England was so absurd it was dismissed. Not until Hungary thrashed them at Wembley in 1953 did the myth of innate superiority begin to spring recognisable leaks. A World Cup win playing at home in 1966, with Brazil helpfully ushered out of the tourney by the Germans (and an English referee, as any Brazilian will swear) helped resurrect that myth, but the truth is that for the past 20 years, England has been barely more successful in World Cups than, say, the United States.

In fact, a quick fix is exactly what is needed. Eddie Jones, an Aussie, turned England's rugby team around using the same players who had disappointed so gravely at home in the World Cup the previous season. Iceland, lest we forget, were not coached only  by a part-time Icelandic dentist, their other co-manager was a Swede. Xenophobic principle will win England football matches with about as much certainty as would putting the Union Jack on their jerseys. The reality is not a question of nationality: England's past choices of foreign managers has been just as underwhelming as their Englishmen. It is a matter of perspective, of a change in perspective, and if history is any guide, that may be, on principle, exactly the most difficult thing for the FA to even contemplate.