Fantasy politics

Welcome to Perspective’s newsletter, our view on what’s been happening over the past week. This Sunday, Rowan delves into fantasy politics and nukes, while Peter reflects on Farage’s return and the 80th anniversary of D-Day. (If this email has been forwarded, you can subscribe here).

Fantasy politics

In the cosmically unlikely event they are returned to power, the Tories are proposing child benefit should be extended to couples earning up to £120,000 between them (while poor folk with more than two kids don’t get any extra), and longer prison terms for murderers. I haven’t heard voters clamouring for either policy – and why would you clamour to extend life sentences when the real scandal is a soaring backlog in our criminal courts? But of course Sunak’s now playing Fantasy Politics. What next? Every household must have a winged horse and a portal into Narnia? Why not fly the UK’s worst criminals to Dr Evil’s extinct-volcano-lair on a Pacific Island, where they’ll be dropped into a tank filled with radioactive piranhas?

Meanwhile, Keir Starmer says “wealth creation” is his top priority and has stated his “triple-lock commitment” to the UK’s nuclear deterrent, saying he will build four new nuclear submarines if elected. Well, it will certainly mean loads of wealth for BAE systems, associated manufacturers and their shareholders, But please let’s see the costings to the UK taxpayer written down in billions and an honest appraisal of which services will get less cash because of our nukes. What about admitting the fact Trident is in a parlous state and needs urgent replacing, whoever gets in? Dominic Cummings (yes, him again) tweeted in March that the sky-rocketing costs of our deterrent would make a mockery of any government’s budgets: “the nuclear enterprise is so fkd it’s further cannibalising the broken budgets and will be for decades because it’s been highly classified to avoid MPs thinking about it.” The Nuclear Information Service has estimated the full cost of the UK’s nuclear weapons programme between 2019 and 2070 at £172 billion – if you include warheads and running costs.

In a poor field, my favourite political statement of the week was Lib Dem leader Ed Davey talking about being a carer for his disabled sixteen-year-old son John and how he fears for his boy’s future, emphasising the vital nature of care work. Ed Balls (a Perspective favourite), in a non-partisan gesture, retweeted the video and amplified the message. Isn’t this the sort of thing we want to hear: what candidates for PM would do for the elderly and vulnerable, for health, schools, businesses and communities? How they would provide affordable housing for the young and tackle our collapsing rail and water services? Given a magic wand, I’d parachute Feargal Sharkey in as PM. His brand of cutting through the bullshit is what’s needed right now, as our interview with him amply demonstrates.

Trigger happy

My main takeaway from Friday’s general election debate was that Mishal Husain is the UK’s most impressive political performer. I also started warming to the Green Party’s Carla Denyer whose earnest passion hasn’t yet been sandblasted off by Westminster cynicism. But undoubtedly the weirdest part of the discussion was when Penny Mordaunt and Angela Rayner went head-to-head to proselytise their commitment to our nuclear deterrent – even though Rayner was one of 48 Labour MPs who voted against renewing Trident in 2016. Sensing blood, Mordaunt went full Rottweiler on Rayner lacking the “credibility” to push the button on our nukes and vaporise millions of innocent citizens: “If you’re doubting that they [Labour and Rayner] would use that force… imagine what Putin is thinking.” I find it hard to imagine what Putin is thinking at the best of times (especially when sitting proudly bare-chested on a horse, when the rest of us would be worrying we looked batshit-crazy) but I doubt he’s musing, “Oh, Angela seems too timid to go the full Hiroshima on Moscow, I’m going to divert my army to Dover tomorrow.”

There are many, many causes that may sway my vote, but Mordaunt’s readiness to deploy our nukes at hair-trigger readiness, like Dr Strangelove’s Major Kong, ain’t one of them. In fact, I can’t think of a single moment in global history when a degree of hesitancy over pressing “Go!” on nuclear weapons hasn’t been a huge asset. If you doubt me, do a quick google search for “nuclear close calls”. Twenty-eight near-Armageddon incidents are listed. On 5 October 1960, radar in Greenland’s Thule region misinterpreted a moonrise as a large-scale Soviet nuclear launch. Then there were the computer errors on 9 November 1979 at NORAD in Peterson Air Force Base, leading to alarms for a (non-existent) Soviet attack involving 2,200 incoming missiles. Another case involves a suspected saboteur scaling the fence of a top-secret US base, who turned out to be a bear. In almost every instance it was the exercise of caution, or what you might term sanity, that saved the planet from nuclear winter. Call me a Greggs-pasty-eating British surrender monkey, but I think Rayner’s credibility may surpass Mordaunt’s in this. In any case, my favourite doomsday expert (who is part of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk) says we should worry more about satellites and the risks around AI-robot warfare. If you want to learn more, read Chris Lincoln-Jones’ piece on the topic.

Clacton's Brexit boon

Back when he was Brexit opportunities minister, Jacob Rees-Mogg was given the unenviable task of coming up with a list of benefits to justify his portfolio. To be fair, he did identify a potential two per cent discount in the price of fish fingers, which was probably just as well, given they’d be spending several days stuck at the border. It's a shame then, that Rees-Mogg won't get to appreciate the opportunity just handed to the good citizens of Clacton – one that stems directly from the decision to leave the EU. 

You'll have guessed I'm talking about Nigel Farage standing in that seat at the general election on 4 July, but might be wondering at the “opportunity” part. Well, how about this: Farage thinks the electorate's demographics make it fertile ground for his bigoted jingoism. But I reckon it’s the best chance yet for those who have been hurt most by the lies told them by Farage and his former pal Boris Johnson in 2016, to give both their parties a kicking.

Farage no doubt hopes the locals won't have noticed the lack of correlation between low levels of immigration and economic prosperity. Over 95 per cent of the electorate are white, and less than one in twenty of were born abroad, but Clacton has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. Some might also have noticed that even Oldham, the area of Manchester recently singled out by Farage in his anti-Muslim TV rant, scores only half as badly as Clacton in the “economically inactive” (doublespeak for impoverished) stakes. And I'm guessing that the area's struggling shopkeepers are more concerned about attracting a few foreign tourists to buy their wares than Farage’s alleged “invasion of Muslims” who “don't share English values”.

Clacton's significant elderly population also includes some of those most affected by the substantial deterioration in NHS services, many of which are the direct result of Brexit. The end of free movement saw a huge exodus of European medical staff, and the government has had to bend its own anti-immigration rules to bring in higher paid and sometimes less qualified staff from countries farther away, such as Nigeria and Pakistan. More has also had to be spent on imported medications and equipment, leaving less resources for front-line workers. The situation is even worse in social care.

In the 2016 referendum, the majority of voters in Clacton put their faith in Farage and bought the lie that Brexit would fix the NHS and return Britain to the sunlit uplands. They will know how that turned out, and that the wise citizens of the seven other seats where Farage has previously tried his luck all sent him packing. The rest of us can only keep our fingers crossed that this Essex seaside community will do the same – and that after the eighth failure he will finally get the message.

The lessons of D-Day

My father was a wireless navigator in Mosquito fighter-bombers during World War II, part of the Royal Australian Air Force contingent dotted around Britain. Like many veterans, he was generally reticent in talking about the war, although he did once recount his memories of D-Day. Operation Overlord had been kept a total secret, he told me, even from those participating. His squadron were on patrol that day, but not directly involved. They only knew something major was taking place because the air was literally vibrating from the propellor thrust of the almost 12,000 warplanes sharing the sky with them.

The largest seaborne invasion in history, the scale of D-Day remains staggering. Over 150,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy on 6 June 1944, with 700,000 following them before the month was out. But its real measure is of course in the magnitude of the sacrifices made. There were at least 10,000 Allied casualties from the initial landings, with 4,414 confirmed dead, and German troops suffering similarly. The average age of those who died on both sides was around 22, but many were still in their teens.

Last year I witnessed a dawn service on Omaha Beach to commemorate the 79th anniversary. Of course, with Rishi Sunak’s election planning as secret as D-Day itself, this year’s commemorations unexpectedly ended up in the middle of the campaign. And strangely, of all the politicians, it was Sunak who appeared to trip up, deserting Normandy and the chance to be photographed in presidential poise alongside other world leaders in order to rush home and pre-record an interview. Many were quick to lambast the hapless PM for his apparent disrespect, but we’ve all twigged by now that Sunak is doing everything he can to ensure he isn’t re-elected. For me, those that make more of a performance about D-Day and shamelessly exploit public sentiment towards it for their own political purposes leave a nastier taste. D-Day is above politics, or should be. It symbolises a time when we sent young men into battle not to colonise and conquer, to evangelise or exploit, but to liberate others from tyranny and stop it reaching our own shores. We haven’t always maintained those ideals since 1945, but for now we and most of Europe remain essentially free. With the threat of a resurgent Russia and the rise of populism across the globe, none of us should take that freedom for granted.

Book of the Week

Private Rites
By Julia Armfield
(208pp, Fourth Estate, £16.99, hb, pub 11 June)
Reviewed by Belinda Bamber

Julia Armfield’s Private Rites is an engaging account of how three sisters, Isla, Irene and Agnes, face “a designated end time” as waters rise inexorably over the earth, engulfing all humanity. (It’s an apt narrative to read alongside Perspective’s Apocalypse issue.) At the novel’s start, buildings and people are vanishing daily beneath the flood and boats have become the main form of transport. Yet the squabbling sisters have to organise the funeral of their tyrannical father and, far from preparing heroically for their own final days, are perversely preoccupied with the banal business-as-usual of eating, working, sex and the weather.

A sense of foreboding from the opening page has echoes of gothic author Shirley Jackson: characters feel continually watched, not necessarily by a living source. Even “the sun [is] like an eye half-stuck with sleep”. As the title suggests, there’s an underbelly of dark arts and the horrific depths people might plumb to save their skins, including human sacrifice. At the same time, Armfield brings subversive comedy to the sisters’ bitchy exchanges and skewed preoccupations. Agnes “sometimes worries she’s never felt anything but a blanketing sense of dread”, without reflecting exactly why – though her awful childhood would be an obvious place to start.

Armfield has described the novel as “King Lear with lesbians at the end of the world” and her queer-sister twist upends conventional disaster narratives in which nuclear families are always first to the lifeboats. Despite a nod to Shakespearean ideas of redemption through self-knowledge, she suggests that when Armageddon comes, it will be every woman for herself, or at least for herself and her beloved. In the end, whatever kind of ark we might envisage, in whatever familial configuration, she confronts our willed blindness in the face of catastrophe. How will we behave when the waters close over us? Will good or evil rise to the top? Who or what, in the end, will we hold onto?