What Might Have Been

It was sad to read the obituaries at the end of the year for Peter Newsam and Tim Brighouse. Both were visionary educational administrators, with a passionate concern to make good education available for all children. In any sensible country, people like them would have been in charge of the system - organising, encouraging, spreading the belief that all children matter.

Here, they were shoved to the fringes, part of the education blob that wasn’t to be trusted. Only division and competition could produce results, and anyone supporting teachers was bound to be suspect. That was the Tory view, but then Tony Blair came in, and decided it was his view too. Chris Woodhead was kept on, and Alastair Campbell talked disdainfully of “bog-standard comprehensives.”

Blair’s rightly remembered as the architect for our involvement in the Iraq War, but for me he’s just as culpable for his undermining of our schools. However many times he talked about “education, education, education”, as I remember it his impact was disastrous.

The Booker shortlist

The Booker has always been controversial, and I can see why there are risks involved in turning the writing of novels into a competition, in the damage it does to books not selected etc etc…but it’s still hard to resist the pull of getting involved in focussing on a few books that serious readers have decided are worth our attention.

This year’s list, in particular. There was the initiual curiosity that two of them were written by Irish Pauls, but beyond that silliness was the fact that both The Bee Sting and Prophet Song were compoulsive reads. I had them from the library at the same time, and was gripped by both, but in very different says. I ended up buying a hardback copy of each as Christmas presents, one for my son, one for my daughter. And who got what was another interesting internal debate…

So I enjoyed reading an extract from a blog published in The Guardian, where the writer was comparing their responses to these books, and wondering which of the two of them was more likely to win the prize, and why…and then the realisation that this blog was written in Gaza, and by the time I was reading it the writer could well have been killed.

Labour's Line on Israel

Oct 11: Starmer tells LBC he’s no objection to Israel cutting off water and electricity from Gaza.

Nov 16: Jess Phillips resigns from Labour’s front bench because there’s a fierce three-line whip against supporting a ceasefire.

Dec 10: David Lammy - with Starmer’s backing - attacks Israel for ignoring settler violence on the West Bank.

That’s not a line, it’s a zigzag. This isn’t an organised party, proceeding through rational analysis. It’s a dictatorship, where everything is geared to accommodating the leader’s whims today - which may well have changed by tomorrow. And this is what the country is being offered, as an alternative to the Tories. God help us all.

Set your sights on terrorists

Yet another heartbreaking story from Gaza. Three Israeli hostages manage to escape from captivity, and try to get back safely to Israel. They take off their shirts. One of them has a stick with a white flag. An Israeli soldier on a rooftop shouts “Terrorists!” and opens fire. Two of the three are killed immediately. The third runs into a building, where the soldiers pursue him. He’s pleading for help in Hebrew, but they shoot him anyway.

That’s three more casualties from this mess, but it’s also a stunning example of the mindset of the Israeli military - think self-defence, think shoot, think terrorist. Don’t question whether the person in front of you actually needs to be shot, just shoot them. Shirts off, white flag - what else were they supposed to do to show they weren’t a threat?

While Netanyahu sees this as a chance to campaign, and cling to corrupt power, nothing much is going to change. But whose job is it to tell him it’s time to go?

Educational Reform

You probably didn’t see this. The House of Lords has produced a report calling for an urgent overhaul of secondary education in England. Our system is too focussed on academic learning and written exams, and pupils need the chance to experience more practical, applied forms of learning. This isn’t totally unexpected; it echoes what’s been said for years by school leaders, academics and teacher unions.

But we’re England, so we do things differently. Other countries are astonished that we have allowed one opinionated individual without any professional qualification (you’ve got it - Michael Gove) to determine the character of English education for over a decade. This has always been a disaster, but with the shattering impacts of Covid and spending cuts, putting it right is even more urgent than it was.

Should we expect radical transformation from a Starmer government? Don’t hold your breath.

Kissinger

Twenty years ago, I spend a lot of time researching, writing and then trying to publicise a play about Henry Kissinger. I read four separate biographies and a lot of supplementary material, and I was convinced I’d discovered a central character worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy. I had a little notice posted on my study wall, giving Kissinger’s date of birth, with the hopeful reminder that “he could die any time.”

Finally, it’s happened, and my play is no nearer seeing the light of day than it was then, although I’m now reconciled to that. But what does linger was the discrepancy between his self-image - the wise, detached analyst of political reality - and the grim reality of the Nixon tapes, where Kissinger is the endless butt of anti-semitic jokes which he accepts or ignores. He plays along with the crude threats the Nixon gang make about what they will do to their enemies, exploding the excuses Kissinger will later make about the calculations he had to make as the price of exerting political influence.

I look forward to someone doing justice to this ludicrously eventful career, and the various settings in which Kissinger’s influence was exerted.

Archie

After trying and giving up on a series of overhyped, unconvincing TV dramas it was a real pleasure to sink into binge-watching Archie (ITVx), four one-hour episodes on the trot. The basic outline is weird enough - the real-life story of Archie Leach, miserable Bristol boy transformed by moving to America and through considerable effort turning himself into international film star Cary Grant.

That’s the surface triumph, but underneath that is the dark history of failed marriages, his concern to protect himself and to dominate the women he lived with, a core of self-doubt and shame of which he was increasingly conscious as his fame and power grew. Plus the intense but twisted relationship with his mother, sectioned in a hospital but not dead - although that was what his father had told him.

But the core of this drama is based on his relationship with Dyan Cannon, who looks like the classic bimbo stereotype, but it’s not her fault she’s attractive and blonde. If this film is anything to go by, she’s also thoughtful, sensitive and mature, recognising Grant’s need for a relationship with their daughter, which turns out to be his route to redemption. So, happy ending of a kind, but it’s a tough, rocky road getting there, and the script and the performances don’t cut corners or settle for easy answers. A rare, intelligent treat - TV drama for grown-ups.

The Bee Sting

What do the Irish put in their water? A couple of weeks ago I raved about Paul Lynch’s novel “Prophet Song”, and now Paul Murray, also Irish, comes up with “The Bee Sting”, also deservedly on the Booker shortlist, but completely different.

Superficially, it’s a classic family novel - like Middlemarch, like The Corrections. It’s over five hundred pages, and it follows each of the four members of a family, gradually unpeeling the layers of the family onion. But it’s also totally modern, exploring in turn, and (to me at least) with total conviction, the inner lives of each of the family members - male and female, young and old. There’s switches and dark secrets, and a complicated plot, but I’ve found it a pleasure to read, and now I’ve finished there’s the painful ache left by a stunning book. I may well reread it in the future, but never again will I discover it for the first time.

Ceasefire now?

So if Netanyahu thinks it’s OK to be talking about a ceasefire, maybe Starmer is up for that too? Or maybe not? You just can’t tell. First of all he insists on a hard line, throws out a lot of good people who have good reasons for the way they’re voting, but his only interest is in himself, and his solitary role. He’s disappointed but hey, that’s leadership.

Somebody points out that even for a disciple of Tony Blair that could sound just a little self-centred, so he changes tack and says his concern is for Palestinian civilians, not the Labour Party. But the Labour Party is his job. That’s what he’s there for, and if it’s painfully split down the middle by his insistence on demonstrating his leadership skills, that’s damage he needs to put right.

At the moment there’s no sense that he recognises the harm he’s causing. Just stay in step with the US, says Blair, and we know where that leads. What about the way the world sees the UK? The massive discrepancy in values between how we treat Ukraine and how we treat Gaza? What about how young voters see Labour? All Starmer’s calculations are about obeying his middle-aged male advisers, and winning back red wall voters - also aging and white. The possibility that there are a lot of young people out there, many of them not white, who could potentially vote Labour but are currently deciding that they won’t - just doesn’t seem to occur. There have to be people in the shadow cabinet who see that, so why isn’t he listening to them?

Going out with a bang

Finally, Suella Braverman goes. She was only there to get Sunak the leadership, but even he can see that there comes a point when that price is too high. Her supporters, of course, are irate - “Come for Suella, and you come for us all” the Daily Mail trumpets, as though this were the last stand of Che Guevara.

But it’s not a movie, it’s a government. She’s a minister, and there are rules. If you submit an article to No. 10 for approval, and they tell you changes you should make, you have to make those changes - or be sacked. She wouldn’t make them, so she’s out. Just as she was out of Liz Truss’ government for leaking confidential material to a friend. It’s not rocket science; it’s called keeping to the rules.

But rules do not apply. We’re in the lunatic world of performance politics, where the stance is all. Forget competence, making things happen, seeing things through. It’s about striking attitudes, saying I’m right and you’re wrong (whether or not you happen to be Prime Minister), appealing to the base. And somehow behaviour which would be unacceptable in a stroppy teenager is seen to be acceptable if it comes from a leadership candidate.

Prophet Song

The world goes to hell in a handcart, so I retreat to my warm cocoon, watch documentaries and mubi films, listen to music, and read library books. And just at the moment, there’s some stunning stuff around. The blurb for Paul Lynch’s “Prophet Song”, for instance, describes the creation of a future dystopia similar to the work of Orwell, Burgess and Attwood.

Which is plainly ludicrous. Except that it’s not. This contemporary novel about how ordinary life in Ireland sinks into an authoritarian nightmare is totally believable. As I read, I can see how little it would take for us to become former Yugoslavia, Ukraine, wherever. the pieces are all in place, and the crude, powerful oversimplifications which drive violence and repression are on the news every day.

It’s deeply domestic. A mother, trying to bring up four kids on her own, when she doesn’t know what’s happened to her husband. The pressures of surviving day to day, of feeding, keeping clean, staying safe, when bit by bit all the things which keep us sane are being wrenched away. Lynch puts us in that position, makes us care, as we long for this family to get away - but all the time we know that it would be ludicrous to expect a happy ending.

Managing the News

Tricky for Starmer, how to negotiate Gaza and the Hamas attack. In the early stages, it’s not surprising that he wants to keep in step with other Western powers, not be outflanked by Sunak, retain the credit for fighting anti-Semitism. So he says it’s an outrage, and Israel must be free to respond. Even if that includes hutting off water and electricity? Yes.

That’s what happened. He had a clear chance to distinguish between rational response and a war crime, and he didn’t take it. In that interview, he basically said “Anything goes.” Since then the Mandelson-style machine has whirred into action, insisting that that wasn’t what he meant, that he’s now totally clear human rights must be defended, that he’s in favour of a pause but not a ceasefire, because that would benefit Hamas…It’s all very frantic and insistent, and it doesn’t face the truth, which was that he made a mistake. In this context, under that pressure, not amazing. But it’s so damaging that he can’t afford to admit it.

So, damage limitation. Go and talk to some Muslims, insist that he does care about the Palestinians, and then produce a statement underlining his wisdom and compassion - which infuriates the Muslims he spoke to, because it’s dishonest about the nature of the conversation that they shared. So, so short-sighted, this obsession with presenting the leader as faultless, when all that does is disillusion potential supporters who know that isn’t true.

Israeli Spokesmen

Really tricky territory, Gaza. Lots of different people ready to descend in fury on those who get things wrong, so God help the BBC if they don’t report every development with the proper caution and nuance. Or even if they do, much of the time.

Early on, Starmer and Sunak were competing to show who could be most in support of Israel. And even in those early stages, problems began to emerge. Deplore the Hamas attack, of course, but “want to see you win” ? What does a win look like, for the Israelis? The total demolition of Gaza?

Some of their spokesmen don’t help. Accusing the UN Secretary General of a “blood libel” and demanding his resignation isn’t a rational response to a speech which clearly condemned the Hamas attack. The bit they didn’t like was Guterres suggestion that this attack did not happen in a vacuum. But it’s true. Look at the casualty figures, Israeli and Palestinian, over the last decade, and you see why the Hamas attack might have happened.

In the same way, an Israeli spokesman on pm argued against a ceasefire, because that would suit Hamas. To him, it’s simply war between Hamas and Israel, and Hamas has to lose. There is no recognition of civilians in Gaza, helpless and unable to move, paying the price for Israeli rage. The only thing that counts is the Hamas attack, and making sure it can never happen again. It’s the politics of vengeance, as usual, and it isn’t the answer.

Fine Margins, Again

And the English rugby-watching populace is still in mourning, after a weekend where we came so close, and yet so far. The game against South Africa was, to be fair, far closer and more gripping than many of us had feared. For once, some serious planning had gone on, and the team set out to carry out a clear plan, with considerable success.

The South Africans who had looked so commanding against France were clearly rattled and unsettled, while England kept the scoreboard ticking, kicking their penalties. Johnny Wilkinson, commentating, suggested that a drop goal would help boost the score, and - as if by magic - Farrell drops a goal. For most of the game we were ahead and deserved to be, but over the last quarter of an hour brute force imposed itself - strength in the front row, scrum penalties, supremely accurate long-distance kicking. And suddenly, cruelly, we’re out of the World Cup.

We shouldn’t get too upset. We didn’t score a try, and never looked like doing so. No line-breaks, and 41 out of 44 possessions kicked away. Yes, we challenged well for the high ball, often won it back, but we were also lucky that the weather conditions made it hard to hold on to the ball. Give the South Africans another dry day and maybe it wouldn’t have been so close. But we did much better than feared, and there are - as they love to say - positives on which to build.

The Road Not Taken

I’ve been reading “An Uneasy Inheritance”, Polly Toynbee’s memoir/reflections on class, and it’s fascinating. But one moment stands out, where she describes Blair’s Beveridge lecture in 1999, when he set out his plans to abolish child poverty. He’d deliberately invited a wide range of experts, analysts and journalists - many of whom were openly sceptical - Does he mean it? Does he know what’s involved?

Toynbee’s answer to both questions is an emphatic yes, and she insists that by 2010 he had got a third of the way there. Whcih came to me as total news, and I reckon to follow politics fairly closely. But that wasn’t my fault; it was Blair’s. He felt the electorate was conservative and grudging, wouldn’t approve of doing stuff for the poor, so that kind of initiaive must be kept under the radar, surreptitious, on the sly.

Which means that when Cameron and Osborne take over, and immediately reverse a lot of that progress, there isn’t an informed public leaping to protest. Maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference if they had known, but it’s fascinating to think that if he’d played his cards differently Tony Blair might now be known as a scourge of inequality rather than a key architect of the War in Iraq.

Oh Wow

Not my headline. I’ve pinched it from David Flatman, whose ITV World Cup Rugby podcast is currently required listening. He and I are both referring to this weekend’s matches, four quarterfinals which supplied more tension and high quality entertainment in one weekend than I’ll ever see again.

I’m not a proper rugby fan. I don’t get cold, slog out in the depths of winter to support my team. I sit in the warm with a cup tea, and put the telly on, and this weekend I had a treat. With fifteen minutes to go, you couldn’t be sure how any of these games would end up. The losing sides averaged 23 points each, and that doesn’t happen very often.

There were little moments where fates were decided, where a different referee might have come to a different decision, and the game might have gone the other way. The incredible French kicker Ramos, for instance, lining up a distant conversion, lets his kick go - only for it to be charged down by Colbe, the South African winger with incredible speed. When did we last see a conversion charged down? Is it possible - and we do have the technology now, to check this out - that Colbe left a fraction early? Does it matter? Oh yes, it does. The conversion is two points, and South Africa end up winning by one. As the commentators like to say, fine margins.

Boxing Clever

It’s fascinating to watch the evolution of Keir Starmer, inching towards power but determined to stay calm and in control. Above all, not to give the Tories anything they can use - which seems to involve agreeing with them so they don’t have anything they can put in a leaflet.

He was asked, for instance, if he agreed with Sunak’s comment in his conference speech that “A man is a man and a woman is a woman”. “Yes, of course. You know, a woman is a female adult.” Time was, he’d have said “It’s not as simple as that”, and then Johnson would have mocked him because he didn’t know the difference between a man and a woman. Now, he plays safe, accepts the caricature, and consigns the trans issue to the bin - with all the ridicule and harassment that that involves.

Shockingly, the Tories embark on new drilling in the North Sea, at Rosebank. This is a massive U-turn for them, and a denial of any sensible climate policy, but Labour refuse to say they’ll reverse it. Keep the Tories guessing, even if that means not being honest with the electorate. It’s worse than that. A clear Labour statement that they’d reverse it would inhibit investment and delay a destructive development, but none of that is as important as playing mind games with the opposition. Peter Mandelson must be delighted.

The Masque of Anarchy

Five years ago, if you’d heard that a politician had quoted from Shelley’s Masque of Anarchy, you’d have laid money that would be Jeremy Corbyn. It is very much his kind of poem - a powerful vision of extremes, with the oppression of the poor by the rich eloquently calling out for justice.

So it’s something of a surprise to find that Suella Braverman quoted from the poem, in her tirade at the Conservative Party conference. I don’t know if she’s a regular reader of Romantic poetry, but it’s not hard to imagine some young aide sniggering at the cheek of adopting one of the great radical poems, just to wind up the opposition.

In Braverman’s vision, there are the many and the few, but “the many” are her and the other downtrodden Tory members, suffering from the impact of a hurricane of migration, while “the few” are the woke intelligentsia, in their ivory towers, who preach decency and humanity while not actually having to suffer the consequences. There’s no recognition that she and her party are in power, having totally failed to deal sensibly with immigration for the past decade.

Festival in a Book

This week has seen the launch of the anthology Festival in a Book, which celebrates the Wenlock Poetry Festival, which ran from 2010-2016. There are two kinds of anthology. One throws the poems into a heap, and sorts them out into alphabetical order of surnames. The other thinks very carefully about what goes where, how the poems are grouped, and in what order they should come. This collection fits very snugly into the latter category, of carefully considered work.

For anyone who was involved in WPF there’s a ton of memories here, reminders of details which are very much treasured, landmarks in a poetic journey which for a lot of us are of lasting significance: particular performers at the Edge, the Poetree, the Emergency Poet, tea and cake and at Priory Hall.

But there’s also the poetry, and that means poems from an astonishing range of contributors. I count at least sixty nationally known poets in the index, writing about a wide variety of subjects. I doubt there’ll be a more substantial anthology of any kind published this year, which makes this collection the perfect Christmas present. Whether or not you know Wenlock, whether or not you read a lot of poetry, this is the ideal way to get a taste of either or both.

World Cup Rugby

What a roller coaster already, and we’re still at the group stage. England’s three games have offered stunning variety already - George Ford defying an early red card to steer through an improbable win; Alex Mitchell getting booed for yet another kick against Japan; and then a ludicrous change of cast and fortune and style as we wallop Chile with a load of tries - though it’s fair to say other sides may offer more resistance. But the possible talking points about future tactics and selection are endless.

Then there’s the serious contenders. France v. New Zealand was impressive enough, but Ireland v. South Africa was amazing. Somehow Ireland managed to be in control most of the time, despite losing four line-outs in the first half. Somehow South Africa kicked away 11 potential points, running out of hookers who can throw straight and kickers who can kick. Who’d have thunk it?

And then there’s Wales, with their outrageous challenge to Australia. Here, have the ball. play the rugby. And we’ll stop you, pressure you into giving away penalties, and beat you by over 30 points, even though you have more of the possession. It’s not pretty, but it’s fascinating. And there’s so much more to come…