I Intend To Escape ......................And Come Back

What no Culture Wars? "Which Way? Thirteen dialogues on choices facing Britain"

I recently purchased a golden oldie in the form of "Which Way? Thirteen dialogues on choices facing Britain". Edited by Michael Ivens and Clive Bradley, it was published in London by Michael Joseph Limited way back in 1970.

The format is simple - take a writer or politician from left and right, and invite them to write a short essay on issues such as nationalisation, tax, housing, education through to international issues. Each writer is also allowed a brief reply to their opponents text. The format works beautifully and there are some big names - Enoch Powell and Ian Mikardo being the most obvious. Some of those 1970 debates continue - most notbaly there is a chapter headed "Common market or NAFTA?" particularly apt as Keir Starmer appears set to drag the UK as close to the European Union as he feels he can get us. Others - such as the Cold War "East versus west" have been dated for a generation, although it is stimulating to be reminded of a time when Moscow and Beijing were on poor terms.

Most of the authors of course are no longer with us, although Michael Wynn Jones (better known now as Mr Delia Smith) enjoyed a high public profile until 2024 as one of the owners of Norwich City. One of the best-written commentaries is by T Dan Smith described as "Chairman of the Northern Economic Planning Council" who writes on government, parliament and technology. In 1970 Smith was just a few years from being brought down in a corruption scandal that led to his imprisonment. There is enough here in his cogent arguments on the importance of planning and development to suggest that this was an outcome that was far more than a personal tragedy.

What is notably missing from "Which Way?" is anything resembling the type of culture wars which so dominate contemporary debate. Perhaps we were more serious then, as a people? Arguments about transexuals, statues, renaming roads or decolonising school curriculums were peripheral in the early 1970s, if they existed at all. Identity politics in that era primarily meant one thing - class - the subject, naturally of a chapter all to itself.

The final section - "What kind of future?" features the late Conservative journalist T E Utley. Here I think we find some structure for the debates of 2025 and beyond. Utley writes:

"In Britain the nation does not exist by virtue of the State; the state exists and is capable of activity by reason of the fact that it presides over a nation." (p.261)

When even a north London leftie lawyer like Sir Keir Starmer begins to realise that this country has been changed too much, too fast, by immigration, Utley's words carry weight. Until we work out how to be a nation again, we are some years away from producing an update to the type of debates in the pages of "Which Way?" They can only really feature in societies with a degree of commonality.

The Tragedy of Striving

"A tragedy cannot be written about creatures of the jungle, only about those who try to get out of it - or those who succumb to it knowing that it is possible to transform it".

The writer Alan Sillitoe, in his introduction to Robert Tressell's "The Ragged Trousered Philantropists." (Panther: St Albans, 1983), p. 9 - 10. The beauty of this quote is that it applies so aptly to our greatest comedies, most notably Steptoe & Son.

There's no such thing as Starmerism - and that's the problem

As Labour gets a hammering in the polls, what is the problem with Sir Keir Starmer?

The most simple answer is that it is obvious what Starmer is against, but unclear what he is actually for.

Having won the Labour leadership as the continuity candidate, he quickly decided he was opposed to Corbynism. As the Conservatives vote collapsed, he won the 2024 general election by being opposed to Rishi Sunak, but standing on a largely empty mainfesto. Nearly a year on, and not much has changed, and now it is Labour tanking votes.

As Michael Gove wrote in The Spectator of 5 April: "The reason Labour finds itself in this abject and indefensible position is because it failed to develop a coherent political economy in opposition. It had no theory of change for the state, no industrial strategy worth the name, no philosophy of public service reform, and no account of why the Conservatives failed other than that they were, well Tories."

Hence today's results. It is also why Blue Labour is now having a degree of influence and public recognition. They at least have a programme and some thinkers, while Starmer has power, but no idea what he actually wants it for.