Ask Al Anything

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I see that these are back? Let's do one of them again then: after all, I have a lot of opinions about a lot of things and am I always correct. Ask away.

[Some of My Best Friends Are Gay]

How do you think West Virginia would vote in an election between Donald Trump and Robert Byrd, if Byrd was still alive and young enough to run for President?

[Sestak]

When the next round of Brexit talks inevitably fail,

1. Who do you think becomes the next PM?

2. What direction do you see them leading the Tories both in terms of Brexit and rhetorical strategy in general?

3. When do you see the next general being called?

4. How badly do you think CON will do at the next geeral? Who (besides Labour) will reap the most benefits from a dramatic Tory loss?

[Vosem]

When and why did you become as interested in recent South Asian history as you are?

[PSOL]

Do you eat fish n’ chips commonly?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Odd Arne Westad?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Do you eat fish n’ chips commonly?

Every now and again but not that often. Mostly when I'm somewhere coastal, where they tend to be better.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Have you read anything by Stanisław Lem?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

How do you think West Virginia would vote in an election between Donald Trump and Robert Byrd, if Byrd was still alive and young enough to run for President?

Byrd was unbeatable in West Virginia, but he was very much a man of his time(s). A Robert Byrd young enough to run for President now wouldn't be Robert Byrd, and no hypothetical Robert Byrd clone would stand any hope at all of winning the Democratic nomination.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Have you read anything by Stanisław Lem?

No, but I do mean to at some point. I have watched (many times) Tarkovsky's adaptation of Solaris and love it. Of course I understand it is rather different to the book, but that the book was source material is a good enough reason to be interested.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Odd Arne Westad?

Can only speak of his reputation, which is rather high. From what I'm aware of his arguments, his thinking about his subject seems sound.

[Devout Centrist]

You recently cancelled your membership in the Labour Party over the pervasiveness of antisemitism within certain elements of the Party, and over the inaction of Party leadership to address the problem.

What do you believe are some structural reforms that could help uproot antisemitism? Which groups or people do you believe to bear the most responsibility for this crisis? Are there any signs that the tide may turn in the near future?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

1. Who do you think becomes the next PM?

A swine.

2. What direction do you see them leading the Tories both in terms of Brexit and rhetorical strategy in general?

Bluster and general incompetence, beyond that it would depend on the swine.

3. When do you see the next general being called?

Not a clue. Right now the government does not have the remotest incentive to call an early election, and the Fixed Term Parliament Act makes it exceedingly difficult for the opposition (which, anyway, isn't in a great state either) to force one. Everyone says that there's no way that this parliament lasts its full term, and this seems logical enough except that the new (stupid) rules give considerable power to sheer terrified inertia. Of course things can change, especially at the moment.

4. How badly do you think CON will do at the next geeral? Who (besides Labour) will reap the most benefits from a dramatic Tory loss?

They'll almost certainly lose a lot of votes (and vote share), but beyond that it is impossible to tell.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

When and why did you become as interested in recent South Asian history as you are?

My interest in South Asia is a direct consequence of my lifelong interest in cricket; it has always struck me as an important and fascinating part of the world for that reason, and so taking an interest in its history and politics followed onwards pretty logically.

[OSR stands with Israel]

- How Come you liked Tony Blair in 2004 but came to dislike him later , unlike much of the left who started to dislike him in 2003

- Why have Blue Collar Voters such as Coal Miners not abandoned the left in the UK like they have here in the US

- Do you think England has a realistic chance of winning the World Cup this year

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The British left has a history of being (or, at least, a reputation for having a history of being) less anticlerical than most Continental leftist traditions; Orwell, for example, was anti-Catholic but seemed comfortable with or even fond of the C of E, and the Vatican used to specifically exempt the Labour Party from its routine blanket condemnations of socialism in the first half of the twentieth century. How much of this is due to differences between British and Continental political or constitutional thought, and how much is due to differences between British and Continental religious thought?

[Joe Republic]

Jeremy Corbyn: great Labour leader, or the greatest Labour leader?

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

I would love to hear your take on Harold Macmillan.

[pikachu]

what can the ecb do to increase the popularity of cricket in england? thoughts on the hundred?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

You recently cancelled your membership in the Labour Party over the pervasiveness of antisemitism within certain elements of the Party, and over the inaction of Party leadership to address the problem.

That was one reason, yes. Though about the institution as much as the leadership specifically (even if the two are linked), and it's possible that I'd have come to a different decision if I lived somewhere with a less... um... problematic CLP.

What do you believe are some structural reforms that could help uproot antisemitism? Which groups or people do you believe to bear the most responsibility for this crisis? Are there any signs that the tide may turn in the near future?

1. The big problem institutionally is that there is no independent complaints and disciplinary procedure, and that there isn't even a functional one that happens to be partial. It's a complete disaster. I think one of the most telling episodes in this affair actually concerned a complaint of about a different kind of racism, and that's why it's so telling. Anas Sarwar (who, for the record, I distrust and dislike) made a complaint relating to a racist remark made by a Hamilton councillor¹ who just happens to be one of the most powerful people in the trade union/local government nexus in his part of Scotland. Sarwar is affiliated with the Wrong Side from an institutional perspective, while the man he complained about (as noted) happens to be part of the furniture. Various procedural absurdities were pulled, and the councillor was officially cleared. You may just possibly see the problem here. There are other things that need to be done, but this is the most important thing.

2. This is actually quite complicated. Firstly there's the part that is all about factionalist madness; the way the 'need' to protect Corbyn from his patchy record and undeniable blind spots has lead pretty directly to bad practice, worse precedents and general paranoia over the matter. Bad enough, but it doesn't (can't) explain the scale of the problem.

Essentially there are three... no... four elements to this. The first is the dangerous self-congratualistic habit that has, for quite some time now, led a lot of people in Labour to believe that because Labour Is An Anti-Racist Party that Good Comrades Cannot Be Racists. So blind eyes are turned and excuses are made and that's just the way things are; look at how many people continued to insist that Livingstone could not possibly have really meant the things he said until he made it all so very extremely explicit. The second is the lamentable tendency (going back at least forty years) for ~ The Conflict ~² to be used as a factional proxy in the toxic world of student and Young Labour politics. The third is not about the Labour Party, but about what we might call... I don't know... wider Left Culture (often people who are more liberal than anything and not all that left wing, but who read e.g. The Guardian), along with the Hard/Far Left specifically. The latter has had issues with antisemitism for a very long time, and this became endemic and even characteristic after the (almost entirely Jewish) right-wing of the CPGB crossed over into Kinnockism in the 1980s and never returned. A growing obsession with ~ The Conflict ~ and a tendency to see it as symbolic of all that is bad about the world (oh dear) in the former set of circles often turns rather cluelessly toxic. The key thing here is that the latter are very influential in certain trade unions and now in the Party hierarchy as well, while the former are much more likely to have membership cards than previously. The fourth is that, bluntly, antisemitism runs very deep within British society and culture. This is relevant to the previous three things, but also relates to something else: a lot of angry middle aged and elderly people who were not previously politically active or often even particularly political have been inspired by the (cheap, yes, but not unskilled) populist rhetoric and simple narratives provided by Corbyn and the rest of the Labour Left at present. That in itself is not a problem. Where it has become an issue is that there has been no 'political education' to accompany this, no warding off of the ghastly old spectre of the 'Socialism of Fools', which is a bit of an issue in a country which antisemitic sentiment is as deeply rooted as this. Where it then gets extremely messy is that often these factors combine.

3. It doesn't look good at the moment (what in British politics does?), but there are a few encouraging signs around the edges; in particular there are some younger people involved in Momentum (an organisation with such a strange and contradictory role, mostly because its membership looks very different in different places) who have clearly had enough of all this and are inching towards putting that ahead of factional loyalties. It's a start.

<sub>1. There's actually an Atlas link to this: back when afleitch was a Conservative, he was an unsuccessful candidate against this guy in a local election.

2. Credit to Nathan for that term.</sub>

[Filuwaúrdjan]

- How Come you liked Tony Blair in 2004 but came to dislike him later , unlike much of the left who started to dislike him in 2003

Like implies more enthusiasm than would be accurate, but who can explain why teenagers take the positions that they do. Family background, fwiw, though definitely quite Labourist was not at all Left.

A firm dislike started setting in, if I recall correctly, when he went completely loopy shortly after his second re-election and started to propose increasingly deranged hare-brained schemes.

- Why have Blue Collar Voters such as Coal Miners not abandoned the left in the UK like they have here in the US

We don't have coal miners now. But as to why there has been no firm structural shift (and that's the key thing here: all manner of swings in all sorts of directions from election to election occur and always have) from Left to Right amongst working class voters, I would tend to invert the question: why would there be? The Conservative Party remains very much a party of property and is strongly associated in the popular consciousness with the City and with landed interests. Meanwhile the Labour Party, for all its myriad flaws, tends to advocate for policies that are perceived to benefit its base, and in most of the country that happens to be working class voters of one sort or another. While old fashioned class consciousness and the sense of a whole and unitary Working Class are both dead and gone, British society remains strongly marked by social class and it's natural that this is reflected at the ballot box and strongly so in General Elections.

- Do you think England has a realistic chance of winning the World Cup this year

The only prediction I ever make about Cricket World Cup's is this: South Africa will never win. Other than that, all things are possible.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The British left has a history of being (or, at least, a reputation for having a history of being) less anticlerical than most Continental leftist traditions; Orwell, for example, was anti-Catholic but seemed comfortable with or even fond of the C of E, and the Vatican used to specifically exempt the Labour Party from its routine blanket condemnations of socialism in the first half of the twentieth century. How much of this is due to differences between British and Continental political or constitutional thought, and how much is due to differences between British and Continental religious thought?

Orwell was more than merely fond of the CofE: he subscribed to The Church Times, occasionally attended services and insisted on a full Anglican funeral and burial. His dislike of Catholicism had more in common, in both tone and content, with traditional English Protestant hostility to Romanism than with Left anticlerical traditions.

Anyway, the answer is that the British Socialist tradition emerged directly out of the Victorian trade union movement, the active membership of which was predominantly Liberal and Nonconformist Protestant. There were other currents, Marxist and so on, but they were were smaller and often subsumed in that wider culture; Keir Hardie, for instance, was technically a Marxist but he remained also a Christian and doesn't seem to have regarded the two as contradictory. The trade unions were not see as any sort of threat by the Church of England, and so neither was the new party, and so there was never any tension between it and the state church; a critical requirement for anticlericalism. Meanwhile, there was a large and growing Irish presence in some trade unions (particularly transport; railwaymen, dockers etc) and as those unions were the main way in which the community found its political expression, a strong Catholic element developed within the early Labour Party, which, of course, bolstered it further against any possible lurch towards anticlericalism. And because this meant that Labour became the principle means through which Irish and therefore also Catholic political interests were expressed in Britain, the Church hierarchy in Britain adopted a position of benign neutrality.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Poll of you: Edward Bellamy or Francis Bellamy.

[heatcharger]

Any French Open picks? Thoughts on Roger Federer’s return to Roland Garros? Do you have any insights on the structural problems plaguing British tennis?

[DC Al Fine]

What if anything should Jagmeet Singh and the NDP doing differently?