N. 107 - Tomorrow's Election - 'The Battle for Britain's Soul'.
Dear James,
Do you have a soul? Or is the soul some out dated concept left over from our mediaeval past? Certainly no one has found it yet, discovered it with MMR techniques or revealed it through x-ray crystallography. It has no location, no scientific identity, no way to measure its dimensions or its activity levels. And yet there is something there. It gives us energy, direction, certainty and hope. Today Jo Swinson talks about tomorrow’s election as being a ‘battle for Britain’s soul’. I think she’s right.
On the penultimate day before that election, we are all feeling something. Some of us have a feeling that to escape from Europe will release us from shackles that have constrained us for far too long. Others feel that the real escape is through the transformation of our economic life to serve the many not the few. Yet others believe that to stay in Europe is the pathway to greater wealth and social integration. All these feelings are a combination of mind and gut, some more gut than mind, others more mind than gut. Most of us are somewhere in between. The soul is that irreducible sense of being at the centre of each of our lives and world views. Today, passions, those speakers for the soul, are running high. Voting intentions are still extremely fluid and volatile. Anything could happen tomorrow. Suddenly the nation is getting serious.
The nearest thing we have for measuring the soul of the nation is the opinion poll. The latest predicts a majority of 28 for the Tories. Yet this itself indicates a lessening of that majority by 50% in the last few weeks. In other words opinions are narrowing and there are signs that people are suddenly deciding what it means to be British. Or English. Or Scottish. Or Welsh. Or something else. We are being tested and that means that everything is still up for grabs. Tomorrow will be the most critical vote for decades.
Yesterday, in an attempt to express his own particular soul, Johnson drove a union jack-emblazoned bulldozer through a wall of polystyrene blocks in a stunt for the TV cameras. Here lies the essential nature of the new Tory soul. Based on the social exclusiveness of our public school system which was created to run an empire and still yearns for a return of that power, the Tory soul of nostalgic nationalism, stripped of its One Nation compassion, crashed through the polystyrene and stopped dead. There was nowhere else to go. The ‘natural superiority’ of the ebullient public schoolboy stood before us in its naked futility. ‘Boris the Brave’ on his digger simply showed us the narrow autocracy which your party has become James. And this is the problem of Brexit. Beneath the bravado, Boris and his cohorts are viscerally afraid of Europeans because when they go to Paris or Berlin, their natural superiority is not recognized. They are judged by different criteria in those nations. Not by tractors crashing through polystyrene but by the ability to think logically, to deliver evidence and to form coalitions of consent. When Boris went to Brussels recently, Europe slapped him on the back, smiled politely and then wondered how a man, so lacking in these qualities, could ever be chosen to be our Prime Minister.
As for Jeremy Corbyn, his soul is the validation of oppositional anger. He is rightly angry at the two hundred years of Tory rule and has concocted an ‘anti-reality’ whereby, in 100 days, he will overturn the rules of capitalism and run a state controlled economy that will emasculate the driving force of free choice. Too much thinking Jeremy. Not enough gut. When you’re stuck in the angry slot, thinking overshoots. Lovely plan Jeremy! It will never work. Ever heard of human nature?
And the Lib-Dems? Is there such a thing as a ‘Lib-Dem soul’? It doesn’t sound right does it? Lib-Dem sounds wishy-washy and not up to the job of a real soul. But perhaps that’s its secret. It is a gentler sort of self-experience. A more balanced soul, it combines compassion with practicality, tolerance with fairness the kind of soul for which most of our nation is generally known worldwide. But Jo Swinton is right. This soul is under attack from left and right. I just hope that, under attack, she has been able to add spine to this immaterial aspect of our anatomy.
And finally James, there is the question of your own soul. The one you left behind in 2016. Remember? Your journey has been a long one since you abandoned ‘Remain’ and 'One Nation Toryism' to enhance your career. I am afraid, that in your situation and from my perspective, there is no way back. You really are a lost soul.
For the rest of us though tomorrow really is a ‘Battle for Britain’s Soul’. Wish us luck!
Kind regards,
BH - Your Concerned Constituent