The return of English melancholy
UK News Report #4
You’re a 1970s television writer composing a drama for the BBC about a dystopian future, one in which the British government is introducing blasphemy laws, trying to stop local elections going ahead and making concerted efforts to clamp down on opposition media in the name of public decency – the real aim being to suppress criticism. This government also wants to abolish jury trials, knowing that subversives are far more likely to go to jail when faced by pro-regime judges.
Bearing in mind that, as a BBC scriptwriter of the 1970s you’re probably in the Socialist Workers Party, would you have made your imaginary totalitarian junta run by Labour or the Tories?
The British Government indeed wants to abolish trial by jury for crimes carrying less than three years in jail; this will be especially bad news for the various Yookay citizens arrested for things they write on social media, for whom juries are their main hope of escaping prison. It was notable that Justice Secretary David Lammy talked about ‘offenders’ rather than ‘accused’ when justifying this change.
Tory MP Geoffrey Cox recently made a powerful speech in the House defending the right to jury trial, met with a depressing response by Labour MP Catherine West, who called it ‘pompous’. As the Spectator’s Madeline Grant put it: ‘Disoriented by a rare display of brilliance in the Commons, she can only call him patronising (inevitably, before reading off a sheet) and her colleagues can only jeer.’
Niall Gooch has a theory of pomposity: ‘“Pompous” in modern parlance just means “precise and solemn and not relentlessly undercutting everything with jokes and winks to camera because you’re scared of seriousness”.’ Everything has to be ironic and unserious, and yet many things – like our freedom – do require seriousness and solemnity. When you have no reverence for tradition and history, when you dismiss ‘men in suits clinging on to a Magna Carta myth,’ it makes it easier to take away our hard-fought rights.
The week in Parliament
In a future Adam Curtis documentary, images of Britain impotently unable to protect its Cyprus base against attack - which has led the Cypriots to suggest we leave - will be illustrated by scenes of politicians dancing in Westminster. They’re allowed to dance, of course, but it all adds to a sense that these are not serious people, as Logan Roy would say.
The Hereditary Peers Bill finally passed the Lords, ending centuries of tradition.
Britain has also legalised abortion up to birth, something Neil O’Brien wrote a beautiful post about.
