This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/nov/14/britain-new-heroes-of-resistance-lego-prince-harry-continuity-remain
The article has changed 3 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 1 | Version 2 |
|---|---|
| Britain’s new heroes of the resistance: Lego, Prince Harry and ‘Continuity remain’ | Britain’s new heroes of the resistance: Lego, Prince Harry and ‘Continuity remain’ |
| (about 2 hours later) | |
| The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, is fond of saying that we should stop talking about the 52% and the 48% and start talking about the 100%. This is sensible, as far as it goes: the idea that, in the Brexit conflagration (or, elsewhere, in the Trump catastrophe), a permanent trench has been dug, over which neither side shall cross, is a scary and self-fulfilling argument. On the other hand, this would-be unifier is also a member of, you know, the opposition. That’s the curious thing about political appeals for unity. Heartfelt though they may be, they usually contain the subtext: “The other guy is less unified than me, sling him out.” | The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, is fond of saying that we should stop talking about the 52% and the 48% and start talking about the 100%. This is sensible, as far as it goes: the idea that, in the Brexit conflagration (or, elsewhere, in the Trump catastrophe), a permanent trench has been dug, over which neither side shall cross, is a scary and self-fulfilling argument. On the other hand, this would-be unifier is also a member of, you know, the opposition. That’s the curious thing about political appeals for unity. Heartfelt though they may be, they usually contain the subtext: “The other guy is less unified than me, sling him out.” |
| Sure enough, Starmer has proved himself one of the more effective proponents of Labour’s Brexit rearguard. Yet, for quite a lot of people, this won’t be enough. Quite apart from the fact that Jeremy Corbyn sometimes appears more interested in promoting his Snapchat account, Labour has felt itself bound by the constraints that sit on any political party in a democracy: you might hate the result, but it is hard to argue that we should simply ignore it altogether. Not every 48 per center feels the same. If they sense that Corbyn’s limited interventions are borne of ambivalence, they may be grateful to note that opposition isn’t confined to Westminster. Those who dream fondly of a return to a world that’s basically the same as it was on 23 June can at least console themselves with the surprising range of voices saying the things that a conventional opposition cannot, the prophets of a new remainia. | Sure enough, Starmer has proved himself one of the more effective proponents of Labour’s Brexit rearguard. Yet, for quite a lot of people, this won’t be enough. Quite apart from the fact that Jeremy Corbyn sometimes appears more interested in promoting his Snapchat account, Labour has felt itself bound by the constraints that sit on any political party in a democracy: you might hate the result, but it is hard to argue that we should simply ignore it altogether. Not every 48 per center feels the same. If they sense that Corbyn’s limited interventions are borne of ambivalence, they may be grateful to note that opposition isn’t confined to Westminster. Those who dream fondly of a return to a world that’s basically the same as it was on 23 June can at least console themselves with the surprising range of voices saying the things that a conventional opposition cannot, the prophets of a new remainia. |
| Here, then, is a selection of the most persuasive and – more to the point – comforting members of the new opposition. Their pub quiz team name is Enemies of the People. | Here, then, is a selection of the most persuasive and – more to the point – comforting members of the new opposition. Their pub quiz team name is Enemies of the People. |
| Gary Lineker | Gary Lineker |
| It is a measure of Britain’s changed politics that the role that once fell to Russell Brand has now passed to the host of Match of the Day. As an aspiring national treasure, behind Judi Dench but ahead of Paul Hollywood, Lineker’s interventions are more powerfully radical than anything you might hear on the Trews. His new status is notable as an example of how the Brexit debate has, to everyone’s dismay, become knotted up in all the grimmest bits of public discourse, to the point where believing it is inhumane to require refugee children to prove their age with x-rays of their teeth definitely means you’re an inner. As a snarling Kelvin Mackenzie column made clear recently, Lineker is firmly in the sights of the new enforcers; one imagines that Eurosceptic editors across London are screaming for someone to DO LINEKER and rooting through their vaults in the hope of finding an ancient kiss’n’tell. So far, the best anyone has managed is a story describing his “overly affectionate form” on a flight to Naples with his wife, which Lineker says is fabricated anyway. Mostly, his treatment is a good barometer for what happens now to anyone who dares challenge what the Daily Mail optimistically calls “the overwhelming verdict of the British public”: rattle on about crisps for a boatload of cash while living in a mansion and everyone will leave you alone, but worry aloud about the dispossessed and you will be thrown to the wolves immediately. | It is a measure of Britain’s changed politics that the role that once fell to Russell Brand has now passed to the host of Match of the Day. As an aspiring national treasure, behind Judi Dench but ahead of Paul Hollywood, Lineker’s interventions are more powerfully radical than anything you might hear on the Trews. His new status is notable as an example of how the Brexit debate has, to everyone’s dismay, become knotted up in all the grimmest bits of public discourse, to the point where believing it is inhumane to require refugee children to prove their age with x-rays of their teeth definitely means you’re an inner. As a snarling Kelvin Mackenzie column made clear recently, Lineker is firmly in the sights of the new enforcers; one imagines that Eurosceptic editors across London are screaming for someone to DO LINEKER and rooting through their vaults in the hope of finding an ancient kiss’n’tell. So far, the best anyone has managed is a story describing his “overly affectionate form” on a flight to Naples with his wife, which Lineker says is fabricated anyway. Mostly, his treatment is a good barometer for what happens now to anyone who dares challenge what the Daily Mail optimistically calls “the overwhelming verdict of the British public”: rattle on about crisps for a boatload of cash while living in a mansion and everyone will leave you alone, but worry aloud about the dispossessed and you will be thrown to the wolves immediately. |
| Marmite and Toblerone | Marmite and Toblerone |
| Inanimate foodstuffs are going the extra mile this political season, emerging for the first time as plotters against the people. Personally, I’ve always been on the fence about Marmite, but that position is now invalid, not only in the eyes of those who would sell you yeast extract, but also in the eyes of those who would like an efficient proxy for your view on Britain’s membership of the European Union. If you think businesses are entitled to charge us what they like for their goods, since the market will demonstrate the acumen or idiocy of their decision, you are no longer a principled capitalist, but a Jean-Claude Juncker-loving banana-straightener with no understanding of the ordinary shopper; if you think there should be a legal minimum number of peaks on your Swiss chocolate bar, you are a defender of British values against foreign commercial interests that basically amount to – of course! – a pyramid scheme. | Inanimate foodstuffs are going the extra mile this political season, emerging for the first time as plotters against the people. Personally, I’ve always been on the fence about Marmite, but that position is now invalid, not only in the eyes of those who would sell you yeast extract, but also in the eyes of those who would like an efficient proxy for your view on Britain’s membership of the European Union. If you think businesses are entitled to charge us what they like for their goods, since the market will demonstrate the acumen or idiocy of their decision, you are no longer a principled capitalist, but a Jean-Claude Juncker-loving banana-straightener with no understanding of the ordinary shopper; if you think there should be a legal minimum number of peaks on your Swiss chocolate bar, you are a defender of British values against foreign commercial interests that basically amount to – of course! – a pyramid scheme. |
| The Cabinet Liberation Front | The Cabinet Liberation Front |
| Anna Soubry and Nicky Morgan are my favourite politicians of the moment: actual conservatives who think their job is to eschew radical interventions in favour of taking good care of the most precious parts of their political inheritance. If they were Republicans, you feel, their distaste for Donald Trump would not have expired on election day. This is, accordingly, a moment that may be driving them nuts. They will be talking quite moderately about the way forward on one of the Sunday morning chatshows, then someone will read them a Liam Fox quote about how the EU is putting “politics over prosperity”, or suggest that a nice blue passport will probably sort everything out, and veins will start to throb subtly in their temples, their eyes will bulge, their glasses will crack. Suddenly, you’re looking at Michael Douglas in Falling Down. In a couple of years, when the police ask them why they are taking a couple of sledgehammers to the bow of the Royal Yacht Britannia, they will reply, with icy calm, that they don’t intend to give a running commentary, then get back to a bit of righteous and retaliatory vandalism. | Anna Soubry and Nicky Morgan are my favourite politicians of the moment: actual conservatives who think their job is to eschew radical interventions in favour of taking good care of the most precious parts of their political inheritance. If they were Republicans, you feel, their distaste for Donald Trump would not have expired on election day. This is, accordingly, a moment that may be driving them nuts. They will be talking quite moderately about the way forward on one of the Sunday morning chatshows, then someone will read them a Liam Fox quote about how the EU is putting “politics over prosperity”, or suggest that a nice blue passport will probably sort everything out, and veins will start to throb subtly in their temples, their eyes will bulge, their glasses will crack. Suddenly, you’re looking at Michael Douglas in Falling Down. In a couple of years, when the police ask them why they are taking a couple of sledgehammers to the bow of the Royal Yacht Britannia, they will reply, with icy calm, that they don’t intend to give a running commentary, then get back to a bit of righteous and retaliatory vandalism. |
| Continuity remain | Continuity remain |
| Or Keepers of the National Time Machine. Denied the opportunity to dance badly on national television for a couple of months, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg are taking a more upsetting path to the rose-tinted uplands of nostalgia: not forcing us to discover their playful side, but rather making us sob violently and wish that things had been completely different. (Hillary’s pause for a photo with another hiker shortly after her defeat last week is an early indication of how infinitely sad it is going to be to watch her taking the same path.) Oh, days of drab competence! Oh, counterfactual history, where bacon sandwich jokes are our biggest concern, the Lib Dems are there for a reason, and Paddy Ashdown hasn’t eaten any hats! Oh, Tony Blair, sort of! | |
| Openly gay former Olympic fencers (‘judges’) | Openly gay former Olympic fencers (‘judges’) |
| Members of the judiciary who apply the law as they are obliged to can now be described by this surprising new synonym, courtesy of the Mail Online’s appalled headline reference to one of the three judges who ruled on the article 50 case. OGFOFs are monstrous partly for their wigs, which are an absurd anachronism (unlike the Royal Yacht Britannia); partly for their approach, which is activist (even though a more carefully planned Brexit process could easily have avoided this eventuality); but mostly for their interest in minority sports and minority sexual orientations and their refusal to hide either. | |
| Lego | Lego |
| Funny one, this. When the campaign group Stop Funding Hate asked a range of brands to stop advertising with the Daily Mail, not even Lineker himself could extricate Walkers Crisps (so far, anyway). But Lego, the venerable Danish manufacturer of little plastic bricks, decided that it was time to cut its ties. And yet. To quote the company’s excellently named press officer, Roar Rude Trangbaek: “The agreement with the Daily Mail has finished and we have no plans to run any promotional activity with the newspaper in the foreseeable future.” That reads like a statement with an awful lot of wriggle room, avoiding any reference to cause and effect and inserting the crucial word “foreseeable”. Perhaps this was merely an awkward way of saying: “We don’t actually advertise with them anyway, so leave us alone.” Who knows. For now, anyway, Lego’s little, yellow figurines are doing better than Labour’s large, grey figureheads. | Funny one, this. When the campaign group Stop Funding Hate asked a range of brands to stop advertising with the Daily Mail, not even Lineker himself could extricate Walkers Crisps (so far, anyway). But Lego, the venerable Danish manufacturer of little plastic bricks, decided that it was time to cut its ties. And yet. To quote the company’s excellently named press officer, Roar Rude Trangbaek: “The agreement with the Daily Mail has finished and we have no plans to run any promotional activity with the newspaper in the foreseeable future.” That reads like a statement with an awful lot of wriggle room, avoiding any reference to cause and effect and inserting the crucial word “foreseeable”. Perhaps this was merely an awkward way of saying: “We don’t actually advertise with them anyway, so leave us alone.” Who knows. For now, anyway, Lego’s little, yellow figurines are doing better than Labour’s large, grey figureheads. |
| Ireland | Ireland |
| Perhaps alarmed at the prospect of millions of disconsolate inners digging out an Irish grandparent with the alacrity of a middling Premier League footballer, perhaps dismayed by the dangers that a hard border with the north would bring, the Dublin government has done its best to say: er, listen, are you absolutely sure about this? It won’t make a blind bit of difference, of course, but it is consoling for the diehard remainer, who doesn’t need much encouragement to hear an English-speaking European leader offering rousing words on the importance of working together and conjure themselves into a slightly less terrifying world. (Of course, as Dublin’s recent travails over its treatment of Apple’s tax affairs make clear, it wouldn’t be a perfect world, either, but you can’t have everything.) | |
| Lily Allen | Lily Allen |
| As the great and the good have gravitated towards Calais, Allen has stood out for the vigour with which she has stuck up two fingers at those who would prefer that she shut up. If Lineker has seemed occasionally a little taken aback by the opprobrium heaped upon him, it is all par for the course for Allen, who has been subjected to the sneering of the tabloid press for years. Yes, there’s a certain unexamined celebrity grandeur in her apology to the refugees on behalf of her country. But when she tells the story of a cab driver who suggested that she “find an immigrant to drive you, you stupid tart”, and when Jan Moir uses her column to describe her as “just another indulged idiot” of whose views we have “had a bellyful”, it is hard not to enjoy it when she tells her critics that their grandchildren will be apologising for them “just like the Germans do for the Nazis”, if only for her refusal to worry about the resulting headlines. No one wants to get into a Bono situation, but God save us from celebrities who don’t agree that “There’s a good chance that what I do say will end up helping some people, so why wouldn’t I do that?” | |
| Football Manager | Football Manager |
| Not a middle-aged man prowling the technical area in a big coat, but rather a state-of-the-art spreadsheet masquerading as a video game that allows you to do the same. When the latest iteration was released last month, players were interested to discover that it would model a range of possible consequences of the Brexit vote. These range from the soft option, in which freedom of movement is retained and your club’s latest tricky winger can still be imported with impunity from Ligue 1, to the full Farage, wherein any player from overseas requires a work permit, and the English football league sinks gradually into irrelevance. As a game mechanic, this sounds lively, although it is a pity it doesn’t account for the effect of a hike in Marmite prices on your enthusiast star striker. | Not a middle-aged man prowling the technical area in a big coat, but rather a state-of-the-art spreadsheet masquerading as a video game that allows you to do the same. When the latest iteration was released last month, players were interested to discover that it would model a range of possible consequences of the Brexit vote. These range from the soft option, in which freedom of movement is retained and your club’s latest tricky winger can still be imported with impunity from Ligue 1, to the full Farage, wherein any player from overseas requires a work permit, and the English football league sinks gradually into irrelevance. As a game mechanic, this sounds lively, although it is a pity it doesn’t account for the effect of a hike in Marmite prices on your enthusiast star striker. |
| Philip Hammond | Philip Hammond |
| As unlikely heroes of the resistance go, the chancellor of the exchequer is right up there with René from ’Allo ’Allo!, but no less effective for that. Perhaps it is as much a matter of sensibility as anything else: a man as grey as Hammond simply could not let a trio of buccaneering Brexit bros like Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox get the better of him. As such, the subtle undermining of their bravado became essential. So you would believe, anyway, if you read the Daily Telegraph story of 11 October, in which Davis’s allies accused Hammond of “pulling the rug from under” Brexit negotiations with a leak of draft cabinet papers that warned that leaving the single market could cost up to £66bn in tax revenues. Exactly how much to read into this insurrection won’t be clear until the memoirs emerge, but, in the meantime, at least we can tell ourselves that there might be a mole in the camp. | |
| Prince Harry | Prince Harry |
| Where Lineker and Allen lead, you might not have expected Harry – erstwhile denizen of Boujis, wearer of Nazi fancy dress, a man who once referred to a member of his regiment as a “Paki” – to follow. But then he started dating actor Meghan Markle, and the Daily Mail ran something about her being “(almost) straight outta Compton”, among other thinly veiled pieces of racialised comment. By issuing a sternly worded statement decrying all this, Harry suddenly began to look like what the Observer called “a liberal deep inside the palace”. | |
| Can the prince really be a member of the PC brigade? Who knows; many of the 48% will conclude that their enemy’s enemy is their friend. What’s really striking is this: his statement had nothing to do with Brexit. However, in this weird era when the definition of “elitist” is “any sort of liberal”, a prince’s protest and a yeasty spread feel like they are part of the same amorphous, asymmetrical political warfare, broadsides in what has, appallingly enough, become a culture war. |