Our governing class has a problem with history. It perhaps goes without saying that we are led by an interrelated subset of the myopic, the self-indulgent and the self-interested, all lacking hinterland. Imagine the Junkers if they did Parkrun. But it bears repeating that history poses a particular challenge to them, exposing the insanity of much of their worldview.
Nothing illustrates this more than Lisa Nandy’s recent blundering attempt to use Remembrance Sunday to champion Labour’s EU reset – specifically, the decision to rejoin the Erasmus scheme. In a press release, the Culture Secretary announced ‘as we mark Remembrance Sunday, Erasmus+ will give a new generation the chance to build connections across Europe’ which, she added, ‘veterans’ service helped to secure’.
Only someone with absolutely no grasp of history could indulge in the implied comparison between then and now. I doubt even the most jingoistic observer of the first world war would have described being shelled into oblivion in the Flanders mud as ‘building connections across Europe’. Still more egregious is what it reveals about Labour’s view of history: namely, something which exists exclusively to be shoehorned into justifying the present. It’s a particularly low-rent version of ‘Whig history’. At least Lord Macaulay believed fate was marching inexorably towards parliamentary liberty. The current lot see the grand sweep of history as leading to nothing more than a reciprocal student exchange, the great triumph of the clipboard and the online form.
Nandy was then trotted out for the media round decked in black, trying to channel Wednesday Addams but giving much more of a vibe of Pugsley. She attempted to defend her comments by doubling down on them. She accused her critics of ‘politicking’ and ‘being crass’. The real hijackers of Remembrance, it turned out, were the people who found the whole thing ridiculous – a group that included everyone who interviewed her.
Her decision not to focus on other aspects of European integration with more obvious relevance to war, such as military cooperation and intelligence sharing, but on a notoriously unrigorous student exchange programme, tells us much about why her side lost the referendum. Erasmus was one of the big casualties of Brexit for urban Remainers; that they see resurrecting it as a top priority suggests they’ve learnt little since 2016.
What’s especially grating is the suggestion that working-class lads in the Highland regiments or the pals’ battalions from industrial South Yorkshire really fought in the trenches so that Islington trust-fund babies could have their year in Perugia. It would certainly have come as news to my grandads (both Eurosceptics who never went to university) that they actually spent five years variously manning freezing Atlantic convoys and dodging Japanese gunfire in Burmese swamps, not, as they imagined, to defend their homes and nation against fascism but so that one day Marie-France could enjoy her fully funded ‘booze and fags’ tour.
Politicians of all stripes have a track record of abusing history for self-serving ends, especially where Europe is concerned. It wasn’t that long ago that David Lammy not only likened members of the European Research Group to Nazis, but repeated the comparison, saying it ‘wasn’t strong enough’. Last year, the former attorney general Lord Hermer compared politicians who support leaving the European Convention on Human Rights to Nazi-era German jurists.
Such historical cynicism isn’t confined to the left. During the Covid pandemic, Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock repeatedly invoked ‘Blitz spirit’ to rationalise locking down the country for long periods. Helpfully for the government, this sense of enforced solidarity made it easier for anyone who criticised their policies, however well-intentioned or evidenced their queries, to be branded treacherous, not team-players, the equivalent of wartime spivs. Ironically, lockdown probably did more to empower modern-day spivvery than any recent domestic decision. Had Private Walker from Dad’s Army been around during the Covid pandemic, he’d have been all over the bounce-back loans and faulty protective equipment.
Arguably Kaiser Wilhelm II lived a sort of permanent Erasmus scheme; to such an extent that if there was any justice it would be called the Hohenzollern scheme. Kaiser Bill spent his life speaking multiple languages, travelling across European borders with gay abandon and being related to people from almost every EU member state – and he still managed to cause the first world war. Yet that doesn’t matter to the Culture Secretary. She, like other politicians, views history merely as a crude source of metaphor to serve her current political obsessions. So, in that spirit, I humbly present: 1997 and All That – or The Great Nand Theory of History.
The current lot see the grand sweep of history as leading to nothing more than a reciprocal student exchange
ad 61 – Activist from the Reform-sympathetic region of the Iceni, Boudicca, receives the proportionate sentence of death for her and her children following efforts to stir up racial hatred against the non-native population. By contrast, the Roman legions are granted indefinite leave to remain after an immigration judge takes into account the Emperor Nero’s struggles with poor mental health.
1194 – Renowned Islamophobe Richard the Lionheart returns from Crusade and thus ruins the far-sighted progressive tax regime of his brother, Good Prince John.
1348 – A mere third of Britain’s population dies during the Black Death; testament to the efficacy of the envy of Christendom, R’NHS.
1525 – Thomas Wolsey dissolves a number of smaller monastic houses to found Cardinal College, Oxford, creating the first Sure Start centre.
1805 – The Battle of Trafalgar. Napoleon’s fleet is single-handedly defeated by a diverse British force consisting of the Empire Windrush, Oleg Deripaska’s yacht and two dinghies full of highly skilled engineers.
1854 – The Charge of the Light Brigade. Had Captain Nolan, the Earl of Cardigan and Lord Lucan spent time before the Crimean campaign in deep study of Adolescence, then their toxic masculinity would never have led to the disastrous cavalry charge at Balaclava.
1997 – Dawn of the new age. The turning-point of all history. The arrival of the Alpha and Omega. The beginning but, in a much more real sense, the end.
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