Hugo Rifkind

This is a short piece on Holocaust Memorial Day, and what it means to be descended from Holocaust survivors. Many, many people could write a story like this, but this one is mine. All parts of my family lost people in the war. My grandfather, though, lost pretty much his whole family. They were in Krakow, in Poland, and only he and one brother survived. His first wife, his baby daughter, his parents, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews all died. To understand the immediacy, that’s my mum’s half-sister, grandparents, her whole extended family. All gone before she was even born. Recently, I’ve been trying to find out about them. It’s really hard. My grandpa died when I was three, and I gather he didn’t like to talk about the past much.

On the morning of the election, we buried my lovely mum. I write this 24 hours later, now on a flight to the States, with the mud from her graveside still all over my shoes. This was just the ashes, because we had the funeral six weeks ago, but it was oddly fitting. The 1970 election was called a week before she married my father, who would go on to spend the bulk of his working life as a Tory MP, which meant they had to postpone their honeymoon and spend it canvassing the streets of Edinburgh instead. Four years later, the sudden second 1974 poll was held two days before the birth of my older sister. And there we were, right at the end, doing it to her yet again. She hadn’t talked much for the past few years, because multiple sclerosis can be savage like that.

Be fair. Theresa May’s plan actually half-worked. No, there was a plan. I know the consensus now seems to be that the entire election was motivated by little more a succession of senior Tories saying ‘Gosh yes, everybody loves you!’ to the Prime Minister while Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy stood behind her chair, slapping truncheons into their palms. Only that’s not how it was. Once, there was philosophy here. There was a plan to cut loose the liberal, urban, Remainiac middle classes, and draw in a new working-class Tory vote instead. And, like I said, it half-worked. As in, the working classes might not have got the message that the Tories were now a party for them, but the urban middle classes surely got the glaring hint that it now was not for them.

The opposition wants to raze your house to the ground. No, bear with me. Analogy. They say they’ll pull it down, and build a new one with, I don’t know, walls of gold, and hot and cold running unicorns. ‘You can’t trust them,’ says the government, ‘because they want to knock your house down!’ And normally, normally, this would be quite an effective message. Only this time it is delivered from inside the cab of a JCB by a government that also wants to knock down your house, and has already demolished your garden wall. ‘Honk honk!’ they’re going, on that pull-down-horn thing, with eyes gleaming like those of actual maniacs. ‘Those guys are crazy!’ they’re saying, with foam frothing from their own lips.

Enough of all these vital, apocalyptic, existential elections. They don’t half wear you out. The Scottish referendum was vital and apocalyptic, so they said, because the wrong decision would have seen Britain crack like a plate, and Scotland spiral off into insane debt, and residual Britain fade in geopolitical importance. Or, on other side, Tory rule for a millennium, which no Scot could ever want. Hmmm. Then the 2015 election was vital and apocalyptic, too, because Ed Miliband… Ed Miliband… Hang on. What was the big problem with Ed Miliband? There definitely was one. Ah yes, his dad hated Britain. Also he was incompetent. Didn’t even know how many kitchens he had. Couldn’t eat a sandwich. Or hold a banana. Unless that was somebody else.

In his new book Move Fast and Break Things, the American academic Jonathan Taplin makes a decent case that, democratically speaking, the internet has gone awry. Tools and freedoms which originally promised to allow individuals to challenge the powerful, he argues, are instead exploited by the powerful to dodge the demands of society. He’s writing about copy-right and tax, mainly. But he could have been writing about political advertising. On the radio last weekend, my friend and colleague Lord Finkelstein (I don’t actually call him Lord Finkelstein) was talking about the skills of Sir Lynton Crosby, the Tory election mastermind. ‘Lots of election campaigns are taking place where you can’t see them.

The crapness of Corbyn’s Labour is a phenomenon. It fascinates me. Frankly, it does my head in. For there is a theory, you see, that Corbyn’s Labour isn’t really crap at all. That it is all a conspiracy. That journalists such as me, who I suspect are ‘neoliberal’ or something, merely construct a narrative demonising it as such. Where politicians match our prejudices, this theory goes, we give them enormous leeway and spring to their defence. When they don’t, we supposedly deem them ‘mad’ or ‘radical’ or, yes, ‘crap’, in a spirit of sheer defensiveness. It’s a neat theory, this, and very occasionally I even find myself wondering if it might be true.

According to archaeologists and all the papers last week, the 11th-century villagers of Wharram Percy, North Yorkshire, used to mutilate their dead, chopping off their heads and breaking their legs to minimise the danger of zombie resurrection. ‘Imagine being afraid,’ I chortled while reading this, ‘that the undead might put you in mortal danger!’ Whereupon I flicked forward a couple of pages and came across Michael Howard’s plan to defend Gibraltar by sending a gunboat. Personally, I’m against the idea of war with Spain. Although I say that cautiously, because we Remoaners must not hold back the will of the people.

The best thing about being a Remainer is obviously the dinner parties, where we all sit around being incredibly well-heeled in leafy Islington. Bloody love a good heel, I do. And a leaf. Honestly, you haven’t lived until you’ve heard Eddie Izzard and Nick Clegg crack jokes at each other in French, as Lily Allen and Matthew Parris do impressions of old people from Northumberland, while in the background Bob Geldof and Professor Brian Cox duet on the piano. It’s almost literally how I spend almost all of my time. Whereas Leaver dinner parties, so I’m told, are just IDS and a Scotch egg. The worst thing about being a Remainer, though, is Jean-Claude Juncker. Indeed, I’d go further and say that he’s the worst thing about the European Union altogether.

The best thing about being a Remainer is obviously the dinner parties, where we all sit around being incredibly well-heeled in leafy Islington. Bloody love a good heel, I do. And a leaf. Honestly, you haven’t lived until you’ve heard Eddie Izzard and Nick Clegg crack jokes at each other in French, as Lily Allen and Matthew Parris do impressions of old people from Northumberland, while in the background Bob Geldof and Professor Brian Cox duet on the piano. It’s almost literally how I spend almost all of my time. Whereas Leaver dinner parties, so I’m told, are just IDS and a Scotch egg. The worst thing about being a Remainer, though, is Jean-Claude Juncker. Indeed, I’d go further and say that he’s the worst thing about the European Union altogether.