If food is the only dependable pleasure, then reading is the one true consolation, offering both immediate escape and a longer narrative arc that suggests how today’s shocks and swerves ultimately become the story. Also, on the whole, fiction has as its meat human characters – or artful approximations of them, anyway – and so little patience for ideas of perfectibility or progress.

That said, I hope to go straight from anger over the referendum to grim acceptance, bypassing grief and sorrow. But here is something from someone with his emotions less defensively expressed, a former infantry officer shocked not just by the result but the depth of his sadness at it:

“Security is not police, soldiers and border checks. It is social cohesion, education and equality – our society is global now and stepping away from that can only be damaging to the things that deliver long-term security.”

Here are some of the books I’ve read in the past six months that I unreservedly recommend for summer-reading. And they’re not even all fiction.

The World of Yesterday, Stefan Zweig
For those who haven’t already read this classic memoir of a Jewish Viennese intellectual who lost everything – family, home, culture, books, hope – in World War II, it feels like the book of our own historic moment. Zweig describes what it is to grow up comfortable, refined and secure and then be expelled by fascism and war from everything you know and love. Yes, war happens to clever middle class people, too.

Zweig’s father and grandfather “lived their lives in a single, direct way … spent all their days in the same country, the same city, usually even in the same house.” Such wars as they experienced were short or far away. But Zweig’s generation, born at the end of the nineteenth century “lived through everything without ever returning to our former lives, nothing was left of them, nothing was restored. It was for our generation to experience, to the highest degree, events that history usually bestows sparingly on a single land over a whole century.”

History is something we like to read about but would prefer to experience as little as possible of. So it is just a little sickening that we in the still-peaceful countries must now actively coach ourselves to not consign those whose homelands have been incinerated to some frightening, plague-like category of ‘other’.

So be it. If all a book does is hammer into our core the realisation that ‘this could be me’, then it’s almost enough. What it can’t do is direct or encourage what we do with that knowledge. That is up to us. Read Zweig. Then think about what is called for.
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It’s what you have been waiting for! Two more pages of On Beyond Zarathustra! (When oh when will Z stop talking already? Not soon, it seems!)

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Anyone have podcasts they like? I listen to a lot. Always up for something new and good. Or even something bad, maybe.

I just listened to an interview with Leslie Reagan, on On The Media. She’s a historian of abortion politics (here’s her book). She talks about how the movement to legalize abortion in the US got a double push, first from fear of rubella-related birth-defects, then from fear of thalydomide-related birth defects. (This is the late-50’s, early 60’s.) In a nutshell, ‘dangerous pregnancy’ had to be made vivid – pictorially vivid – as something that could happen to ‘good’ white women. I’m not sure whether this makes a difference to how we think about the politics of abortion today in the US. (There’s a zika virus hook, for the podcast. Will Catholic countries facing zika outbreaks lift bans on abortion?) But I found it very interesting because if you’d asked me about the US politics of abortion in the 50’s and 60’s I would have drawn a total blank. I would have said ‘something about the sexual revolution?’ and then realized, as the words left my mouth, that this didn’t sound right.

Second, I just listened to a Federalist podcast interview with Randy Barnett. Not my cup of tea, usually, but I have an interest in Barnett’s stuff. The guy really has a bug in his ear about John Roberts. A couple months back he was blaming Roberts for Trump and I was like – fine, fine, you lost your Obamacare case. You are a bit bitter, venting steam. But he’s still banging on about how Roberts is the betrayer-in-chief of the Constitution, hence to blame for Trump. This is polemically unfair, in ways I could spell out, but won’t. (If you really want to ask, that’s what comments are for.) But I’ve got to wonder whether this sort of thing isn’t really pissing off Roberts. It would piss me off, if I were Roberts. Barnett isn’t just some guy. He’s like the brain and soul of the Federalist Society, these days. A bit of on-again, off-again grousing about Roberts’ ‘bad’ decisions is one thing. But Roberts is shaping up to be this consistent, vile Judas in the conservative imaginary. Roberts is going to be Chief for a while, I expect. Dale Carnegie would suggest that the way to work the refs effectively is not this. If Roberts actually turns into some flaming Living Constitutionalist slave-to-the-democratic-mob in 20 years, maybe you can give Barnett half credit.

The first time I heard the name Boris Johnson was in the early 1990s. I was in graduate school, and one of the ways I made a little money during the summer was by helping shepherd tours of American policy people around Brussels to be lectured by various dignitaries and then writing up reports. One year, my Americans were treated to a performance by a prominent UK member of the Brussels press corps, who was clearly enjoying himself immensely. The larger part of his talk focused on Boris Johnson, who was then the Daily Telegraph’s Brussels correspondent. The journalist told of how Johnson clearly was completely at sea in Brussels, and at a loss for what to report on. Other reporters quickly noted that he had a sweet tooth for stories about this or that regulatory horror that Brussels bureaucrats were about to inflict on unsuspecting Britons. They started an informal pool, to see what was the most ridiculously exaggerated story that they could stuff into Boris, which he would then relay as gospel truth to Telegraph readers. The speaker suggested (perhaps exaggerating for effect) that they hadn’t yet been able to find a story so ludicrous that Boris wouldn’t gulp it down.

It’s Boris who’s having the last laugh though, isn’t it.

I suspect – hope – many have heard of ATM scammers, people who try to get information about your card while you are withdrawing cash from an ATM. I will usually look at a machine to see if it looks like someone has tampered with it and I always use my other hand to cover the one entering the PIN. Perhaps that’s silly, but it’s not much of an inconvenience and it’s routine for me now. But as far as I know, I have never encountered an actual ATM skimmer, thankfully.

A security expert happened upon one during his travels recently and captured it on video. In addition to reading his account of it, I highly recommend a careful look at this image from another observer who breaks down very carefully how some components of the ATM (most importantly the section next to where you insert the card) was different from the adjacent ATM that did not have a skimmer. That is likely where the camera resided. In addition to the skimmer, there is usually a camera nearby that captures your motions entering the PIN (if I am understanding this correctly, but do correct me if I am wrong), which is why I tend to cover my hand (and have noticed that now some machines supply some coverage themselves). Snopes has pictures of another version, an older model.

I found the video interesting as I find actual examples of such things helpful thus this public service announcement. Hopefully no one here has related experiences, but if you do, please share.

Like most people outside Britain (and, it seems, like most British people, politicans and pundits as well as voters) I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to the detailed implications of a Leave vote until it actually happened. Now that it has happened, the details matter. In particular, it seems that Boris Johnson and other leaders of the Leave campaign (though presumably not UKIP) are hoping to promote either the “Switzerland” or “Norway” options. I thought I’d check on the implications of these options for migration policy and AFAICT, both Norway and Switzerland are Schengen visa countries. So, on the face of it, those Leavers who supported continued market access on the Norway/Switerland model have voted for removal of existing controls on migration rather than the imposition of new ones.

I assume that Johnson and others have in mind a negotiation in which Britain (or England) gets the market access bits of the Norway/Switzerland options, while maintaining the existing opt-outs negotiated as an EU member. But why should the EU offer this? In particular, if Scotland becomes independent and joins the EU, the Scots will presumably want to maintain free access to England, while the rest of the EU would be unlikely to allow Scotland to remain under English border controls. In any case, the whole logic of the EU position is that Britain should not be able to pick and choose.

On the basis of an admittedly perfunctory search, I haven’t been able to find more than passing discussion of this question. Can anyone point me to more comprehensive analysis?

Jokes first. This one is not so funny. Kierkegaard’s life basically was a “Hark! A Vagrant” strip. So what’s there to work with? But this one nails it. I think there should be a good one about “The Seducer’s Diary” and pick-up artistry. Negging and Hegelian negative? Can’t put my finger on it.

This one is ok, but, here again, the trouble with turning Kierkegaard into jokes is that, honestly, it was as funny in the original. Example: [click to continue…]

I’ve been trying to make sense of the Brexit (or rather E-exit) vote in terms of the “three-party system” analysis I put forward a while back. The result, over the fold, is a piece in Inside Story, an Australian magazine.

The key point is, that, in the absence of a coherent left alternative, neoliberalism (hard and soft) is being overwhelmed by a tribalist backlash. Writing this, I realise it might be construed as criticism of Corbyn for failing to develop and propose such an alternative in the referendum campaign. That would be a bad misreading. The context of the referendum meant that it was always going to be a choice of evils: between the racism and bigotry that animated so much of the Leave campaign, and the neoliberalism of both the Cameron government and the EU. The option of a social democratic, or even soft neoliberal, EU was not on the ballot.

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So, first off all, the main blame falls on Cameron and his friends. He called an entirely unnecessary, and for most of the electorate unwanted, referendum, which risked the Union (and how anyone can now resist a second Scottish independence referendum with a straight face now is beyond me) solely for reasons to do with the interests of his party. The result is exactly the one anyone would have predicted (and many of our pro-Brexit commentators did) after a Brexit campaign that has lasted about 25 years, and knowing the the Remain campaign would be led by a bunch of out-of-touch toffs with a history of public dishonesty. (Of course, the Brexit campaign was led by similar types, but had a 25 year head start).

Then, unsurprisingly, the Remain campaign, led by those toffs, started scaremongering in ways that were dishonest and implausible. No, this will not provoke war in Europe. This was always going to be a Tory-led campaign (because they are the government), and unfortunately the leaders were people whose every appearance rankled with anti-establishment voters. Corbyn could (if he were a different kind of person) have joined the chorus and campaigned in the same vein. But there’s no reason to believe that would have helped. From what I heard from Labour canvassers in pro-exit wards they were overwhelmed by the anti-EU sentiment on the doorstep. Of course they argued, but even when you ‘win’ an argument like that (which maybe you can if, as in some cases, they have known you as their councillor for the last 30 years) you cannot be sure they are going to vote your way.

When the Northeastern votes started coming in, commentators were blaming Labour for not getting out the vote. But the thing about GOTV operations is that it is they make a lot of sense when you expect your voters to vote for you but they are really quite spectacularly stupid you know they will vote against you. If Labour MPs and council members in the Northeast did sit on their hands, they did exactly the right thing — the thing that maximized the chances for Remain to win.

Imagine Labour had been led by a former SPAD, establishment, Oxbridge-type euro-enthusiast instead of Corbyn. Knowing what you know now, do you think that would have been better? (Don’t imagine, instead, that Alan Johnson had been leader — he was not on offer!). For much of the 25 years of the Brexit campaign, the Labour mainstream has been gently assisting it by expressing contempt for, and disregarding the interests of, exactly the kinds of Labour voters who have started defecting to UKIP, and who voted for leave. The ‘blame Corbyn’ movement says that it has been entirely irresponsible of Jeremy Corbyn, and shows his lack of competence, that he has failed, in his 9 months as leader, to turn the tide and win all those people back not just to voting Labour, but to supporting the EU with enthusiasm. No doubt Andy Burnham or Yvette Cooper or Liz Kendall would have succeeded!

And now England has voted for Exit, and Scotland will, presumably, secede. And Corbyn’s enemies are seizing on this chance to do him in. But how will replacing Corbyn with a former-SPAD establishment, Oxbridge-type, euro-enthusiast help Labour’s position in this new environment? I’m curious what the sensible story is about this. Or, maybe, they are planning to replace him with McDonnell.

Went to bed feeling optimistic, believing the late polls and the bookies, and turned the radio on at 4.20 to hear Nigel Farage gloating. A coalition of English and Welsh voters, advanced in years, low in education, and xenophobic in attitude, have enabled the worst and most reactionary people in British society, made it extremely likely that Scotland will secede, undermined the peace settlement on the island of Ireland, and destroyed the UK’s access to the single market. They have made it likely that their children and grandchildren will be deprived of the right of free movement within the EU. The pound is tanking and the stock market too. Imports will be more expensive, inflation will rise, house prices will fall but interest rate rises will keep the cost of being housed high. Immigration will probably fall, but not because “we” regained “control of our borders” but because immigrants come for jobs and there will be way fewer of those. Already we have the farce of areas of the country, like Cornwall, that voted for Brexit demanding that central government guarantee that the EU subsidies they get will be replaced. And then the horrible lying politics of the whole campaign, with Leave claiming that money saved on the EU would be diverted to the NHS (a commitment Farage repudiated within hours of the result). Little England with Wales is a poorer, narrower, stingier place. Cameron, the most incompetent Prime Minister in British history and the architect of this disaster is walking away, to be replaced by a hard right Tory administration under the leadership of Gove, May or the Trumpesque clown Johnson. People, we are well and truly fucked.

From the same stable as some of Harry’s recommendations, the song that I had always meant to post in this eventuality:

I said to a student that the British were deciding whether to leave Europe and she said, with shocked puzzlement on her face, “But where will they go?” She’s quite funny.

Discuss away. Please be civil and polite to those you disagree with (and those you agree with, for that matter) — unless you are a Tory addressing another Tory, in which case I guess that bird has flown and you should just enjoy yourself.

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