In Lost, Stolen or Shredded, published in 2013, my pal Rick Gekoski gave us fifteen stories of missing works of art and literature, ranging from a juvenile poem by James Joyce (lost) to the Mona Lisa (stolen) to Philip Larkin’s diaries (shredded).
 
I wonder if Banksy read it.
 
His Girl With Balloon, which self-destructed minutes after selling for a million quid (the Sotheby’s estimate was £200K to £300K) is now believed, in its shredded state, to be worth twice what the anonymous buyer paid. Or at least, what he or she bid because we await confirmation that the buyer has paid or will pay for the artwork.
 
I’m pretty sure that he has or will. After all, the result of this coup de théâtre is a new, unique artwork.
 
There is a parallel here. Back in the early 1950s, Robert Rauschenberg performed an equally audacious act. He ‘erased’ a drawing by Willem de Kooning and in so doing, over a period of two months, he created a new piece which he exhibited under the title “Erased De Kooning Drawing”.
 
He said that it was not destruction, nor negation, but celebration. And de Kooning colluded in this by providing “something I will miss”.
 
Rauschenberg had experimented with erasing his own work, but concluded that “If it was my own work being erased, then the erasing would only be half the process, and I wanted it to be the whole,” he said.
 
Judged by this criterion, Banksy has only achieved half the process. His next move, perhaps, will be to approach a de Kooning of today with a request for an artwork which can form the raw material for a total erasure.
 
I nominate Damian Hirst.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: To my eternal regret, I missed Luna’s couple of gigs in the UK last month, so grateful to nyctaper for a great show from Industry City in “deep Brooklyn”. Highlight (for me) a terrific version of the Velvets’ Lonesome Cowboy Bill. What NY lacks in baseball, it makes up for with a great music scene.

We were introduced by a mutual friend. I was a naïve student journalist; he was the recently appointed director of the Child Poverty Action Group.
 
My friend and I had travelled down from Cambridge to the CPAG office so that I could interview Frank Field for a piece in The 1/- Paper. He was generous with his time. We discussed the importance of the work of Brian Abel Smith and the need to transform the CPAG into an effective pressure group, aimed at redressing the failures of the Labour Government of the time.
 
And then he took us for lunch.
 
He regaled us with stories of the left before my time, notably - I recall – the attempt by Gerry Healey (of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party) to run him down outside a meeting at which Frank had challenged Healey’s agenda. The story involved Frank taking cover behind a concrete bollard into which an irate Healey smashed his car. And then, long into the afternoon, he talked quietly and powerfully about his faith. And although I was familiar with the truism that the Labour Party owed more to Methodism than Marx, I wrote later that Frank must be one of the first to come to socialism via High Anglicanism.
 
That day Frank Field was committed, thoughtful, witty, charismatic. As he was also on subsequent occasions, addressing small groups of students at ill-attended meetings (a couple of which I organized), patiently explaining to us that there was much that could be achieved to eradicate poverty even before the revolution!
 
Forty years on, that Frank Field is no longer recognizable. And it’s a source of profound regret to those of us who believed that he was a progressive force.
 
Over the years, I have consistently given him the benefit of my doubt. I have read with detailed attentiveness each new paper, each new policy proposal, looking for evidence to justify my belief that he was a maverick but he was our maverick, that his Anglican social democratic instincts nevertheless made the Labour Party his natural home. I even sought to justify his relationship with Thatcher and his acceptance of an offer to work with Cameron as ploys to further a Labour agenda, to exploit every contradiction etc etc.
 
But today, I can no longer do so.
 
Frank is too intelligent a man to believe the stuff in his resignation note but he said it anyway. Just as an ex-Chief Rabbi must surely know the difference between Jewish and Zionist, so Frank must surely know that the party he has represented in parliament since 1979 is not racist or anti-semitic and nor is its leader. To argue that the the bizarre statement by Sachs is the reason he has resigned is the ‘last straw’ for me and, I suspect, for thousands of members and supporters who, regardless of their position on the political spectrum, acknowledged his right to independent thought and action.
 
Throughout his career, Frank has been a member of a legitimate tendency within the Labour Party. It is not a tendency to which I subscribe, but I also prefer to watch the parking meters and I recognize that it has a long and valid tradition.
 
Trouble is, it is this very tradition which Frank is undermining. Oy vey.

Today from the everysmith vaults: My birthday album, Highway 61 Revisited. (the mono recording obviously.) Probably my favourite of the extraordinary 60s triptych anyway. Released on 30 August 1965, it emerges from the vaults both regularly and frequently.

Had I been a US citizen, I would have voted for Trump. By which I mean, of course, I wouldn’t have voted for Trump. But I am nevertheless fascinated by the man and even more by his rise to power, a development which I now read was in the confident expectation of losing but building his brand, rather as Boris Johnson expected defeat in the Brexit referendum but saw it as a prerequisite for his leadership ambitions.
 
I read this in Michael Wolff’s book, Fire and Fury: Inside The Trump White House, which has been sitting on my Kindle since its publication. Opening it was prompted by the recent visit to our shores of the man himself and his subsequent ‘summit’ with Putin.
 
Who is he? What motivates him? Is there a real political ideology at the root of his rhetoric? Or is he, as I have long suspected, a kind of alt-right situationist: “It is not enough that thought should strive to realize itself; reality itself must strive toward thought.” That’s Marx by the way. But it is also Dadism and it’s also punk.
 
I doubt whether Trump will have any idea what I’m talking about. But I bet that Steve Bannon does.
 
Bannon is by some distance the most interesting character in the book, a bizarre combination of Lenin and Rasputin. It is his finger on the pulse of the electorate, his popularizing of the ideology, his instincts and his ability to pander to Trump’s political ingenuousness.
 
We already know much of the stuff that Wolff records. It's all on Youtube or in the newspapers. What's interesting is the detailed story of how Bannon loses out to the family. Or rather, how he loses out to daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner. ‘Jarvanka’, as he calls them and their supporters did not, as did Bannon, give long interviews to Wolff, but it is clear that they are the enemy. Not least because they are part of the political elite which has always been the main target of Trumpism-Bannonism; and also because, when a President is likely to go with those who had the last word with him, the family will always triumph.
 
But the last words in the book are Bannon’s: “It’s going to be wild as shit” he says.
 
Those are the words of an instinctive situationist. Those are the words of someone who looks to create and exploit social disorder and cultural divergence. Those are the words of a man who relishes fire and fury and knows how to sieze the opportunities it creates.
 
That is why Bannon is now embarking on his alt-right world tour. His theory is that Trump’s election is not the realization of Trumpism, merely the start of it.
 
And the only man who can see the project through to its conclusion is not Trump, but Bannon himself.
 
It’s going to be wild as shit. And the rest of us are right in it.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: Yesterday afternoon I shoe-horned myself into a crowded pub in Upton-upon-Severn to see the first Swaps gig of the year. Despite the temperatures, around 30C, they gave us a great two-hour set, including a superb new song called Gravity. So today, I have all their albums on shuffle. Welcome back James, Beth, Adam, Dave and Tomo. And thanks.

​The discussion about anti-semitism in the Labour Party has disappointed me and frightened me. But most of all, it has surprised me. As a long-standing member of the Labour Party, I can honestly say that I have never heard an anti-semitic remark or seen evidence of anti-semitic prejudice in the party (or outside it actually) in several decades of leftist activity.

Or have I?

Much of the current debate is centred on different definitions of anti-semitism, pitching Jews against Jews, right against left, member against member, MPs against the NEC. When Corbyn, who has devoted his life to the fight against racism is called by Margaret Hodge “a fucking anti-semite and racist”, I find myself in a state of total confusion.

So I followed a link on social media to the following article with hope. Published by Open Democracy, and written by Brian Klug, who delivered the Holocaust Memorial Day Lecture at Cambridge this year, it is by some measure the best exegesis of the arguments in the dispute that I have read, and it deserves as large an audience as possible.
​
This is the full text. It’s a great deal longer than my normal postings, but a hell of a lot more interesting, instructive and rewarding.


The Code of Conduct for Anti-Semitism:
a tale of two texts 
 
How to deal with antisemitism while at the same time protecting free speech in the political debate over Israel and Palestine? This conundrum lies at the heart of the argument (to use a polite word) in the public square over a new Code of Conduct for Antisemitism proposed by the Equalities Committee, a sub-committee of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Labour Party. The proposal is due to be formally endorsed by the NEC on 17 July. I shall refer to it as ‘the NEC Code’.

The argument revolves around the relationship between the NEC Code and a document that was issued in May 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), an intergovernmental body to which thirty-one countries, including the UK, belong. One edition of the document on the IHRA website has the title ‘The Working Definition of Antisemitism’ and this is the name by which it is widely cited. (Another edition does not.) This title, as we shall see, has given rise to confusion, so I shall refer to the text as ‘the IHRA document’. The IHRA working definition has been widely adopted by national governments (UK included) and other public authorities.

According to Jennie Formby, General Secretary of the Labour Party, the NEC Code takes the IHRA Working Definition and supplements it “with additional examples and guidance”, thus creating “the most thorough and expansive Code of Conduct on anti-Semitism introduced by any political party in the UK”. Similarly, Jon Lansman, a fellow member of the NEC, calls the Code “the new gold standard” for political parties, “stronger than anything of its kind adopted by any political party in this country”. The Code, he says, “fully adopts the IHRA definition, and covers the same ground as the IHRA examples” but goes further, making it more workable. That is the view from the inside.

Wholesale indictment
Those who oppose this view tend to dismiss the NEC Code out of hand rather than seeking to amend it. This itself tells you something about the nature of the ‘argument’ in the public square: it is not exactly amenable to nuance. While there are specific points of criticism, critics typically take the position that Labour should simply adopt the IHRA document in its entirety. This is usually accompanied by a wholesale indictment of the NEC’s initiative or of the entire Labour Party or of the party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, as this sample of comments from the week following the Code’s appearance illustrates:
“Labour’s new guidelines show it is institutionally antisemitic”. The NEC Code is a “toothless document that will only encourage Jew-hate in the Labour Party to flourish further, unchallenged and unpunished”. “It seems Labour found [the IHRA] definition too stringent – it prohibited anti-Jewish expression that Labour wants to allow.” This is an “attempt to weaken the guidelines around how and when criticism of Israel can stray into territory that is obviously antisemitic”. Labour’s “IHRA rejection … represents and repeats the same far left ideological, emotional and systematic rejection of our concerns that we have faced for decades.”

These comments were all made by people who, either in their own right or in the context of Labour’s approach to dealing with antisemitism, are prominent figures. Their comments might strike some readers the same way as they strike me: over the top. But in two cases – no purpose is served in identifying them by name here – the person is someone I have known and respected for many years. I cannot simply dismiss what they say as false or wrongheaded, even though I believe it is.

There is a complex historical and political background to the current debate. In part, this lies in conflation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism. Partly it consists in hostility to Labour from the outside or opposition to its left wing from within. But there is another piece: the sense that some of us have who are Jewish (I include myself) that something has been awry in the discourse about Zionism – and even about Jews in general – in certain sections of the left for many years (as I argued last year). This grievance has festered, as grievances do when they go unheeded. I detect the effects of this unheeded grievance under the surface of some (though by no means all) of the cynicism about Labour and the NEC Code. Which is why I cannot simply dismiss it.

By the same token, cynicism, even when it is well-founded, can become a habit. It is liable to impair our ability to make rational, measured judgments and to recognise when the very thing we want comes about. How ironic if, just at the moment when Labour wakes up to the need to deal with antisemitism in its midst, it is shouted down because of its failure to deal with it in the past! This is, I believe, part of the explanation for the hostility to the NEC Code. A legitimate grievance has sunk in so deep that it is impossible to accept that possibly – just possibly – this grievance has at last been taken on board by the party and that it is being dealt with responsibly. For those readers of this article for whom the cap fits, I urge you to try to keep an open mind about this possibility – which I believe is the reality – as you read on.

‘People of goodwill’
I shall come to specific objections to the NEC Code in due course. I think these objections are largely (if not wholly) misplaced. In a short piece, however, it is not possible to take up each and every criticism and to give a point-by-point refutation. My concern in this article is not primarily with the validity of particular criticisms but with the general stance taken by critics who, on the one hand, reject outright the NEC Code and, on the other hand, embrace unconditionally the IHRA document – as if the one were anathema and the other sacred. I shall seek to show that this stance is an impediment to what people of goodwill want to achieve. By ‘people of goodwill’ I mean people who are sincere in wanting to solve the conundrum I mentioned at the outset: how to deal with antisemitism while at the same time protecting free speech in the political debate over Israel and Palestine. These people are my intended audience. I have nothing to say to those who pretend to be concerned about both desiderata but actually are interested only in grinding a political axe.

Since the current argument revolves around the relationship between the NEC Code and the IHRA document, the first hurdle that critics have to clear is knowing what each text says. I am not convinced that everyone who takes the stance that I am critiquing – treating the IHRA text as sacred and the NEC Code as anathema – has cleared that hurdle. The analysis that I am about to give is based on comparing the texts in relevant respects. My comparison will not be exhaustive. I urge readers to go back to the two primary sources so as to check my analysis and to judge for themselves whether the NEC Code is an advance on the IHRA document in solving the conundrum or not.
A word about the structure of the two documents. There are three parts to the IHRA text: a preamble, a “working definition of antisemitism”, and a discursive explanation that includes, inter alia, a bullet list of eleven “examples”. The NEC Code comprises sixteen numbered paragraphs divided into three sections: Introduction (pars. 1 to 4), principles (par. 5 to 8), and guidelines (par. 9 to 16). Par. 9 contains a list of seven “examples”, (a) to (g).

Perhaps the most insistent criticism of the NEC Code is that Labour has rejected the IHRA definition, replacing it with something new. So, for example: “The IHRA definition of anti-semitism is the only globally accepted one, and it truly beggars belief that the Labour Party thinks it can or should try to cook up its own. What the hell is going on?” Sometimes the words “in full” are added after “definition”, which, as we shall see, is a clue to the confusion underlying this criticism.

The “working definition”
Has Labour tried to “cook up its own” definition? Here is an extract from par. 5 of the NEC Code: “To assist in understanding what constitutes antisemitism, the NEC has endorsed the definition produced by the [IHRA] in 2016”. There follows the definition, reproduced from the IHRA document: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” In the IHRA document, this form of words, described as  a “non-legally binding working definition”, is set off from the rest of the text by appearing in bold and being placed in a box – thus leaving no doubt that this – these two sentences – constitutes the “working definition”. Likewise, in the NEC Code the (identical) definition is set apart by appearing in bold, though indented rather than boxed. No cooking of the books here. The NEC takes the IHRA “working definition”, in its entirety and without altering it one iota, using it as the foundation on which the Code is built: that is “what the hell is going on”.

As definitions go, this one is, to say the least, somewhat vague. Accordingly, the drafters of the IHRA text provide “examples” which, they say, “may serve as illustrations” to “guide” IHRA in its work. Similarly, the NEC Code includes “guidelines” to assist Labour in its work, including a set of seven “examples”. Here is where there is a degree of variation from the IHRA text; and this is where the confusion arises. For, when critics say that the NEC has not adopted the IHRA definition (“in full”), they allude to these variations.

They thus confuse the definition and the examples that are meant as illustrations only. The examples are precisely not intended to be definitive. The definition itself might be vague, but nothing could be clearer than this distinction – between the definition proper and ancillary examples – in the body of the IHRA text.

This confusion is compounded by the fact that (as I mentioned earlier) the IHRA document as a whole is often referred as ‘The Working Definition of Antisemitism’. It is not unusual for the title of an article or a position paper (which effectively this is) to be taken from a part of the text that it names. In this case, however, the title helps sow confusion. Nonetheless, no title has the magical power to obliterate an analytical distinction. To repeat: the definition is one thing, the examples another.

To sum up so far: it is not true to say that the NEC rejects the IHRA “working definition”. On the contrary, it endorses it and incorporates it – prominently – in its Code. It does, however, depart from the IHRA document in certain other respects, including the “examples” it gives. In order to evaluate the Code, we need to take stock of these differences.

Two sets of examples
Let us begin with the two sets of examples. Five of the eleven IHRA examples are taken over bodily – word for word – into the NEC code where they reappear as examples (a), (b), (c), (e) and (g). Example (d) in the NEC Code is identical to the corresponding IHRA example except for substituting ‘Nazi’ for ‘National Socialist’ (a difference without a distinction). One of the IHRA examples is “Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis”. The NEC Code incorporates this as example (f) and expands on it: “Classic antisemitism also includes the use of derogatory terms for Jewish people (such as ‘kike’ or ’yid’); stereotypical and negative physical depictions/ descriptions or character traits, such as references to wealth or avarice and – in the political arena – equating Jews with capitalists or the ruling class”. Not only is this a valid addition, not only does it plug a hole in the examples given by IHRA, but it picks out discourse that, in the British context, Labour needs to be cognizant of for the purpose of conducting its educational and disciplinary work.

This is not the only respect in which, in terms of dealing with antisemitism, the NEC Code improves upon the IHRA document. Thus, par. 10 says: “To those examples [in par. 9] the Party would add the making of unjustified reference to the protected characteristics of being Jewish”; in other words, the equivalent of referring to a ‘black mugger’ when the racial or ethnic identity of the mugger is irrelevant or would not be mentioned if the mugger were white. (An example that springs to mind: ‘Jewish banker’.) There is a further addition in par. 14, which says “it is wrong to apply double standards by requiring more vociferous condemnation of such actions from Jewish people or organisations than from others …”. This speaks to the actual experience of some Jewish people on the left, as I know from the testimonies of people close to me.

All these points significantly enhance the IHRA text. But I have not yet come across a critic of the NEC Code – I mean a critic who places a premium on combating antisemitism – who acknowledges them, let alone welcomes them as the enhancements that they are. They are passed over in silence, as if the IHRA document were a sacred text whose words may not be tampered with – not even if the text can be improved. (This implies a fundamental failure to understand the status of the IHRA document, a point to which I shall return at the end.)

Strengthened guidelines
Four examples from the IHRA list do not figure in the NEC list in par. 9. They are as follows: “Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.” “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” “Applying double standards by requiring of it [Israel] a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.” Critics point to the fact that these examples are absent from the list in the NEC Code.

They are not, however, absent from the Code altogether. Clearly, the drafters of the Code saw these four examples as potentially problematic, partly with an eye to the second part of the conundrum: how to protect free speech in the political debate over Israel and Palestine. Accordingly, in subsequent paragraphs they discuss these examples, along with other tricky issues, and recommend what they see as appropriate guidelines to assist people who have to apply the IHRA working definition. Whether they have ‘got it right’ or not is a question on which people of goodwill might disagree. But the drafters of the Code are surely right to see the need to discuss the complexities with these four examples; and I have yet to see a single critic acknowledge this or wrestle with these complexities themselves.

Furthermore, the NEC Code actually strengthens the role the examples play. This point has been overlooked in the public debate, but it makes a significant logical difference. Consider, first, the IHRA document. When the text introduces the list of examples that “may serve as illustrations”, it says:
“Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel …” (emphasis added). In a similar vein, we are told: “Contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include …” (emphasis added). Thus, the IHRA examples are not intended to be examples of actual antisemitism but only of possible antisemitism. Mere possibility has limited value as a guide to making judgments. In contrast, the NEC Code says (in par. 9) that its examples “are likely to be regarded as antisemitic” (emphasis added). This renders them more serviceable as guidelines. By the same token, the criterion of likelihood raises the bar for determining which examples qualify for inclusion in the list and which call for discussion separately.

The four IHRA examples that do not make it into the list in par. 9 of the NEC Code are not simply waved away. Take the ‘loyalty’ example (the first of the four). This reappears in par. 14  of the NEC Code in the following form: “it is also wrong to accuse Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.” This goes beyond mere possibility (IHRA list of examples) and even probability (NEC list of examples). This is a categorical assertion. No ifs and buts; not even the stipulation that such accusations are inadmissible if and only if they are deemed to be antisemitic. This affords a greater degree of protection than any of the examples in the IHRA document. With equal finality, par. 15 says: “it is not permissible to use ‘Zionist’ (and still less any pejorative abbreviation such as ‘zio’ which the Chakrabarti report said should have no place in Labour party discourse) as a code word for ‘Jew’.” Not permissible, full-stop. Once again this provision gives important guidance that is missing in the IHRA text.

The IHRA Working Definition
Which brings me to the question of the status of that text. Even as they refer to the IHRA document as a ‘Working Definition’, critics seem to forget the adjective ‘working’, as if it did not qualify the noun. But it does. A working definition is, by definition, a work in progress; it is not the last word. And if this applies to the definition proper it applies all the more to the “examples” that are meant to serve as illustrations of that definition. In short, the IHRA text is a ‘living document’, a document that is subject to revision, continually in the process of being developed. This is the spirit in which the drafters of the NEC Code have approached the document. They keep it alive precisely by altering it and adding to it where they see a need to do so. Their critics, in contrast, treat the text as frozen in time and immune from all  change. Ironically, it is the drafters of the NEC Code, not their critics, who have grasped the meaning of ‘working definition’.
This is not to say that all the changes they have made are necessarily for the better. But, as I have demonstrated, some of them certainly are significant improvements. The way forward for people of goodwill who genuinely want to solve the conundrum with which this article opens – combating antisemitism while protecting free political speech – is to welcome the NEC Code as the latest incarnation of a living document that constantly requires work. As making this case has been my primary aim, I shall refrain from taking up other criticisms of the Code, though they deserve to be addressed and, in my view, can, for the most part, be answered.

Sacred text
But, even in making the case, a part of me feels the hopelessness of appealing to reason, a sense of swimming against a mighty and unmindful current of opinion. Just now I have had sight of a letter in the Guardian signed by sixty-eight British rabbis, including individuals for whom I have the highest regard (not to say affection), rallying around the IHRA text, “full and unamended … including its examples”, as if it were the eternal word of God. But in the Judaism in which I was nurtured and educated, there is only one text whose status is sacred; and it was not written by a committee of the IHRA.

This article was originally published in the independent online magazine www.opendemocracy.net 

Today from the everysmith vaults: Anthem of the Sun, obviously.

Last night, Mookie Betts treated us to a 13 pitch at-bat, before hitting a Grand Slam into Lansdowne Street. It was the 10th straight win for the Sox, who are now 37 games above .500 for the first time, apparently, since 1949, the year I was born. And there are still three games to go before the All Star break.
 
In a week which has seen England’s defeat in the semi-final of the World Cup, the Trump visit, the Brexit shambles descending to new depths, and my apparent inability to write anything worthwhile about the 1871 Paris Commune, I can rely on the Sox to provide some measure of cheer as I fall asleep with Dirty Water flowing through my head.
 
The Town Nine are on pace for a 113-win season. Which sounds insane, but is possible. It really could happen!
 
Not least because the last few months have seen many things come to pass which sounded insane on first hearing. And we need something to focus on at a time when the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. 

​Which brings us to inexorably to Boris Johnson.

What rough beast is he, slouching towards Bethlehem to be reborn?
 
Of course, Johnson manages to lack all conviction and simultaneously be full of passionate intensity. His allegiance is only to himself, his ego and his ambition. His resignation was prompted only by his fear of being out-flanked in a future Tory leadership race by David Davis of all people.
 
As Aung San Suu Kyi pointed out, Lord Acton got it wrong.

“It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it …”.

Johnson is an opportunist who sees his opportunity disappearing and will grasp any nettle to retain it.
 
I am not denying his intelligence, although he does a good job of concealing it. But as Harold Wilson confessed, the trouble with his first cabinet was that there were too many Oxford firsts around the table: a classical education is no longer a useful attribute in politics. And despite my admiration for Mike Duncan’s podcasts, I am not convinced that there are many parallels to be drawn between the situation now and the end of the Roman republic. And if there are, they are not instructive.
 
It may be difficult to conceive of a situation where Johnson outside the tent is less dangerous than inside, but I fear that will be the case.
 
His only roadplan now is for a disaster. He is hoping for disaster. He is counting on disaster. And he will work hard to ensure that the disaster happens. Regardless of the cost to his colleagues and the country.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: I have never been convinced by Mark Knopfler, but some recent listening has made me reconsider. My issue, it appears, was not with Knopfler per se but with Dire Straits. The listening has been the complete Dylan/Knopfler recordings – outtakes, alternatives and rehearsals - posted by Mat Brewster recently. Quite excellent.

Today from the everysmith library: Reading Rick Gekoski's A Long Island Story. This is the difficult second album after the triumph of Darke, and I am not finding it easy. I will return to it, maybe next time.

It’s the evening of the day that the Commons voted itself into irrelevance by refusing the opportunity to have a final say on the Brexit negotiations. Jill and I are sitting with a German friend in the grounds of his Second Empire chateau in Uzès, looking out across the wooded valley of the Eure towards the cathedral and the Fenestrelle.
 
This is where the Romans came to get their fresh water, from the fontaine de l’Eure, building the Pont du Gard to ensure a precise gradient over 50 kilometres of aqueduct from here to the city of Nemausus, now Nîmes.
 
But Guido is in no mood to admire this idyllic view or contemplate what the Romans did for us.
 
“You are fucked” he tells us.
 
We nod in agreement. We know what this mild-mannered, liberal European citizen thinks of the shenanigans in the UK.
 
“And the reason why you Brits are fucked” he continues, “is because you have forgotten your history. We are European, all of us. In Germany, we know this. My generation of Germans understand only too well the dangers of nationalism. You Brits seem to have forgotten.”
 
We nod in agreement.
 
“So why aren’t you doing anything about it?”
 
We explain that we are active supporters of the Labour Party, that we had campaigned and voted to remain, that a few days before we arrived in the south we had sat at a table with Sir Keir Starmer discussing exactly this point, that Leamington Spa had been a remain oasis in an ocean of leave, that we had overturned a Tory majority of more than 6,000 in the last general election, that we didn’t actually know anyone who voted leave, that we continued to argue and debate and demonstrate to stay in the EU.
 
We tell him about the tweet we had seen, that the 58% vote to leave has been rounded up to 100%, and the 48% to remain has been rounded down to zero.
 
“So you really are fucked.”
 
We nod in agreement. “Pretty much.”
 
“Your economy. Your legal system. Your technology. Your agriculture. Your universities. Your whole fucking country!”
 
We nod in agreement.
 
“What is it about you Brits that make you want to turn your back on the institution that has kept peace in Europe for more than half a century? What is it that makes you refuse to take more than a handful of immigrants? And treat them disgracefully?”
 
We remonstrate mildly, pointing out that Germany has its own UKIP, as does France, Italy and Austria.
 
“But in England they are setting the agenda, running the country. Face it, you’re fucked.”
 
There is no answer. We sit in silence with our wine, looking out over the Eure valley.
 
We never even mentioned the football.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Still no news of the Never Ending Tour arriving in the UK in 2018, so I'm enjoying some of the European shows from a few weeks ago, notably Barcelona. The set list remains unchanged, but there are some interesting refinements in the arrangements and both Bob and the band are on top form. That will do me for the moment.

I’m not sure how many of us remember the tales of Jennings and Darbishire, written by Anthony Buckeridge in the last century. I read them, or at least the first few, in the ‘50s, enchanted by, and jealous of, the idealized version of my own prep school.
 
A large part of the appeal of the stories was the wordplay and jokes, and I remember one to this day. Jennings has a pet rat, which he keeps in a shoe box as I recall. He is discussing the rat with his amiable housemaster – Mr Carter? – and tells him, “I call it Gloucestershire, sir, because it’s got a long tail.”
 
If you are not smiling, I should explain that, in the cricket county championship of that year, Gloucestershire was noted for its poor batting. Batsmen 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 were incapable of reaching double figures and this was known, in cricketing parlance, as a “long tail”.
 
Don’t worry if you don’t get it; I haven’t heard the expression in years. But my point is that, back in 1957, I and all my fellow 8 year old chums did get it, just as we also got Buckeridge’s Latin puns! Cricket was part of our lives. We knew the scores each day; we knew who was top of the championship, and who was top of the averages.
 
I don’t know any of these today. The county scoreboards are not easily come by. Most of the time, one is not even aware that games are being played. There is no structure to the season. A four day county game or two is followed by a random assortment of one day games, one night games, and day-night games. And we are told that, next year, we shall have yet another competition of 10 overs of 10 balls. Or something like that anyway.

Even the test series is being subjected to the same cavalier treatment of the schedule. Starting today is the second test. And then, nothing until August – apart from ODIs. It’s madness. 

Matthew Engel, once the editor of Wisden, the cricketing bible, wrote recently about this lack of a season-long narrative, attributing his falling out of love with cricket to this vandalism. He used a religious metaphor: he still believes, but no longer attends church with any regularity or enjoyment. And he contrasts cricket with baseball, referring to his daily check on the box scores from St Louis (unaccountably he is a Cardinals fan) and wondering whether next year’s proposed two game series between the Sox and the Yankees may remind English sports fans of what they have lost, certainly what they are missing.
 
I suspect it will. Like Engel, I have embraced the game of baseball. And although I am currently listening to Test Match Special from Headingley, and although I managed a day the Oval test last year, it is baseball that keeps my summer on the daily straight and narrow.

The prospect of rain at Headingley could well England’s best chance of avoiding defeat in the test match.
 
But whatever happens, I fear that English cricket is already facing an innings defeat.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: Been listening to the Dead’s run at the Warfield in October 1980. Not my favourite period by any means, but these are very good shows and the work of the digital engineers has worked wonders with some iffy SBDs and audience recordings. Also, on the 11th, John Cippolina makes a guest appearance.

They are all there, lined up on the shelves, their multi-coloured paper backs leaping out from the more sombre company of Mailer, Roth, Updike, Irving and Thompson, their painted words shouting “Me! Me!”
 
Until my eye reaches the point where, chronologically, there should be The Bonfire of the Vanities, and it’s not there, and I remember that I abandoned it half-way through and loaned it to a friend and never bothered to ask for it back.
 
If one was reading English in the last couple of years of the ‘60s, Tom Wolfe was required reading. Not required by the syllabus you understand, but by one’s inner writer and critic. If one was also working on a student newspaper, then The New Journalism was there to be emulated, learned from, plagiarized. And if one was a young English person, listening to the Dead and regretting that there was no prospect of joining the Californian counter-culture, then The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test provided a degree of vicarious identification.
 
To a student of English literature, the formula was pretty obvious: third person narration, scene-by-scene narrative, dialogue (loads of it!) and references (loads of them!) to status symbols.
 
But what really marked out Wolfe’s prose was … well, the prose. He used devices such as bizarre punctuation and weird syntax, fancy typography and onomatopoeic neologisms.
 
The result was realist, writer and reader totally and equally immersed in character, narrative, life! His books – essays really – were non-fiction novels. And Wolfe was doing this knowingly, comparing the new journalism with the early realistic novel in England, and arguing that it was prompting precisely the same objections.
 
But there is a part of him, a part of every American writer, that knows the novel is the supreme literary achievement and that the holy grail of the Great American Novel is what he’s been put on earth to produce. (Mailer and Roth had the same aspiration and came closer.)
 
So in 1987 he publishes The Bonfire of the Vanities, and he loses me.
 
It’s full of false and fractured narratives. It’s full of brand names. It’s full of platitudes about race and capitalism. It’s focused on the media and media frenzy. It’s anti-feminist and misogynist. And he said that he wrote it with “a sense of wonder. I was saying [excitedly], 'Look at these people! Look at what they're doing! Look at that one! Look at that one!'”
 
That’s not novelistic. It’s not journalism. And it sure as hell ain’t literature.
 
But that’s ok. Not very much is. And I regret his death a great deal.
 
But not as much as I regret his hubris.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: I’ve been listening to the Dead’s 1970 shows and, in so doing, fallen in love again with the New Riders of the Purple Sage. Currently it’s 1970-10-31 at SUNY Gym, Stony Brook, NY.

​I’ve been reading a great deal of Auden recently as part of my History to the Defeated project. But not as much as Carolyn Steedman.
 
Although it is probably unnecessary, I will tell you that Carolyn Steedman is Emeritus Professor of History at Warwick University, the author of Dust, An Everyday Life of the English Working Class, Master and Servant and Landscape for a Good Woman; and that her latest book was published a couple of weeks ago.

The new book is entitled Poetry for Historians or, W.H. Auden and History and it examines “a kind of love story” between historians and poets, history and poetry, historiography and poetics. It is also, perhaps even primarily, about Carolyn Steedman and Auden and their very particular relationship, “a kind of love story” in its own right.
 
At the (literal) centre of the book is a chapter headed “W.H. Auden and Me”. It is also the heart of the book. In it, she stresses the importance of her schooling in poetics, her ability to master the business of scansion and clause analysis at the expense of understanding the meaning; to concern oneself with the sound-system of the English language rather than its import.
 
Her dilemma – the imagined dilemma of her fifteen year old self - is that Auden himself, the great experimenter with form, did not agree, or at least said he didn’t. She quotes him as saying “Accents, long and short syllables, are really quite simple. You will always read a line of poetry right if you know its meaning” and asks “What would we have made of it … to be told that our pursuit should be meaning before the effect on us of sound and rhythm?”
 
I was taught English at about the same time as Professor Steedman. But unlike her, I was encouraged to write “on what exactly Auden meant” or perhaps that is what I elected to do and was allowed to do. Certainly, my considerations and speculations on his meanings pushed me towards a politics (but not a poetics) which remains with me to this day.

​And when I read, for the first time in Poetry for Historians that Auden looks in a poem “for one thing only, lines of poetry”, I am driven again to that haunting couplet which I first read more than half a century ago:
 
“And history to the defeated
May say Alas but cannot help or pardon.”
 
Auden explains his requirement for lines of poetry. "By this I mean a line which speaks for itself, which, as it were, no longer needs its author’s help to exist."

Of course, the lines I love exist today not only without its author’s help, but with his positive disapproval. He first revised and then renounced the poem, calling it – as he did the entire decade in which it was written – “dishonest”.

​But that doesn’t matter: it doesn’t need Auden to exist, to be authentic, to be true. To be honest.
 
And Auden did not and does not have to sit, as Carolyn points out, “in a small claustrophobic room … and listen to the Boy Marxists explain to him, in patient and exhaustive detail, exactly why his position was so very incorrect.”
 
As one of those Boy Marxists, then and now, I still admire, respect, and quote Auden’s poetry and poetics. Just as I will the history and historiography of Carolyn Steedman.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: The first couple of weeks of May mean two things: from the vaults come the Grateful Dead’s East Coast shows from May 1977 and the song Isis by Bob Dylan (recorded 1975, released 1976) because "I married Isis on the fifth day of May".
 

I read that a new political party is in the process of being formed. It has apparently been “secretly under development for more than a year by a network of entrepreneurs, philanthropists and donors”. And it has “access to up to £50 million in funding”.
 
Obviously I believe this story implicitly. After all, it quotes variously “a source”, “one source”,  and “sources”. Getting increasingly specific, it “understands” this, and “it appears” that; this is “said to be”, that “is believed”, and there is a great deal of “the Observer understands”.
 
Yes, it’s the Observer. Of course it is.
 
And it’s clearly pretty convincing. Which is why in a week which has seen so many major stories from Syria, Salisbury, Washington, London, this detailed revelation is the lead story.

It’s clearly a major priority for editor Paul Webster, Michael Savage, described as Policy Editor, and of course Andrew Rawnsley, the political columnist who told us that Labour “should choose Jeremy Corbyn and field him as its leader at the next election, so that the thesis that Labour loses because it is not left-wing enough is finally tested to the destruction that it so richly deserves”. Finger on the pulse as you would expect.
 
He tells us what is required: “a potential audience” - tick; “money” - tick; “a policy platform - tick”; a name – he has heard “Mainstream” mooted and notes that it “sounds moderate and inclusive without being as anaemic as ‘Centre party’.”
 
Obviously, we have to await the verdict of Nick Cohen before we make a firm decision as to whether we embrace membership of the Mainstream Party. Nick was concerned this week with the politics of the forthcoming movie Entebbe and hasn’t had the time to give his well-considered views on a new party. But he will. Not for nothing did the Observer refuse to publish a letter from women in Unite pointing out his misogynist response to the election of Jennie Formby. Don’t worry, Nick will make his views known, but maybe in the Spectator where his politics has a “potential audience”, “money”, “policy platform” etc etc.
 
Enough already.
 
I have no idea whether these meetings of “sources” and “figures from across the political spectrum” have taken place. I have no idea whether the new Mainstream Party will make a formal appearance any time soon or, indeed, any time at all.
 
But I know a flier when I see one.
 
Unattributed and unattributable quotes. A Nick Clegg interview on Radio 4 this morning, arguing that Labour is fractured and that a break would unleash a new kind of politics, straight out of the SDP songbook. Doubtless, there will be more over the next few days. We’ll hear the phrase “breaking the mould” over and over again.
 
But the mould is already broken. And so is the “mainstream”.

​It's about time that the "mainstream" press and "mainstream" politicians recognised this.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: On the anniversary of its release, New Morning. The original acetate together with outtakes. Happy days.