2018 Comes: A Personal Melancholy

2017 was a melancholy time, but this has been normal, and 2018 can only be the same, if not worse.

In 2017 I had a disagreement with a minister over another minister visiting with his co-authored book. I was apparently unkind about the book online, although I now think I was too kind. The upshot was my decision to walk away and now I have no dealings with Unitarianism, other than a distant watch over what happens online. Instead of attending a worship service weekly, as I had done, and a social gathering weekly, as I continued to do (and I was the most frequent attender at both), I now only refugee myself to the Quakers once a fortnight, having in any case spent time 'looking around' before my final act of self-removal. Previous to my walk away, I'd already reduced my worship attendance and was tentatively returning - only then by surprise event to call it a day.

The Unitarian regular attendance was about three or five or at most eight persons anyway, and many had effectively gone before me. I discover that my refugee place is a little better in numbers, and indeed my visits around (Anglican, URC, Methodist) showed that they were all down on what they once were.

By any measure, Christianity is dying, dying as an expression of faith in the ordinary course of things, and as evidenced by attendance. Unitarianism isn't obviously Christian in any effective sense, but this has not caused any improvement in its fortunes. Far from it. There is no future either in 'spiritual but not religious' strategies, which are meaningless anyway within structures that are religious and with an institutional memory. The long time played-out transition in religion is now starting to bite, as structures can no longer be supported on such low numbers, and as people no longer commonly think and express themselves in relation to these structures and their beliefs.

The Quakers, I notice, have quite a self-understood identity. The Friends get this through the 'meetings' that they attend at different levels and purposes: indeed I discovered that the worship hour (plus ten minute after-thoughts) is itself a meeting. The meeting is guided, and referred to often, by their Advices and Queries. To be a Quaker is to be something. Whilst I have participated and spoken, I don't think I want to attach myself to that memory. I did with the Unitarians and I am known for that connection, and I have over thirty plus years (gosh) attached myself to that institutional memory. In 2018 I doubt that I will begin to attach myself in any formal manner to the Quaker memory. I do wonder how many people will do up and down the land, because if people don't come anew and don't start to sign up, there won't be any soon. Same with the Unitarians of course, who have lower national numbers than the Friends, but the Friends are harder to join, and more is expected on a personal ethical basis (I think). The Quaker club is a stronger club, perhaps: the Unitarian inculturation takes a long time and creeps up gradually and it remains incredibly loose.

Even in my own mind there is the death of religion. I write about it a lot, but in a novel that has been building up for maybe four years. The religion there is informed and even intellectual, but in the novel it is cynical: used in a kind of Twin Peaks weird seaside town world. I'm not doing a Barchester Towers but investigating secrecy, truth (qualitative and quantitative) and untruth. The central first person narrating character is an intersex female deacon and then priest who ends up going independent, in fact becomes a bishop of (in the end) her own outfit that takes on the weird characteristics that she and her friends were once exposing and destroying. Some lyrics from The Who's Won't Get Fooled Again apply. Think of 'Meet the new boss, Same as the old boss' and also 'We were liberated from the fold, that's all, And the world looks just the same' singing in the background.

The novel is complete but I keep editing it (necessary) and keep adding bits in, so this will go on next year. Indceed, I have just written about a Conference on the Seaside Communities far off in Margate that happens early on, and has allowed some essential happenings - and these events have only just been thought up. How did this happen? Because recently in our shared world there has been research on the economy of the seaside town, and my mind looking at this made connections in my novel and realised something like this could set the scene not just for the location of "Serpensea" but also lay the ground for the narrative. It's about an extra 10,000 words. I like it. The narrative has echoes, with no spies being present, of Le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley's People. In 2017 I bought the DVDs of these, having earlier acquired the literature, and I have watched them with the intensity of a student. In my novel people keep their weird ways secret by method, and yet everyone knows something funny is going on somewhere.

No doubt I will keep painting too. In 2016 I hardly painted a thing. Much had happened on the computer. And then in 2017 I suddenly started knocking them out on four quid for three canvases. I went to an art group for a very short time, and stopped because I calculated it was for the better-off retired. I cannot commit to any large-scale spending. I know that there are expenses down the line that have to be afforded first. So instead of doing a limited number of artists' models, I've been painting barmaids. One pub even asked me to do a couple of paintings of barmaids and barmen. The barmaids (but one as yet unvisited) have all received paintings. Funnily enough, as the driver of friends who enjoy pubs, I don't drink, and more than this I have a lower opinion about alcohol now. I've seen in a number of places it start to take casualties of people's lifestyles, and there is a fine line between good boozing and it taking over and loss of control.

The website went paid during the year. There was no option - once Dropbox stopped displaying the results of HTML, and showing only HTML code - but to find a host and one cheap enough. My website will be twenty years old in November 2018. It started with a page, and reached 1800 PDF and HTML pages. Then the galleries were sent to Facebook. From time to time I update the under-construction novel on the website, as I indeed record my other activities.

I use Facebook and have a blog; I don't use Twitter. I go into 2018 still without an active mobile phone. There are more than hints that my old and so-far reliable car could cost a lot at MOT time. Perhaps I need a mobile phone, should it become unreliable. But I much on the computer, still using Windows 7 and still thinking I want a better Operating System.

I was labelled 'disabled' in 2017, and it has good and bad effects. One good one has been the ability to park just about anywhere and at no cost. However, I can't walk a great distance and so I need this. I suddenly started to attend more interviews, but nothing has happened yet. I have one in the first week of the New Year. I manage in all the essential ways, but it's the shocks that will cause the boat to leak.

My friends are in transition too, it seems. The outlook is not good. One folded a long-term business and now sleeps better at night having got a just-above minimum wage job that requires much concentration and is physical. The other is uncertain for the future: transition and potential loss beckons. Nothing is certain.

The sources of romance websites have all shown themselves to be rubbish in my case: a few early responses years ago dried up years ago. Anything on this front would be a real surprise.

Yet you never know what is around the corner. Death comes at the end of it all, or course, but between now and then there might be a few pleasant as well as unpleasant unexpected happenings. I think, where the hell did the last twenty years go? Weeks pass in a flash, and indeed 2017 did not hang about.

Politics is, for me, a worry about the other, and it is why I am so adamant about the error of leaving the Europan Union. It makes not a scrap of difference to me, but I see it as a self-inflicted disaster that will harm generations. I believe in sharing economically and politically, in reducing tribalism, in being liberal and social, and seeing the potential best. For me, the European Union was never the given caricature of a bureaucracy, but a confederacy of similar political cultures tying themselves together for peace and prosperity and a wider vision. I have no influence on anyone, but just hope that words of argument to stay in seep out and that this body politic starts to see sense and stop the retreat. The European Union is a fact on the ground and we should be in there, currency and all. If the silly sods succeed in reducing our outlook, then I will still be here but it will be in a diminished political environment; and as one of the poor, I'll be hit by the consequences, as will many many more currently better off than me. This is the tragedy of what is coming, led by political donkeys.

Melancholy is my ordinary condition, and it is justified.

2018 Comes: Essential British Politics

A New Year approaches, and what shall it bring in politics?

I'm hoping that this year the Conservative Party splits, but the future is likely to be far more complex than this.

Had the 2016 referendum been won by remain, the Tory party would have split there and then, as some would have gone off to campaign beyond the referendum, in a kind of 'no this matter has not been solved' manouvre, to the benefit of UKIP.

Because leave won, the Tory Party stayed together, and it was Labour who split via recriminations over Jeremy Corbyn's lack of enthusiasm for remain. What put Labour back together again, in a sort of way, was Jeremy Corbyn improving the Labour vote to remove the Tory majority. Thus, just as remainers have stayed with the winning leavers in the Tories, so Labour centrists and broad left MPs have stayed with Corbyn.

However, two years down the line, the likelihood would be otherwise. The need to make a decision about leaving the EU will strain the remainers to the limit. What is clear is that the leavers and remainers, even with attempts to compromise, cannot stay together.

The reason is this. That one-time Remainer, Prime Minister Theresa May, identifies that staying in the Single Market and Customs Union is not leaving. Yet this is precisely the compromise that remainers will stomach, and only this, especially now that Ireland and Northern Ireland can only have a border like now if the UK stays in the Single Market and Customs Union via the European Free Trade Area.

So far Labour, in its lack of clarity, has edged more towards accepting the Single Market and Customs Union, but it doesn't (and Corbyn seems to want to practice his socialism outside of these), then Labour will not hold together either. Also the trick of Labour attracting remainers while having a policy also of leaving the European Union will come to an end.

First of all, Tories unused to rebelling have now experienced success. They have drawn blood and also caused the government to swerve in their direction regarding not having a fixed date of leaving set in legislation beyond Article 50. There are now an increasing number of Labour side MPs and peers actively promoting at the least remaining in the Single Market and Customs Union, and indeed saying more loudly about staying in the EU. Some have been silent: I've heard nothing from David Lammy, for example, who was for staying in the EU after the referendum vote.

At the same time, it has been disappointing that the Liberal Democrats have made so little traction on the remaining in the EU argument. I would harden their position up to beyond a referendum, rather to agree with Kenneth Clarke - referenda are lousy devices for deciding complex issues. They need to say, if you vote for us in a General Election, then you vote to stay in the EU. Forget the nonesense of a second referendum: referenda are not sacred cows. It is parliament that is sovereign, and the people through its representatives. They are not our delegates either. A referendum should only ever be used after a government has produced a firm position for change and then asks for confirmation. The Scottish Referendum was an example: the Scottish Government proposed independence and the people said no. The EU was a referendum gamble for a political party that could not make up its mind. On that basis alone it was illegitimate and no one should be troubled by opposing it completely. We now know that the issues were not raised in their compleity that have since emerged in the tortuous process of a government trying to negotiate from its own divided cabinet and party.

The idea that we can be outside the Single Market and Customs Union, and yet have the near equivalent and thus satisfy the Irish border and needs of business and financial services is a pipe dream. These institutions exist to have common standards, and so the arbiter is the European Court of Justice. You don't reinvent the wheel just to satisfy the fantasies of extreme Tory MPs.

While all this goes on, of course, there are needs of citizens going unaddressed. Housing, social services and transport are key needscrying out for attention: the latest is bailing out a private operator of the East Coast Main Line rather than have the nationalisation that once operated successfully there. A bail-out, as well as being ideological for the Tories' friends, is quick and simple. We need attention on these necessary issues but the government 'does not have the bandwidth' to focus on anything but the disaster of leaving the European Union.

If a Centrist Party emerged (and it probably won't: the reality is more likely to be informal), it would have to exclude the likes of Frank Field. He votes with the government on leaving the European Union, as the Centrist group/ party would be pro-European. The Liberal Democrats have got to make a real effort at working with these people, as well as into the media and putting the issues clearly. We do not need another referendum, but it still needs an identifiable change of public opinion feeding into the political system.

The Tory split to come is more than eleven MPs, even though (with the Labour two supporting the Tories) these were enough to inflict a defeat. It will manifest as the government fails to take up the simpler Single Market and Customs Union 'solution' to leaving the EU.

If Labour does not move to this position, it will also be weak, but to move to it would also lose a body of its MPs well beyond the rebellious two. However, the mathematics of the House of Commons (and the fixed term Parliament Act still applies) is that the Single Market and Customs Union 'solution' has a majority across the House.

Theresa May has argued against this, and she probably would fall if this were enacted. She or someone would have to probably get a coalition from across the parties that command this majority on this issue. This is also how a truly 'Brexit Election' could come about, and where the Liberal Democrats must step up to the plate, and where even deals might be done in some cases on this issue.

So politics in 2018 could be very interesting, with fissures and splits and combinations unimagined before 2016. But it will come through extreme strain in the system, with Theresa May run out of options, and even Corbyn out of place, his dreams of a socialist government overrun by this burden around all our necks.

Until, of course, someone says stop this madness, and the UK stays precisely where it is, and as part of the EU keeps all its business secure, and then gets on with tackling social and infrastructure necessities that are being ignored.

The Logic Behind the Chaos

It's clear that the negotiations to leave the European Union have reached a critical point, despite the incompetence that seems to be on display every time they take place.

The 'second division' nature of the government is pretty obvious. There is a lack of plan, and a lack of ability to put what they come up with at any one time into place. And yet a logical shape is presenting itself.

A border is a border is a border. It's no good the "swivel-eyed" Brexiteers saying that the British Government does not want one: borders work in both directions, and they only cease to be if there is no major difference going across in both directions.

If the policy intention is to have no border in this sense in the island of Ireland, and of course none in this sense within the United Kingdom, then the logic is the softest of Brexits (ugly word) possible.

The alternative is variation: as was expressed from Scotland, Wales and London, all of whom wanted to be in the Single Market and Customs Union, if Northern Ireland was to have continuing regulatory convergence with the Republic. Despite devolution, this seems to be too great a variation, and why should England be at a disadvantage in this respect?

Now I always knew that the "hard Brexit" rhetoric of Theresa May was either out of character or showed that she has no political principles. It may well be a combination, because no one at the time of her rise to office knew anything about what she stood for, other than being a Tory of course. She clearly has a great deal of flexibility.

In more recent times she has upped the love-in rhetoric with the European Union, and become more pragmatic. At times the Cabinet has gone to open warfare, and more recently has applied a little self-discipline. At times one thought Boris Johnson wanted to be sacked, to campaign again, but it is obhvious that the incompetent Foreign Secretary has stayed - for good or ill.

Now the swivel-eyed brigade have made noises about the 50 billion euros price to leave, but not so much if it gets us out. But now the logic is the broader House of Commons position, and it does mean having to bypass these objectors in her own party, plus about ten Labour MPs.

This is the point about the Democratic Unionist Party objection to Northern Ireland being treated separately. It was never just about their ten MPs. Theresa May probably does not need them. It's about those other Conservatives they can call upon at the same time, by which her strength in the House of Commons on this specific issue dives in terms of any majority (which the DUP gives). The swivel eyed are all dedicated Unionists, all of whom want this sharp and conclusive exit from the European Union, and in all parts of this Union of nations.

The Labour Party has not been much clearer, but leading figures have said recently that the party has never ruled out staying in the Single Market and the Customs Union, and if this does firm up as the party policy, then this is where ostensibly Theresa May can find her vote to leave the European Union but stay in the Single Market and Customs Union.

The Northern Irish Unionists won't like it, but their objection of not being treated separately falls away.

However, would Labour give her this vote?

The Liberal Democrats should not, on the simple argument that if we are going to stay in the Single Market and Customs Union, then it is more logical to have a say in their direction, and provide Ministers, Commissioners and Members of the European Parliament. We should "exit from Brexit" as Vince Cable says. Theresa May can say that formally the European Court of Justice would have no superiority over British law, but then we would do whatever it says in these economic spheres, and these spheres are broad and wide. We may as well also provide a judge into this court. As Benny, formerly of Abba, said the other week, "Stay." The Scottish Nationalists may well agree.

Plus Labour will want a General Election, as we all need because the government is consumed with this 'Brexit' and does sod all else of significance as people suffer the continued lack of economic growth and absence of social progress.

The danger is that taking these positions, Theresa May without principles will stay in office and allow us to crash out of the European Union. In one sense the nuclear button works both ways, and in the end we have to ask whether this 'remainer' is wreckless just to remain in office.

And on that basis her own 'remainer' Tories may consider whether enough is enough, and themselves see the issue as more important than simply staying in office in a sterile sense and call it a day. Let's have that General Election.

Now we know the issues better than we did, it could well be that this time the Liberal Democrats get their Europe issue election and say, if you vote for us, we will stay in. And other MPs who would rather stay in should stop being zombies as now and have the courage of their convictions: a General Election trumps a referendum. This is the issue and time to show that staying in is more logical than the soft leaving.