The origin of the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes is difficult to pin down: could it be 19th century Denmark or 14th century Spain, 13th century India or the 500s BC in Greece? Perhaps the fact that all of these cultures and times are viable options confirms the truth of it: never underestimate the capacity of those in power to believe their own nonsense.
One of the inherent problems with the government’s strategy to ‘educate’ people out of their concerns about immigration is that the narrative it requires is based on myth, not history
British politics is an excellent example of this. I’m fascinated by Angela Rayner’s words – leaked from a cabinet meeting in the midst of the Epping hotel fiasco – about needing to ‘repair the social fabric’ and foster ‘better integration’. She’s not wrong, but the fact that something so self-evidently true even needs to be said at cabinet is telling. Surely no one who hasn’t been in a coma for the last 25 years would need reminding of this. It was redolent of one of Basil Fawlty’s better put-downs to his wife; ‘Next contestant: Sybil Fawlty from Torquay, special subject the bleeding obvious’.
You detect a belief, in some quarters of government, that people are somehow imagining the problems around them. Indeed, Rayner went on to add that ‘while Britain was a successful multi-ethnic, multi-faith country, the government had to show it had a plan to address people’s concerns and provide opportunities for everyone to flourish.’ Given that she also warned of civil unrest and a summer of rioting in the same breath, to return instantly to ‘diversity is our strength’ platitudinous slop seems to require a certain cognitive dissonance.
One of the inherent problems with the government’s strategy to ‘educate’ people out of their concerns about immigration is that the narrative it requires is based on myth, not history. ‘The Windrush built Stonehenge, Paddington abolished slavery, Nye Bevan created the world in six days’ brand of legends which are now peddled as the official narrative of the country’s past simply don’t stand up to any meaningful tests of fact. All this further undermines governmental attempts to allay concerns about migration. This constant construction and promotion of easily disprovable myth only embeds the idea that the powers that be are either dangerously deluded or maliciously dishonest.
Whenever the issue is raised of enormous numbers of people arriving in the country, in defiance of public opinion and often with beliefs, values and practices that are at direct odds with the norms of this country, we are treated to a lecture by our leaders replete with nebulous platitudes and sometimes a bit of football chat. Football appears to be Keir Starmer’s only cultural touchstone; he claims not to have a favourite book and never to have experienced a dream, he exhibits no knowledge of history prior to the tail-end of the Clement Attlee government. Is it any wonder that this man is incapable of communicating a deeper narrative of Britain beyond his Dalek-like squawks of ‘R’NHS’? These are people who, when faced with an overboiling pot, choose to put a lid on it rather than turn down the stove. They have no idea how truly divided and angry the country is, nor how ill-equipped they are to deal with it.
The government’s latest plan appears to be shuffling asylum seekers from hotel to hotel, or from hotel into private rented accommodation, and hope no one will notice – while MPs congratulate themselves for getting the numbers down. This tendency isn’t just limited to politicians either. Having initially denied it, Essex police have now admitted that they escorted a left-wing rent-a-mob to the protest against illegal immigration outside the Bell Hotel in Epping. Since the Southport murders, an entire team of civil servants has been tasked with monitoring people’s personal comms on social media. Never does it apparently occur to them that public anger might be rooted in real, tangible things. They fundamentally see this as a matter of information containment or – among the even more naïve – education of the masses, rather than policy.
There is still a Blair era idea – courtesy of Alastair Campbell – that you can simply ‘manage’ the news, and people will feel better. In practice that means that if enough lies are repeated, enough platitudes spouted and enough protests cracked down on then eventually the headlines will change. Ironically, this attitude is doing more to ‘whip up unrest’ than any Facebook post by some outraged Essex nan. Indeed elsewhere, the government is very much compounding the anger with its lack of transparency. Whether it is the prolonged obfuscation over its new Islamophobia definition, continuing delays with a grooming gang inquiry (last week, Jess Phillips confirmed that it has yet even to appoint a chairman), or just the clear evidence of two-tier justice across all aspects of policing – which you can now expect a ticking-off for noticing.
Whether it was Denmark or India or Spain, nothing is clearer than the fact that we now have an emperor’s new clothes situation in Britain today. Our leaders strut around naked and then have the audacity to criticise the dress and deportment of the plebs down below. In short, if anything is bringing the nation to boiling point, it is this.
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