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THE AGE OF
(re)ALIGNMENT
JUNE 2021
a PARLIAMENT STREET paper
authored by Patrick Sullivan
1
PATRICK SULLIVAN
THE AGE OF (re)ALIGNMENT
A PARLIAMENT STREET PAPER
PUBLISHED BY
PARLIAMENT STREET
JUNE 2021
2
CONTENTS
PAGE 4: FOREWORD
PAGE 5: INTRODUCTION
PAGE 8: CHAPTER ONE – BORIS VS. ALEXANDER
PAGE 13: CHAPTER TWO – AMBLING INTO AUTHORITARIANISM
PAGE 17: CHAPTER THREE – THE ONCE AND FUTURE PRESIDENT
PAGE 20: CHAPTER FOUR – THE GREAT REBOOT
PAGE 23: CHAPTER FIVE – HAVING A LAUGH
PAGE 29: CHAPTER SIX – REVOLUTIONARY ROADS
PAGE 38: CHAPTER SEVEN – THE NATURAL ORDER
PAGE 44: CONCLUSION – NEW PROGRESSIVES
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FOREWORD
By the time this pandemic is “over” we will have all collectively had, hopefully no more than, a year
and a half of our lives taken from us. Most people are going to come out of this crucible very different
from who they were when this great tragedy we have been living through began.
We will not know ‘til many years hence what lasting changes, societal and political, this deadly
virus hath wrought. We do know that there will be many and that they will be very significant changes
indeed. Whilst we have been living in the fog of the pandemic, we have taken to looking at our politics
through the prism of a pre-pandemic world. When we are finally out of this crisis, after we have caught
our breaths, we will have to start the painful process of surveying the wreckage caused by this virus
and the measures we had to take to stop it spreading, in so far as we were able.
Sometimes in life one does not feel the bruises of a battle until the fight is over. Then the body
reminds one of their pain so that they take the time to heal. All of us are due time to heal when this
current crisis is in the rear-view mirror. Unfortunately, there are those such as the Davos-based World
Economic Forum, our present prime minister, Alexander “Boris” Johnson, and our future king, Prince
Charles, who would have the nation on a perpetual state of high alert. They would have us believe that
climate change represents a similar real and present danger to that posed by Covid-19 in mid-March
2020, when the initial nationwide lockdown began. That is utterly preposterous on its face and the
public is not going to be having any of it. The climate change hysterics are almost certain to hurt their
cause as the absurd mania they bring to the challenge will cause many of those not so heavily invested
in that agenda to increasingly consider that agenda absurd. Climate change should be tackled but should
not be done so on the backs of the hardest working Britons, or the hardest working people of any
nation.
The Prime Minister should not prioritise the COP26 summit in November ahead of working with the
great British people on bringing Britain back, but he almost definitely will. He would be better advised
to focus on the real and present social and economic problems post-pandemic Britain will inevitably be
facing before rushing off like Don Quixote to tilt at windmills.
To everything there is a season. The season ahead should be one of healing, and, if we can shut up
the “cancel culture” mob for long enough, one of laughter and smiling too. I implore our political
leaders to consider the spiritual wellbeing of the nation in the coming weeks and months. This verse
from The Ballad of Andrew Barton could not more perfectly reflect the national mood as the end of
crisis seems in sight:
“I am sore wounded but not slain;
I will lay me down and bleed awhile,
And then rise up to fight again.”
From the Desk of Patrick Sullivan
London, 2nd June 2021
4
INTRODUCTION
“The immortal gods are wont to allow those persons whom they wish to punish for their guilt
sometimes a greater prosperity and longer impunity, in order that they may suffer the more severely
from a reverse in circumstances.”
- Gaius Julius Caesar, The Gallic Wars: Book One (58-49 B.C./C.E.)
“The history of failure in war can almost be summed up in two words: 'Too late.' Too late in
comprehending the deadly purpose of a potential enemy; too late in realizing the mortal danger; too
late in preparedness; too late in uniting all possible forces for resistance, too late in standing with one's
friends. Victory in war results from no mysterious alchemy or wizardry but depends entirely upon the
concentration of superior force at the critical points of combat.”
- General Douglas MacArthur, as quoted by James B. Reston in Prelude to Victory (1942)
“The seeds of leaders’ success and downfalls are often the same and are sown very early on. Most
vividly in the cases of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, their
dark fates were sealed as they rose to the top.”
- Steve Richards, The Prime Ministers (2019)
The past 15 months are almost certain to have been difficult for
everybody reading this paper. The failure of this government to
act swiftly at the onset of this crisis has had an undeniably
negative impact on the lives of all Britons, including this author.
The Conservative Party has traditionally won elections because it
has been seen as the party of competent management. This
reputation is now in great jeopardy. At time of writing, the Prime Minister is riding high and the
government has been experiencing an upswing in the polls. This is likely to be due to the vaccinations
going well and the end of the crisis being in sight. But opinion polls are only a snapshot of public
opinion at one moment in time and as we have learnt over the course of this pandemic, things can
change very rapidly indeed.
Many of the Prime Minister defenders claim that any criticism of his initial response to the
pandemic is unfair because it is being done with the benefit of hindsight. This author is no Captain
5
Hindsight. I tried futilely to inform the public of the potential scale of Covid threat in an article for The
Commentator published on Saturday 29th February 2020 and a briefing paper for Parliament Street
published on Monday 16th March 2020. Neither the article nor the paper had any significant impact on
the course of events, but sadly they were all too prophetic about the calamity to come and the Prime
Minister’s lack of suitability to manage the crisis.
On 29th February 2020, I wrote in The Commentator:
“It was also announced that Mr. Johnson would be chairing an emergency COBRA (Cabinet Office
Briefing Room A) meeting on Monday. COBRA is an emergency council most often convened as part of
the Civil Contingencies Committee. Those in attendance at a CORBA meeting depend on the nature of
the emergency.
Some have criticised the British Prime Minister for not acting with the appropriate urgency. It is a fair
point that infectious diseases don’t take weekends off. If the coronavirus becomes unmanageable, Mr.
Johnson’s lack of haste in convening the COBRA meeting is sure to be used against him. There are
echoes here of Mr. Johnson’s response to the London riots in August 2011 when he initially refused to
cut short his summer holiday in Canada to deal with the crisis in his city. The public outcry was so
great that he did eventually relent and come home early. When back in London, he continued to show
no sense of urgency and even turned up late to the emergency COBRA meetings convened to deal with
the riots.
It is an unforced error on Mr. Johnson’s part to wait to hold an emergency COBRA meeting. Britons
want to see their Prime Minister on top of a crisis and quick on the ball responding to changing facts
on the ground.
A failure to manage a crisis can severely alter the trajectory of a Prime Minister’s political fortunes.
John Major won a general election, against all odds, on 9th April 1992 but five months later on
Wednesday 16th September, which became known as ‘Black Wednesday’, he provided indecisive and in
over his head as his Government tried and failed to keep the pound sterling in the Exchange Rate
Mechanism as the value of the pound was collapsing. From that moment onwards, he became a Prime
Minister with a very visible sell-by date. His government continued until the last possible date for a new
general election, 1st May 1997, which saw the Conservative Party lose 171 seats, to be left with a
presence of only 165 seats.
Mr. Johnson would be wise to remember that ‘arrogance breeds contempt’ and if he fails to meet the
moment with his response to this virus, the political paradigm could once again shift with the election
of a credible leader of the ppposition, who could portray himself as a ‘serious man, for serious times’
in contrast to an ‘out for lunch’ Prime Minister.”
One reason for Mr. Johnson seemingly having gotten away with the sophistry that no one could've
prepared for this pandemic better has been the abject failure of the Leader of the Opposition. At Prime
Minister's Questions every week, Sir. Keir Starmer behaves like a prosecutor and not a Prime-Minister-
in-waiting. With an out-to-lunch Boris Johnson, Starmer could have presented himself as a serious man
for serious times. Instead, he has failed to treat the office of Leader of the Opposition with the
seriousness it deserves. He has proved too keen to prosecute the case against Boris Johnson and not
keen enough to show empathy for a nation in pain. As nature abhors a vacuum whilst not being the
6
leader of the Labour Party, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has emerged as the voice of
Labour Britain.
The issue facing Mayor Burnham is whether Labour Britain still believes it is Labour anymore.
Brexit has been rightly receded from being the issue of greatest consequence to the public and the news
media due to the pandemic. As we hopefully approach the final weeks of the pandemic, we must not
forget that the issue of Brexit had the country deeply divided between Remainers and Brexiteers only
15 months ago.
The behaviour of the European Union in relation to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine appalled
even the most strident Remainers and I believe extinguished any serious prospect of a campaign
for Britain to rejoin the EU getting off the ground. Brexit is now settled but the cultural fault
lines the 2016 referendum revealed will still be defining our national politics for years (potentially
decades) to come. Sir. Keir’s failure to launch appears to have opened a window for the most
unlikely of 90s revivals - a Tony Blair comeback - just switching the New Labour brand for a new
New Progressives brand.
.
7
CHAPTER ONE
BORIS VS. ALEXANDER
“If each, I told myself, could but be housed in separate identities, life
would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust de- livered
from the aspirations might go his way, and remorse of his more
upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his
upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure,
and no longer exposed to dis- grace and penitence by the hands of
this extraneous evil.”
- Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde (1886)
“The Lion thought it might be as well to frighten the Wizard, so he gave a large, loud roar, which was
so fierce and dreadful that Toto jumped away from him in alarm and tipped over the screen that stood
in a corner. As it fell with a crash they looked that way, and the next moment all of them were filled
with wonder. For they saw, standing in just the spot the screen had hidden, a little old man, with a bald
head and a wrinkled face, who seemed to be as much surprised as they were. The Tin Woodman,
raising his axe, rushed toward the little man and cried out, ‘Who are you?’
‘I am Oz, the Great and Terrible,’ said the little man, in a trembling voice.”
- L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
“You put on a bishop’s robe and miter, he pondered, and walk around in that, and people bow and
genuflect and like that, and try to kiss your ring, if not your ass, and pretty soon you’re a bishop. So to
speak. What is identity? he asked himself. Where does the act end? Nobody knows.”
- Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly (1977)
Tony Benn used to say that politics should focus on policy not personalities. A very noble sentiment on
an intellectual level but when dealing with the realities of British politics you have to take things as
they are. Personality without policy is the politics of the snake oil salesman. Policy without personality
is going to struggle to find an audience.
On the stage of life, we all wear masks and are judged on how well we play our parts. Whilst acting out
the roles to which we have been assigned our communal dialogue can often turn into Kabuki theatre.
The participants behave as if they are unawares of certain facts, despite most being fully cognizant of
8
them. These certain self-evident truths are not acknowledged in our on-stage repartee because we fear
that to do so would wreck the illusions that we are working fastidiously to maintain. “Boris” is the not
the man who has the power of the British premiership in his hands. The man who does is Alexander
Johnson. “Boris” is merely the persona Alexander inhabits in public life.
10 Downing Street often comes to reflect the personality of whomever is the Prime Minister.
Under Theresa May, No.10 could be said to be structured but secretive. Alexander Johnson was a
fantastic editor of The Spectator, but he did run something of a chaotic operation. From some of the
headlines we have seen in recent weeks he has brought his own special brew of chaos to the office of
Prime Minister. Alexander has been able to get away with this because the British public has a special
tolerance for the eccentricities of “Boris” but what happens when the mask slips and “Boris’s”
predominately conservative, populist base gets to see the “man behind the curtain”, the liberal,
progressive Alexander Johnson. Unlike most politicians Alexander Johnson has a dual identity – to his
friends and family he is known as Alexander but the public know his better by the mask, he wears
which is “Boris”. Why this is not commented on more by the media is beyond me. No other political
leader is afforded the right to have a dual identity – that is something straight out of a comic book. Who
does Alexander Johnson think he is - the goddamn Batman?!?
Alexander has worn more than one “Boris” mask over the course of his political career. The
current “Boris” mask was forged by Alexander when he saw a means to achieving political power by
fashioning a “Boris” that although intellectually a last-minute convert to the Brexit cause was able to
bring with him all the passion of a convert. Fair enough, there would be no Brexit without “Boris”. But
“Brexit Boris” was just a part Alexander played to gain his ultimate prize.
Alexander is more likely to have felt a kinship with the liberal, progressive “Jolly Boris
Johnson” who was Mayor of London. But he lost the support of liberal, progressives by backing Brexit.
Dominic Cummings then masterminded a strategy where “Brexit Boris” won a Parliamentary majority
of conservative, populist voters.
Alexander never liked President Trump but he played the “Britain Trump Boris” role to win the
Tory Party leadership. It was a lie. He betrayed Donald J. Trump at the first opportunity. Despite
“Boris” acting as if he never knew the 45th President, Alexander cannot rewrite history. Most U.S.
Democrats were introduced to our Prime Minister when he was playing the “Britain Trump Boris” role
and are now understandably wary. Viewing Johnson with suspicion might be one of the few positions
Biden and Trump actually share. Should a Trump restoration happen in 2024 and short-sighted
Alexander still be Prime Minister, he should expect to reap just what he sowed. It is obvious that
Alexander hasn’t read Donald J. Trump’s 1997 bestseller, The Art of the Comeback where the future
president wrote:
“As a result of these experiences, my thinking has changed. I’m sharper. I’m warier. I believe in an eye
for an eye – like the Old Testament says. Some of the people who forgot to lift a finger when I needed
9
them, when I was down, they need my help now, and I’m screwing them against the wall. I’m doing a
number . . . and I’m having so much fun. People say that’s not nice, but I really believe in getting
even.”
The last thing of note in British politics before the pandemic hit was Brexit. Therefore, during
this fog of crisis it is that image of Boris that people have taken with
them. When they see “Boris” starting to pursue liberal, progressive
policies post-pandemic the “Red Wall” will soon tire of him.
The Conservatives won the Hartlepool by-election a couple of
weeks ago because Alexander has yet to be seen to make his COP26
pivot and the natural order of things vis-à-vis Britain’s political
alignment is reasserting itself. On the same day, Labour’s Sadiq
Khan won re-election in London with the support of many who had
voted “Jolly Boris Johnson” to be mayor twice then we will be
seeing the conservatives, populists in the Red Wall aligning with the
Conservative Party and the liberal, progressives in metropolitan London aligning with Labour.
The Hartlepool result further highlights that the continuing success of the Conservative Party in
future electoral cycles is going to be reliant upon the conservative, populists in the middle of this
country. Alexander Johnson has made a number of unforced errors of late that should have cost him the
support of these voters. “Boris” has been given a “hall pass” because “Boris” delivered what his
Brexiteer base voted him into office to do which was namely Brexit. His embrace of the most radical
aspects of the Green agenda is going to substantively undo a lot of the good Johnson has done and also
cause those Red Wall voters to revoke “Boris’s” “hall pass”. When they do, they will do remembering
Alexander’s recent slights and be less forgiving in retrospect to Alexander than they were to “Boris” in
the moment.
I am increasingly confident that after freeing us from the shackles of the European Union he is
now going to tie the country to all sorts of new international obligations in order to fight the “climate
crisis”. In effect, he is about to revert to type. The fact that the government has prioritised the COP26
summit to be held in Glasgow this November above post-Covid recovery is indicative of this.
The “Climate Crisis” is the greatest Trojan Horse for corporatism ever built. Climate Change is
real but we should not buy into a series of solutions which make the world’s mega-billionaires even
richer and give political authority to former leftists who painted their red flag green when the Berlin
Wall fell.
As a generalisation the majority of those who place climate change at the top of their list of
political priorities are fantastically well-off liberal elites living in Britain’s metropolises. They quite
frankly have the luxury to consider climate the most pressing issue of the day because as the prime
10beneficiaries of the unchecked globalisation that has hollowed out many of this country’s once great
towns and villages, they can afford to. Alexander should be working to make them great again instead
of throwing greater burdens upon their backs.
It is also fitting that the COP26 summit is being held in Scotland for Boris Johnson’s entire
reasoning for not holding a second 21st century referendum on Scottish independence is that we should,
as a United Kingdom, be focused on the post-Covid recovery. Alexander is going to greatly undermine
that argument by having his government squander the summer focusing on COP 26 instead of the
bread-and-butter issues which matter to most Brits.
Given “Boris” is just a mask Alexander Johnson wears to differentiate between the man he is and the
role that he plays, the maxim “Let Boris, Be Boris” would ring hollow. Instead, I recommend that
Alexander Johnson remember this old adage that Ronald Reagan
used to love, “You gotta dance with the one that brung ya.”.
Throughout his career Alexander Johnson has offered
“Boris” up to the electorate as something of a political Rorschach
test in which different voters will interpret the same personality in
entirely different ways. The image that voters in Hartlepool have
of “Boris” is of the Prime Minister who delivered them the Brexit
he promised. Ergo, the populist “Boris” Johnson hailed as
“Britain Trump” by the former U.S. President won the Hartlepool
by-election. The electorate of Hartlepool would be horrified if
they were rewarded for voting for conservative, populist Boris by having to live under the government
of liberal, progressive “Boris”.
It is often in moments of great triumph that political leaders set upon the path of their eventual
destruction. In November 1972, Richard M. Nixon was re-elected President of the United States with
520 Electoral College votes to rival George McGovern’s 17 Electoral College. In August 1974, Richard
M. Nixon resigned the presidency and Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as the 38th President of the United
States. In June 1987, the Conservatives won a landslide General Election victory under the leadership
of Margaret Thatcher. In November 1990, Margaret Thatcher was forced to resign as Prime Minister.
In May 2015, David Cameron became the first Conservative Party leader since John Major in 1992 to
deliver his party an outright majority in the House of Commons. Just over a year later, in June 2016,
David Cameron resigned as Prime Minister after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European
Union.
If he embraces the politics and policies of the conservative, populist base then he could wind up
spending a decade in Downing Street, making those flat refurbishment costs easier to swallow. If he
pulls a bait and switch on the newly Tory “Red Wall” voter and starts pushing all sort of regressive
11“green” measures onto them then he will find himself in such political bother that not even Houdini
himself could escape.
Alexander Johnson should be mindful so as not to misread the mandate from the electorate.
They voted for “Boris”, his creation which has begun to have a life of its own, and not the man
behind the curtain. A student of the Classics, Alexander would do well to remember that hubris
invites nemesis and that he has yet to meet his.
12CHAPTER TWO
AMBLING INTO AUTHORITARIANISM
“Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths and ruin Kings.
- John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel: The First Part (1681)
“Napoleon, in his early campaigns in Italy, soon freed himself from the control of the Directory in
Paris. From the time he became First Consul to the end of his career, there could be no question of
collision of opinion between ministers and generals; for the authority of both was concentrated in a
single person. The same was true of Gustavus Adolphus and Frederick the Great. But when, as more
often happens, the general in the field is subject to the orders of his Government at home the case is
very different. Domestic politics, and the fluctuation of party fortunes at Westminster, were constantly
hampering and embarrassing the greatest of English commanders, the Duke of Marlborough. The
Tories were in favour of a merely defensive war in the Netherlands, and only assented in a half-hearted
fashion to the thanks which were voted in the House of Commons to the victor of Blenheim.”
- H. H. Asquith, Memories and Reflections Vol. 2 (1928)
“He could have been a great dictator,
Given half a chance
But they treated him like a traitor
So he went to live in France
Baronet Oswald Ernald Mosley”
- Peter Brewis, Not the Nine O’Clock News (1980)
On Wednesday, Dominic Cummings said that our political party
system has was not fit for purpose because at the last general election the best our two major political
parties could offer the electorate was a choice between Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson. I concur and
suspect much of the country does too. This does not mean I am simpatico with all of Mr Cummings’
opinions.
Mr Cummings chose his words poorly in claiming we needed something akin to a dictator to deal
with the coronavirus crisis (You’d have had a kind of dictator in charge of this). Mr Cummings is quite
right in pointing out that we needed better lines of accountability and responsibility. I wrote as much at
13the time. In both in my Commentator article of February 29th 2020 and my Parliament Street paper of
16th March 2020 I called for the appointment of a coronavirus tsar to manage the crisis. Although tsar is
a derivative of Caesar who was a dictator, that term does not carry the same emotional charge.
Mr Cummings was not for one moment saying Britain needed a dictator in the twentieth century
sense of the word. He was speaking of a dictator in the classical sense. Mr Cummings spoke about a
dictator to deal with the coronavirus, not to run the county’s affairs ad infinitum. In the Roman
Republic dictators were given autocratic powers to deal with particular crises and would then hand that
power back. The most famous example of this was Lucius Quintus Cinninnatus who was made dictator
twice and on both relinquished power after the crisis was over and returned to his farm. It was the
example of Cinninnatus that George Washington followed when he decided not to stand for a third
Presidential term even though he could have been president-for-life if he so wished. Most people,
however, when they hear anyone speak about dictators think fascism. This means it is not a word that
should be used in a positive sense should one not wish to be misconstrued.
Whilst Mr Cummings may not be in favour of actual dictatorship,
an increasing number of people are becoming that way inclined. We
run a real risk as a nation of falling into some authoritarian form of
government if do not fix our broken political system. At present
unaccountable party bosses decided who can and who can’t stand for
either major political party. Save for leadership elections, the
membership of the parties are expected to toe the line and are given no
meaningful power. The Conservative Party, of which I am more
personally familiar than the Labour Party, was far more open and democratic in the late 19th century
than it is today. Declining membership in political parties has worked to the benefit of those already in
various positions within the parties. Smaller internal electorates assist existing cliques in maintaining
control, as it proves easier to pack a room and stich things up if the membership is small and preferably
the majority made up of personal friends or political allies. This starts to become numerically
impossible when organisations become mass membership such as was the case when, for example, the
Conservative Women’s Organisation used to be so big that it held its annual conference in the Royal
Albert Hall. The Royal Albert Hall used to be used for all kinds of political functions. In 1934, Oswald
Mosley held a meeting of the British Union of Fascists there and almost packed the venue.
Some will think that it is a melodramatic notion that Britain could take an authoritarian turn.
Their logic will be that it can’t happen here. I would remind those people that at the turn of the 20th
century popular opinion in England was that the world was so interconnected through trade that the
country would never be in a war with a major power again. Only 14 years later, the First World War
began. We can take nothing for granted. We were fortunate not to fall under fascist influence, like much
of mainland Europe in the 1930s. However, it is not difficult to conjure up a counterfactual where
Oswald Mosley becomes Prime Minister. Mosley, who served, at different times, on both the
Conservative and Labour benches in the House of Commons was once considered a rising star by both
14parties. If he had not stormed out of the Labour Party in a huff in 1930 there is a reasonable chance that
he would have eventually become its leader. When Mosley set up the New Party in 1931, there were
politicians on both sides of aisle who contemplated joining him.
In his 1975 book, The Past Masters, former Conservative Party Prime Minister Harold MacMillan
wrote:
“Since I personally agreed with almost everything in the ‘Mosley Memorandum’ I naturally got in
touch with him, although not now in Parliament. I had only a slight acquaintance with him, although
his wife was an old friend of my wife and her family. I had then many conversations with him and was
struck by his acute intelligence and energy. Indeed, I might have been tempted to join his New Party if I
could have seen any practical hopes of its success. When I thought it over, I realised that traditional
political parties are too strongly entrenched to be easily overthrown. It is better for a young man to
work within them. The increasing disillusionment with the Labour Government would have given
Mosley immense strength inside his own party had he remained.”
Thankfully, Mosley’s ego got the better of him and he self-destructed. MacMillan certainly
thought that Mosley could have climbed to the top of the greasy pole if he had not been so vain. As he
wrote in The Past Masters:
“Mosley’s story is really a sad one, something of a tragedy. Great talents and great strength of
character were thrown away in vain. Had he waited, he might have been supreme. He struck too soon,
and fell for ever. In politics, as in many other things, the essence of the game is ‘timing.’”
That Macmillan should have been so sympathetic to Mosley is unsurprising. Both had strong
authoritarian streaks in them. One of Macmillan’s ministers, J. Enoch Powell, said of Cabinet meetings
that “it’s like having a debate with Henry VIII – I was conscious that he had the axe down by his
chair.”
Britain does not need a Henry VIII or a dictator. Britain does need leaders who are decisive and
who can make fully informed decisions. In short, we need better politicians.
Mr Cummings was rightly critical of the choice put to the great British electorate in his
testimony to the joint inquiry to the Health and Social Affairs Care Committee and the Science and
Technology Committee in the House of Commons on Wednesday. Unfortunately, he was too forgiving
of the government scientists who offered bad advice at the outset of the pandemic. Additionally, Mr
Cummings seems to think that our leaders should be brainboxes. If we were to assess leaders on
academic intelligence alone then Herbert Hoover would be regarded as the greatest American president
and Harry Truman as one of its worst. No one individual can be a specialist in every field. What is
needed in a leader is an ability to source out the best advice from a cross section of opinion and make a
determination from that regarding the best course of action. Boris Johnson is unfit to be Prime Minister
15because he lacks intellectual curiosity. They also have to have a certain swagger. The problem Mr
Cummings had was that he was too in awe of the big brains he now found himself surrounded with to
deliver the sort of push back he seemingly gave everyone else throughout his career.
SAGE was too hesitant to act at the beginning of the pandemic when we had a window to strangle
the virus in this country to death when it was in its infancy and before it spread too widely such as we
couldn’t get our collective hands around it. I realise this a terribly unpleasant metaphor but nothing
about the past 15 months has been terribly pleasant, although there has been a lot that has been terrible.
That there was no plan as of what to do is in this incredible situation was also unsurprising but the
first lockdown should not have been delayed until they came up with a plan. Every second the
government was planning the virus was spreading. This also meant that the inevitable lockdown was
also going have to last even longer. The government should have locked down the moment they knew it
was inevitable and then worked out what to do. Dynamic leadership, not dithering, was what was
needed.
It was unsurprising that the Prime Minister thought the virus had all but gone away by the
midsummer. If he had been intellectually curious, he would have read up on the last worldwide
pandemic, the Spanish Flu of 1918, and learnt that that virus seemed to be going away in the summer
months, only to come back with a vengeance in the autumn and winter months of that year. This was
when the majority of deaths were. If the Prime Minister had been worthy of the office he holds, then he
would not have squandered the summer months and he would instead have delivered on the world-
beating track and trace system he promised the public. If he had done so we would have been able to
have been able to rapidly respond to any new outbreak and had targeted micro-lockdowns as opposed to
cancelling Christmas.
Furthermore, having not taken the virus seriously enough at the outset, SAGE has now
overcorrected and now is too hesitant to allow people their lives back. Overcorrecting is a natural
human instinct and any leader worth their salt would know this and factor it into their decision
making.
16CHAPTER THREE
THE ONCE AND FUTURE PRESIDENT
“Yet some men say in many parts of England that King Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of our
Lord Jesu into another place; and men say that he shall come again, and he shall win the holy cross. I
will not say it shall be so, but rather I will say: here in this world he changed his life. But many men say
that there is written upon his tomb this verse: Hic jacet Arthurus, Rex quondam, Rexque futurus.”
- Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur (1485)
“Though Merlin sware that I should come again
To rule once more; but, let what will be, be”
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1859)
“I learned a lot about myself during these hard times; I learned about handling pressure. I was able to
home in, buckle down, get back to the basics, and make things work. I worked much harder. I focused,
and got myself out of a box. Don’t get me wrong – there were moments of doubt, but I never thought in
negative terms. I believe in positive thought and positive thinking.
I learned a lot about loyalty – who was and who wasn’t. There were people that I would have
guaranteed would have stuck by me who didn’t, and, on the other hand people who I had made who
when it came time to help me, didn’t lift a finger.”
- Donald J. Trump, The Art of the Comeback (1997)
In 1997, Donald J. Trump published his third book, The Art of The Comeback. Now, in 2021, President
Trump is making plans for the greatest comeback in political history, as he seeks to join fellow New
Yorker Grover Cleveland in the ranks of those holding the presidency of the United States for two non-
consecutive terms. Prior to the pandemic it appeared that President Trump was bound to win a landslide
re-election in November 2020 on the back of a booming economy. The pandemic changed everything.
Joe Biden’s American Grandpa offered the electorate the empathy they were yearning for. President
Trump could not provide this whilst at the same time as presenting the most positive face possible
given the circumstances, so as to reassure the markets and to ensure that further uncertainty didn’t
cause a financial collapse in the midst of a global pandemic.
17Donald J. Trump also wanted to make Americans smile in what
was a dark and difficult time for everyone and that meant presenting a
sunny demeanor even when he literally had the weight of the world on
his shoulders. I for one was immensely grateful that President Trump,
who throughout his career has often played along with jokes at his own
expense, made the comments which were interpreted as him asking
whether there would be a way to inject something with the properties of
bleach into the body to clean out the virus. Trump says the comments
were delivered in jest and looking at the results they were extraordinary.
By putting himself out there as the butt of the bleach joke, Donald Trump managed to break the tension
caused by the pandemic and bring joy to so many people who had been having trouble finding reasons
to smile. This was that rare moment in history where most of the world was engaged in a collective
chuckle crossing language and cultural barriers. Laughter it is said is the best medicine and with little
regard to the personal and political cost, President Trump administered the treatment. It would have
been difficult to provide both optimism and empathy in the moment. Trump provided the optimism to
get through the worst of the crisis and Biden was elected to give the American people the collective hug
they needed after the worst was over.
With Trump out-of-office some might forget how he got there in the first place. In 2016 voters in
Britain and America had had enough. The 21st century had begun - 9/11, the War on Terror, the war in
Iraq, the Great Recession, austerity, the Syrian refuge crisis and the rise of ISIS - it had been non-stop
since September 2001. Every time you turned on the news it was depressing. Then you had Trump who
suddenly did what the War on Terror could not - deprived the terrorists of their most effective tool - the
oxygen of publicity. Trump destroyed ISIS by depriving them of airtime - that was not his strategy but
Trump provided a spectacle that drove cable news ratings higher than that of “terror porn” of the
preceding decade and a half. When America voted for Trump, they voted to change the channel from
what had preceded it and who offered better television than Donald J. Trump.
Donald J. Trump may not be a trained psychologist but he understands his audience.
Unfortunately, the media did not give him the credit he deserved for keeping America calm during the
crisis. They roundly criticised his long press conferences after the medical experts had said their part
and imparted the information they needed to impart. Receiving this information although important
caused heightened agitation and anxiety amongst the audience. President Trump instinctively knew that
the audience, for the good of their mental health, needed to decompress after assimilating the necessary
information. Using the power of the bully pulpit he split the White House coronavirus briefings into
two. The first part of the briefing would be focused on imparting information where the American
people would learn what they needed to, even though the receipt of this information caused agitation
and anxiety within them. The second part of the briefing forced the American people to decompress by
watching an episode of Celebrity President after the briefing part of the briefing. This meant that by the
end of the White House briefing the American people had all the information they needed but their
18anxiety and agitation had in large measure dissipated, meaning they were not taking their frustrations
out on themselves or their loved ones after the briefing.
Having a pit stop between presidencies might behoove
Donald J. Trump well. By most accounts he is looking rested
and recharged having enjoyed the bright Florida Sun for the
last four months. President Biden is going to have a tough
time of it, as the post-Covid world looks increasingly perilous.
This means that it is likely he will be running for re-election
with the political headwinds against him, just as they were for
him this year. This will be especially true if the economy goes
south. These problems, which in fairness, for the most part, are
not of Biden’s own making, would have been Trump’s
problems had he been the one sworn in on 20th January.
President Trump would have received the blame for all of it. It is much harder for his opponents to
blame him when it is their man sitting behind the Resolute Desk.
As Donald J. Trump is the overwhelming prohibitive favourite for the 2024 Republican
presidential nomination, he would be well advised to do sit back and watch events unfold, whilst
allowing the public a hiatus from The Trump Show. As anyone involved in the production of
television would tell you, you don’t want to overexploit a popular programme. For the past five
years, cable news in the United States has been Trump 24/7. In Britain, before the pandemic,
when the headlines weren’t about Brexit, they were about Trump. On occasion you had perfect
media synergy between the two biggest stories of the day and the headlines were not about Brexit
or Trump but Brexit and Trump! The Trump Show, even his fiercest critics would admit, has
been a ratings bonanza. Just as The Apprentice had hiatuses between seasons, so too must the
electorate have a hiatus from President Trump if he is to mount a successful comeback in politics.
19CHAPTER FOUR
THE GREAT REBOOT
“So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty,
and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their
labour. Once they were there, they would no doubt have to pay rent, and not a little of it, for the
ventilation of their caverns; and if they refused, they would starve or be suffocated for arrears. Such of
them as were so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, in the end, the balance
being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life,
and as happy in their way, as the Upper-world people were to theirs.”
- H. G. Wells, The Time Machine (1895)
“We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of
corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr.
Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that
perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality -- one vast and ecumenical
holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a
share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.”
- Arthur Jensen (as played by Ned Beatty), Network (1976)
“Elites are no longer the ones we count upon to tell us right from wrong, or to apply their skills of
expertise to move society forward. Instead, they are viewed increasingly as spinmeisters, telling tales
that fit their narrowly defined worldviews. They have become even more distant from the broader
population simply by rejecting what happened across two continents and reading books like Hillbilly
Elegy, treating the other half as though they are zoo specimens. The implications of this disconnect
remain profound, with no solution in sight.”
- Mark Penn, Microtrends Squared (2018)
When it comes to this pandemic, we are stuck between two narratives: one is that of the grand
conspiracy and the other is that “there is nothing to see here”. As it is, both narratives are false.
This pandemic was not caused by the global elite or lizard people. There is a possibility that it
might have been the result of research gone wrong, but if so, that would have been through gross
20incompetence rather than malice. This pandemic certainly has done nothing for China’s reputation in
the world. It is likely that we were always due a crisis such as the one we are in because history does
follow patterns. We have been told repeatedly, over the last few months, that a pandemic such as the
one we are facing now occurs every hundred years or so, the last being the Spanish Flu of 1918.
Therefore, if one was studying historical trends, one would have been able to predict something like
the coronavirus was going to emerge. George W Bush when president of the United States certainly did
and after reading The Great Influenza by John Barry on the 1918 pandemic set up procedures within the
federal government to deal with such a crisis.
One did not have to create the virus in order to know that
something like it was coming. One just had to be astute of
history. Winston Churchill once said that “the further back
you can see in history, the further forward you can see”.
Ergo, the best way to super forecast is to pick up a history
book.
Conspiracy theorists have pointed to the Johns Hopkins
Centre for Health and Security in partnership with the World
Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
who hosted a pandemic exercise in October 2019 called event
201 in New York City. This was essentially a war game something the British government probably
should have done more of. It does not mean that Bill Gates or the WEF caused this pandemic. It does
mean they were prepared for it and as such, prepared to roll out their agenda for a “great reset”.
The problem with this is two-fold. The first is that the main economic beneficiaries of this
pandemic have been big-tech billionaires, including Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates. We
saw with the Democratic Party presidential debates just prior to this pandemic that Michael Bloomberg
was the only one really taking it seriously and that Bloomberg, because he was so fabulously wealthy,
was completely unsuited to the cut and thrust nature of the political arena where people such as
Elizabeth Warren were not going to be deferential to him just because of his wealth and would
perfectly, happily attack Bloomberg’s character. Mayor Bloomberg was like a deer in headlights.
He also showed that while he knows his stuff about business and public health, his political
knowledge was poor for a major candidate of the presidency. The former New York City mayor
floated the idea of announcing a running mate prior to receiving the nomination, believing “nobody had
done it in history”. NBC News reporter, Hallie Jackson, mentioned that Ted Cruz had announced that if
he were to receive his party’s nomination, he would pick former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina as
his running mate. Not only this, but in 1976, Ronald Reagan, then running against President Gerald
Ford for the Republican nomination, announced that if he were to receive his party’s nomination, he
would select the liberal senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania as his running mate.
21The Davos set exist in a world where everybody tells them they’re great. That is not the world of
politics. In politics, for even the most popular leaders, as a general rule, they will have less than 50% of
their country behind them. In this country, most MPs do not receive 50% plus of the votes in their
constituencies, meaning that the majority of their constituents voted against them. Whilst in politics,
there are people who are sycophants, there are enough people throwing verbal grenades that the
successful politician will always have an eye on how things appear. Big tech billionaires who have been
seen to profit as a result of this pandemic then preaching to the rest of the world how it should be is
already getting the backs up of those blue-collar workers and small business owners who have borne
the economic brunt of the lockdowns that have been pushed by the corporate media.
Furthermore, it has not escaped most people’s notice that those billionaires pushing the green
agenda also seek to profit from those very policies. So even if their science is completely right, because
they will profit, some people will just assume “well, they would say that wouldn’t they: they’re going to
make money from it”. The truth is that there is climate change, but there are likely to be alternative
ways of addressing the problem without completely upending society. A certain amount of humility
from the self-proclaimed global thought leaders would go a long way. Rather than suggest they take a
leaf out of Donald Trump’s book which they will dismiss out of hand, I would suggest that they look to
the example of Hillary Clinton when she first ran for senator of New York and engaged in a “big
conversation” with the voters of her adopted state.
The Davos set’s “great reset” which is currently getting a lot of play in certain parts of the
media seems to have already arrived at its conclusions. It might not be a conspiracy. Indeed, it is
likely not, but they do seem to be going out of their way to make it look like one. Equally, they
talk about it being a discussion, but not a conversation and in doing so are ensuring that they will
get minimal political support from the electorates of the world because people do like being
consulted and dislike being preached to.
22CHAPTER FIVE
HAVING A LAUGH
“And lost be the day to us in which a measure hath not been danced. And false be every truth which
hath not had laughter along with it!”
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883)
“Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think
Enjoy yourself, while you're still in the pink
The years go by, as quickly as a wink
Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think.”
- Carl Sigman & Herb Magidson, Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later Than You Think), (1949)
“A remarkable young artist named Garry Trudeau creates a comic strip ‘Doonesbury’. This happens to
be my children’s favourite strip, and when they introduced it to me, I saw why. I imagine young Mr
Trudeau must have been a bit shocked when I, a monster in the ‘Watergate Alumni Club’, which was
featured in his strip, sent word to him that I liked two of his strips about me which were hardly
flattering. I said that I hoped he would give me the originals to frame. Trudeau said he didn’t usually
do this, but in my case he would make an exception — and they’re framed on the wall of my den today”
- . H. R. Haldeman, The Ends of Power (1978)
By embracing so-called “cancel culture”, liberals are losing one of the strongest weapons in their
arsenal – comedy. Comedy has often provided a medium through which society could engage in
otherwise uncomfortable conversations about sensitive topics. Comedy serves a purpose in pointing out
the absurdities amid the gravity of our existence and what could be more absurd than racism.
The supposedly “offensive content” in the Fawlty Towers episode The Germans was not racist
because it was lampooning racism. In Weimar Germany, the opposition that most infuriated Nazi Party
leader Adolf Hitler came not from opposition politicians but from the Cabaret.
In the late 1960s, Norman Lear was in Los Angeles reading a copy of TV Guide when he came a
description of British TV show called Till Death Us Do Part. Lear was immediately taken with the
concept of the show – a bigoted father-in-law constantly arguing with his live-in liberal son-in-law. It
reminded him of the rows he had with his reactionary father as a boy and suddenly Lear was brimming
23with ideas. By September 1968, he had secured the rights to make an American version of the show.
The American version would end up being called All In The Family.
The Alf Garnett father-in-law character was reborn as Queens’ taxi driver Archie Bunker. The
politics of the protagonists of the respective programs not only ran parallel; so did the politics of the
actors who played them.
Both Warren Mitchell, who played Alf Garnett and Carroll O’Connor, who played Archie Bunker
were the polar opposites of the people they played on TV. Not that you would know when watching
their performances, as both were distinguished thespians who had leant their trade on the theatre
boardwalks.
Mitchell, who played a right-wing, West Ham United
supporting, anti-Semite on television, was in his own life
a socialist, Tottenham Hotspur fan of Russian-Jewish
descent.
Carroll O’Connor played Archie Bunker, who thought
that “we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again”,
but in his own life he was a Ted Kennedy liberal, who
attacked President Jimmy Carter for being Hoover. In the
late 1980s and 1990s, in a dramatic departure from
playing Archie Bunker, Carroll O’Connor was executive
producer and lead actor in the TV police drama, In the
Heat of the Night. In the Heat of the Night would be honoured at the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Image Awards for its addressing of racial issues.
O’Connor was a passionate advocate of racial justice. So that audiences did not take away the
wrong messages from All In The Family, he recorded an anti-bigotry Public Service Announcement
(PSA) for the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. O’Connor speaking direct to camera told the
television audience:
“Listen friends, it is one thing to play a bigot on TV and it’s quite another thing to be a bigot in real
life. You know there are still people around who are willing to hurt people by judging them primarily
on their race or their religious beliefs. Now bigotry has not helped Archie Bunker’s life. You know that.
It has spoiled it, in many ways, small and large.”
In an obituary of O’Connor in 2001, the South Florida Sun Sentinel proclaimed:
“Carroll O'Connor played the most important character in the history of television, and it's a sign of
his artistry that Archie Bunker could appall, captivate and amuse America.”
24It went on:
“Bigoted and lovable, funny and scary, Archie moved television into a new era and pushed Americans
to think about racism, the Vietnam War, drug use, anti-Semitism, homosexuality and other issues that
tame series refused to touch. Archie, under the inspired guidance of producer Norman Lear, rewrote
the rules in television. With Archie, the medium grew up. He paved the way for more-complex and
flawed characters, such as Frank Furillo, Andy Sipowicz and Tony Soprano.”
The obituary closed:
“O’Connor said last year that he hoped to play Archie once
more.
‘His outlook on life was very, very foolish,’ he said. ‘A racist
outlook is a very foolish thing.’
And thanks to O’Connor, America got the message. Rarely
has television done such a service.”
This closing captures perfectly why it is vital that comedy
be used to address racism even when that includes having
characters use racist and offensive language. Many jokes are funny because of the grain of truth
contained within them.
In his 2014 memoir, Even This I Get To Experience, Norman Lear, now in his nighties reflected on
why Carroll O’Conner’s likable face was pivotal to his being cast as Archie Bunker:
“It was very important to me that Archie have a likable face, because the point of the character was to
show that if bigotry and intolerance didn’t exist in the hearts and minds of the good people, the average
people, it would not be the endemic problem it is in our society. As the ‘laziest, dumbest white kid’ my
father ever met, I rarely saw a bigot I didn’t have some reason to like. They were all relatives and
friends.”
The left today by seeking to dehumanize those that disagree with them actually force those people
to double down because, why not, if you are damned in their eyes already. Lear used the character of
Archie Bunker to start conversations. The modern left seems afraid of conversation and that is likely
because they do not have the confidence in their ideas that they maintain they have.
25Archie Bunker would have a pop-culture scion in the animated form of Eric Cartman on South
Park. In a 2008 interview, South Park co-creator, Trey Parker told America’s National Public Radio
(NPR):
“’I'd say within the first season, we kind of realized Cartman's like a little Archie Bunker,’ Parker said
in an interview at South Park Studios in Los Angeles. ‘And we were big fans of All in the Family, and
we were going back and seeing some of those reruns, and we kind of realized what we had there.
‘And especially because he was 8 years old, he was kind of free to say whatever he wanted. He could
dress up like Hitler, and he could do this because he's 8. And he doesn't really know what he's doing;
he doesn't care. He's just a product of his environment.’”
This serves to illustrate how once they release a creation out in the world, the creative loses their
absolute control over their creation, as it develops a life of its own. When Johnny Speight first imaged
Alf Garnett, in 1965, he would have never thought that Garnett would have a creative grandson-of-
sorts, in Eric Cartman, still making a mockery of racist attitudes in 2020.
Norman Lear found himself on Richard Nixon’s
enemies list so enraged was the 37th President at how Lear’s
comedy was undermining his administration in the popular
culture. In many ways Lear through his writing and
O’Connor through his acting proved far better advocates for
liberal points-of-view to Richard Nixon’s voters than the
elected Democratic politicians of the time. Making Archie
Bunker an essentially good, but misguided, person ensured
that Lear did not alienate those in the audience who held
views similar to those held by his late father. By keeping
them engaged he was able to use All In The Family as a
means of conversing with them. Through comedy he sought
to introduce the audience to ways of looking at political or
social problems that they might not have done previously.
All In The Family put everything on the table and there was not an issue the show would shy away
from and the same was true of its spin-offs The Jeffersons and Maude.
Maude, played by Bea Arthur, was an unapologetic liberal feminist and was introduced in the
second season of All In The Family as the cousin of Archie’s wife, Edith. The All In The Family
episode Cousin Maude’s Visit was an adaption of the Till Death Us Do Part episode Aunt Maud,
tailored to the American audience. Whereas Aunt Maud would only appear on the one episode of Till
Death Us Do Part, cousin Maude would get her own spin-off after her second appearance of All In The
Family.
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