Why 'Leave' are winning

If you had asked me 6 months ago what the outcome of the EU referendum would be, I would have ventured an unambiguous answer: 'Britain will vote to remain in the European Union'. How wrong this answer would look today. The latest poll puts the Leave camp 10 points ahead of Remain.

Whether or not you believe the polls, everyone agrees on one thing: it's going to be close. Very close indeed. And it shouldn't be. So how did we get here?

There is now a consensus that the gravest threat to a Remain vote is the rapid decline of Labour in its heartlands. The Guardian and the BBC recently travelled into these areas where deprivation, long term unemployment and general hopelessness have dominated the political landscape since the 1980s. South Wales is a good example. Asked why they support Leave, the answers come thick and fast. And they are all of one kind: immigration. Whilst there used to be hesitation to discuss this issue, covered by the thin veil of British politeness, now people openly voice xenophobic and at times even racist prejudices.

Their opinions are peppered with flagrant falsehoods such as: 'immigrants get a grand in cash when they get here' or 'they get free housing', or 'most of them scrounge on benefits'. But the tenor is remarkably similar. The message is simple, straightforward and repeated up and down the country. And it is one that comes from one source alone: UKIP.

Neil Hamilton, of 'cash for question' fame, now sits in the Welsh Assembly for UKIP
Foto: WENN

Although the Labour Party does not want to hear it, its voters are abandoning Labour in droves. More and more Labour supporters have moved to the far right, taking the electoral fortunes of their party with them into an abyss of xenophobia and narrow-mindedness.

Why did this happen? And why now? There are essentially two reasons for this. The first is that UKIP has gone unchallenged for decades when it peddled its falsehoods and distortions about foreigners and migrants in the UK. The Conservatives felt largely insulated from the UKIP threat due to the first-past-the-post electoral system. And the Labour Party thought the UKIP message to run counter to the ideals of solidarity and mutual support that defined the party in the post-war period. So no one thought it worthwhile spending political capital on challenging the UKIP narrative (with the valiant exception of Nick Clegg, anyone remember him?).

The referendum changed this drastically. It gave Farage and his minions a national stage to articulate publicly the simple message that had already sunk into the nation's (sub)consciousness: It's the migrants' fault.

The second reason is of tactical nature. The Leave campaign settled early on a simple message and managed to define the terms of the debate: control, sovereignty, immigration. It shaped the content and nature of the terms by positively associating false choices like 'control' versus 'Brussels' with democracy. There are too many ironies in this to list them all here, ranging from the claim that the British political system is a beacon of democracy (House of Lords anyone?) to ignoring role the EU has played in democratising large swathe of the post-communist and post-Franco landscape since 1975.

Defining the terms of engagement is the key ingredient for political success and the Leave campaign understood this well. Once the campaign started Brexiters could rely on a solid foundation of animosity towards others, xenophobia and outright racism that was put in place long time ago by UKIP. All they had to do is to bring in their harvest of division and resentment.

Why the NHS should not fund PreP

PreP stands for Preventive Exposure Prophylaxis. It is medication that prevents the infection of HIV with a 85% probability for those who may be exposed to high risk with infected partners. PreP is therefore an important armour in the arsenal against the spread of HIV amongst gay men. NICE, the body in England that reviews the effectiveness and economic benefits of medication for the NHS has recently recommended not to prescribe PreP on the NHS and NHS England has declined to do so. Its analysis of costs and benefits suggests that its costs simply outweigh the benefits. This calculation may change soon and there has been a significant outcry from AIDS campaign groups such as Terrence Higgins about the decision. They have branded NHS England 'irresponsible' and 'shameful'. But lets look at this in a bit more detail.

Personal responsibility or a matter for the NHS?
Foto: Science Library BBC

PreP is not medication for people who have contracted HIV but it is a preventive substance for those who are at high risk to contract the disease because they engage in unprotected sex. The groups that typically come to mind that may benefit from this medication are sex workers and people in the porn industry. However, both industries have extremely by now low infection rates. In fact, the porn industry is highly (self-) regulated now and has only seen few (less than 40 compared to more than 400 in the previous year) infections in the last four years. Porn stars (gay or straight) need to undergo regular tests and prove their HIV status to be allowed to work.

So, PreP is not a medication for people who professionally may put themselves at risk. S, who is it for? In essence, it is for a group of gay men who deliberately decide to have unprotected sex. This is crucial in the argument for or against public funding of PreP as there is in fact a simple and cost-effective means to prevent HIV contraction, it's called the condom. However, at the moment, some men decide not to use a condom which exposes them to a higher risk of contracting the disease. At present, many of them self-fund PreP (at about £400 per month).

The argument for publicly funding PreP through the NHS is thus an argument about whether or not to spread (or socialise) risk. One may argue that we do this all the time. We are all exposed to the possibility to have an accident in our lives, say to break a leg when cleaning the gutter on the house. Emergency care is provided free at the point of use in the UK and the costs are borne by everyone through taxation that funds the NHS. The critical difference between an accident and risky sexual activities however lies in the role of agency. In the case of the latter, some men deliberately expose themselves to risks even though they do not need to. Terrence Higgins and others argue that society should pick up the tab for this. I disagree.

So what's the rationale behind their case for public funding of PreP? It appears that they mainly employ a public health argument: to prevent the disease from spreading, those men who decide to have unprotected sex have a right to draw on public funding to reduce the risks. This seems to me to reduce those men to mere recipients of public assistance, when in fact they are actually the agents and initiators of the risks they want others to mitigate for them. The interpretative framework that is often invoked here is that of human rights. It is, so the argument goes, their human right to be free from risk. But human rights are the sort of set of rights that are easily invoked only once active agency is discounted. It has a patronising undertone. Men who decide to have unprotected sex are not like those who have no choice, say women within an abusive marriage who are coerced to have unprotected sex with their unfaithful husband. Gay men do have a choice. They simply decide not to exercise it to the benefit of their health.

My suspicion is that the NHS will eventually fund PreP for everyone. Mainly because the cost-benefit argument that NICE bases its decision on is relatively weak in the face of moral pressure and fake indignation from organisations such as Terrence Higgins. What we really need is a debate about the limits of mutual beneficence and the obligations we ourselves have to maintain our own health.

The price of friendship

The debate about the EU referendum appears to have had mainly one effect; to turn most people off politics. By now, I actually dread turning on the radio in the morning to listen to the Today programme, afraid that I will have to hear one more time how the economy will tank if Britain dares to go it alone, or how those pesky immigrants will invade Sutton Coldfield if we stay in the European Union.

The battle lines are well and truly drawn and both sides have settled on the most soporific arguments they could muster. I have previously written HERE about how difficult it is for anybody living in Britain to actually develop a feeling for European integration, let alone a positive sentiment towards those French drinking their lovely wine just across the channel. The main reason is that Britain is an island and, here, borders are not just a function of us being outside Schengen but a simple fact of geography. That is different for a French popping over to his neighbouring village which happens to be in Belgium, to stock up on some cheese (to continue the national stereotyping). Borders signal where our ability to move ends, and there could not be a stronger signal than a big fat cold mass of water, only to be overcome by some madcap celebrity in the pursuit of a charitable cause.

Bringing Europe closer by swimming - David Walliams in the Channel

In short, what is missing in the debate is the experience of living in Europe, as living with others that are different yet are also the same. In that vein, I would like to point to a dimension of us being in Europe that should matter to anybody thinking about where to put their cross in the referendum. I am talking about the incredible privilege to be surrounded by friends, who are willing to listen and debate with us what would and should happen in the common space we inhabit: Europe.

Many of us may take this for granted yet it is nothing but. The European Union has created and maintained the institutions which gives the British government the ability to articulate its demands, wishes and desires to its European friends. And Europe, above all, has developed an enormous stock of  mutual trust that allows us and our European neighbours to call each other friends, for good or ill. That should count as something. How unique this is in foreign relations can be seen by looking across at the recent spat between Venezuela and its neighbours. Yes, Europe costs. But it gives us so much more: friends who do not question our motifs when we raise an issue. That's something to celebrate, and to preserve.

What happened to Barcelona?

I have never been a great fan of Barcelona. To me, the city seemed always a bit too much to stomach, too lively, too much 'in your face'. However, it clearly has its charms and during a recent conference I had the chance to re-visit my original judgement.

When I visited the first time in the 1990s, the city had just hosted the Olympics and was in full throttle tourist mode. The transport infrastructure had gotten a facelift and there was a vibrancy about the place that was hard to deny. Almost 25 years on, and the city has not weathered with time all too well. The Rambla has more or less deteriorated into a somewhat tacky and over-crowded tourist avenue and the metro is creaking at the seams. So what happened?

The centre piece of tourist attraction - the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona

Part of the story of Barcelona is its port. It remains one of the biggest ports in the country but the rejuvenation of the city in the 1990s deliberately tried to eradicate this important part of the city's existence. Banished to the outer fringes, it is only visible from Montjuic. As part of the Olympics, the city elders tried to frame it with an artificial beach, but that never felt quite like a real one, and whilst popular with tourists, you see precious few locals there.

The other dimension Barcelona's tourist and city planners were keen to stress is her architectural history, with the Sagrada Familia as the crown jewel. However, it always appeared to me that they emphasised Gaudi at the expense of the 'other' architectural history of Barcelona, which is more ordinary, yet just as fascinating, though chaotic and resisting simple narratives. The official story however, with Gaudi's cathedral appears hollow.

Gaudi's cathedral, as important as it may be, is not easily 'domesticated' within architectural history. It did not emerge organically from any homegrown style or architectural school. It stands alone and represents, to an extent, a dead end in architectural style. Little in or around Barcelona (or anywhere else in fact) carries echoes of Gaudi's work. True, that speaks of the uniqueness of his style. But it also makes it look quite alien in the city scape.

In fighting mode - Barcelona's mayor Ada Colau

It does not help that Barcelona appears now on the path of a slow but frightening path to political polarisation paralysing the normal functioning of the city. Where the infrastructure urgently needs investment and modernisation, the mayor appears to exhaust her administration in endless cultural confrontations, embarking on en masse renaming of 'francoist' streets with the names of her heroes of the communist revolution. As rubbish collections need to be improved and green spaces need to be created, the new mayor prefers to demonstrate her 'solidarity' with house occupants and their 'fight against the repressive classes', by castigating the police who tried to implement court orders. The ensuing street battles do not help the city's image.

However, who looks long and hard can find the charms of Barcelona, far away from the crowded Rambla and overpriced restaurants. But I could not help to notice that the old vibrancy has turned into a staleness, that the makeup has somehow smeared and lost its freshness. The next time Barcelona launches itself it should perhaps make less of the things that are temporarily borrowed, and make more of the things that have always been there, a city of dockworkers and labourers, artisans and fishermen. Pretence tends to backfire.

The 'heart' of Corbyn and Farage

Political strategists like using metaphors when discussing politics. The 'heart of Labour' is all the vogue at the moment. The purpose of metaphors is to signal apparently agreed and shared meaning. The trouble with metaphors is that most are probably nothing more than cognitive crutches, dissipating in thin air under close scrutiny. The 'heartlands' of a political party is another one much used these days, suggesting the ability of a party to draw on rock solid support, conjuring up voters who trot to the ballot boxes like sheep, eager to put their cross in the foreordained box.

If the recent elections have demonstrated anything it is that the time of 'heartlands' of political party support is well and truly over in Britain. Where once the mighty Labour Party dominated, the landscape of political allegiances appears fractured and uncertain. Behind this picture of fragmentation of political loyalty however lurk familiar patterns for those who care to look closely.

Take UKIP's rise in Wales and in the North of England, in Labour 'heartlands'. Previously inconceivable, UKIP, articulating a xenophobic and isolationist agenda, attracts significant number of Labour voters despite Labour's professed principles of solidarity, internationalism and economic equality. It seems that what binds Labour's working class support and UKIP's message together is not commitment to progressivism but notions of social order (or bemoaning the loss thereof) and socio-economic entitlements. The foe of Labour's and UKIP's voters is, so it seems, the assumed or imminent loss of control and of old certainties. In this respect, to be controversial, Jeremy Corbyn does not differ much from Nigel Farage. His windmill is societal change, brought about through socio-economic dislocation (capitalism) whilst Farage's windmill is immigration (European or otherwise). The irony is however that both party leaders battle this threat of impending change in their country with metaphors that belong to the past.

Back to the Future - Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn on 1 May 2016
(Foto: AFP/Justin Tallis)

For Farage it is the vision of a bucolic English countryside, cleansed of foreign influences (whatever that may mean in a country that embraced migration for centuries). For Corbyn it is a country that conforms to the description of Marxist class struggle, with a disenfranchised working class pitted against a greedy capitalist elite (naturally wearing a top hat and waistcoat).

The latest elections however have shown that both Farage and Corbyn's versions of what is going on in Britain are largely fantasies based on flawed interpretations of reality. That is why Corbyn's speeches sound so hollow: struggling to meaningfully connect with reality. To be clear, this does not bother Corbyn, as his worldview had not been formed by looking at the facts in the first place. His mind, just like Farage's, appears to move effortlessly solely within the certainties of theoretical constructs, such as  antagonism between workers and capitalists. His thought, untrammelled by reality checks, appears to be buttressed by the logics of socialist wordplays.

For Farage it is 'the other' that is at the centre of social and cultural transformations that is to be feared. Remove 'the other', Europe or immigrants, and things will fall into place again. What neither Corbyn nor Farage would like to do at any rate is to embrace change in order to shape the future. For both, politics is about a return to a past that offer certainties.

Yet, for politicians without any interest in shaping the future, policies are irrelevant. That's why neither Farage nor Corbyn ever formulate anything beyond slogans. To articulate policies requires them to think about how to actively shape the future. Corbyn's and Farage's basic attitudes remain defensive, with a strong retrograde impetus. This speaks of a de-spiriting lack of aspiration on their parts, something that defines their 'heart'.

What's wrong with Colm Toibin?

I am a big fan of Colm Toibin's books. His writings often remind me of beautiful melodies, capturing moments of haunting beauty or devastating realistic insight into human frailty. More recently I started reading Toibin's novel 'The Master', a fictional account of Henry James in England. Whilst Toibin once again at times manages to conjure up literary marvels the novel itself somehow misses the emotional mark. With Toibin, a writer of great precision and quality, the most interesting question is why.

Henry James, the brother of the American philosopher William James, is still read widely today but his record is mixed. His writing style is often compared to the impressionism of Monet and others, offering a multitude of dots that require distance to comprehend the whole picture. James also occupies a curious position within the American canon as a lifelong exile (in Britain) yet never quite making Britain his home. The main reason for the latter was his abject failure at producing any good play and Toibin homes in on James' experience of Guy Domville's flop in London's West End which arguably traumatised James and produced a creative crisis (not least as James had the misfortune that his play's failure contrasted with the enormous success of Oscar Wilde's work on the London stage at the time, a writer he despised).

Toibin may have been motivated to write about James by his subject's curious position in English literature, something they both share. As an American, James was at once removed from English manners and customs, whilst curiously drawn to them. The remove afford him a critical distance, yet the fact that he shared the same language intimated a closeness that was probably illusory. Toibin may feel something similar, being Irish (now mostly living in Spain) yet invariably drawn to the enormous (at times negative) influence of the English on his homeland. James' experience of being a closet homosexual in a country that both cultivated 'queerness' in London high society and repudiated it violently in law may be something that Toibin can sympathise with as well.

As usual Toibin manages to capture moments of fascinating insight and beauty in 'The Master'. His writing is full of fitting observations of Englishness as seen from a distance. And yet, the novel somehow does not quite hit the mark perhaps because Toibin, by linguistic means, is too close to the English (language) that serves as the backdrop to James' emotional upheaval.

Poignancy over extravagance: Colm Toibin.
Foto: David White/NZ Listener/REX

Toibin is not an extravagant stylist at the best of times. His mastery does not reside in innovative linguistic playfulness but detailed descriptions of moments, based on acute awareness of social dynamics that conspire to poignant insights. He is almost unrivalled in this amongst contemporary writers but the outer limits are defined by his unwillingness to push into more poetic writing. At the core, his style remains realistic and factual. This is usually an asset when writing fiction, yet when creating a simulacrum of actual events, the factual can come to predominate and artistic construction takes on the cloak of the humdrum of reality.

This makes 'The Master' a difficult read as Toibin clearly wants to pass it off as a realistic account of James' existential and emotional struggle in England. Yet the main linguistic tool, given that Toibin eschews poetic flights of fancy, remains a third person narrative that sounds precocious, distant and impersonal at times. Whilst Toibin manages to paint some stunning scenes, James as a character remains unfinished and sketchy. Toibin may have wanted to create this effect as it may mirror James' precarious experience of living in self-imposed exile, requiring him to never disclose his emotions and views quite fully to his friends and foes populating his English world.

But, as a fictional biopic, Toibin's refusal to turn the hero inside out for the reader to see his inner workings (and failings) makes it a difficult read. At the end of the day, his novel resembles one of Monet's paintings, composed by a myriad of individual details but requiring distance to identify the overall motif. Artistically, this may be an enormous feat achieved by Toibin, yet being constantly held at bay we sometimes lose interest in the image supposed to occur before us.

The conceit at the heart of British membership in the EU

The key to political success is to beat your opponent to framing any issue in terms favourable to yourself. Once an issue is seen through the lens you selected, the fight is almost won.

The European referendum may just offer some evidence for this claim. Both camps have been busy trying to frame the issue of European Union membership, at times frantically. The leave side is hamstrung by the fact that predictions of things to come are always difficult to articulate, so their argument is necessarily focused on problems and difficulties of the present. They have made some hay of the fact that Britain has transferred sovereignty to Brussels. What they do not mention is that Brussels is an intergovernmental organisation at best, granting the British government a voice at the table. In fact, it is difficult to pinpoint a single issue that has not been passed by Brussels which did not receive the express consent of some British minister.

The Brexiters are on safer ground when it comes to the argument that Britain joined an organisation that was fundamentally different to the Europe today. As a BBC documentary recently offered a fascinating look behind the moment Britain joined. And it seems that Britain did not sleepwalk into a Europe with a single currency and parliament. The truth is more complicated yet also more embarrassing for the Conservatives who wholeheartedly supported joining the European Communities in 1974 (including one Margaret Thatcher).

In 1974 the roles were curiously reversed to those adopted today, with most of Labour opposed to joining Europe and the Conservatives largely in favour. At the heart of Ted Heath's strategy to convince his parliamentary colleagues was a conceit however. The Government argued that this was a community of independent nation states promoting free trade in Europe. On the Monday following the 'yes' vote in 1974, then Prime Minister Ted Heath was given the agenda for his first meeting with other European leaders. The civil servant, glancing at the agenda, noticed that one point to be discussed was 'establishing a common currency by 1980'. He mentioned this to Heath and, apparently Heath looked up and said: 'That's what it is all about'.

The BBC documentary interviewed Heath before his death in 2005 and pointed out to him the discrepancy between what he argued in public and what he had known all along, the true destination of Europe. In the documentary Heath looks puzzled and says something to the effect, 'so what?'

I always felt that the way the British joined the European Communities was the Achilles heel of those wanting to make a positive case for European Union membership. At the heart of the British membership remains a conceit by one of the most dishonest politicians, Ted Heath. You may argue about the pros and cons of pooling national sovereignty in European institutions, but you cannot argue that Germans and French politicians were not clear with their electorate about the final destination. The same cannot be said for the British. I would not be surprised if this will come to haunt them on June 23rd.