My favourite place for creative writing and thinking is a hop and a skip north of Malcesine on Lake Garda. The combination of friends, mountain scenery and mediocre windsurfing is unbeatable. It’s my performance which is mediocre, which is relevant. Strong gusts dump me in the lake. So in the afternoon my body has to concentrate super-hard, which clears the mind of the morning’s writing. Being plunged abruptly into cold water helps break repetitious mental patterns.
I was at Lake Garda last week, with a Brexit difference. Like thousands of other Brits I used my burgundy EU passport for the first time since 23 June and pondered my attachment to it. More distinctively my week’s ‘homework’ was to think how Brexit affects the plot of my second novel. It’s a satire about democracy set in the British General Election of 2020. I completed the first draft, about 90,000 words, two weeks earlier. Thinking fiction also encouraged me to reach beyond my own immediate repetitions about Brexit.
What I’ve brought back to London are some thoughts about constitution, concussion and contempt.
Famously, the British constitution is ‘unwritten’ (a fractional truth, but relevant to the British sense of specialness in contrast to the continent). The idea that the spirit and understanding of the constitutiton is living, organic rather than legalistic, is potentially creative. But so far I sense a kind of post-23 June concussion in the body politic; as if, without a comprehensive script, all sorts of constitutional actors have not just forgotten their lines but forgotten that they are in the middle of a play which had prided itself on improvisation.
Who are these actors? All of us, of course (the second letter here in the Guardian was one of my actions); but below are thoughts on three of them.
It’s dearly to be hoped that, with or without a Labour split, we gain before too long an effective English opposition in the Commons. Without it, we have no working democracy. Effective opposition has never been about saying boo-sucks-yah! to the electorate, or to the Government. One index of effective opposition through the next twelve months will be shining a devastatingly clear and detailed light on the Government’s emerging thoughts and actions. Another will be painting the big picture: comparing what is proposed with the bill of goods which the British electorate was sold.
We are paying a price for having neglected the role and composition of our House of Lords. Well, we are where we are: we fought the Battle of Britain with saucepans so our second chamber can deliver its national functions as it is. Those functions are part of what British democracy means: holding the Government accountable (especially when the first chamber is failing); defending our country’s existence and constitution; drawing on extensive experience; and being willing to give the electorate a view which is not merely that of short-term politicians. The job of the House of Lords is to serve democracy by showing it has a mind and speaking it, even if the consequences put its abolition on the populist agenda. That’s what they get to wear the fancy robes for. I reckon they will do their job (possibly, paraphrasing Churchill in another context, after exhausting the other possibilities).
The courts are the passive element of our constitution, removed from executive action. With luck this means that the concussion hasn’t spread to them. In one scenario for the novel, I imagined that the Supreme Court convened a panel of nine (instead of the usual five) judges to deliberate a critical Brexit point, and decided it by five to four. A narrow margin? Eleven per cent would be nearly three times the margin on 23 June.
But underneath all the constitutional machinery, what strikes me most is that we (and several other Western democracies) face a grievous ignorance and mutual contempt between ruling class and ruled. The spittle spat during the referendum about experts and expertise expressed it powerfully. Apart from Jo Cox’s murder, for me a crystallising moment towards the end of the campaign came when George Osborne’s words and actions screamed to the voters (my creative paraphrase) – ‘Christ, I knew you were stupid, but I didn’t realise you were this stupid!’. Whereas I was lucky enough to have drummed into me at the beginning of my ‘expert’ career as a headhunter is nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.
In fact, while caring would be a start, it wouldn’t be enough. The deep problem may be social identities built on having others to disrespect. Whether or not we send immigrant plumbers and nurses and cleaners ‘home’ or not, the festering threat to our well-being is not just about whether our shared economic cake will be five percentage points smaller (important though that is). Nor is it the buck which the ruling class conveniently passes onto the ruled, in terms of ‘their’ unwillingness to do menial jobs – ignoring who defines ‘menial’. Nor is it ‘just’ (just!) racism or xenophobia.
It is, I suggest, a problem at home – in our own homes. A problem about what it will take for the affluent, educated, globalised ruling class to respect the doing well of those jobs currently dismissed as menial – for the doing of such a job well to become something to be admired in, say, the boyfriend or girlfriend whom your newly grown child brings home.
To that I don’t pretend to have an answer, but the horrendous multi-dimensionality and through-and-through ‘humanness’ of a challenge like that is why, for me, writing novels is not a pointless response.
To summarise, if the British body politic has been knocked off its windsurfer by a gust, the concussion will pass and it will probably climb back up. We can each help by playing full parts as creative citizens in the improvisational play. If, in addition, our fin has snagged on dark weeds which have blossomed not well noticed in our life together, climbing on and hauling the constitutional sail back up will not be the end of the job.