I felt a bit queasy when I heard our recently ennobled, unelected Foreign Secretary explain, in mellifluous tones, why it was necessary for the RAF to drop bombs on Yemen. We cannot allow trade to be disrupted. If container ships continue to be attacked in the Red Sea they will have to sail the long way round, via the Cape of Good Hope, and prices in the supermarkets will go up.
Well, it’s not the first time we’ve interfered, militarily, in this neck of the woods. Anthony Eden, who himself was Foreign Secretary for a very long time, and PM rather briefly, once explained to the nation, in similarly mellifluous tones, why it was necessary, in concert with Israel and France, to attack Egypt, in order to keep control of the Suez Canal. But on that occasion, Mr Eden did not have the support of President Eisenhower, and it all went hideously wrong. Then Mr Eden’s biliary tree, thanks to a botched op, started to play up. He went for a rest to Goldeneye, courtesy of Ian Fleming, but failed to recuperate, and his premiership came to an end.
It has been said that one of the chief causes of the Great War was the nature of railway timetabling across continental Europe. If the Big Push was to occur, the troops had to board the requisite trains. Similarly, much of what happens in the modern world is directed by the “just-in-time” nature of globalised trade. Any disruption causes a knock-on effect. We see this on land, at sea, and in the air. Incidentally, Heathrow recorded its busiest December ever, last month. 6.7 million people passed through its terminals. Everybody is on the move. When it goes wrong, trains and boats and planes get stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time. Produce is left to rot on the wharf. Goods are trafficked at maximum capacity, and if there is a glitch, the whole system starts to teeter. The world is run by a flamboyant music hall showman of The Good Old Days, a juggler on the World Stage who runs himself to exhaustion spinning a series of plates on wobbly poles, reacting to each crisis as the rotation of the plate slows, the crockery tilts dangerously, and threatens to smash itself to pieces.
There is an assumption amongst the political class that the people are primarily content, or discontent, according to the depth and variety of the produce on the supermarket shelves. It’s the economy, stupid. We may put this theory to the test this very year, an unusually busy one across the globe, at the polling booths. Populism thrives on promises of milk and honey. The notion is not new. Mr Eden’s successor, Mr Macmillan, told us that we’d never had it so good. And wasn’t Caligula a great fan of bread and circuses? A cynic, or perhaps a realist, mighty say that it is necessary for the government to order the bombing of Yemen (without first consulting Parliament) in order to win the next general election. I’d like to think that it is not true; or, that if it is, then the electorate could confound the politicians by voting for something else, be it justice, tolerance, peace, and humanity, albeit at the expense of having to tighten our belts.
At least we still have the right to cast our vote. I see that Beijing is very displeased with Taipei, because the people of Taiwan chose to elect a president China doesn’t like. I wonder how the wobbly plates on the World Stage are going to stack up, or smash up, this year. Perhaps Mr Trump will return to the White House, and inaugurate a new age of US isolationism. Ukraine will run out of munitions, and while the West is preoccupied with Eastern Europe, China will make its eastward move across the Taiwan Strait.
What a mess we are in. What’s to be done? You stop an Irishman in the street and ask for directions, and he says, “If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.” Yet you have no alternative but to play the hand you are dealt.
I await this evening’s Iowa Caucuses, with apprehension.
jamescalumcampbell 