John Harris writes:

Forty years of post-Thatcher individualism have done their work, so that protest is now not a matter of collective agency (in other words, “we can stop this”), but the kind of atomised conscience-salving I first glimpsed at the time of the Iraq war, with the appearance of that deathly slogan “Not in my name”. Moreover, in a world as over-mediated as ours, each day brings a different spectacle – a march, a parliamentary vote, some or other drama at the top – so simultaneously ubiquitous and short-lived that joining everything together and having any sense of clear meaning becomes all but impossible. Politics becomes fidgety; strategy is lost amid tactics. To take that down to brass tacks, even if six million signatures on the petition to revoke article 50 represents a creditable achievement, what should everyone do next?

It is part of the tragedy of Brexit that the opportunists now pushing the country towards disaster have not only been better at making their case with big stories and emotional oomph, but have not been convincingly challenged on that terrain. Whether we are talking about Tory ultra-leavers, that indefatigable chancer Nigel Farage or the new English fascists among those who turned up last week in Parliament Square, the same basic point applies: claims of treason and betrayal – let alone their ludicrous readings of history – must be contested.

Put another way, I am not sure that the best way to answer this grim coalition of wreckers is with irony and understatement, an obsession with parliamentary procedure, and platform lineups featuring Michael Heseltine. Going back four decades, there might be something in the example set by Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League, and a bold, popular, singularly un-English approach memorably summed up by one of its activists: “For a while we managed to create, in our noisy, messy, unconventional way, an emotional alternative to nationalism and patriotism, a celebration of a different kind of pride and solidarity.” [Continue reading…]