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Anthony Barnett had a dream about the future of Britain…
On Sunday morning, 25 April, BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House hosted a discussion between Peter Oborne and Boris Johnson’s biographer, Andrew Gimson. Oborne listed the times Johnson had misled the House of Commons – once a capital political offence – and otherwise evaded the truth. Gimson did not deny it, but argued that Johnson had achieved the larger truth: he’d promised to ‘Get Brexit Done’, and did. Oborne said the man ought to go, while Gimson replied that Johnson would still be Prime Minister in 10 years. If 10 why not 20?, I thought – either way is an eternity. How would we institutionalise his rule? I wondered fleetingly, and thought no more about it. Then, after the Hartlepool by-election…
…I woke up in the near future. My country had become a People’s Democracy. It was surprisingly similar to those I visited in eastern Europe in the dog days of Communism. Everyone lived relatively well but they were oppressed.
In this world, our Great Leader is much celebrated. His photograph is always prominently displayed in newspapers and on television meeting ‘the people’. He dresses up in the occupational costumes they wear in laboratories, hospitals and fish merchants (he has a particular liking for fish and crabs), or pubs when he lifts a full glass of beer, and he is pictured texting on his smartphone just like an ordinary person. His costumes and shirt are always pristine, usually shining, and everyone around him smiles.
He doesn’t bother with the truth. For example, we all know he doesn’t drink beer. Lying demands knowing what the truth is and deciding to mislead. He has moved well beyond that. He just says what he likes. This had made him a Great Leader.
He had once been a journalist and knows how to use different words to say the same thing. Namely, that ours is a Terrific People’s Democracy where things will Get Better if we all show the necessary Enthusiasm. It is as if we were all in a performance in which we are also the audience, with our Great Leader being both the star and the one who leads our applause.
In East Germany in the late 1970s, I visited the playwright Heiner Müller in his flat in East Berlin. He complained that theirs was an “Ersatzkultur” – a pretend culture that was not really their own. Now, in our own People’s Democracy, it feels the same way. For example, when our Great Leader tells us to see slavery as the ‘Caribbean Experience’ and we smile.
But behind the smiles there is an air of sadness, even depression. Teachers in schools, the journalists who publish the images of the Great Leader, civil servants, broadcasters, say what they need to say – but they don’t believe in what they are saying. Every year, we watch the Great Leader and his Great Partner clap for the National Health Service. We all know that it is being sold-off, its valuable data first, to American health providers. Hospital workers are given a clap-rise of 1% a year, which is always a real cut in their actual income, to make it more profitable to sell-off.
To encourage our enthusiasm, the Great Leader has ordered the country’s flag to be flown in as many places as possible. For example, from the hospitals they are selling, so that everyone feels proud. In the days before we were a People’s Democracy, we were proud that we didn’t feel the need to fly flags the whole time or boast of being ‘world-beaters’. Now, it feels artificial. We fly them yet there is a pervasive melancholy.
The pervading sense of helplessness and private melancholia is strongly reinforced by the official Opposition. Its role is to pretend to be an Opposition. For example, it does not officially object to the Great Leader lying and only tut-tuts about the selling-off of the NHS. Its leaders also put up flags. Everyone feels they are just going through the motions.
There is an enormous amount of corruption, just like eastern Europe under Communism. The Great Leader has dismissed those with integrity. Weak officials are easily persuaded that hand-outs to companies that support their families are good for the country. Schools and universities are businesses. Planning is governed by kick-backs. The unreported marketing of government was pioneered with the so-called ‘Test and Trace’ system back in the days of the pandemic, when billions of pounds were cycled to mates of mates in what was known as ‘let it disappear without trace’.
A previous Prime Minister, whose name was easily forgotten, was so incompetent that he failed to get the kick-backs he was promised. The scheme that he, the Government’s chief procurement officer and others devised was to use a finance company to loan NHS staff their pay in advance of the end of the month using an app called Earnd. They needed this because their pay had been cut in real terms. The arrangement gave the company access to the cash flow of the NHS which it planned to borrow against to finance more scams.
It is as if we were all in a performance in which we are also the audience, with our Great Leader being both the star and the one who leads our applause
The project’s failure distracted attention from the real scandals involving billions that never became public. But the idea of finance companies using state employees’ income in advance took root to become a pillar of our People’s Democracy.
The Government insists it is ‘against’ the corruption of ministers. But the committee that oversees the approval of business appointments of ex-ministers and, just as important, ex-civil servants, to prevent corruption stopped meeting (well, it met once after the Great Leader became leader in December 2019 and did not publish any minutes). When a website ‘dedicated to transparency in politics’ published this, it was ignored. Similarly, declarations about the importance of law and order went hand-in-hand with courts being run-down and starved of resources. A well known legal blogger wrote about how the legal system was “crashing”. He too was ignored. This ignoring was called ‘Freedom Of The Press’.
Early in his reign, the Great Leader foresaw that at first people may not welcome his far-sighted development of a People’s Democracy. So, in 2021, he put through Parliament a Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act. One of its purposes was to “tackle non-violent protests that have a significant disruptive effect on the public”. The police were told to decide what was significant. The Great Leader let it be known that anything that undermined Enthusiasm is obviously significant. Heavy fines, reinforced by the threat of jail, await those who do not ask the police in advance for permission to protest, so the officers can assess the significance of what is proposed. This allows the police to stipulate the size, time, place, duration and noise level of any demonstration, if it is approved. Some complained that this takes away the ‘right’ to oppose the Government. They fail to understand the Great Leader’s concern is to protect the right to demonstrate. Even at considerable public cost, he has ensured that police are able to safeguard what he calls “A Super Tradition of Protest”. In this way, he builds on the previous regime’s legacy that banned raves, made walking in public places a criminal trespass and trained police to kettle those who objected – all ways in which, thanks to our Great Le