Two hundred Tories standing in a field in Berkshire make a good start on life beyond Brexit
In the mid-1990s Britpop classic “Sorted for E’s and Wizz” Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker describes British rave culture and the large gatherings that gave the defining youth movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s its drug-induced mystique. The title of the song was borrowed by Cocker, having been overheard by one of his friends at the Stone Roses concert at Spike Island in 1990, where the drug dealers were going around checking whether anyone present needed any further supplies. A few years later Cocker’s anti-hero in “E’s and Wizz” has over done it. He dances alone until 6am, wanting to go home but unable to call his mother to say that he cannot ever come back because he has left an important part of his brain in a field in Hampshire.
Is this, Cocker’s character asks, the way they say the future’s meant to feel? “Or just twenty thousand people standing in a field?”
Cocker first performed “E’s and Wizz” at Glastonbury in 1995 at the peak of the Britpop moment before Tony Blair noticed what was happening and the corpse of a by then dead musical movement was co-opted for use by New Labour in the cringe-inducing “Cool Britannia” experiment.
Druggy rave culture, rooted in the 1980s explosion of dance music and acid house, was the essential link in the creation of the modern festival such as Glastonbury. It is the link between the hoary or hippy “rock” festivals of the early 1970s, drawing their inspiration from the US west and east coast counter-cultures in that late 1960s period when the drugs got heavier and the sound systems became big enough to play to vast open-air crowds. In the 1990s the spirit of impromptu, illegal raves infused the tired old-style rock festival. A hybrid concept was created that blended rock, dance, folk, camping and commerce. These events have prospered to such an extent that there is now a new summer social season built around Glastonbury and the lesser festivals, with nostalgic oldsters turning up and affluent teenagers in wellies regarding attendance as a rite of passage. For all the Corbynite posing “festivalism” is big business.
It is easy then to mock 230 politically engaged people standing in a field in Berkshire discussing how to renew non-Corbynite politics. The first Big Tent Ideas Fest gathering that took place on Thursday evening and on Friday was wrongly if impishly dubbed the “Tory Glasto” by the Financial Times. The only music provided came from Bach via one of the country’s leading violinists. The rest was conversation, speeches and debate about politics, ideas, economics, culture, science, business, health and technology, in three marquees. Thanks to one of the sponsors, everyone was, to adapt Cocker’s song: “Sorted for fantastic artisan gin, botanicals, prosecco and a nice little session ale to take the edge off.”
The Big Tent Ideas Fest was the baby of Tory MP George Freeman and several generous and concerned donors. In the summer months after the Conservative party’s June election debacle, when almost no-one else in the Tory tribe seemed up for doing anything other than sitting by the pool preparing for an intellectual nervous breakdown and the imminent theft of private property by the looming Corbyn government, Freeman decided to plan an event at which interested people might discuss what might be done to offer an alternative to the John McDonnell turns Britain into Venezuela option. Could entrepreneurs who despair of politics be encouraged to talk? How could there be renewal? Yes, Tories predominated in Freeman’s discussion, but there were plenty of people of other parties and none too.
The Reaction team got involved early, on the basis that the current political-media nexus seems somewhat knackered and if the Big Tent organisers could encourage people to generate fresh analysis and policy ideas then we were delighted to publish the encouraging results on our site and to encourage speakers to come forward for the festival itself. Click on the Big Tent tab on the top of the Reaction site and have a read. I don’t agree with it all, and neither will you, but that’s not the point.
Understandably, there was a certain amount of cynicism abroad about the festival itself. I can hardly complain about the mockery, having been schooled as a political journalist providing analysis and trained to, when appropriate, take the piss, for a living. It has paid my mortgage for 25 years. No-one can spend any time writing or reporting on politics without being deeply sceptical and alert to chicanery and spin. You need a sense of humour to do it. I am still, regularly, taken aback by what I see in all of the parties.
But let’s face it, the smuggery of a lot of mainstream hackery on politics has reached the outer limits of usefulness. If the supposed smart arse “joke” is that we – journalists/hacks like me – are so hardened and realistic that we have access to some unique insight into how the “game” works, and how it all ends badly anyway, then how come we made such a complete arse of it at key moments in the last few years? Thanks to changes in media, technology and society, might the rules be changing?
Corbyn was laughed at endlessly for 18 months but the joke was on us in the end. As a journalist I joined in the mockery, but like others I also found him terrifying, because of his hard left beliefs which have always produced economic disaster, theft and thuggery whenever they are tried. I never thought sensible British people would think putting him in Number 10 was a sensible idea. Wrong.
The political-media crowd has in the last few years missed Brexit, predicted that Trump would never win, and been stunned by Corbyn and voters below 45. Who cares one jot if it now raises a collective eyebrow and asks what’s this nonsense about trying to rethink and renew. You have to start somewhere, surely.
Just consider how the birth of Thatcherism in the mid-1970s would be reported in the current climate. Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph in a room with a handful of volunteers, all mucking in doing the photo-copying to set up the Centre for Policy Studies? Patching together pamphlets and Thatcher making the tea? What a joke! So rudimentary and uncool! This will never go anywhere! It never went anywhere, of course, other than unleashing an intellectual revolution which played a major role in spreading markets and bringing down the Soviet Union within 15 years.
In the end you may be pleased to hear that George Freeman’s festival was terrific and got some good reviews. As was always intended, it is a start and he and his team are planning more such events around the country. There will be a much bigger festival at some point.
Bu the most discombobulating and jarring moment at his Ideas Fest came when Theresa May’s speech was beamed in from Florence and shown live on TV screens. It was listened to in sombre silence. The far left, it occurred to me at that moment, have already banked Brexit and moved beyond it. That can be a Tory wrangle while the Corbynites design policies on nationalisation and much higher taxation, on socialising assets and stealing private property, and craft cleverly constructed populist campaigns that rest on the widespread assumption among those aged below 45 that Tories and non-Tory pro-market people are an inherently bad bunch with motives that are inherently evil. Non-Corbynites face a huge challenge to combat this emerging orthodoxy.
What of the Florence speech? Having said in advance that she needed a storming speech to reassure business, I think May made progress but not in a stellar manner. What she was unveiling was “the bridge”, which readers of Reaction will be familiar with. Lord Bridges, the former Brexit minister, wrote for us ten days ago and spoke in the Lords on the need for a clear plan with two years of transition (very like EU membership) and agreement on an outline deal negotiated as we go. Then clean departure in 2021 with business only having to make one switch. It was all pretty much there in the May speech, yet bafflingly she did not turn it into a summarised offer for Brussels, Berlin and Paris.
A crisp finale was missing: “So, my big, open offer to our friends is… in three short points for the evening news.”
Without it, people were left in the Big Tent in Berkshire and pretty much everywhere else asking what she had said and what was the point.
As it is, the speech received a cautious welcome from sensible EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier and a full-scale denunciation from that secret agent of the British Leave movement, Eurofanatic Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament lead co-ordinator on Brexit. May’s speech moved things forward but perhaps not by enough with the German election taking place this weekend and Britain needing to get on with securing that deal and finally preparing properly for No Deal in case that is the outcome. A ruinous new round of Tory big beast squabbling over the leadership has also begun, which will provide the backdrop for Corbyn to enjoy a Labour conference this week in which he will, incredibly, be treated as a hero and potential Prime Minister.
More of this in the next few days.
Have a good weekend,
Iain Martin,
Editor and Publisher, Reaction.