The Daily Telegraph

This country has come through many a crisis, but this one is a true shemozzle

With the future unclear and political faith low, a sense of powerlessn­ess has begun to afflict our communitie­s

- Charles moore

When I edited The Spectator in the 1980s, most of the staff, including myself, were young. We had the optimism of youth, therefore, but when a crisis came along, we sometimes panicked, because it was unfamiliar. I always found it helpful that we retained one elderly member of staff who could offer a different perspectiv­e. “Well,” he would begin, “the last time we had one of these shemozzles…”. The mere fact that he could remember past disasters – and had lived to tell the tale – was reassuring.

Most agree that this country is in a crisis. This week, people have talked to me about nothing else. At a memorial gathering, at a party to commemorat­e one year since the Brexit vote, on trains, in the street, and even at Ascot races, they have poured out their worries to me.

Everything was making them jumpy. Would the heat-wave produce riots? Would Prince Harry’s odd remark about none of his generation wanting the crown weaken the succession? Thirty years on from the learning experience­s I describe above, I have a nasty feeling it now falls to me and my generation to recall the last time we had one of these shemozzles, and see what can be learnt from it.

Unfortunat­ely, it is hard to work out what sort of a shemozzle it is. It is not merely political. Although our system is used to single-party government, and gets aerated when there is no overall majority, government usually carries on readily enough. The Tory/lib-dem coalition of 2010-2015 may not form a glorious chapter in our island story, but it sort of worked. Even after this election, basic arithmetic does not make government impossible. The Government can carry on, if its party wants it to.

It is not really an economic crisis. True, the crash of 2008 has dissolved the certaintie­s and increased the resentment­s in modern capitalist societies. Also true – though there are many economic compensati­ons – the prospect of Brexit creates new uncertaint­ies. But we are a country with full employment, few strikes, low inflation and a government able to borrow at very low rates of interest.

It is not even a national identity crisis. Theresa May’s only success in calling this election was to drive back Scottish nationalis­m and bring about a more even spread of support for the two main parties everywhere except Northern Ireland. If the DUP does end up making a deal with the Tories, that does its bit for the Union too.

So if it is none of the above, why do we feel so shemozzled, or, as the Queen more elegantly put it, in a “very sombre national mood”? It relates to a sense of powerlessn­ess. All the four terrorist attacks since March have been followed by scenes of communitie­s coming together, lighting candles and vowing not to give in. These well-meaning ceremonies have reinforced a sense of collective weakness. Here is the combined power of state, local government, police, organised religion and ordinary citizens hit very hard by a tiny number of very revolting people, and looking sad and helpless. Global Islamist extremism could not win a pitched battle anywhere in the Western world, yet it can motivate a trickle of inadequate­s to frighten millions and turn violent death into a familiar sight on our streets.

Then there was the Grenfell Tower fire. With the horror of the blaze came the shock that the public authoritie­s had failed to prevent such a catastroph­e or coordinate the response to it. A secondary shock was the revelation, in death, of an aspect of life in our capital city. The Grenfell Tower was full of immigrants. One distressin­g feature of the aftermath was the difficulty in finding out who might have been there that night and therefore how many had died. That obscurity indicates part of the problem with mass immigratio­n – a huge, shifting population, not all of it legal, searching for somewhere to live, and the consequent strain on services. The non-immigrant majority fears that nobody knows what is going on.

For years and years, government­s – often with Theresa May doing the talking – have declared that they are bearing down upon immigrant numbers. Yet they have failed. The latest figures reported yesterday show the population of the United Kingdom grew by 7.9 per cent from 2005-2015 (and that of England by even more). Net internatio­nal migration accounts for 62.4 per cent of this increase. Voters wanted something done. Politician­s said they would do it. It turned out they couldn’t, or wouldn’t.

And then there was the election. Its purpose, as declared by the woman who called it, was to ensure “strong and stable government”. She failed to prove that this was on offer, so voters lost confidence in the power of their vote. Now people do not know which way to turn. Brexiteers fear sell-out. Remainers who neverthele­ss wanted to get on with Brexit find it harder to see the way through. Unreconcil­ed Remainers, though pleased by Mrs May’s humiliatio­n, feel no happier about the direction of the country. Those who truly want Jeremy Corbyn to be prime minister are excited, but they probably do not constitute a majority even of those who voted Labour.

In this respect, this shemozzle most closely resembles that of February 1974, when Ted Heath rashly took on the miners. Sometimes – 1945, 1979, 1997 – an election produces a victory which even many of those who voted the other way quietly welcome. Occasional­ly, it throws up a result which hardly anyone wants – that applies to February 1974, and to June 2017.

Mrs May resembles Heath in her curious mixture of inner confidence and inarticula­cy. She is sure she is right, but can’t explain why, and doesn’t see why she should have to. You always have to, though. Leadership is one constant act of explanatio­n. If you won’t do it, it is very hard for anyone else to do it for you.

Words like freedom, opportunit­y, nation, markets, choice, defence, wealth, growth are essentiall­y conservati­ve words. If they are neglected at a general election, they become like isolated forts, abandoned by the high command, and easily overrun by their opponents. Since the Tories had almost nothing to say about taxes, for example, Mr Corbyn was free to fool the many that his promises to them could be paid for only by the few.

As a first-time voter in 1979, I can remember actually learning things about markets, opportunit­y, tax and money from Margaret Thatcher in that campaign. She didn’t (that time) persuade me to vote for her, but it certainly made me see how the entire way the country was run could be different. Mr Corbyn was doing something like that for first-time voters this time, even though he is a pied piper not a prophet. You can’t blame the young for listening to him, since Mrs May seemed to think, like nannies in the 1930s, that the young should be seen but not heard.

Unlike the last election, the EU referendum last year had a real subject with which the voters engaged. It was about who controls our future, said Vote Leave. The Leave side therefore won, because voters decided they wanted that control back for themselves.

Now they cannot be so sure that our leaders will deliver this, and we shall have to wait until 2019 to find out. I fear this is a shemozzle for which not even the close study of the past can prepare us.

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