Philip Johnston

We may be divided, but our future still looks rosier than it did under Labour in the 1970s

Hard though we tried to make the festive season a Brexit-free zone, the subject simply refused to go away. Christmas party conversations over the mince pies and mulled wine would vainly seek some other less contentious outlet – “Any holidays planned?” “Will it be goose or turkey this year?” – before they guiltily crept back to the issue at hand. “So, what’s going to happen, then?”

I wanted to say that for the next week or so I couldn’t care less; but of course I do and it would have been churlish not to participate in the nation’s new emotional tic – deep foreboding. Theresa May’s deal – disaster. No deal – disaster. Staying in – disaster. A second referendum? Don’t get me started.

What struck me most, especially among contemporaries, was a prevailing view that somehow we are living through an almost apocalyptic end-time period rather than a readjustment of the country’s foreign policy and trading priorities. “It’s never been this bad,” said a friend ruefully. “You can’t be serious,” I replied.

On this day 40 years ago I was on strike, in a provincial newspaper dispute that the National Union of Journalists thought would be good to bring to a head over Christmas. Other, more sensible, unions waited until the festivities were over before calling out their members. The Winter of Discontent was beginning.

It really did feel dystopian. The weather was ferociously cold and snowy, and we stood on a picket line warming ourselves on improvised braziers donated by the firemen who had been on strike a few months earlier. Within weeks, the public sector began to shut down and rubbish piled up in the streets of some cities. Hospitals were blockaded and reduced to taking emergencies only. When gravediggers began unofficial action in Liverpool and Manchester, and the dead remained unburied for weeks, the sense of a country unravelling became acute.

The main gripe was the Labour government’s pay restraint at a time when inflation was well into double figures. We hacks were striking for a 40 per cent rise, if I remember correctly (we didn’t get it). Overall, about 30 million working days were lost to strike action that winter. Compare this to 2017, when 250,000 days were lost.

We need some perspective. As has been pointed out many times, even the bleakest Brexit prediction does not envisage an impoverished and ravaged nation but one where economic growth might be less than it would otherwise be. Since gross domestic product predictions are hardly worth the paper they are written on, this is just a guess anyway.

Compared to New Year’s Day 1979, the economic future looks far rosier today. Indeed, the Winter of Discontent was the harbinger of a three-year period of massive and painful restructuring as the nationalised industries that the unions had bankrupted became impossible to sustain against international competition. By 1982, unemployment was above three million as pits, shipyards and steelworks shut down. Yet today there are more people in work than ever and pay is going up faster than at any time for 10 years.

It was impossible to assure those afflicted with Yuletide anxiety that everything would be fine and dandy. Who knows? Clearly, the first few weeks of 2019 are going to be tumultuous on the political front. If the Prime Minister’s deal is voted down and she resigns, the prospect must be high that the UK will seek to extend or even withdraw Article 50.

Even so committed a Brexiteer as Liam Fox believes the chances of the UK leaving without a deal are 50:50. I suspect they are non-existent, which leaves staying in as the only other option. The idea that a no-deal departure is a “default position” that cannot be overridden by MPS is absurd; just watch them. Perhaps when the penny drops on the Brexiteer side they will hold their noses and back Mrs May; but probably not enough of them will do so to forestall an inevitable defeat for the Government. Too many – both Remainers and Leavers – have burnt their bridges to go back now.

However, while we cannot foretell the future we can surely agree that the current levels of trepidation are over the top. Looking back 40 years to the dawn of 1979, I don’t recall feeling that we were going to hell in a handcart, though maybe that was because I was young and our parents had experienced far worse 40 years earlier.

Today, we are told that young people have the most acute sense of disquiet about Brexit; but is that not because everything in their lives so far has been so straightforward? They have never known political and industrial dislocation on any scale. That is why many hero worship Jeremy Corbyn, who probably looks back nostalgically to 1979 as the zenith of the worker’s struggle against the system, even if it was a Labour government in office at the time.

January Jeremiahs terrified of Brexit should consider that it is far less of a danger to the well-being of the nation than the prospect of a Corbyn-led government; and yet the collective memory of the Left’s past failures has waned.

At the 2017 general election, Labour comfortably beat the Conservatives in every age group up to 50. Among firsttime voters the lead was 66 per cent to 22 per cent.

The Conservatives commanded high levels of support among older voters because we know the consequences of handing the country over to a Leftwing Labour government. There was a time when the Tories had only to refer obliquely to the Winter of Discontent for the electorate to know precisely what they were talking about and to understand what had to be done to avoid it.

The fact that Labour is not miles ahead in the polls suggests that enough still do appreciate the danger to make the outcome of an election, which could be held as early as this spring, impossible to call.

So, those who greeted the New Year with a glass of champagne and a deep sense of misgiving, remember this: things are not as bad as they have been, not by a long chalk, and a disorderly Brexit would be preferable to a Corbynled Labour government, which really would be a threat to the fabric of the nation.

Mind you, if we end up with both I’ll be joining the doomsayers.