Opinion

June Reflections

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BY STEWART SLATER

Modelled on Jay Nordlinger’s “Impromptus” in National Review, I’ve written a piece which is a series of paras on various ideas:

  • The sun has set on the British Empire. With the government’s decision to surrender (hand over in accordance with the reasonable demands of International Law, if you prefer) the Chagos Islands, there will now be a period every day in which the entirety of our sovereign territory is in the dark. This I learned, perhaps unsurprisingly, from a Frenchman on X. The pound-shop Bonaparte would, no doubt, be heartened to be reminded that, despite the deal, perfidious Albion is still the only country to have territory on all seven continents…
  • One who would, no doubt, have disapproved was Patrick O’Flynn, the Eurosceptic journalist and one-time MEP whose death was recently announced. People reacted as people, it seems, do these days. They took to social media and posted some form of “Sorry to hear about Patrick, he was a great bloke [possibly some personal detail]. Thoughts with the family.” The family would, of course, only receive those thoughts if they followed the poster. Otherwise, they were just words in the ether, allowing the speaker to appear good without having to do good (sending a condolence card, for example).
  • Still, thoughts with the people of Liverpool (convenience is virtue’s greatest foe…), reeling after a car drove through the crowd attending the football team’s victory parade, an event immediately termed a tragedy. Was it though? There were certainly many injuries, but no fatalities and, at the time of writing, none expected. If it was a tragedy, what would we call a similar event in which people had died? Was it not, instead, a lucky escape? Everything, as the philosopher Epictetus said, has two handles.
  • The city, however, “stands together” because, in the words of one councillor, “there is such a strong local identity”. Events such as the accident are unbalancing because they puncture our illusion of power and control and we attempt to regain our footing and self-ascribed position by elevating ourselves. (This is why you are more likely to shout at your spouse in the evening if your boss has shouted at you during the day…). But few societies have collapsed in the aftermath of a road traffic accident and even famously individualistic New Yorkers pitched in together after 9/11. We are humans before we are Londoners, Luandines, or even Liverpudlians. Claims of exceptionalism are often confessions of parochialism.
  • Among those “sending their thoughts” was the Prime Minister. Fresh from “selling out” the Chagossians. This came after he “sold out” the fisherman in the E.U. reset and “sold out” the farmers in the U.S. trade deal (they had already, of course, been “sold out” over inheritance tax) and just after he decided to be nice to pensioners whom he had “sold out” shortly after coming to office. The government appears to have out-groups whom it is happy to sacrifice for its in-groups (public sector workers and employees of British Steel on the current evidence). But perhaps all governments do, and I have only noticed because I am now closer to the former than the latter. After all, every first term government wants a second term.
  • We are not just what we are, still less what we once were, but all that we could be and while a little light condemnation is good sustenance for the ego, unless there are absolutely no circumstances in which one could conceive oneself acting similarly (and how could we tell?) criticism has the potential to morph into hypocrisy. We all think ourselves civilised but, as John Buchan said, “a touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn.”
  • One man who has been condemned is Kevin Spacey. Although found innocent of sexual misconduct, the allegations have made it hard for him to find work, a fact he bemoaned on the sidelines of the recent Cannes Festival. People have a right not to work with those they consider unpleasant and, given the context of his trade, not to invest in projects if they think a participant’s reputation will make them unprofitable. But we do not know if Spacey is unpleasant or merely was unpleasant. The accusations are historic. He may have learned, or he may just have changed. We all do. All the time. (When, exactly, did you become you?) At some point (and I do not know where this is), we no longer give an individual a second chance, we give a different individual a first chance.
  • Cannes, like Chelsea, marks the start of summer. I have already had my first series of beach photos on social media, each day bringing a new shade of brown, like a 1970’s Dulux colour chart. I have never, I confess, been a fan of holidays. They have, it turns out, a nasty habit of getting in the way of work. Not travelling enough is, apparently, a common death-bed regret. Is it not more regrettable to define your life by the two weeks a year you get to escape it?
  • Ageing is a fact of life, the only consolation being that others do it first (you have to be quite old to be the oldest person you know). I have noticed recently that my mother’s cohort have started to acquire ailments, so many, in fact, that when she mentions one of them, I run through a checklist of conditions – Is she the one with the cataracts, or is it arthritis? Has she got new hips? I should not, of course. If our lives are not just our holidays, neither are we the sum of our infirmities but, as we noted, convenience is virtue’s foe…
  • Daoism, it is thought, started as a practice to extend longevity, its Sage abiding in “the awareness of the ten thousand things”. I am (as is perfectly obvious) no Sage, still less a scientist, but they might have a point. The world is always there to fascinate, if only we let it. The shape of a leaf, the sound of fingers typing, the feel of a floor-tile beneath the feet, the random thoughts that flash through the mind (why do companies use “family-owned” as a sign of quality and probity when the Trump Organisation is family-owned?). We miss these things when we dedicate ourselves to distractions. Rather than stressing to keep the world out, we should perhaps, at least occasionally, just let it in.
  • In a possibly vain effort to keep this format fresh, a couple of closing questions before our closing quote. How would your life change if you no longer needed to feel good about yourself or have others think well of you? If you stopped wanting and started just doing what was there to be done when it was there to be done?
  • The last word I leave to Leonard Cohen, “The less there was of me, the happier I got.”

Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.