Farewell to 2023 (Part 1)

The pieces that are worth rereading (IMHO)

This is the first of two posts in which I pick out the pieces that stand up best from 2023, my first full year on Substack. They are in the archives now, so if you are not a paying subscriber, you might want to consider signing up for the equivalent of £1.15 ($1.47) a week. (There’s a free trial for the faint hearted.)

Paid subscribers have access to all my articles, the archives and podcasts, and join our courteous and informative debates. By subscribing you also allow me to write without pressure from advertisers and media magnates, which, obviously means a great deal to me!

Right, hard sell over, let’s get on with it.

January

People ask where I get ideas from. In this case I was listening to the Telegraph’s excellent daily podcast on the Ukraine war. The presenter mentioned in passing that the émigré Russian photojournalist Dmitri Beliakov had used the recruitment adverts for the Russian military to examine the regime’s vulgarity and desperation. I spent several days tracking the ads down, and used them to show the poverty of Russia and how the Kremlin tried to manipulate men into joining its war.

One sadness rereading the piece is that it was written in the hope of a Russian defeat. Now that hope has weakened. As Tom Paine said, “tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered”.  If the West can find the strength of purpose to properly support Kyiv that story could change in 2024.

February

Newspapers revealed the Puffin, the children’s book division of Penguin, was censoring Roald Dahl – Augustus Gloop was no longer fat, Mrs Twit was no longer fearfully ugly, the Oompa-Loompas were now gender-neutral, and, well, I am sure you can imagine the rest.

Inspired by John Milton I wrote about a question that comes naturally to writers, and should bother everyone who is worried by the neuroticism that is consuming our culture. Who wants to become a censor? Who wants to twist someone else’s work, scolding the author and imposing their views as they leave pious notes beside the tracked changes?

Milton identified four types of people who wanted to censor: the stupid, the jealous, the ideologically motivated and the mediocre. They live among us today.

March

In March I wrote about an irony history, and a bitter one at that: how the move to democratise political parties had led to the rise of anti-democratic strongmen. In the US after the upheavals of 1968, progressives insisted on primaries that would allow activists rather than party insiders to pick candidates. Once party democracy took hold the horrors of Vietnam/Watergate era would be banished, they thought. Instead, party democracy has allowed wholly representative figures to seize control. There are no “men in smoked-filled rooms” who can, for instance, stop Trump running as the Republican candidate, or force Joe Biden to step aside and allow a candidate who might beat Trump to run in his place.

No one likes the old fixers. They were all white, male and middle class. But we may miss them in 2024.

April

I loved writing this one. A proper old fashioned, gloves off, no-nonsense, old-time-religion polemic against a pseudo-populist and utter charlatan. Pieces like these make my life worth living.

May

The UK has been in a rolling crisis since 2014. Starting with the Scottish independence referendum and then on through the far left’s seizure of the Labour party, Brexit, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, every optimistic myth about this country has been – well, how to put this gently? – tested. I wrote a long piece about a fine book on the British crisis by the Guardian’s Rafael Behr in May.  It set me thinking about the role of boredom politics.

“Imagine Labour party members, who had spent their lives hearing lectures about how they must focus on what middle-class, middle Englanders want and give it to them. Think of the release that comes when the chance arrives to shake off caution and let rip with the far left. Or imagine being a Conservative nationalist, instructed on the need to respect diversity and practise compassionate conservatism. Why not enjoy the opportunity to break free of the constraints of respectability and do what you had always wanted to do: trash the European Union and throw money at the rich”

You can read the whole thing here

Piece

June

As it became clear that Boris Johnson and the type of conservatism he represented were finished, I wrote a cautionary piece on why populism was not dying with him. To my mind unless the centre is radical and delivers better wages, affordable homes and the freedoms and security so many require, the extremists will be back.

Part Two will follow on New Year’s Day