Empire Song

The Sunday Times's claim that the BBC was considering dropping Rule, Britannia! and Land of Hope and Glory from Last Night of the Proms in response to complaints by the Black Lives Matter movement was a repeat of an earlier Daily Mail story in July that was thoroughly rubbished as nonsense at the time. That this fake news was recycled only six weeks later tells us a lot about the working practices of the press, and even of the BBC itself, which appeared just as keen as the Sunday Times to drum up rage-clicks. In short, there is no historical memory involved when it comes to the "culture wars". If a claim is debunked, it can be revived in short order because its purpose has nothing to do with truth. It's a conspiracy theory, after all. There are people who still swear blind that kids in the 1980s were taught to sing "Baa Baa White Sheep" in state primary schools in London. Joining the bandwagon, the Prime Minister has now decided to decry this as a "general bout of self-recrimination and wetness" and insist that "it's time we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history". Anyone familiar the man's own Bunterish attempts to write history will find this laughable.

A paradox of popular history is that the further an event recedes into the past the more people celebrate it. They don't forget, but equally they don't remember. We're currently seeing this with empire, but we've experienced it for some years now in respect of World War One. As the survivors have left the stage, so too has their bitter experience and warnings against a repeat of such folly. Bereft of first-hand witnesses, the media space is increasingly occupied not just by professional historians with conflicting or nuanced views but various species of gobshite and fool, from MPs to newspaper columnists and rentaquote minor celebrities. Once the last World War Two veteran is dead, we can expect the poppy hysteria of Remembrance Sunday to get even worse, only stopping just short of a full-on Nuremberg rally. By 2060, the Iraq War will probably be remembered as a heroic struggle undermined by foolish politicians and inept senior officers. Assuming cinema is still a thing, it could well produce a cross between The Charge of the Light Brigade and Zulu.

Formal empire was largely over by 1966 (Zulu came out in 1964), which means the dwindling body of first-hand witnesses of Britain's colonial administration are mostly in their 70s or older. Empire's contemporary champions are younger, often much younger. But where do they get their ideas from? Despite being shallow, most TV history has been alert to the sins of imperialism, while the education system has (when it bothered to focus on the subject) been reasonably judicious (this was why Gove felt the need for a more patriotic curriculum, after all). The answer is that it has been the press, including kids comics (which were still celebrating imperial glory and the derring-do of World War Two well into the 1970s and whose vocabulary has clearly influenced Boris Johnson), the tabloids (which have been variously anti-Irish, anti-French, anti-German and anti-immigrant as political salience and the international football fixtures have required) and rightwing broadsheets, such as the Telegraph and Times, which seem to be forever running 'Was empire really so bad?' pieces by the likes of Niall Ferguson or articles condemning the martyrdom of Nigel Biggar.

The press's fascination with empire is not just rightwing sympathy. The Conservatives were the original anti-imperialists before the pivot masterminded by Benjamin Disraeli in the 1870s, and oversaw much of its dismantling in the 1950s and 60s under Harold Macmillan. Though empire became associated with patriotism, the reverse was never true, as George Orwell was fond of noting (his modern epigones have tended to be less forthcoming on this point as it would mean exploring the liberal roots of British imperialism). Equally, it is simplistic to imagine that empire is simply a serviceable euphemism for xenophobia and chauvinism: a reliable resource for when Britain was "top dog" and colonial subjects knew their place. After all, as the Windrush scandal reminded us, "multiculturalism" and ethnic diversity are largely the products of empire too. The idea of empire - and an idea is all it is for the vast majority today - speaks to a more fundamental desire for national significance and an associated fear of insignificance. In this respect, Kipling's Recessional is perhaps more representative than his more famous The White Man's Burden. Dominion over palm and pine will go the way of Nineveh and Tyre.

But just as important are the structural factors that affect the newspaper industry. To dominate a domestic market, it helps to build a cohesive public - of one mind in matters great and small - hence the ready recourse to nationalist rhetoric and the promotion of a narrow culture (deviance is to be deplored) and even a common vocabulary (again, few of Orwell's imitators appear keen on the parallels between Journalese and Newspeak). Part of this is the idea that the press "speaks for Britain": that it presents the British view to the wider world, whether expressed in the sterotypical language of the public bar or the Pall Mall club. Though the division of society into the good and the bad is the meat and drink of newspapers, from rightwing tabloids lauding workers over shirkers or liberal papers fussing about political virtue, this always runs the risk of alienating significant portions of the market (consider the way the Guardian is currently alienating the left). Nationalism (or internationalism for liberal titles) offers a subject that is unifying rather than divisive, even if the collateral damage of xenophobia and bigotry is considerable.

Empire provides an expanded scope for a newspaper to strut about as a national proxy, insisting on its own virtue while lecturing foreigners from a position of assumed superiority. This is not just a British failing. Consider the US "Yellow Press" during the Spanish-American War (memorably fictionalised in Citizen Kane), or the New York Times at almost any point during the American imperium. The British Empire, even in memory only, provides the largest stage for geopolitical strutting the world has ever seen. To be able to use it as the basis for pontification about foreign affairs (note the many columnists who still imagine the UK has unique insights into the Middle East), and to employ it to make unflattering comparisons between the generations as part of a critique of contemporary domestic policy, it is necessary to minmise guilt for colonial crimes. Were the British press ever to truly face up to the reality of empire (and in the case of the liberal media, its role in promoting it), it would have to forgo its pretensions to any superior judgement. It would become modest, even parochial. 

One reason why the press was largely anti-EU was that it saw the gradual pooling of sovereignty as the loss of its own authority. Despite the language barriers, ever closer union would have meant that the voice that mattered in Europe would be located somewhere between Le Monde and Bild, making the British press increasingly peripheral (or, more accurately, the English press, as it wouldn't be a new experience for Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish media). Had we voted to remain in 2016, it's likely that the rightwing tabloids would have increasingly disdained substantive politics, in the manner of the Daily Star, while the rightwing broadsheets would have doubled-down on their obeisance to the US right and thus become increasingly irrelevant. It's possible that papers like the Daily Mail and Times could have executed a volte-face to become pro-EU, centre-right stalwarts, in the manner of La Croix or the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, but this would have required a crushing victory for 'Yes'. As it is, their current baiting of the "liberal elite" in the form of the BBC is less a continuing victory dance and more the anticipation of post-Brexit anxiety. In that light, the glories of empire offer a reassuring (if entirely imaginary) fixed point in a changing world.

The Nightmare Before Christmas

What difference would it have made if Jeremy Corbyn had become Prime Minister just before Christmas? The bumptious Matt Chorley at the Times recently imagined a Corbyn-led government as both dithering and hyper-interventionist but above all "crankish", which is another way of saying that he is still suffering nightmares about it. Of course, what he really feared was not Carry On Social Democracy but opportunistic "disaster socialism", in which crisis provided the excuse for radical change to the social and economic order (this is clearly projection by those who relish disaster capitalism). Ironically, this concept enjoyed a brief vogue last year among British liberals and the soft-left who wished to dismiss the assumed utopianism of Lexiteers, though it has been revived in the US in a more positive way lately to suggest that the pandemic might nudge the country towards a better social safety net. Amid the stale jokes and gratuitous insults, Chorley did at least concede a good point: that we have even less idea of what a Starmer-led government would look like.

Jeremy Corbyn in Number 10 is obviously a counterfactual, but it's one that allows us to think about what a Labour government might have considered the outer limit of the possible: how far it could have pushed the Overton Window under propitious circumstances. This is useful in that it may provide an benchmark against which to measure Labour's offer at the next general election. I have no doubt that the offer will be more modest, and not just because of Keir Starmer's emphasis on competence (i.e. a change in personnel rather than a change in policy), but the gap between the two provides the basis for a critique of substance rather than form. An important caveat with this counterfactual is that a Corbyn-led administration might also have been less radical than expected, not just because of resistance by the establishment and likely sabotage by the PLP, but because of Corbyn and McDonnell's own caution and desire for consensus. But that's boring. Instead, let's imagine that they followed their instincts in full and that they specifically saw the Covid-19 crisis as an opportunity to advance the recognisably socialist policies that would give Matt Chorley night-sweats.

As a "new broom", any non-Conservative goverment would probably have paid more attention to the national risk register and contingency plans on taking office after a decade of Tory mismanagement than the Johnson regime did, if only as part of an audit of the previous administration for the purpose of easy point-scoring. This means there would have been a decent chance that some of the holes in the planning would have been spotted earlier (the first reports from Wuhan were on 31st December, the first WHO bulletin on 5th January) and that rectification might have been initiated some weeks before March (e.g. buying ventilators and replenishing PPE supplies). It's also worth noting that senior public health officials operate in a political field. It's not pure science. We saw that with their willingness to indulge the nudge unit and "herd immunity" in the early communications, which was a concession to Tory ideology and the assumed preferences of Number 10. In contrast, I suspect they would have assumed a Labour goverment to be more supportive of a strict public health approach and would have advised accordingly. This means there would be have been more likelihood of an earlier lockdown.

A Labour government might have insisted that all care home staff remain in situ and isolated with residents. This would have made sense in terms of shielding and reducing infection (we now know that agency staff moving between homes was a key vector in the spread), but it would also have highlighted the failings of the care sector. It would have disrupted the agency labour market, required increased staffing to allow rotating shifts and prompted calls for state support as care homes at the margin of profitability became unviable. This would have intensified the "crisis in care" that has been developing over the last decade and allowed a Labour government to accelerate its plans for a National Care Service. Consistent with this approach, a Labour government might also have had the good sense to rule against elderly patients in hospital being returned directly to care homes in the early stages of the pandemic rather than being tested and quarantined in the under-utilised Nightingale hospitals.

Responsibility for test and trace could have been immediately assigned to local government and existing regional public health bodies. The "world-beating" app would have rightly been relegated to an adjunct of the programme. This would not only have marginalised outsource providers like Serco and inexperienced figureheads like Dido Harding, it would have provided the foundation for a more thorough devolution of power from Whitehall. That the Health Secretary, Matt Hanock, wants even more private sector involvement in public health going forward, despite the failures to date, shows the sort of nerve that you would hope (absent the failures) a Labour government would display, but in the opposite direction. This devolution could be extended to local job guarantee schemes, to provide useful (but non-coercive) work and training during the developing recession, and an expansion of local authority resources and responsibility for workplace inspections in respect of both employment rights and public health and safety (those Leicester sweatshops).

The GCSE, BTEC and A-level mess could have been avoided by awarding grades based on teacher assessment and then allocating university slots pro-rata across all schools, so that a "bog standard" comprehensive got as many places per capita as Eton in the first pass. Russell Group universities could have been obliged to set quotas on offers between state and independent schools, so the latter would only get 7% of the "cream". This would have met the ostensible goal of the infamous algorithm - to ensure student demand matched the supply of places - while also making a real contribution to social mobility. It would, of course, have marked a radical departure from the systemic bias of the past and thus relatively disadvantaged private schools, but a reforming Labour government should relish that. Having made such a change, it would be palpably unfair to then revert back to the old system next year. Indeed, the smarter parents of the privately-educated would be looking to transfer their 16 and 17-year olds to the state sector. The independent school sector wouldn't disappear overnight, but it would probably rapidly shrink to focus on pre-14 education.

Though the Conservative government did act to provide business and income support, the manner in which it did so produced lots of omissions and anomalies that have led to individual hardship, particularly for those in the more "flexible" sectors of the economy that the Tories have historically lauded. The design of an across-the-board taper for the furlough scheme means that we are now facing the prospect of rapidly rising unemployment and poverty in a matter of weeks, affecting all sectors. The obvious opportunity for a Labour government would have been to cut the Gordian knot of wage support by introducing a universal basic income (and associated tax clawback for the employed) as a temporary measure. The cunning plan would be to allow this to run on naturally until the recession was over, rather than terminate on a specific date, which would inevitably lead to calls next year for it to be made permanent and for the rump of Universal Credit to be disassembled into separate, contingent benefits.

One reason for a UBI would be to make the churn in businesses easier. Rather than committing to propping up firms, a Labour government could argue for reduced state support for capital in favour of increased support for labour, the better to facilitate exit and entry. Failing firms could fail gracefully, while freed-up labour would have the confidence to reject poor quality and precarious jobs and could instead opt for further training or explore freelancing. Ceteris paribus, this should lead to an improvement in national productivity, though that may be initially obscured by the effects of the recession and the changes in working practices that the pandemic appears to be triggering. However, such an approach would also provide a more flexible and forgiving environment for those changes to work through and would also help maintain aggregate demand. A UBI would require reform of the taxation system were it to become a permanent feature, but that could be deferred for a couple of years to allow the principle to be established.

Just as the Second World War made salient both Beveridge's "five great evils" and the potential for change, so the pandemic has shone a brighter light on the vulnerabilities of the health and care sectors, the inequities of education and the precariousness of the economy, while also revealing that there is a magic money tree after all. Things could be different and the political battle leading up to the next general election is likely to focus on whose vision of change or continuity catches the electorate's imagination. For all the revolutionary talk of the sunny uplands of Brexit and the "levelling up" of the North of England, it has become apparent over the last 8 months that the Conservatives remain the party of entrenched privilege and social neglect. What is less obvious is whether Labour is still the party of reform and progress outside of neoliberal technocracy. In particular, you have to wonder why Keir Starmer isn't taking the opportunity afforded by the pandemic to build a public consensus for the sort of radical change that pushes beyond the 2017 and 2019 manifestos (National Broadband now appears a quite modest idea).

One of the characteristics of Labour's 1945 manifesto was that it was comprehensive, even if it was light on detail in many areas. At the time, this was seen as entirely appropriate to the circumstances: the UK needed root-and-branch reform and it was the broad thrust of policy that energised voters not the minutiae. In 2019, the party's manifesto was dismissed as over-stuffed and incredible. This was not just an unflattering comparison with the Tory's sketchy offer of "Get Brexit done", but a conservative lament against comprehensive change: a view apparently echoed by many in the Labour party, including the soi-disant "soft left". Where the two differed is that the 1945 version could skip the detail because much of it had already been publicly discussed, for example by the 1942 Beveridge Report and the plans for the NHS. Labour failed to adequately prepare the electorate between 2017 and 2019, but the pandemic has perhaps now achieved more in this regard than any number of reports and social media memes could. The question is, will Starmer build on this or will his critique remain "I would have done the same, just more competently".

Arsenalisation

Whether the departure of Raul Sanllehi is more of a financial and governance matter than one of football strategy will only become clear in time, but what we can say at this stage is that it marks another step towards Mikel Arteta being seen as a club manager rather than just a first team coach. Before Wenger departed, there was much talk about the need for a new collegiate structure, but the limitations of that became apparent with what appeared to be a number of power struggles, culminating in the departures first of Ivan Gazidis, then Sven Mislantat and now Sanllehi. I doubt Arteta is going to recreate Wenger's imperium, not least because the Technical Director role, which Arsenal were late to adopt but which is now standard in the game, is unlikely to disappear. The tripartite division between business operations, technical oversight and coaching appears intact, and there are signs that Edu and Arteta have a good working relationship in respect of transfers and squad development. One other conclusion we can draw is the Kroenkes aren't very good at organisational design.

What is less clear is whether the apparent plans to demote scouting will change with the departure of Don Raul's contacts book, though I doubt the initiative was driven solely by him. Edu clearly has his own contacts, not least in Brazil, and the Academy appears well-stocked under Per Mertesacker, so the more mundane explanation may simply be a desire to trim the scouting operation at a time when all elite clubs are relying more on data and video footage than bums on rickety seats in small stadia. As a club that has always publicly placed great store on evaluating a player's temperament and cultural fit, I doubt the personal touch will be dispensed with altogether. That said, there have been a few recruits in recent seasons who have never quite managed to gel for one reason or another, such as Guendouzi and Torreira, though I suspect this owes something to the lack of "Arsenalisation" in the recruitment process during the interregnum between Wenger and Arteta. Of course, there are always going to be some square pegs. What this shows is that matching players to systems is more art than science.

Defining Arteta's preferred system is difficult, both because this is the first occasion on which he had been in charge of a team and because he was obliged to work with the squad he inherited, but a couple of things have stood out. First, he clearly wants the team to be more adaptable within games, adjusting their shape and dynamic, particularly in the middle of the park, to counter or exploit the opposition. This was very evident in the FA Cup Final against Chelsea, despite the dollop of luck with red cards and opponent injuries. This does mark a departure from Wenger's approach of trusting the players' own initiative and focusing on maximising their strengths, but it should not be confused with Emery's reactive and ultimately pessimistic style. Arteta is more interested in prepared drills for key moments, rather than Wenger's "automatisms", but he is also closer to Guardiola's fluidity than Emery's rigidity. Second, he likes to attack down the flanks. For all the marked improvement in defence, it is out wide that the team has progressed the most, with the emergence of Tierney, Saka and Martinelli reflecting this.

Arteta took over halfway through the 2019-20 campaign, but his impact is best judged by looking (as I usually prefer) at the season broken into thirds. Over the final 13 games, Arsenal secured 25 points. If we look back over the last 10 seasons, a final-third haul of 25 or more has usually produced a top-four finish (the one exception was 2016-17 when we finished fifth, one point behind Liverpool). In other words, this is Champions League qualification form. That the team ended up in eighth position was less the result of damaging defeats to Brighton and Aston Villa during the run-in and more the consequence of occupying a poor position at the mid-point. After 19 games, which included Arteta's debut (an away draw against Bournemouth), we were in eleventh. It would have been nice to squeeze into fourth at the expense of Chelsea, but that would have taken at least another 10 points, which would have required the sort of form that if replicated through the season would have seen us crowned champions with over 100 points.

Though conventional wisdom has it that Arteta tightened up the defence at the expense of some attacking prowess, the breakdown by thirds shows that while we shipped 3 fewer goals compared to both the first and second thirds, we actually scored 7 more compared to both the earlier periods. Assuming Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang extends his contract, there is every reason to believe that Arsenal can return to the 70+ goal tally that usually distinguishes a top-four team. Who he'll play alongside is another matter. Lacazette has been less effective in Arteta's system because his advanced hold-up play is less relevant to an attacking focus in the wide areas, while his relative lack of pace means he doesn't tend to pick up loose balls. There are grounds to suspect that new-boy Willian will be given a false 9 role to link up play between the flanks and centre, allowing an extra body to drop into midfield (something Lacazette tries to do but isn't particularly good at). With Nketiah, Saka and Martinelli offering options both centre and wide, Lacazette may be squeezed out.

In midfield, Granit Xhaka has become the poster boy for Arteta's regime both on and off the pitch. Like others, I thought he had played his last game for the club when he walked off to boos in the home draw against Crystal Palace in late-October. That he has redeemed himself in the eyes of many, despite being the same Marmite footballer, indicates the degree to which the fans have accepted that his poor form and decision-making were consequences of Emery's system as much as his own limitations. Who he'll play with (I am assuming he'll stay), is up in the air. Ceballos is one player who has thrived under Arteta as a ball-carrying link between defence and attack, but his final third contribution is still poor: zero goals and only 2 assists in 24 league appearances. I suspect Real Madrid's claim that they won't sanction another loan is just negotiation, but I also suspect that Arsenal's preference is a loan rather than a purchase. Regardless of Ceballos, someone is coming in because the midfield needs more experienced central options, though whether it will be a defensive player, such as Thomas Partey, or a creative, such as Philippe Coutinho, may be down to opportunity more than design. It might even be Mesut Ozil.

Despite fine victories over Manchester United, Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea during Arteta's brief stint, the defence is still a work in progress. One or both of Sokratis and Kolasinac are likely to depart, being too one-dimensional, while I suspect any reasonable offer will be accepted for Mustafi, despite his rehabilitation. Much (probably too much) is being invested in William Saliba by the fans, but it makes sense to try and build a young backline that can be blended with more experienced heads, so my money's on Rob Holding sticking around along with Bellerin and Tierney. Emi Martinez proved a more than adequate deputy for Bernd Leno, though it's worth recalling that he had the benefit of an improved defence in front of him. The German was rightly voted runner-up player of the season by the fans, behind Aubameyang, and you have to suspect he will look even better next season assuming the defensive resilience continues to improve. If it comes to a choice, Arsenal would be wise to cash-in on Martinez now and let him enjoy his peak years as a number one with an FA Cup winner's medal to look back on. 

One thing that has pleased me about Arsenal under Arteta is that we have quickly become a team that frustrates top opponents, even if we're still capable of screwing-up against the smaller teams. Winning the FA Cup was hugely enjoyable, but so too was the schadenfreude of doing the cup final treble over Chelsea and denying Liverpool the possibility of finishing as league champions on 100 points. Literally frustrating Manchester City on the pitch during the semi-final, to the point that Guardiola had to vent about Arsenal's "off-pitch" behaviour to avoid criticising Arteta, was also fun. The one blot on the copybook was losing away to Mourinho's increasingly dull Spurs, but I suppose they no long count as a top team anyway. The objective for Arsenal next season is to reclaim that label and so far the signs are promising. Whether Sanllehi's departure proves a clearing of the air or the start of greater instability I frankly have no idea, but I feel a lot more confident that it will be the former with Arteta around.