Grumpy Britain needs the Geldof treatment

Times

14 hours ago

America's summertime invasion is well under way. The commander-in-chief is leading from the front, touring his golf courses in Scotland. His vice-president is reportedly preparing to establish a beachhead in the Cotswolds. Protected by their entourages, the Britain they will encounter resembles the Hollywood fantasy of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
But if they really want to understand their ally, the Britain they need to meet lives next door to the grumpy, miserable Victor Meldrew of One Foot in the Grave.
That's not on anyone's schedule right now. The wedding of Eve Jobs, daughter of the late Apple boss, took place in the church of St Michael & All Angels, near Chipping Norton, on Saturday. A former vice-president, Kamala Harris, and a stream of liberal multimillionaires mingled with a Springsteen or two and at least one Kardashian. Even if we don't matter that much any more, we remain irresistibly cute to our transatlantic cousins.
• Eve Jobs and Harry Charles marry in 'quaint corner' of the Cotswolds
The Hollywood landscape of Merrie England, with its kings, queens, thatched cottages, rolling hills, baffling titles, jolly peasants and strolling troubadours (Elton John played the wedding party) is the stuff of countless movies. No wonder Americans are confused by the reality.
As far back as 1942, US troops stationed in Britain were cautioned not to be misled by the British 'tendency to be soft-spoken and polite… the English language didn't spread across the oceans and over the mountains and jungles and swamps of the world because these people were panty-waists'.
A generation of American friends whistled along to Bing Crosby, William Bendix and Cedric Hardwicke tramping along the lanes whistling Busy Doing Nothing in the film version of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee… This, perhaps, is the Britain for which Mr Trump feels most affinity; a world of wise and virtuous monarchs, of chivalrous heroes and moustachioed villains, of valiant knights and, above all, of a deferential, complaisant people.
His periodic visits to Turnberry and his other properties must feel in some way like a replay of the 1954 Gene Kelly movie Brigadoon, about a bewitched Scottish village so perfect that its inhabitants contrive to ensure it only appears to the rest of the world for one day every 100 years or so, lest its dreamy heaven be changed by cold reality.
Sequestered in his own personal Brigadoon, the president is unlikely to come face to face with the true mood of our nation. Just as well. As the old saying goes, the peasants are revolting. And so are the apprentices. And the apothecaries. And the squires. Even the knights are uneasy. Britain is in a sour state: angry and disillusioned — less Camelot, more Meldrew's Tresillian Way.
Living standards are declining, public service productivity plummeting, utilities unreliable and expensive. Our waterways are filthy. The public's faith in the health service is failing; and even though crime is falling, citizens say they feel no safer. A Sunday Times survey of the nation's mood published at the weekend makes unhappy reading for Sir Keir Starmer's ministers.
The burning fuse of small boats in the Channel remains smouldering, with record numbers crossing this year. Six in ten of us think the French government simply isn't keeping its side of the very expensive bargain. Sixty-nine per cent share Trump's view that we, like the US, should forget about the deal and deploy our own troops to stem the tide. He sent the Marines and cut crossings by 90 per cent; both the Reform leader Nigel Farage and the Blue Labour guru Maurice Glasman want the Royal Navy to blockade the Channel.
The protests against the siting of asylum hotels in Epping, Norwich and Diss have been disturbing, though not yet on the scale of those triggered by the atrocity in Southport a year ago this week. But the admission by a senior Labour MP that the Home Office and local authorities are competing for accommodation to house healthy, young, male asylum seekers and homeless single-parent families is a powder keg waiting to explode.
The unrest comes against a deeper background of disillusion. The generation now leaving university is the first in perhaps 200 years who cannot expect to have a higher standard of living than their parents, even though their educational attainments are dramatically greater.
The totemic British adult milestone, the purchase of your own home with a mortgage, has now become unattainable for many, even for the children of middle-class parents. In 2004, more than half of us owned our own homes by the age of 32. That age is now 36, and climbing. The decision last week to announce a pensions review signals that the actuaries have done their work and retirement age will increase for those at work. People in their twenties are now contemplating working well into their seventies. Or forever.
Anger, of course, does not have to be a bad thing. It is often the catalyst for action. But that transformation demands leadership, vision and poetry. We've seen it happen before. A brilliant three-part documentary series produced by one of the great film-makers of our time, Norma Percy, recounts the way in which Bob Geldof's explosion of rage at the fate of children in Ethiopia galvanised a generation and created Band Aid and Live Aid. The old campaigner has once again entered the lists, this time on behalf of the starving children of Gaza.
Interviewing him over the weekend, I was reminded that sometimes words can make a difference, especially when put together by a poet like Geldof. You do not have to take sides to be moved by his vivid evocation of 'the IDF… dangling food in front of starving, panicked, exhausted mothers' or 'children … taking a teaspoonful of salt and as much water as they can drink to fill their bellies'.
It is hard to contest Geldof's dismissal of the demand by 200 MPs for recognition of a Palestinian state as virtue-signalling. I have little doubt that his sheer moral authority will have contributed to the Israeli decision to allow more aid into Gaza and to agree to 'tactical pauses' in the fighting.
But Geldof's righteous anger is a rare thing in British politics. Instead we get the bluster of government which comes down to little more than noise-making in the hope that something will turn up; and the grandstanding opportunism of opposition manoeuvring to escape responsibility. And I cannot right now name the poet in our politics capable of summoning up the words to turn our nation's rage into a positive, uplifting vision. Nor, I suppose, can you.