Confession time: I’m addicted to British newspapers.
I know; how boring is that? But I’ve been known to pay double figures for the 10-kilo edition of the Sunday Telegraph or the Sunday Times.
Fortunately, these days I can feed my addiction online – the Guardian is even free. Bonus.
Here’s the thing: above a certain line of literacy, British papers are better. Below that line, beneath the Express, let’s say, they’re obsessed with starlets “showing off their bikini bods.” But north of that line, wondrous prose. I’m not sure why. Charles Dickens once launched a daily in London and perhaps his successors feel compelled to keep up the standard. Or maybe it’s one of the few benefits of a private (known in England as “public”) school education: erudition.
Sometimes the quality is astonishing. A few days ago, in the Sunday Times, I read Germaine Greer on rape and was compelled to drag my male sensibility further up the steep climb toward understanding on the strength of her prose alone. And just recently, I read a piece by a Big C Conservative commentator that made me think. I know, right?
The opinion piece, by Tim Montgomerie, prompted a flash of insight into Donald Trump’s mysteriously enduring appeal to his base supporters. “Trump beat the establishment in his own party and then Hillary Clinton because he was perceived to be his own man.” Unlike Clinton, “who collected huge fees after delivering private speeches to Wall Street banks.” Unlike Malcolm Turnbull in Australia, ousted for being beholden to big business. He even cited the end of the 44-year reign of Alberta’s Conservatives, who held their noses and voted for Rachel Notley in 2015 instead of endorsing tax cuts for the relentless rich.
He could have mentioned the end of Christy Clark and the 16-year B.C. Liberal regime for being cheerfully out of touch with the middle class and allowing home ownership to slip out of the grasp of an entire generation.
The point of Montgomerie’s piece was to warn Teresa May from doing the same thing, although the jig is pretty much up for the United Kingdom’s Tories. Too dependent on business and the elites, May and company seem helpless against the hordes of Jeremy Corbyn, who seems at least as unattractive a package as Trump, only on the left.
“As in America (And Alberta! And B.C.!) voters who are desperate for a new economic settlement seem willing to forgive or at least overlook weaknesses that would have been electorally fatal until recently.” Now that’s an understatement.
As we mark the 10th anniversary of the 2008 Great Recession, the middle class is reminded that Lehman Brothers, Ford, Bank of America, etc. all survived, bonuses intact, while they have to work – and shop – at Walmart.
In saner times, the populists cringe in the shadows, but for too long, the Centre, burdened by the art of the possible, never mind the art of the deal, has been stuck in the quagmire of the status quo. So we’re tempted to let someone else try – Donald, Bernie, Jeremy, that guy in Italy, what’s his name?
All this leads me to wonder what impact decades of stasis will mean in the upcoming municipal elections.
Gone are decent, cautious leaders like Richard Walton. Will this be an opportunity for those who lead constituencies of the disenchanted to stomp in? Will those who are perceived as in the pockets of the developers end up politically homeless while their rude inheritors try to cope amid the rubble?
The problem with people who tell you what you want to hear is that’s all they’re good at, usually. They don’t often come with a plan that works in the real world.
Here in North Van, we complain about the fallout of development and density. Quality of life is deteriorating but the only candidates offering refreshing simple solutions are those who are refreshingly simple.
So, to those serious, responsible candidates worried about being trampled in a populist stampede, I can only offer the quiet wisdom of Tim Montgomerie in the Times of London: “The protection of the ‘little guy’ from any concentration of power should be the ... mission today – whether that concentration is in commerce, media or the state.” Or the municipality.
For the purposes of this column, the “little guy” is any man or woman who is under-educated, underemployed, inadequately housed, is hopelessly in debt, can’t find decent daycare, is poorly served by transit, can’t find a parking spot and has to wait eight hours in the emergency ward to see a doctor.
Keep calm and carry on reading!
Journalist and communications consultant Paul Sullivan has been a North Vancouver resident since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of Madonna. Email him at [email protected].
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