A quick reminder about what happened in July. The collapse of the Tory position, long forecast round these parts and explored in a certain book (as seen on TV), served up the worst Conservative general election defeat ever. And, even worse, despite Labour's best efforts to make themselves as equally loathsome, it's not obvious how the Tories can make a come back. And that's without the long-term decline of the party being taken into account.
There were two reasonable moments at the conference, and both of them came from the mouth of James Cleverly. He began his stump speech with an apology to the country (albeit not for the crimes committed on their watch), and stood out from the rest of the pack as he pleaded with his party. "Let's be more normal", he said. These were words few, if any of his fellow Tories were interested in heeding.
The two front runners, Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick were competing as if the chair of the Federation of Conservative Students was in contention. Jenrick put massive distance between his origin as a soggy Dave/Osborne era briefcase and his latter day manifestation of right wing bat shittery. Before Iranian missile strikes took out Israeli military targets and an oil platform, Jenrick had cringingly paraded around with a 'Hamas are terrorists' hoodie and pledged that the Star of David should be prominently displayed at every point of entry into this country. He would also, following Donald Trump, move the British embassy to East Jerusalem and, for good measure, vote for him if he was able to because "he's a conservative". Not the sharpest knife in the drawer. And it got worse. On Monday night, he accused the SAS of carrying out extra-judicial killings. He did this not to criticise the special forces, but to put across how the European Convention and its protections makes it harder for them to take terrorists into custody. A point that drew criticism from his edgingly less right wing rival, Tom Tugendhat. To top things off, he proposed a dukedom for noted anti-black racist, David Starkey. Tory MP Jesse Norman summed Jenrick's pitch up best: "lazy, mendacious, simplistic tripe".
Kemi Badenoch lived up to her 'Bad Enoch' billing and managed to be somehow worse. Having warmed the cockles of far right hearts over the summer, she went straight into conference with an Telegraph opinion piece arguing "not all cultures are valid". You don't need mega enhanced reading-between-the-lines skills to know what she was getting at. She gave a very tetchy defence of the position on Laura Kuenssberg, demonstrating an inability to cope with the mildest line of questioning. So much for the hard woman bravado about "walking through fire." It didn't end there. Having argued in the morning that "our culture" means valuing women, that afternoon she singled out maternity pay as "excessive" and symptomatic of the "burden of regulation" on British business. She doubled down on this, suggesting the minimum wage is harming employers. More, give us more! Okay. She jokingly said 10% of civil servants should be banged up because of incompetence, leaking, etc. Ha ha. She rubbished migrant care workers, claimed - without a shred of evidence - that conservative-minded students were marked down at university, and we learned her leadership campaign has its (undeclared) base at the home of a wealthy Tory donor. Not that this stopped her criticising Starmer over his fondness for favours offered by Lord Alli.
Among the other conference highlights were the 'Breed for Britain' fringe (also addressed by Badenoch), a long and indulgent conversation between Tim Stanley and Liz Truss, where she was feted like a rock star. Trump endorsement, check. I was right, check. Clash of civilisations, check. Tories lost because they're too woke, check. If the party was serious about clawing back the ground lost, Truss would be dealt a life time ban from conference. And, if this wasn't bad enough, most of the reports from Birmingham suggest the party members are in a chipper mood. Incredible.
Last year, it was obvious that the Tories could go one of two ways. Head right to consolidate their vote after a traumatic wipe out and see off Reform once and for all, or try something different. The answer, even from the "centrist" candidates is that the indulgence of extreme right wing politics and hobby horses is where they want to go. And that's fine. It might solidify their support on that side of the voting spectrum, but it won't make winning back dozens of Labour and Liberal Democrat-held seats any easier. Making the task more difficult if not impossible, it seems few Tories understand their party is on the verge of permanent irrelevance. This was less a conference, more a colourful noisy, unhinged and celebratory wake. And going by the politics offered by the contenders, they're competing not to lead the party but for the honour of lighting its cremation.
The Quatermass Experiment by Nigel Kneale
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
The White Mountains by John Christopher
The City of Gold and Lead by John Christopher
The Pool of Fire by John Christopher
No Way Out by Tim Shipman
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
Empire of Two Worlds by Barrington J Bayley
The Sorrows of Young Werther by JW Goethe
Jupiter by Ben Bova
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Out of the Silent Planet by CS Lewis
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes by Anita Loos
The Breaking of Northwall by Paul O Williams
Zofloya, or, The Moor by Charlotte Dacre
The Gap Into Conflict: The Real Story by Stephen R Donaldson
Waiting for the Barbarians by JM Coetzee
Walk to the End of the World by Suzy McKee Charnas
Mine Boy by Peter Abrahams
Doomtime by Doris Piserchia
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? by Horace McCoy
A Billion Days of Earth by Doris Piserchia
Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth
The Eyes of Heisenberg by Frank Herbert
Candide by Voltaire
Radix by AA Attanasio
Super-Cannes by JG Ballard
Incandescence by Greg Egan
Journal of a Wife by Anais Nin
The Gap into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge by Stephen R Donaldson
The Woman Who Walked into Doors by Roddy Doyle
Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert A Heinlein
Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Swimming in the Dark by Tomasz Jedrowski
Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Robert Maturin
Killer Planet by Bob Shaw
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
Cosmonaut Keep by Ken MacLeod
Infinity Gate by MR Carey
Some corkers stand out from this humongous list. Top reads include Mine Boy, the first black South African novel to command mainstream critical attention. Life was hard in the townships, but Abrahams's work is not depressing in the slightest. Au contraire a sense of creeping menace competes with a huge heart that beats throughout the book. A strong recommend. Anita Loos's double bill of short novels was great fun, and the inclusion of contemporaneous cartoons from its magazine serialisation give it a lot of character. You don't have to be into Sex and the City 1920s-stylee to enjoy it. Melmoth the Wanderer is representing as the gothic novel to end all gothic novels. A ridiculous set of nested stories, murder, the Inquisition!, dungeons, melodrama, visions of hell, soul-selling - it has the lot. Very entertaining but for me, The Monk remains the sub-genre's unconquered pinnacle.
Looking into the SF, the two Gap books and its sequels by Stephen R Donaldson don't get much coverage. And now I know why. Take an unimaginative space opera with space pirates, space cops, corrupt officialdom, and gross aliens and use these tired tropes to dress up a nasty little story about the repeated rape, physical abuse, and gaslighting of a traumatised woman. The titular 'gap' of the series refers to the hyperspace jump technology of the universe, but it might equally apply to Donaldson's absence of a moral compass. A gross and unnecessary entry in the SF canon. Much better was Williams's The Breaking of Northwall, the first in the post-apocalyptic Pelbar cycle. It's North America 1,000 years from now. Swords are as advanced as weaponry gets, but social change is afoot and a new renaissance and industrial revolution beckons. It's not a masterpiece but it is well written and entertaining. Also good fun were the two juvenile reads from this quarter. Bob Shaw's Killer Planet can be breezed through in no time: an uncomplicated mystery that, funnily enough, centres around a planet that kills people. The other was the Heinlein. Yes, four books in and I've found a likeable novel by him. Citizen of the Galaxy is a meditation on social responsibility. It has some thrills and spills for its intended audience, but winds up as a courtroom drama. Not the choicest of narrative directions, but it's Heinlein so there you go.
Quick shout out for the third entry from "Shippers" Brexit quartet. Its predecessors were pacey and entertaining, but No Way Out was a bit of a slog. The detail is impeccable, and he does his best to make dry negotiations interesting, but even as skilled a writer as he cannot polish up the dullest of subjects. And finally there are the Tripods trilogy: a set of books I should've read decades ago. They're dated in a boy's own where-are-the-women way, but not horrifically so. A shame I didn't get round to writing about them.
What have you been reading recently?
Since the 7th October attack by Hamas, virtually every Western power has granted Netanyahu a free hand in the region. The gut wrenching butchery of Gaza had, until recently, garnered nothing but a whisper of protest from European governments. The attacks on Yemen and Syria, the flagrant military actions on Iranian soil, and now the invasion of Lebanon give the impression of a rabid Israel that has slipped the leash of its sponsors. Britain announces a limited moratorium on some weapons it exports, and is castigated by their ungrateful recipients. Germany appeared to slow the flow of arms several days ago, and later denied it was doing so to avoid an establishment backlash. And while Western leaders did their love, love, peace, peace thing at the UN last week Netanyahu took to the stage and peddled the racist rubbish that Israel was waging a war for civilisation. He effectively announced that Iran was next.
The truth is, the West and above all the United States have not reluctantly gone along with but are actively aiding Israel. A fact that is obvious from even a cursory glance at mainstream media sources. Its war aims, the "neutralisation" of Gaza and destruction of Hamas, reducing and, if possible, defeating Hezbollah, and bombing targets in Syria are American war aims. They want Iran's regional influence pared back, and to see it punished for the assistance it has rendered Russia in its pointless Ukraine quagmire. And the State Department, loyally followed by Germany, France, and the UK, have gone about it in the most underhanded way.
The spectacle of a ranting, if not crazed Netanyahu has suited his sponsors very well. With every outrage committed, the Biden administration has cast themselves as the helpless observer from afar. The briefings are on "words exchanged" behind the scenes, of "warnings" and "concerns" that Israel's recklessness could provoke a wider conflagration. While this charade has gone on, Israel has been inundated with Western munitions, and there is ample evidence its intelligent assets and special forces have variously assisted the IDF in their operations. In other words, what we have seen this last year is a reversion to Israel's historic role in the region: as a proxy and as a meat shield for interests beyond its borders. The appearance of Netanyahu's autonomy hides Western complicity. Indeed, it gives every impression that the relation of force is the other way round. That Tel Aviv says jump and Washington and London ask "how high?" The utter cynicism of faux concern and studied helplessness feeds antisemitic conspiracy theories. It positions Netanyahu and/or Mossad as behind-the-scenes puppeteers. And American, German, and British governments are fine with this because they escape immediate responsibility for atrocities committed while seeing their interests served.
At any moment, Joe Biden could have stopped this. He could have picked up the phone to Netanyahu and said no and halted the slide to a generalised Middle Eastern war. Israel is militarily and economically dependent on the good will of the world's hegemon, and would have had a hard time carrying out their colonial campaign of ethnic cleansing and murder by itself. They have done so with American blessing, and it's at America's behest that Israeli bodies will now start piling up.
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1. Confessions of the Gravediggers
2. A Note on Authoritarian Modernisation
3. Residual Welfare Vs Social Security
4. A Fondness for Freebies
5. Why Scrap Winter Fuel Allowance?
Surging ahead of the pack was my take on the "unexpected" revelations that the Labour right were more interested in ditching Jeremy Corbyn than winning an election. A reminder that these people can't be trusted to do anything except for what might advance their careers. Our runner up was a look at Keir Starmer's statecraft. What are the principles guiding his wooden managerialism? What is he trying to achieve? Third place was a result of this strategy: their successful assault on a remaining prop of universalism. While it's time for pensioners to cut their cloth, no such restraint applies to Labour's leadership. A good chunk of the month and no mean amount of political capital was expended defending Starmer and co.'s right to accept all the gifts. And coming in last was another look at the cut to Winter Fuel Allowance.
Labour have monopolised the traffic, so let's look at something else. Sticking with politics, we nip across the Channel to take in Macron's anti-democratic shenanigans. And leaving this most ignoble of pursuits entirely, I choose to bat some disaster SF your way.
October's here, and appropriately enough for Hallowe'en month the horrors are abroad at Conservative Party conference. I have a sense this blog will return to its specialist subject. I can feel a piece on a recent science fiction novel in my bones too. But undoubtedly there will be fall out aplenty from Rachel Reeves's budget. As we're not allowed nice things, who's going to get clobbered? As ever, if you haven't already don't forget to follow the occasional newsletter, and if you like what I do (and you're not skint), you can help support the blog. Following me on Twitter and Facebook are cost-free ways of showing your backing for this corner of the internet.
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