The simple conclusion from Brexit and Trump

As anyone who either didn't vote for Britain to leave the European Union, or didn't vote for President-Elect Donald Trump, or was not a fan of either one or both these notions tries to process what has happened in 2016, there is one very simple conclusion.

A lot of us are more conservative than we think, and people in general are, quite simply pretty damn conservative. These results are largely about inherent conservatism.

Of course, this should have become obvious during last year's poll-defying general election in Britain. The predicted knife-edge result in a David Cameron versus Ed Milliband contest turned into a pretty comfortable win for Cameron's Conservatives. The phenomenon of secret Tories was born, the people who could really only express their true beliefs in the privacy of the polling booth.

And then it happened again when Brexit triumphed. Secret Brexiters were also in our midst, people who again dared not mention their intention to put their cross in the "leave" box or even to tell this to a pollster, but did so when nobody was looking.

And then, just as Trump promised when he said his victory would be "Brexit plus plus plus", the polls turned out to be utter bunkum, and typing the words "President-Elect Donald Trump" still feels weird to many a journalist's fingers, my own included.

Of course, "conservative" is a broad term. There are social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, some people fit into both categories, others are one or the other. But, if we are going to be honest, there is an element of conservatism in a lot of us. 

It takes many forms. Some of them you may recognise in yourself, some you may not. This is the part of us that claims to be a feminist yet fervently checks the Daily Mail's sidebar of shame to mock a famous woman who has had the temerity to put on weight or wear an unflattering dress. This is the person who claims to be socially liberal but still makes fun of the guests on Jeremy Kyle. This is the old school, hard left trade union type who is also a fervent anti-abortionist. This is anyone who likes the security of a monogamous marriage. This is the eyeroll when one sees how much tax comes out of their salary and mutters to oneself that they hope everyone on benefits appreciates their hard-earned. This is the reason why TV programmes such as Benefits Street and Geordie Shore keep getting made. It is the maintaining of a sexist, racist, classist double standard that allows Trump, with his five children to three wives to run for president, but such a marital track record would have denied Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton the same opportunity. It is the part of us that thanks the troops for their service, gets their kids christened despite being agnostic at best, and judges people's sex lives.

And it is this inherent conservatism that leads people to say things like: "Give Trump/Brexit a chance. It might be OK, after all." and "We need to accept the result and move on." Even if they didn't vote for the winning outcome. But for everyone who tells the world to take a chill pill, to calm down, that everything will be fine, there are people fearful in the wake of both the EU referendum and the ascension of Donald Trump. The inherent conservatism that leads to glib calls for calm is almost always based in privilege, from the people who genuinely don't think the referendum or election result will adversely affect them in any way at all.

While there are certainly people from the black, Asian, Hispanic, LGBT and Muslim communities - oh, and women - who voted for Donald Trump, there are plenty of people from these communities who are fearful as to what the future holds. Based on Trump's awful rhetoric, these are not irrational fears. If any of these fears come true, such as mass deportations, travel bans for an entire religion despite it being made up of 72 sects, a rollback of reproductive rights, a daft wall, more inter-racial violence, a society where it is even harder to be take seriously as a sexual assault victim, and so on and so forth, will those who voted for Trump take responsibility? Equally, will everyone who voted Brexit take responsibility if everything truly does turn to shit after the hounds of Article 50 are released?

After all, personal responsibility is a popular principle among conservatives. Will the conservatives who voted for Trump or Brexit take responsibility if their desired utopia does not materialise? 

And it all makes a mockery of left versus right. The lines between the left and the right are now blurred but the inherent conservatism is still there.

The Trump vote was not, as much as Jeremy Corbyn would like to think so, a massive anti-globalist, anti-establishment wake-up call. Donald Trump, in sending jobs to China (and now his daughter, Ivanka, the only woman on his transition team, in sending jobs from China to the even cheaper workforces of Ethiopia) has benefited enormously from globalisation. Plenty of people, stereotypical establishment types, figured they'd do well under Trump and voted accordingly. Conversely, there was certainly an element of anti-globalisation feeling among many a Brexiter, from the hard left to the protectionist right as well. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage, Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn are all apologists for Putin's Russia, even though it is a profoundly undemocratic, anti-freedom regime. 

Disturbingly - and elements of the left and right are equally appalling here - there are calls for censorship of journalists and of all manner of media outlets, as well as stifling of peaceful protests. Like the post-Brexit slanging matches, there are gloating Trump voters taking the "we won, get over it" line, as if democracy begins and ends at the ballot box. These people don't want to be challenged by protesters or by the media. And there are plenty on the left these days who are also mad about censorship and won't rest until the BBC morphs into Pravda, Laura Kuenssberg is replaced by Naomi Klein, and the Morning Star is the only newspaper available.

And when you look at who voted for Trump, and realise that there are plenty of educated, wealthy people among them, and when you realise that large swathes of England and Wales voted to leave the EU, even in areas that have benefited enormously from EU membership, it is clear that generalisations about every person who voted in these directions are grossly unhelpful if there is to be constructive dialogue about any of these issues any time soon. 

But there is certainly an undercurrent of inherent conservatism out there and it tells me that a populist leftist movement won't necessarily win out on either side of the pond. 

Elections are won on the centre ground - or the perceived centre ground - in the UK. Right now, the Tories have convinced broad swathes of the electorate that they hold the middle ground. Hell, there are still people who think the NHS is perfectly safe under this government, despite another £700m of our money going to Virgin Care in Somerset while remaining free from the accountability of freedom of information requirements. Indeed, the NHS is a solid example of inherent conservatism again rearing its head. There is no shortage of people who claim to support the NHS but still blame immigrants if they cannot get a GP appointment, have no issue with unchecked outsourcing of health services to the private sector "as long as it remains free at the point of use" and would not bat an eyelid if services such as IVF, transgender healthcare, abortion and birth control, were not covered by the NHS. 

Meanwhile, it's not quite apples and oranges when you compare it all with the US - there would be a political home in America for many a British Conservative MP in the Democrats, for example. David Cameron, Anna Soubry and Justine Greening, for example, would not look out of place as US Democrats, and it is actually not too hard to imagine Hillary Clinton sitting on the green leather benches of Theresa May's Conservative government. On top of all this, I am unconvinced that an ageing, Jewish-often-perceived-as-atheist, self-proclaimed socialist, such as Bernie Sanders would win over enough of America to lead a government. 

None of this points to either Britain or the US crying out for a hard left alternative, as disappointing as many will find that conclusion. While there are certainly differences between British and American societies, both nations are, at heart, conservative. And this is what the opponents of Brexit and Donald Trump need to address if they are to make a real impact.


Picture by Chris/Flickr

Eternally seeking the perfect victim...

In the past few weeks, two cases have been in the news and these two cases shine a rather horrible light on our notions of victimhood. Monica Lewinsky's affair with Bill Clinton and the subsequent legal and political ramifications again made headlines when Lewinsky started a Twitter account and was, predictably, faced with assorted trolls. And in the UK, Ched Evans, a convicted rapist, has won a fast-tracked inquiry into his conviction - and regardless of the outcome of this, Twitter and the court of public opinion - which led to the inquiry being fast-tracked in the first place - will ensure the woman at the centre of the awful incident will still be living in the shadow of that night in a hotel room.

What is disturbing about both these cases is the rush to condemn the women largely because neither one fits the narrow, demure image of a victim that guarantees sympathy or, at the very least, stops a mob of keyboard warriors from behaving like anonymous, irrationally angry vultures.

In the case of Monica Lewinsky, it really didn't matter how she chose to live her life and conduct herself in public after the story broke, she was never going to win. Being open about what happened in the Oval Office all those years ago and trying to make the most of her accidental fame with money-making ventures such as a line of handbags, has led to inevitable slut-shaming and a desire to silence her. I had a bizarre Twitter exchange this week in which a conservative American woman was disappointed that she hasn't been more critical of Bill Clinton and, as such, she is a poor role model who is not serving other women well.

Really? Why does Monica Lewinsky have to be a role model for anyone? Why is it up to her to serve other women over an incident that she did not intend to become public? The woman I argued with on Twitter agreed that Lewinsky was indeed a victim but she was not behaving like the kind of victim she wanted her to be. As if Lewinsky owes it to Random Conservative Internet Woman to behave in a certain way.

If Linda Tripp had not betrayed Lewinsky on such an enormous scale, we may never have known about any of this.

If Lewinsky just wanted to confide in someone about her relationship with the President and move on without pressing harassment charges, that should have been her choice to make.

If Bill Clinton hadn't hung her out to dry with the infamous "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" quote, an inevitable statement to make in an often puritanical society, it might have been a different story all round. But it is Lewinsky who has come out of this worse, lost so much more, and been fed to the wolves on a far more regular basis than Clinton ever will be.

If Lewinsky decided to slink away quietly after the voracious news cycle had moved on and Clinton completed his presidency relatively unscathed, that would be perfectly understandable but she would probably then have been accused of letting Clinton get away with it, of letting herself be silenced and so on. And, frankly, it'd be naive to think that even if she did exile herself in some rural backwater and open a five-and-dime, the scandal would still cast a long shadow over her life, such was the global notoriety she achieved. She still might not have settled down with a nice lad and led a quiet, anonymous existence - and who is to say that is even what she wants out of life?

Lewinsky was in an extraordinary situation, one that she could never have imagined when she started her White House internship, and there are any number of ways she could have reacted. If 100 different women were in that exact same situation, there would probably be 100 different responses.

As a victim, Lewinsky was only ever going to be acceptable if she was either silent and absent from public life or she was demure and contrite. Instead, she told government lawyers to go fuck themselves when she was questioned and threatened with 27 years in prison. Good for her and bad luck if that offends anyone.

In the Ched Evans rape case, again we have a victim who does not fit the mould of a victim that is acceptable to the hordes on the interwebs. It is astounding how quickly people have gone straight to the "she is clearly a slag" defence on behalf of Evans.

As it stands at the time of writing, Evans is a convicted rapist. A jury found that the victim was too drunk to consent and the fact that she consented to sex with one of his friends before Evans joined in was deemed to be irrelevant. Consent to sex with one man does not equal consent to sex with his mate.

So what if she was not a virgin when Evans let himself into the hotel room. So what that this is not a rape that fits the "man jumping out of an alleyway" image that many seem to associate with this awful crime. So what if Natasha Massey, his girlfriend, is standing by her man. Even if Evans' conviction is overturned, I have no idea why you'd stay with him - but that is Massey's choice, just as Hillary Clinton stayed with Bill, even though she is bright and qualified enough to hold high office on her own merits.

But, I repeat, as I write this, Ched Evans is still a convicted rapist. And his victim, who was only 19 at the time, is still trying to rebuild her life.

The morons on the internet who have named the victim and then named her new identity, forcing her to change her name and location yet again, are absolutely disgraceful excuses for human beings. Just as the events of 1998 will always be with Monica Lewinsky, the events of May 2011 will always be with this woman.

She deserves privacy and the right to get on with her life, regardless of the outcome of the inquiry into the conviction. She is not seeking to be a public figure and that choice should not be denied her just as Lewinsky should not have to be forced into exile. You can disagree with anything Lewinsky might have to say about the events of 16 years ago but if you seek to silence her, or any woman who might not fit the mould of demure contrition, you are part of the problem.

If Sheffield United want him to play for them, that is their choice. If people want to support a club and pay for tickets to watch Evans play, that is their choice too. But the club's managers or fans or the #JusticeForChed zealots cannot expect others to be silent. If Evans returns to top level football, nobody should be stunned if others use their right to free speech and peaceful protest to picket the Bramall Lane stadium. If people refuse to watch Ched Evans play and refuse to renew their season tickets on that basis, that is also a choice that must be respected.

The conservative woman on Twitter believes that Lewinsky's unwillingness to condemn Bill Clinton is a great disservice to all women. But the bigger disservice to women is to force them to conform to the prejudices of others, and to want them to only behave in a certain way when they are confronted with awful situations where there is no one correct way to react.