A Year of Paralysis

A year ago, I was full of enthusiasm for The Nazaré Project. What seems to have ensued mainly is paralysis. Indeed, as 2019 begins to slip away from us, we might have to call it 'the Year of Paralysis', so widespread has been this experience, brilliantly exemplified of course in our part of the world by the B saga. It is a dead weight weighing down not just on Brits trying to do things and go places on the Continent, like our Alec, but on the whole of Western Europe.

     I am just back home on Sherkin after another fortnight in Nazaré, where I did little besides getting the Anna M lined up for another year there, which involves moving her off the concrete apron to the cheaper part of the yard. I am sufficiently worn down to enjoy my visits there regardless of 'progress'; it is a very pleasant place to be! While I was there, we went from late summer to a very mild early winter:-

One thing about going away now and again is that it is very lovely to come home again, especially with Fiona being here. Meanwhile I do hope that, deep down, things are happening. Certainly our thoughts about what we want to do, both technically and in general, are maturing. And for all the lack of actual progress and political movement, surely there is a much more widespread understanding that the environmental crisis simply has to be addressed; the question is, how?

     The General Election in Britain promises only more and indeed worse paralysis, as far as I can make out. Of the two men who are apparently contenders for the top job, enough has been said about the present incumbent. If he were to win a viable majority (which I hope is most unlikely), the likes of me would have to write the UK off for the duration. But I shall also make just one little observation about the other fellow.

     "My whole strategy has been to try and keep the party, the movement and the country together", says Mr Jeremy Corbyn. He has a brilliant way of doing so - simply deny the split! So as far as he is concerned, as he informed his Shadow Cabinet, "The debate (about Brexit) is over." It's all crystal clear - his government will negociate a new agreement with the EU (though most of his party say they do not want it and it is very hard to expect the EU to take such negociations seriously) and then 'put it to the People to decide if they want it'!

     How a devastating dereliction may be dressed up as responsibility! The pretence of unity where it does not exist, canonized in the name of 'the People's decision', is actually a recipe for tyranny, and especially so if it happens to wangle some sort of 'democratic majority'. In the same breath as the above quotation, gleaned from the Guardian*, we find Mr Corbyn apparently proud of the fact that he took the decision to go for a General Election entirely on his own. “I put it to them (the Shadow Cabinet) quite clearly: I said, our objections are now gone. We are now supporting a general election – and everybody gulped. I didn’t alert anybody in advance – it was my decision. On my own. I made that decision. And they gulped, and said, Yes Jeremy.” This is the same guy who says he 'would share power out to everyone who helped build the Labour movement'.

     If Mr Corbyn cannot build consensus in his own party, what hope for doing so in the whole country? In the circumstances, one must hope for another hung parliament, who would put a stop to the wild imaginings of either of the Great Leaders on offer. Yet, one can only tolerate so much paralysis, and reluctant as the EU may be to cutting the mooring ropes and letting the good ship Britannia drift away, in the end Europe is likely to be wound up into insisting on one of the dreaded 'binary decisions' that the fashionable anglophone chatterati profess to disdain- Yes or No, Oui ou Non. 

     Those who disdain 'binary' politics seem generally to assume that any of life's many polarities necessarily entail adversarial behaviour, even as in the relationships between men and women. This is a counsel of despair. I insist that actually the correct application of polarities is the basis of all creativity (based on the most fundamental of them all, the relationship of the Father with the Son, from which the Holy Spirit springs). But one does not get there, to creativity, by denying the polarities.

    Is there then any chance of leaving the sorry adversarial politics behind? What would an holistic politics look like anyway? Is it not struggling to take shape in Europe? Instead of claiming the EU is falling apart, would it not be so much better to participate wholeheartedly in this immensely exciting project? But in Blighty, having reformed the voting system, one would need to furthermore turn the Palace of Westminster into a museum, and build a purpose-built, round parliament in, say, Brum, wherein the seats might be allocated to the constituencies in alphabetical order!

     Meanwhile, the best most of us can do is to build away at an holistic world in our own little ways. It is pressure from below that will bring about change, not just some great political project!

 *https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/03/obey-brexit-jeremy-corbyn-warns-cabinet-dissenters