Winter Skyfall

by Stoker

One strange quirk of my childhood is that I was always fascinated by politics.  My earliest political memory – I was 8 – is the assassination of President John Kennedy; and rushing to get the newspapers next morning so I could read up what had happened, and what might happen next.  The next memory is perhaps a year later, late 1964, sitting on the floor in my grandmother’s drawing room, hidden at the back of the long sofa from which she held court.  And hold court, or at least, hold forth, she did.

What gripped me was a secret that she was imparting to her guests.  She said that Harold Wilson was a Communist and that we were living in the last few months of freedom. Soon everything, she said, would be seized by the government. Wilson was the newly elected Prime Minister of the first Labour government for thirteen years, overturning, very narrowly, a reasonably successful Conservative government.

Wilson was certainly regarded among many Conservative voters as a dangerous leftie.  But this was astonishing information. Wilson a Communist!  I wasn’t exactly sure what one was, but I was horrified by the thought that he would shortly be along to seize our home, farm, cars, maybe even our dogs.  And my toys, my Corgi-Cars Bentley, newly acquired?  My lord, this was horrific.  So horrific that I kept these insights from the political world to myself – also because there would have been dire consequences had the grown-ups become aware I was sitting in on their conversation.

But from then on, I became an avid reader of the newspapers, anxious and fearful as to how the Communist seizures were going.  Of course, as we now know, they weren’t.  In spite of extraordinary high taxation, at confiscatory levels on the rich, most of us survived.  Even my Bentley.    

As an aside, my grandmother was not the only one to think Wilson a Communist.  A senior group in MI5, most famously Peter Wright, thought him a Russian Soviet agent deeply embedded in the political system, and became determined to both out him and oust him.  They failed to do either, though rumours linger on.  They also thought that the head of MI6, Roger Hollis, was a Soviet agent, along with those unmasked as the “Cambridge Five” spy-ring: Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Cairncross, and Blunt.  Nevertheless, Wright’s book Spycatcher is a fascinating read on the subject and an unwitting insight into paranoia!

From then on, my fascination in politics has never left me and I have read much on the subject, especially British and American history.  In particular, the English Civil War - alright, Scottish as well - is an endless fascination.  A relatively stable, well- ordered country descended in a short period into a horrifically violent internal war.  There is much good literature on the Civil War but one especially fascinating study is the new book by young Oxford historian Jonathan Healey, The Blood in Winter*. A ghoulish and slightly misleading title – the blood mostly came later - but a fascinating detailed study of the London political world, late 1641 to mid-1642.  In 1641 it looked as though the differences between Crown and Parliament might be settled; by mid 1642 Charles I was driven out of London and serious fighting had broken out.  Most politicians on either side did not want any of this to happen, and did not mean it to happen, but a few what we now call “bad actors”, one of them the King himself, would not listen, consider, or compromise. 

In retrospect, the Civil War, the victory of the Parliamentary forces, the gradual move towards a fully participatory democracy and the absurdity of the divine right of kings looks inevitable.  It was not; it still is not.  Democracy is not a system which is the final iteration of the political state.  It is in fact a fragile construct which needs a great deal of care and nurturing to grow and to survive.  In the 1640’s England** was lucky enough to have a number of intelligent men who wanted a more open society.  And perhaps, one might argue, lucky enough that Oliver Cromwell died when he did, that Richard Cromwell had no desire to take on his father’s powers, and that Charles II had learnt from his formative years how to be a cautious head of state with no desire to turn the clocks back.  His brother, James II, had not picked up these wise ways, but by his accession in 1685 the new political order was firmly in place.

Which brings us rather abruptly to 2026.  We are indeed living in strange times, times in which democracy is struggling to adapt to new ways of doing things.  One of the great themes of UK politics over the last hundred years or so has been the slow decline of deference; the populace looking for guidance and wisdom to its betters, not just to the aristocracy and the older established rich, but to the self-made, to the well educated, to trade union leaders, to teachers, to writers even.  Now one person’s voice is as valid as any other, and social media means those who shout loudest or most outrageously or with apparently inside information, especially salacious, tend to be the most listened to.  The new powerful trade is that of being an “influencer” and that applies not just to fashion or music or holiday destinations, but also to politics and social matters.  Reading of newspapers has rapidly declined and continues to do so; we are less informed and more opiniated. The C17th citizen might recognise this; it is again the time of the mob, of loud voices and increasingly violent undercurrents.

And the politicians can mostly blame themselves for this.  This is not a Brexit essay, but the slogan that succeeded in the Brexit debate was “Take Back Control”.  It summoned up precisely what many voters were feeling.  That they were no longer listened to, that decision-makers did not pay regard to their views, that politics is remote and arrogant.  How many politicians learned anything from this?  Mr Farage knew it already, Danny Kruger and Wes Streeting listened.  But most did not, still do not.  It is not difficult.  Take the voters with you on the journey.  Listen and learn, then explain, try to be subtle in making the electorate think you are on their side; and be on their side so far as you can.  Our politics is fragmenting, our arguments are increasingly fractious.  Compromise, understanding, caution seem lost causes.  Contempt for voters stalks the land – the recent casual cancellation of many local elections is an extraordinary act and no serious politician should possibly countenance it. 

It may be that we are about to see the collapse of the Labour Party into warring factions, into some grouping of the centre Left incorporating the LibDems, and a merging of the various very Left groups.  It is also not unlikely that we may see a merger, at least tactically, a coalition, of the Conservatives and Reform.  That may all seem unlikely and even unpleasant.  But if we don’t see some willingness for give and take, for compromise and conciliation, well, read about the winter of 1642.  It may seem impossibly unlikely, but the portents are not good.

 *Jonathan Healey: The Blood in Winter; A Nation Descends, 1642. Published  Bloomsbury 2025

**I’m not forgetting Scotland but things, then as now, were rather different there!