TROUBLE IN AMERICA, AND IT'S EVEN WORSE, PROBABLY, IN THE UK...

Americans have a uniquely terrible president currently and unless they are careful he may win a second election. Even 8 years of Trump is dispiriting and damaging but eventually and soonish he will be gone. He may yet be impeached.

The UK is less lucky by far. Here we face a terrible disruption that is likely to last a generation or more. If we are fortunate we may recover by 2050.

This disruption is the Hydra-headed Brexit dilemma. If it goes through the UK will be far poorer culturally, economically and politically. And the union may break up, with conflict again on a more divided Irish island. If it fails to go through there may well be a terminal decline in mainstream democracy and a further rise in more extreme forms of populism. This is because the middle ground has been hollowed out and the far Left and far Right stand by to fill the vacuum and exploit the claims that democracy died when Brexit was not delivered.

At the most optimistic, Britain will become a low tax haven, a quasi-Singapore, but how this works for the farmers and factory workers is anyone’s guess. The falling pound might help exports. What lies ahead for the 99% will be an unpleasant land of avarice and inequality. The toffs will have their Eton Mess and eat it too.

More likely is a disintegrated UK within a decade of now - 2030 seeing a separated Scotland and a very different Ireland. England and Wales will form a Tory rump, evermore beholden to American policy and influence and too weak to resist a more dominant Russia.

Probably we will have a Farageist government within the decade to come or something approaching Leninism. Either will be bad for most of us though depending which way the voters swing the ruling party will either be more Islamophobic or more Anti-Semitic. Either way immigrants and minorities will be at the butt end and hate speech and crime will grow.

Is there a way out of this?

Sadly, the best option was probably the PM May deal - imperfect but just about bearable and nuanced enough to keep some semblance of normalcy.

I would like to predict a rosy outcome but our fates are now in the off-putting hands of Cummings the Take Back Control guru and Johnson the charismatic maestro of disaster capitalism.

If you own vast estates of land, or large amounts of gold, you will ride this out perhaps. For most others, our small island is shrinking in a most lamentable way. It may end up a champagne cork bobbing on a sea of rough troubles.

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se. What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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