Nothing civil about civil war

When I arrived in the US back in 1973, Americans invariably asked me what amazed me the most. Supermarkets? Department stores? Cars?

No, none of those, I’d reply. I had expected to find a consumer cornucopia, and the same went for things like free elections. No surprises there.

Astonishment was caused by something else entirely: seeing that people of different political views could be friends or even spouses. And even if they were neither friends nor spouses, they remained civil towards one another.

Where I came from, politics killed. It divided the people into victims and executioners, not into debaters who could have a muted argument and then walk into a bar together.

Some 15 years later I moved to Britain and eventually also to France, part-time. In these countries, especially the latter, politics was more febrile than in the US c. 1973 (things have changed there since then), but still not to a point of widespread personal hostility.

Obviously, politics doesn’t matter so much in places where it cleaves without destroying. People have more important things to worry about: mortgages, medical care, children’s education, holidays and where their next cleaning woman is going to come from.

Those things are of course affected by politics, but not everybody discerns the links. And in any case none of this is really a matter of life or death. Worse comes to worst, the wife can do her own hoovering for a while, unless she can appeal to feminism and make hubby-wubby chip in.

We can all still be friends, political differences notwithstanding, can’t we? Well, yes, provided we all stay in the mainstream. The closer to its margins politics moves, and especially if it goes beyond the signposts, the more serious it gets – the more it becomes a matter of life or death, or even things worse than death.

Two more anecdotes then, both involving the late Stalinist historian Eric Hobsbawm, considered to be an intellectual giant in some circles.

Those circles are quite vicious. For it takes warped moral values to credit an unrepentant Stalinist with cleverness without qualifying the praise with a reminder that he’s a champion of carnage and slavery on a uniquely epic scale.

Mercifully, not everyone feels about Hobsbawm that way. Many years ago, he invited Miriam Gross, at that time literary editor of The Sunday Telegraph, out to lunch. “I’ll never go to lunch with you, Eric,” replied Mrs Gross. “Why not?” The Stalinist was genuinely perplexed. “Because,” said that brilliant woman, “if the political situation were different, you’d kill me.”

I wish we had more people able to see politics, and its links to personal relationships, as clearly. Scaling down from there, I too had a vicarious brush with Hobsbawm.

He sat on the advisory board of the publishing house that was about to bring out one of my books. The publisher wanted to get a peer review from Hobsbawm, and he asked me if I wanted to meet the venerable gentleman. “Absolutely not,” I said. “And if I did meet him, I’d refuse to shake his hand.”

This is merely an illustration of my contention that, as politics moves towards the extreme, the stakes become intolerably high, and there’s little place left for bonhomie. We’re no longer friends with divergent opinions. We’re implacable enemies, and the devil take the hindmost.

This is regrettable, unhealthy and divisive – which is why such a situation is best to be avoided. But then the same goes for a street brawl: do all you can to prevent it, but if it’s unavoidable you’d better know how to handle yourself.

Such pugilistic analogies are no longer alien to British politics, and the sooner we realise this, the better. The very political, which in Britain’s case means vital, nature of the country is under dire threat.

Two threats, to be exact, although they are interrelated: the EU and Corbyn. Let’s start with the one I see as marginally less deadly.

The unseemly squabble following the Brexit referendum has emphasised and aggravated the bankruptcy of our democracy-run-riot, as it has become. Whatever the pluses and minuses of universal franchise (and I think the latter outweigh the former), it can only succeed when balanced with numerous political, social, moral and educational counterweights.

In the absence of such, democracy degenerates into spivocracy, a government of self-serving nonentities constantly striving to distance themselves from the electorate for fear of being found out. Hence their urge to move the centre of British government out of the reach of British voters – not just politically but also geographically.

If, as seems likely, they prevail and effectively turn the British monarch into an EU citizen, Britain will have a hard time being Britain again: politics is her pulsating heart, and it can be neither ripped out nor surgically replaced with a transplant.

This is the immediate damage that takes no fortune-telling powers to predict. The full extent of the long-term psychological damage, caused by everyone realising, not before time, that politicians can never be trusted, is harder to assess. But it’ll be huge, and this regardless of the outcome of the current mess.

The second threat, closely related to the first, is even deadlier: the looming possibility of a Britain governed by Marxist ghouls, a gang of Eric Hobsbawm clones, minus even pretensions of intellect.

While staying in the EU will be harmful, the damage won’t be eternal – because the EU isn’t. That retarded child of megalomaniac European semi-intellectuals is a gross contrivance that will eventually, soon I hope, be set ablaze by its internal and innate contradictions.

Being inside a burning house is worse than enjoying the spectacle from across the street, but at least one can throw a wet bed sheet over one’s head and run out. But being locked in is fatal – and this metaphor describes the effects of a Corbyn government with deadly accuracy.

A normal, common-or-garden Labour government can be confidently expected to wreak havoc that will be undone by a subsequent Tory administration only partly , especially now that the Tories have become Labour Lite.

Every socialist government, Labour Lite or Full Strength, will cause erosion. But it won’t necessarily cause an instant and irreversible catastrophe, which is something we can look forward to if Mrs May’s new ally Corbyn moves into 10 Downing Street.

Using their much-admired Venezuela as the role model, all those Corbyns-McDonnells-Abbotts won’t govern the country – they’ll occupy it and treat it the way Marxist invaders always treat their conquered nations.

The economic collapse that’ll follow within weeks of their election will be the least of our problems, for economies can be repaired. A murdered nation can’t be: no Lazarus will come back to life; no Phoenix will rise from the ashes.

Can we be civil to such people and their supporters? A civil war leaves no room for civility, is my answer. Yours will depend on whether you agree that we’re indeed in the midst of civil war, not a friendly political debate.