This year, naturally and necessarily, is one of prolonged commemorations of the end of the Second World War. This month, the focus has been on victory in Europe. The parades have been impressive. The surviving veterans have been treated with affection and respect. The street parties have been jolly, if more subdued than I expected.
I’ve also been surprised – and dismayed – that so little of the media coverage has reflected on the 1945 response to the end of devastating hostilities. Learning from the searing experience of prewar chaos, slump and autarky, and the brutal despotism that these generated, leaders and peoples established an international rules-based order, set up institutions of collective political and economic cooperation, and, in many cases, facilitated mixed economies and welfare states. All of that produced conditions of provision and relative peace which allowed me and many born in the 1940s to be in the “lucky generation”.
Contempt for the present
Donald Trump – soon to turn 79 – might have been expected to comprehend that good fortune. As one of the most powerful men in the world, he might have wanted to extend it by sustaining freer trade, safeguarding our planet, advancing justice and strengthening liberty. He is plainly doing the opposite, demonstrating levels of amnesia about the past, contempt for the present and myopia about the future that can only be explained by a superhuman narcissism.
Maybe the damage he is doing will encourage the return of a “never again” postwar spirit, and a determination to re-establish orderliness and cohesion. Maybe. But even as a socialist who cherishes Gramsci’s “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”, I can’t think of this galactic egotist as a benefactor of the human race, be it accidental or otherwise.
Altered States
There is, however, one inadvertent opportunity that could arise out of Trump’s tariff rollout: it could galvanise policy changes in the UK. The Prime Minister has spoken of a “new era”. The Chancellor rightly says that “the world is changing before our eyes”. Neither is willing to explain why everything has shifted seismically since the tariffs were announced on 2 April, but even without pointing fingers to Washington they could say something like: “Because of this alteration, many recent policy stances have been shredded. We must adopt an approach that is relevant to the new conditions. As a result, we will undertake three main missions.
“First, there will be a national security levy to fund defence bonds. Second, our efforts to reset relations with the EU will be accelerated as we recognise that our country will not achieve substantial growth outside the single market and the customs union. Third, we are aware that many incomes have flatlined in real terms for two decades while many assets have mushroomed and not been proportionally taxed. So, we will increase dues on high-value assets and the highest incomes. This will raise urgently needed revenue for public services, and demonstrate equity, which is particularly important in a country where there is widespread deepening inequality.”
None of this is likely to become government policy, of course. But if an old patriotic progressive can’t muse on such themes in the New Statesman’sDiary, where can he?
Choral courage
The annual Festival of the London Welsh Chorale is a great bonanza of singing and includes the Welsh Young Instrumentalist of the Year Competition.
The choral concert is held in the magnificent Welsh Church of Central London, a late-Victorian balconied temple of assertive nonconformism near the Mammon’s boulevard of Oxford Street. Pristine cleanliness and the incense-heavy smell of furniture polish always brings back memories of chapel attendance in an otherwise happily misspent youth in South Wales.
This year, the Chorale has dedicated a young musician’s prize in memory of my wife, Glenys. That pleased me greatly – not least because she particularly admired young solo singers and musical performers. She said that they showed “a special kind of talent: bravery”. She knew about that. In her childhood and early teens she regularly performed in eisteddfodau and cymanfaoedd canu (singing congregations) in the chapels of her native North Wales, overcoming terror to give angelic voice to both religious and folk songs, and, by all accounts, delighting hundreds. All that came before she gathered the supreme courage to tell her family that she was a humanist and would no longer perform. That took real guts.
Neil Kinnock was leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992
[See also: The EU-UK reset exposes the limits of a “geopolitical Europe”]
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This article appears in the 21 May 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Britain’s Child Poverty Epidemic