Simon
Kuper
"To
understand the man, you have to know what was happening in the world when he
was 20."
Napoleon
Bonaparte
Chums
is a useful but limited look at a group of Oxford Tories who now run the
country on behalf of a section of the English bourgeoisie. As Kuper adeptly explains,
this group is hardly a set of intellectual giants.
One
of the group's cheerleaders and media friend Toby Young was forced to admit
that "It has become a commonplace of Islington dinner parties that the
reason Britain is in such a mess is because of its wretched class system which
has condemned us to be ruled by a bunch of incompetent Tory toffs. Not only are
they lazy and amoral, believing the rules don't apply to them, but for the most
part, they are innumerate and scientifically illiterate, thanks to the
humanities bias at Britain's elite public schools and Oxford University. Little
wonder they have made such a hash of governing the country, culminating in the
disastrous decision to leave the European Union".[1]
The
leader of this group is Boris Johnson, who learnt at a very early age that he
was never going to win a sustained intellectual argument with anyone. So, according
to Kuper, to defeat opponents whose arguments were better, he ignored them and offered
"carefully timed jokes, calculated lowerings of the voice, and ad hominem
jibes".
During
his time at Oxford, Johnson was at the heart of a somewhat incestuous network
of friends that now hold political power in Britain. This clique, according to
Kuper, was "born to power". More importantly, it was this clique that
organised Brexit. According to a statement by the Socialist Equality Party, "the
Remain and Leave wings of the British bourgeoisie had opposing strategies to
respond to the inexorable drift towards trade war between the major powers.
Both factions are equally reactionary. The Remain faction wanted to preserve
Britain's global position within the EU trading bloc and its massive single
market. The Leave forces viewed the EU as an impediment to the UK's pursuing a
global trade and investment policy as a deregulated base for financial
speculation, centred on a strengthened alliance with the US and directed
against Germany and France.
Brexit
is, therefore, a product of global economic and social contradictions produced
by capitalism. This was underscored within months of the referendum vote by the
election of Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election, standing on his nationalist
"America First" agenda. Trump embraced Brexit as a weapon to
encourage the breakup of an EU he denounced as a "competitor," not an
ally, and as a "cartel" run in the interests of Germany.[2]
The
book details this group, including Michael Gove, Patrick Robertson, Dan Hannan
and Dominic Cumming and others who, under the influence of the right-wing
historian Norman Stone hatched the idea of a break away from Europe. As Jacob Rees-Mogg
put it so bluntly, "We on this side know each other." It is not
difficult to see why a section of the English bourgeoisie choose this group of
vacuous individuals or, as Kuper puts it, a "chumocracy" to do its
dirty work for it.
If
Johnson and his friend's behaviour during their reign has taught us anything,
this psychopathic social class has lost any right to rule. During their reign,
Johnson and his allies launched a one-sided class war. It is clear to anyone
that Johnson's reputation is now in tatters, but according to Chris Marsden, "the
more fundamental issue at stake is whether he is too damaged to navigate the
treacherous waters British imperialism has now entered. Most importantly, can
Johnson lead Britain's war drive against Russia and China, in alliance with the
United States, while carrying out the brutal offensive against the working
class needed to pay for it?"[3]
While
it is politically important that Kuper has identified the class and social base
of the Tories, it is hoped that Kuper's next book would do the same for the
Labour Leadership. It also contains a significant number of privately educated
individuals, and therefore Labour is no less a party of the super-rich than the
Conservatives.
Kuper
has done a good job is raising the question of class in Britain. The crap espoused
by Labour and Tories alike that Britain is a classless society has been badly
exposed as a lie. However, under conditions of mass death and massive levels of
social inequality, it is a dangerous act to raise the issue of class in Britain
because Britain's ruling elite sees it as "tantamount to an invitation to
working people to join a class war that has—to date—been raging in an almost
entirely one-sided fashion".
[1] https://www.politicshome.com/thehouse/article/a-onesided-selective-narrative-toby-young-reviews-chums
[2] Britain leaves the European Union:
Against nationalism, For the United Socialist States of Europe!- https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/01/31/pers-j31.html
[3] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/04/23/john-a23.html
