I don’t think it was that extreme. Nancy (oldest and died youngest) and Jessica were always anti-fascist, Diana, Unity and brother Thomas were open fascists, Pamela was a politically quiet but apparently virulent anti-semite. The youngest, Deborah “the Duchess”, was apparently uninterested in politics but claims to have been unimpressed with Hitler (whom she met once as a teenager and she spoke no German anyway - her German-speaking, Hitler-loving sister dominated the conversation) and her husband was an early backer of the SDP, so probably mildly centrist in a rich-nobleman-conservative sort of way. Deborah has been claimed to have been the last person to die that had verifiably personally met Hitler.
I’d score that is four fascists/bigots, two anti-fascists and one relatively apolitical rich noblewoman.
Okay, not quite as bad as I framed it, but still … not … impressive. Of course, I don’t know how many of my forebears in the 1930s were fascist sympathisers, because no one wrote about them … (Now that I think about it, many of them would likely have been fans of Shubhash Chandra Bose, soooooo …)
IIRC, it was her character “Uncle Matthew”, who bore more than a passing resemblance to her father. The Pursuit of Love incorporates many sayings and doings of her family.
Jessica, btw, identified as a Communist (initially, maybe, to spite her older fascist sisters), and remained an active member of the Party, with her American second husband, all through the 40s and 50s. Apparently, she was in the habit of describing her colleagues to Deborah as “active in” this campaign or that, and for a sisterly tease Deborah sent her the official photo of her and husband in their robes for the 1953 Coronation, looking rigidly stony-faced, with the inscription “Andrew and I being active”.
While the political culture in the UK regards Urooe with suspicion and tends towards pulling up the drawbridge to Europe and looking outwards to the rest of the world for trade. The states of Continental Europe are prisoners of their history with few defences against powerful states creating great land armies and invading and annexing and generally terrorising other states.
The twentieth century saw many European countries experience occupation and oppression. The EU project has a political objective to prevent that from happening again by tying the economies together by integrating their economies.
This has been successful, but it had little relevance to the UK except to provide access to a large single market. The EU political objective was articulated as towards ‘ever greater union’ - a federal structure that would require states to give up some of their sovereignty. This is not a consensus and some states with nationalist parties such as Poland and Hungary strongly resist this. Their objections have been somewhat undermined by Putin’s predations in Ukraine bring back the worry that they may be the next target.
The UK, safely offshore and at the other end of Europe, has been vociferous and practical in its support of Ukraine. The big threat is not a federal Europe but an aggressively expansionist Russia, once again trying to dominate half of Europe. This had encouraged more countries to want to join the EU and NATO. This may lead to a change in attitude in the UK towards the EU. The bigger players in the EU have also changed their attitude towards Russia. Binding Russia to the EU economy by being a valued customer of its abundant Oil and Gas resources is now seen as a strategic mistake.
The invasion of Ukraine has had a dramatic effect on the geopolitics of Europe.
I hope to see the UK repair its relationship with the EU. But I doubt whether the Conservative party are capable of doing this. But a future Labour government might do this. Not rejoining, but nonetheless seeking a closer relationship in trade and many other areas.
Britain’s traditional strategy with regard to Europe has been to maintain the balance of power, or redress it when it became unbalanced, normally by financing (military) coalitions. If one coalition was defeated, it was always possible to assemble another, rather than directly fielding armies. Distrust of standing armies, and recognition that the country’s security rested on a strong navy to keep an enemy out, rather than a large army to turn him out once he had got ashore, were a part of this. As Churchill said, “either we had command of the sea, or we did not. If we had it, we wanted fewer soldiers. If we had it not, we wanted more ships.”
By supporting the widening of the EU, Britain and particularly Margaret Thatcher, hoped to avoid the deepening of the EU. This can now been seen as a mistake, in the narrow sense that it did not achieve its object.
The attraction of the wide EU single market for goods and services was not enough for Conservatives to compensate for the potential deepening of a trade treaty organisation into something that resembles a federal superstate.
This was a mistake, they should have fought their corner within the EU like Thatcher. They could have made alliances with Poland and other states that are concerned about the erosion of their national sovereignty. The EU could have given Cameron some concession to persuade his party engagement was better than Brexit.
These nuances were lost on the electorate who have only the vaguest idea of how international trade works.
Forty years of relying on the EU to negotiate trade deals and after Brexit that became a UK responsibility. And who did we have leading the charge around the world negotiating trade deals? One Liz Truss. Who made much of her great deals though on closer examination they amounted to very little. A performance she was to repeat as Prime Minister.
Separate sources have described finding similar deposits in the offices at No 10 Downing Street after two lockdown parties held when Boris Johnson was prime minister.
I don’t for a moment think Truss would be up to that sort of hanky panky (she couldn’t find her own way out of her own press conference, remember). The teenage ideologues who think they own the place because they’re tagging along on the leader’s coat-tails- they’re another matter.
However, it was almost a revelationary explanation about the governments of Johnson and Truss that a large amount of decisions were made on coke. From my understanding, it’s a drug which fills you with massive confidence in your abilities with little basis, throwing out simple solutions to complex problems, then blaming everyone else when it all inevitably goes wrong. That reads like government strategy 19- late 22.
It’s an explanation from their behaviour rather than proof.
Though Gove acting like a coked up drunk on a Scottish dancefloor at some point, was it last year, gave a big push in that way. Johnson is also supposed to be a massive lush too, and coke might explain his constant financial ruin much more so than just alcohol.
Though with Rees-Mogg, I’d say that it was more mogadon and LSD to explain the words which come out of his mouth, heroin as well, given his frame being like a car showroom tube man.
Wait, Dorries was smashed most of the time, but could form words, nonsense as they are, sounds like coke. What other drug could explain Mendicant, sorry, Fabricants hair?
Truss, Raab, Patel, Jenrick, Hancock, Leadson, Coffey, Williamsom, Schapps, Kwarteng, Eustice, Frost, Braverman, shit it’s hard to see them not being cokeheads given the way they behaved.