At last! Tidings of comfort and joy! That’s because the accident-prone government of Rishi Sunak has actually found a problem it can solve. Let the bells ring out!
Of course, it’s not a real problem most of us would recognise. It’s not – for example – solving child poverty, the unaffordability of decent housing, crippling mortgage rates or the post-Brexit Stormont stalemate. Nor has the UK government actually deported anyone to Rwanda or signed a trade deal with the United States, or brought peace to the Middle East or even improved the UK’s relationship with the European Union.
But now – thanks to a Sunak government in-depth “review” of Brexit – you and I and millions of others will be able to buy prosecco and champagne in pint bottles. I know, I know! It’s an amazing breakthrough. At a stroke Rishi Sunak will end the misery of millions for whom a whole bottle of Cava or fizz is too much.
The extraordinary benefits of being able to buy a pint of sparkling wine come as a survey of British public opinion on the idea of returning to the old imperial British weights and measures shows that 98.7% of those who answered wish to retain the UK’s metric measurements. These have been in use in the UK since 1974. You would therefore need to be aged 60-ish to remember the old system. And according to the UK Metric Association: “Metric is a British invention, having started with John Wilkins in 1688 while Imperial is not. After all, the other name for Imperial is Avoirdupois.”
But it’s worth thinking for a moment why these politics-of-distraction stories about ending metrication or pints of champagne have been – as it were – bubbling along for so many years.
Jacob Rees-Mogg was a strong advocate of a return to Imperial measures, but Rees-Mogg was (memorably) described in the German magazine Die Zeit as “das lebendes Fossil” (the living fossil).
In talking of a “return” to the Imperial system, Rees-Mogg did not mention that no country in the world – not one – has retained the old British weights and measures. Americans do speak of gallons – but a US gallon is 3.785 litres. The old British imperial gallon is 4.546 litres. American AR-15 assault rifles (Armalites) fire ammunition calibrated not in inches, but millimetres (5.56×45mm), although Americans spell it ‘millimeters’.
This whole Rees-Mogg exercise in backward-looking British government futility is however revealing. And what it reveals is that while a section of the British public lives in a world of nostalgia, that section is limited and in retreat.
Brexit was part of that peak nostalgia. It was the idea that the UK could miraculously ”take back control” in an inter-connected world and restore something that had supposedly been lost.
But when confronted with what Brexit means in reality, the vast majority of the public now sees it as a failure. And so instead of taking things back, perhaps 2024 could be a year of optimism about going forward.
The Boris Johnson era was one of weaponised nostalgia. Johnson, like Rees-Mogg, deliberately cultivated the Eton and Oxford antiquated toff image. Both used words and phrases you might expect in the English Just William stories of the 1920s, about a boy who was “always getting into scrapes”.
When confronted with what Brexit means in reality, the vast majority of the public now sees it as a failure. And so instead of taking things back, perhaps 2024 could be a year of optimism about going forward
Unbelievably, even in the 21st century as a newspaper and magazine columnist, Johnson made a career out of weaponising nostalgia. In 2002 The Spectator published a column of his claiming that “Africa is a mess, but we can’t blame colonialism”. Johnson wrote: “It is just not convincing… to blame Africa’s problems on the ‘lines on the map’, the arbitrary boundary-making of the men in sola topis.” (A sola topi was a pith helmet of the sort worn in India.) Africa, he continued, “is not a blot upon our conscience. The problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more…”
Seriously? Yes, seriously. What Johnson’s bizarre post-imperial longing, the metric survey and the pints of champagne nonsense suggest is that perhaps the people of the United Kingdom are mostly happy to celebrate the past, but don’t want to live there.
On the brink of an election year, maybe – just maybe – British voters might be persuaded to think more about the future. It’s about time.
:: Gavin Esler is author most recently of Britain is Better than This.