[John Whitworth]

The Michael Farfrae effect, for those of you who have never read The Mayor of Casterbridge is the passionate Scots who will do anything for their country but live in it. Sean Connery comes at once to mind and the actor Alan Cummings And James Boswell of course, as Johnson often remarked.

Te Polls could be wrong, but not THAT wrong.

[Nigel Mace]

The figures I've given, John, are assuming that the current polls are correct. As to Michael Farfrae, not Hardy's cleverest name - though that was something at which he generally excelled, what on earth do you mean to suggest? Unlike you, I live here and know my country well. (Oh, and you may not yet have heard, but the latest debate in Shetland on secession was against the proposal by 24 to 1.)

[Clive Watkins]

As a minor sidelight on the debate on this thread springing from the forthcoming General Election in the UK, here is the first paragraph of an essay of mine (published in Able Muse in 2008) about the poet, Edward Thomas (1878 – 1917). Thomas was killed in the fighting at Arras. Identity-politics can seem disarmingly simple, but is – as Thomas, who did not know the term, seems to have realized – often highly complex. (In my father’s family I have a Welsh grandfather and, in my father’s mother’s family, a Welsh great-great-grandfather. I have lived only in England, for much of my life in Yorkshire, where, in fact, I was born. I feel, mostly, British and European. In one sense, I am a Yorkshireman, British or European only by accident.)

Clive Watkins

from The Elusive Persistence of Edward Thomas

In his 1966 collection American Scenes and Other Poems, the British poet Charles Tomlinson (1927 – 1915) has an engaging poem entitled “Mr. Brodsky”, in which he tells how he “had heard / before, of an / American who would have preferred / to be an Indian; / but not / until Mr. Brodsky, of one / whose professed and long / pondered-on passion / was to become a Scot”. On a visit to Tomlinson’s house, Mr. Brodsky stands in his “neo-New Mexican parlour” and plays his bagpipes, “lost in the gorse / and heather or whatever / six thousand / miles and more / from the infection’s source”. No doubt many of us have met people like Mr. Brodsky. The question of what it means to be Scottish – or Welsh or (Northern) Irish – has gained urgency since the devolution of aspects of government to Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast in recent years. The concept of “Englishness” is particularly vexed. One recalls John Major’s vision, in 1993, of a Britain fixed beyond change, a “country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pool fillers and, as George Orwell said, ‘old maids bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist’”. Major’s vexed and highly selective idea of “England” has swallowed up the equally vexed idea of “Britain”. Major misquotes Orwell here and takes him out of context, but Orwell in 1941 was well aware of such creative obfuscations. So, long before, was Edward Thomas, who observed in 1909, “What with Great Britain, the British Empire, Britons, Britishers, and the English-speaking world, the choice offered to whomsoever would be patriotic is embarrassing” (The South Country).

[John Whitworth]

Nigel, we are not talking about you and me, both Scots (You live there. I don't). We are talking about those Scots who are strong nationalists, but live far, far way, like those I mentioned.

[Ann Drysdale]

The reason the Michael Farfrae effect is not widely known is probably because the fellow's name was Donald.

The Michael in the novel was Henchard, the actual Mayor of Casterbridge.

[Mark McDonnell]

John, I don't often get involved in these debates but that's a daft argument. Sean Connery and Alan Cumming are actors who have moved to the US for the sake of their chosen career. As have literally thousands of English actors. They didn't leave Scotland because of anything inherently awful about the place. And the fact they are strong nationalists, while many of their English ex-pat counterparts are more blasé about their country of origin, speaks, if anything, positively about the country surely?

[John Whitworth]

Too true, Ann. I mixed the names up.

Mark, you need to read what I said again. Moving to the USA may be a good career move but it doesn't alter what I sad. Read it again slowly. And no it doesn't speak more positively. It's just luvvie speak.

No that it matters. Mrs May will win even more easily because her opponents are all political idiots. The Lib Dem, Farron, is possibly most idiotic of all. He offers the British a second referendum which nobody wants. He also managed to insult all gays and also many Christians at the same time. Still, he has the Liberal Atheist vote, that's the ex Deputy PM, remember him? Nick Clegg, the old Westminster boy. Westminster is a very expensive school. Our own Nicholas Stone was there but recently.

Boris Johnson was at Eton, which is even more expensive, but he got a scholarship, or whatever they call it. Cameron didn't because his family are filthy rich. Mrs May, whse father was a vicar, is relatively poor, like Mrs Thatcher. her husband has money, as Denis Thatcher did, money they made themselves.

I don't think the Labour leader, the present one, Corbyn, not the odious Blair, has any family money.

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

The marriage of speed and nearsightedness in a age of cliffs and consequences. Too bad we are all so tied together or there might be some solace in the reaping.

[John Whitworth]

Gawd knows what you mean by that, Andrew. It's way above my head. Who is going to win, do you think, if that isn't too prosaically bald a question?

Did you get the Trump one right? Or the Brexit referendum, if you ever bothered your pretty head about that?

They both surprised me, I confess, though both were what I wanted. This present thingy is unlikely to do so..

[Jim Moonan]

Andrew: "The marriage of speed and nearsightedness in a age of cliffs and consequences."

The perfect storm as we say in these parts. I like yours better.


John: "Who is going to win, do you think?"

That's not the right question. The right question (and answer) is contained within Andrew's vision.

"What have we got to lose?" is the crucial question (and when I say "we" I'm indicating that the world is, was and always will be one place, one house. We've just got to get used to it. We've only moved in a little while ago).