The Roman Empire, the reign of Henry VIII, and the two World
Wars of the 20th Century. Periods of history that have long intrigued and
inspired historians and academics, novelists and playwrights. In Britain, if
nowhere else, the 1939-45 conflict continues to affect our language, and dare I
say, our relationship with the rest of Europe. The Battle of Britain, Dunkirk,
the D-Day Landings and the Blitz spirit all get used as metaphors for football
matches, the weather, and increasingly, Brexit. I imagine that in time, Brexit
itself - from the day that David Cameron announced the referendum in 2015 to
whenever Britain leaves the EU - will become a subject and a period that
academics will revisit and about which they will write scholarly tomes analysing
its causes and effects. And no doubt, there will plenty of fiction that uses
Brexit as its premise.
If Brexit were a work of fiction I believe that many readers
would describe the characters on the British side of the story as too farfetched[1].
There is Nigel Farage, the privately educated former commodities trader who is
unable to get elected to any Parliament other than the one he professes to
despise, a self-styled 'man of the people' who rails against a political elite of
which, having been an MEP since 1999, he is a long-established part. Real-life Farage is very much a Marmite figure, and audiences would be equally ambivalent about a fictional version. Good guy, or a bad guy? You could
make the case for either.
 |
Next up, the New York-born Alexander Boris de Pfeffel
Johnson. One can imagine an editor, on reading a first draft, demanding that
'de Pfeffel' go as it is an implausible name - ludicrous even - albeit it is a
real one, with roots in Germany, and from which family Johnson is descended.
Johnson has cultivated the persona of an amiable buffoon over the years, which
would be all very well if it cloaked a razor-sharp intellect and a proven track
record of success, but having been sacked from The Times for making up a quote,
he admitted that when working for The Daily Telegraph in Brussels he invented
negative stories about the EU. As Mayor of London, he spent over £50million on a
bridge that got no further than the design stage, bought three unusable water
cannons that were scrapped at a loss of £300,000 and introduced an updated and
much-derided Routemaster bus to London's streets. He may talk a good game, but
his failures speak even louder.[2]
And then comes Mogg. Jacob Rees-Mogg is beyond parody,
impossible to lampoon. Here is a man who dresses like an extra from a Victorian
melodrama, peppers his speech with Latin, and who has been dubbed "the Honourable
Member for the 18th century." Rees-Mogg has been described as "the
stupid kind of Tory’s idea of what a clever kind of Tory ought to sound like."
Superficially, he appears an intellectual, a man of gravitas, although how much
of this is mere affectation is moot. His recent book, The Victorians: Twelve Titans who Forged Britain has been described as "12 turgid
essays" and "mindless incoherent drivel." It is perhaps the only
book I have seen reviewed on Amazon where there are more one-star reviews than
all the others put together. He is, by all accounts, a learned student of
parliamentary history, which will no doubt be of value in the coming weeks and
months as the byzantine rules of engagement in parliamentary debate and
procedure take on great importance in how Brexit is implemented, but of little
practical value in helping the populace deal with the fall-out from it.
Rees-Mogg's recent appointment as Leader of the House of
Commons coincided with his issuing a set of rules on style to be used by his
staff. Were I working in his office I fear that I would frequently fall foul of
his rules vis a vis banned words and
phrases as most feature in my normal vocabulary. How, for example, he expects his
staff to refer to the Equal Opportunity Act of 2010 when 'equal' is one of his
banned words, I cannot imagine. I can, however, understand why 'lot' and 'very' may be
irritants, these can be lazy variants substituted for specific, but perhaps unknown, amounts or quantities.
 |
| What's the point in satire when real-life surpasses it? |
A requirement to use double spacing after full stops (not
fullstops) might have made sense in the days of manual typewriters but has
little value today. Few writers of style guides favour a double space; most
agree it makes writing look dated - which may be exactly what Rees-Mogg is trying
to achieve.
Preferences on style and the use of certain words may be harmless
matters of taste, but the rule that imperial measures should be used is somewhat
unfathomable. I just checked my fridge and cupboards, and the only item that has
an imperial measure is a bottle of milk, where both imperial and metric
measures are shown. Will Rees-Mogg's younger staff - to whom some imperial measures
may be a complete mystery - be expected to use conversion tables to refer to
items measured in solely metric weights, volumes or distances by their imperial
equivalents? Imagine the hilarity, not to say contempt, in another government
department (for instance the Department for Transport) receiving a missive from
Rees-Mogg quoting the price of petrol as being £5.72 per gallon instead of
£1.26 per litre. Or why not go the whole hog, revert to pounds, shillings and
pence, and call it £5.14s.5d per gallon?
Britain has long been
a country in which imperial and metric measures have caused controversy -
remember The Metric Martyrs? - and both systems sit in uneasy juxtaposition. We
measure distances in miles, and yards... until we get below three feet, when
suddenly everything is metric. We dispense beer and milk in pints, but all
other liquids in litres, including petrol, for which we quote fuel consumption
in miles per gallon. Rees- Mogg might be
more comfortable in a world of imperial measures, but, like pounds, shillings
and pence, it is a bygone age. Except that Britain has actually been going
metric since the 1800s, with the introduction in 1849 of the florin (one-tenth
of a pound) - the first step towards decimal currency - and the Weights and Measures (Metric System) Act
of 1864, which permitted the use of metric measures for ‘contracts and dealings.’
 |
| One of the Metric Martyrs. Personally, I buy bananas by number not weight anyway. |
As I have my own quirks and foibles about the English
language, it might be a bit rich of me to question Rees-Mogg's rules, except my
quirks and foibles apply to me and me alone. It would be beyond arrogant of me
to expect other people to conform to them. I agree with David Mitchell, who
suggested in an article in The Guardian that Rees-Mogg is entitled to enforce
these rules if they apply to letters written in his name, but unreasonable
otherwise. Quite how Rees-Mogg would react to letters written by members of the
public - or, heaven forbid, other departments within Government - that do not
conform to his particular standards would probably be a joy to behold. One
imagines - hopefully - that he would regard them as unacceptable and a
disappointment and, should they lack double spaces after full stops, very much not
fit for purpose.
[1]
Aside from Jean-Claude Juncker, who has on occasion been accused of being drunk
in charge of a continent, the EU officials who have been engaged with Brexit
seem to be unremarkable in character; staid and bland even.
[2]
Even the successful public bike hire scheme in London, sometimes dubbed 'Boris
Bikes' was actually the idea of his predecessor, Ken Livingstone.
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