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Angus Take House

Worst Take of the Week: War with Ireland vs 'Labour MPs Should Wear Yellow Stars'

Big week, this one.
Photo: Lensw0rld / Alamy Stock Photo

Welcome to Angus Take House – a weekly column in which I will be pitting two of the wildest takes the world's great thinkers have rustled up against each other. This is your one-stop shop for the meatiest verdicts and saltiest angles on the world's happenings. Go and grab a napkin – these juicy hot takes are fresh from the griddle.

TAKE #1:

What's the story? Brexit worst-case-scenario talk escalated this week as Irish border talk continued to splutter, and the government admitted they were stockpiling emergency rations… just in case.
Reasonable Take: An ashen-faced silence that slowly turns into a resolute and unshakable illness.
SPAM: LET'S GO TO WAR WITH IRELAND!!

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It feels like we're reaching an apotheosis of this whole Brexit thing at the moment. According to YouGov, more people support a referendum on the final deal than don't, for the first time since 2016. On the other hand, UKIP membership has surged 15 percent in the last month. It feels like either side is doubling down: that the grey, slushy, "let's see what happens" middle ground is being parted for absolutists on either side. No-deal plans are being rolled out in the city, calls for another vote are growing in volume and quantity – oh, and a man called Trevor wants us to go to war with Ireland.

That’s right. This week, on LBC (where else) a man called Trevor phoned in to deliver some hard and fast real talk about the Irish border situation. "It's being made complicated…" he lamented. "All we have to do is say to the EU: 'We're not going to put a hard border there, if you want one, you do it.'" Fed up of the Irish being so goddamn extra, Trevor implored the UK to stand up for itself for once! "At the end of the day, they are going to lose more than we will!" he added. What a cool vibe.

Host Clive Bull was less convinced by his "let's just knock it on the head" approach, repeating variations on the words "it's not that simple, though" until big Trev could take no more and… declared war on Ireland. "We should turn around to Southern Ireland, say, 'So what you're saying, then, that if we have a hard border, you want to go to war." When pressed on this suggestion, he repeated the Brexit-voters carpe diem: "At The End Of The Day We Voted To Leave."

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There have been some bad Brexit takes, particularly those with a historical angle, but this one marks a new low. It speaks to English attitudes towards Ireland that Trevor has managed to contort an issue of Britain's making into the fault of the Irish – a republic that's been battered by the UK for centuries on and off, yet clearly, in Trevor's eyes, still hasn’t learnt its lesson.

But maybe it's not all that bad. If the tweets of Economist writer Jeremy Cliffe are anything to go by, Brexit is actually the realisation of the big war we all secretly yearn for anyway. In a tweet that earned quite a lot of disagreement, he theorised that "Britons (innate make-doers) were never happier than during WWII and crave the need to Keep Calm And Carry On," asking: "Is hurtling towards a beans-hoarding, mustn't-grumble, darn-yer-socks sort of a no deal Brexit some sort of nation-level wish fulfilment?"

Plenty of people pointed out that, no, Britons didn't spend the Blitz leant on pianos in the back-rooms of pubs singing show-tunes while bombs rocked plaster from the ceiling. Shops were looted, morale was low, unemployment high, people were charged money to sleep on the tube at night. All that’s left of it now, though, is the lingering conviction that "Brits do best when our backs are against the wall": the fantasy that a life spent eating chlorinated chicken, sitting in hot lorries in Dover for weeks at a time and going to war with Ireland is what everybody really wants.

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TAKE #2:

What's the story? Labour's failure to properly address its ongoing anti-semitism saga.
Reasonable Take: Regardless of being pro or anti-Corbyn, winning back the trust of Jewish Labour party members is the main thing….
Rotten Egg: …by doing Holocaust cosplay?

More war nostalgia here, of a slightly darker leaning. As Labour have continued to be incapable of solving an unfolding anti-semitism problem that is itself a complex, building snowball of prejudice, inaction and political point-scoring, Angela Epstein at the Telegraph has had: An Idea. Writing in the Telegraph, she suggested:

"For example, just as many adopt a ribbon or wristband to ally themselves with certain causes, it’s time for Labour MPs who oppose both anti-Semitism and their leader to wear some kind of insignia too. After all, so legend goes, when the Nazis ordered the Jews of Denmark to wear the yellow star during the Second World War, the king himself was willing to adopt the armbands as a mark of unequivocal opposition. So why not wear a yellow star today to symbolise communal objection to the leader?"

Angela! Fucking hell!

Look, I'm absolutely not going to align myself with the people who are trying to characterise this whole saga as some sort of media-coordinated smear on Corbyn, as plenty of people have. Fortunately, though, when the take is this bad you don't have to get dragged into taking sides. Put simply, the suggestion that Labour party MPs wear yellow stars – as in, you know, like Jews were forced to during the Holocaust – in order to teach Corbyn a lesson is so unbelievably offensive it transcends every other voice in the room, fizzing above them like a wasp that the room is united in trying to swat.

Angela goes on to say, "Imagine, if you will, the glare of an anti-Corbyn pin constantly glinting from the lapels of Newsnight interviewees and Question Time panellists," concluding her piece with the conviction that this gesture would give her community reason to hope again. Which is… I don’t know… have you checked with them? Are you sure everyone is up for this, Angela? It just feels a bit much, is all. Angela? Angela??? She’s hung up.

In a way, the sad existence of this take goes to show just how badly the Labour Party leadership have screwed up their response to people's concerns. If assurances had been issued, and confident action taken immediately, there wouldn’t be the column space for someone to make a suggestion as wild as this one. I’d be very surprised if comfort was actually provided by Hilary Benn going on This Week with an Auschwitz tie-pin, but the conversation has only been able to grow to this feverish point in the absence of anything decisive from Corbyn's office.

PRIME CUT: War with Ireland or Labour MPs should wear yellow stars? Hell of a week. I’m going to take the coward’s way out and call it… a draw!

@a_n_g_u_s