It Could Be Said Newsletter #2
Boris Means Maastricht, BLM in Football, Warner Bros Imposion, & When Jordan Peele Proved Me Wrong
We are back for our second Newsletter! Thank you for everyone whose already subscribed, and as this is a long one, let’s get straight to it:-
The Ghosts of Maastricht
We are incredibly no closer to knowing whether Britain and the European Union will agree a free trade deal than we were this time last week. What sure seems like a deal by the Joint Committee to park the issue of whether British Sausages can continue to be sold in Northern Ireland until June 2021, allowed for the trade talks to drag on, with neither side promising that the new deadline of this Sunday will prove to be final.
Both before and after his meeting with Ursula von der Leyen, Boris Johnson placed greater emphasis than he has before on his objections to the European Union’s “ratchet” clause, his term for the Europeans attempts to reserve the right to take countermeasures should our standards in key areas fall behind theirs as their regulations evolve over time. This he said was the key issue that was stopping a deal being concluded, with the Government even rejecting a proposal where the two sides could work together to raise standards.
And listening to him, I can’t help but wonder whether much of his current paranoia is not being driven by the Tory Right’s folk memory of the Major Government’s troubled relationship with the European bureaucracy after securing an Opt-Out from the Social Chapter. For you young-uns, the Social Chapter was the first attempt to harmonise working standards across Europe, and was one of the opt-outs John Major received when negotiating the Treaty that created the European Union as we know it today.
Firstly, the period where the opt-out was operational was notoriously fraught, with the European Commission repeatedly trying to bypass the opt-out by claiming directives that were arguably related to labour law, and so subject to Britain’s opt-out, were actually rooted in another competency (the European Working Time directive being introduced under the auspices of Health and Safety was a particularly fraught example). It’s easy to see how Johnson could worry that the Europeans could use the need to keep aligned on (say) subsidies to industry to force Britain to change its tax policy.
The second comparison with Maastricht, is that the opt-out on the Social Chapter only lasted as long as the Tories were in office. Not only was New Labour quickly able to cancel that opt-out after winning election in 1997, but the Tories could not revive it when they gained power in 2010. It’s easy to see how the same process plays out again, with a future Labour Government agreeing to align with the European Union by introducing higher standards or extending the areas that the “ratchet” clause covers. Their Tory successors would then be left with no choice but to either accept greater alignment with Europe than they’d want or to chaotically exit the whole deal.
If I’m right I think this both shows the way to a deal, and also illustrates the deluded mindset of Tory Eurosceptics that may lead to No Deal.
The path to the deal is that you just have to reassure Johnson that there is a mechanism for him or a future Tory Prime Minister to exit the agreement in an orderly manner. Sadly, Johnson is a bit of Sovereignty-Shagger, who approaches the constitution with the same obtuseness as somebody who thinks it actually matters whether a door is locked even if the person in the room has no intention of turning the handle. There’s a reason that Cameron tried to persuade him to back Remain through a Sovereignty Act and there’s a reason why last year he was satisfied by the EU finally allowing for the possibility that Unionists could unilaterally take Northern Ireland out of the Protocol if they won a clear anti-protocol majority. A compromise on the “ratchet” clause might be as simple as offering to build a review/exit clause into the agreement or as complicated as allowing any British Government to revert to the initially agreed text, but as long as it assures Johnson he won’t be trapping Britain into a dynamic where Labour busily aligns and Tories listlessly grumble, he’ll probably be satisified.
The deluded mindset is simpler to explain - the Tories cannot escape the European Union’s gravitational pull whilst wanting to maintain current volumes of trade with the Continent. It is not trade deals that compromise national sovereignty but trade itself - if you want to buy or sell things to foreigners you have to take their views into account. If the Tories want to create a more distant relationship with Europe, they have to create the necessary facts on the ground by working towards increased domestic consumption & production, or greater trade with overseas countries.
Sadly, it’ll take a whole other blogpost as to why the current Tory Party will never do either.
It Kicked Off
I think like a lot of sports fans of all ethnicities I’ve became increasingly suspicious of players taking the knee before matches in support of Black Lives Matter. Not only does it feel increasingly divorced from where the national debate has moved on since the summer, but it always struck me as somewhat hypocritical, because I cannot imagine what would happen to a player who dared kneel during the British National Anthem before an international. However, two stories in football this week I think proved me wrong.
Firstly on Saturday, Millwall fans booed players taking the knee before their team faced Derby County. It was clearly a resurgence of that side’s shameful history of racism, and an important reminder that gestures in support of race equality that we in our liberal bubbles may suspect have became somewhat meaningless, are actually controversial and contested. It’s a similar dynamic to LGBT+ Pride, something that people in Britain and similarly liberal places complacently assume is no big deal, but are actually an amazing achievement that people are desperately fighting to secure within the European Union, let alone further afield. Just as seeing foreign Prides make me feel slightly ashamed for having taken ours so lightly, seeing those Millwall fans boo players taking the knee reassured me that the gesture was meaningful. A fact underlined by the fact that the same players were sadly too scared to repeat it the following game.
But events on Tuesday proved that the rolling programme of gestures towards BLM may have a practical impact. The game between Paris Saint-Germain and Istanbul Basaksehir was abandoned when both teams walked off after a member of the PSG coaching staff had been sent off, after being identified by the fourth official as “the black guy”. Such othering is not just clumsily language, but calls into question why in a chaotic enough scene the referee couldn’t ascertain who needed to be sent off, the fourth official had identified Pierre Webo to be sent off. Had Webo really acted worse than everybody else, or had the fourth official treated him harshly due to the colour of his skin?
How to treat the fourth official raises difficult questions about how heavily pan-European bodies dominated by Western Europeans should police equality and diversity, but I think the reaction of the players is more interesting. Because in previous years players in “liberal” countries have refused to go off when their own teammates have been racially abused, but not only did PSG show solidarity with their assistant coach, but their opponents showed solidary with them. I don’t think it’s unfair to assume that this wouldn’t have happened a year ago.
So maybe the key thing about taking the knee isn’t that it might lead to concrete change but it radicalises players. For Black and Asian players, everyone making a performative declaration in favour of race equality gives them greater confidence to argue against injustice, and for White players, it means they’ve nailed their trousers to the mast, in such a public way, they can’t climb down when asked to support their non-white colleagues. If that dynamic lasts, it’ll create its own momentum for change, no matter what football associations or UEFA think.
Video Killed The Radio Star
As promised last week I am going to return to the issue of releasing movies onto streaming services. I think for once we’ve had a rare note of reality brought into the debate by production companies, directors, and actors talking about their economic objections to Warner Bros premiering their new films on HBO Max at the same time as they enter Movie Theatres.
But rather than get into the weeds about why I’m on Team Nolan (he’s pale and English enough to be a sexy vampire) I want to ask a higher level question - why was there never a Direct-to-Video or TV Movie Blockbuster? Producing movies for the home market is not a new idea, but until the 2010s they were clearly pegged as an inferior product. And not unfairly so either - they had lesser production values, lacked starpower, etc.
The reason that even good non-theatrical movies seem cheap is that they were cheap. Anything that can be shown in someone’s home on day of release, means you switch from a per person fee to a per household fee, and also from a per screening fee to a one-off payment. And you also get your initial revenue in one go, whereas theatrical releases get the cinema box office, pay-tv rights and home entertainment rights. So it made perfect sense that films not release in the cinema would be cheaply produced, because there were structural issues as to why they would be earn less revenue.
Those structural issues have not gone away. If you can’t charge per person watching the film, nor for every time someone watches the film, you are losing money compared to the current model. I’ve used this example before, but I ended up paying to see Rogue One three times in cinemas and once for my stepson to see it. We also rented it on Amazon Prime. That’s around £60 of expenditure for a product, that if Disney had used the HBO MAX model, I would’ve gotten for around £12. And that’s before you consider whether it makes it easier for friends of mine to watch the film with me than paying it themselves. In short, it’s always more lucrative to show a film in cinemas first rather than release direct to consumers.
And of course the streaming model brings a new variable into play which is piracy. People ripping off movies is something that has always existed but its always been tempered by the fact that most people don’t want to watch a low-quality version of a film. Hence why business picks up on sites like Pirate Bay when a film gets released on Disc or a Streaming Service, as people who won’t watch a camcorder captured bootleg suddenly start sniffing around.
This is why the HBO MAX of releasing to a US-only streaming service for one month is the worst of all worlds; they’re openly slitting the throat of American cinemas whilst pretending they can still have a healthy overseas box office and strong sales when its released on Disc and Digital Download. But the minute a film is shown on HBO Max, its as available as the sum of someone’s internet connection and moral integrity. And if Warner Bros are going to openly screw filmmakers and cinemas out of the money, its hard to expect viewers to exercise self-restraint.
Song of the Week
I read Ian Leslie’s lovely tribute to Paul McCartney this week, which reminded me when I sang songs to my son whilst trying to soothe him when he was a baby. HELP! and Yesterday were particular favourites. However the song of the week is one that I used to sing much to his delight, only to have to drop it after I watched Get Out. In fairness to my (Black Zimbabwean) ex-wife, she did not gloat too much about being proven right that the song was creepy.