London Actually; or The Political World of Richard Curtis

It says something about the age we live in that the cultural colossus who bestrides it is Richard Curtis. 

Curtis is the man responsible, in whole or in part, for Blackadder, Mr Bean and The Vicar of Dibley on the small screen and Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually, Bridget Jones and Notting Hill on the big one. It was Curtis, together with Lenny Henry, who gave us Comic Relief; it was Curtis, together with Bill Nighy, who gave us Bill Nighy. 

New Zealand, where Curtis was born, has produced wonderful film-makers: Sam Neill, Sir Peter Jackson, Taika Waititi, Jane Campion. But those film-makers are an inheritance for the whole world. Curtis, by contrast, is New Zealand's special gift to us, right here in the UK. When the world looks at Britain on any kind of rectangular screen - indeed, when Britain looks at Britain - we see what Curtis shows us. That's true even when it is not Curtis himself who shows it: think of the recent Paddington films, which are clearly set in the same cinematic universe. The only other auteur I can think of who has an equally clear vision of modern Britain is Guy Ritchie, and I would be only a little surprised to find out that he is an unimaginative pseudonym for Curtis himself ("instead of Richard, how about ... Ritchie? Ritchie the Man. No, too obvious. Man Ritchie? No. ... Got it - Guy!"). Love him, actually, or loathe him, there is no getting away from Curtis.

There is plenty that can be said about Curtis' oeuvre from an artistic point of view, but I won't say it. Curtis has given a great deal of innocent enjoyment to a great number of people, and that is no small thing - it is certainly more worthy of praise than the work of a mere lawyer. His productions are funny and fun, and his heart is in the right place. But, no, I'm not here to talk about Curtis' art - I want to talk about his politics. Or rather, the politics of the place we might call Curtisland. My theory is that Curtisland presents a serious risk, and potentially a great opportunity, for the Right. (Trigger warning: this post also mentions Brexit.) 

(More below the break.)

I. CURTISLAND

From what I can see, Curtis' own politics are precisely as one would expect from a man of his age, background and occupation - a worthy left-of-centrism of a 1990s/2000s kind that, I imagine, found a happy home in Blairism. But I might be completely wrong about that and, anyway, that's just Curtis the man. What about Curtisland?

One feature that has always struck me as curious about Curtisland is how very small-c conservative it is. Indeed, Curtisland can be seen a kind of glossy advert for Good Old Conservative Britain at its Finest. Whenever we visit Curtisland, we find the most traditional features of Toryism:

- The Church of England. To be sure, the C of E is there to be laughed at in Curtisland, but only very gently, and it is also there to be respected and valued. When Mr Bean goes to church and makes a fool of himself, the joke is that Mr Bean is making a fool of himself at a solemn occasion. And then there's all those weddings and funerals. A whole series about a vicar. And so on.

- Social stratification. Curtisland is a world in which there are very rich, very posh people - and that's ok. Four Weddings and a Funeral is not a savage indictment of social division: it's a light-hearted comedy about aristocrats with no visible jobs 'bonking' each other, where the happy ending is Hugh Grant living with Andie McDowell in a vast mansion. Notting Hill, Love Actually - these films are quite open about the fact that people have different positions and statuses in society and that is not a cause for embarrasment. The Baldrick and Blackadder families are stuck in their respective social strata for all eternity (Blackadder's Christmas Carol shows how everything goes wrong when Blackadder tries to change it) - but we are not to worry about that. Indeed, there are various Baldrick-type characters liberally scattered around Curtisland (e.g. Rhys Ifans' character in Notting Hill), all comic relief lower class rustics - and it's ok to laugh at them. Prime Ministers talk like Hugh Grant and tea ladies talk like Martine McCutcheon - and that's ok too. Hugh Grant is always the hero! 

- Nice parts of west London. See: Notting Hill; the mews house that Keira Knightley gets in Love Actually.

- British history, treated affectionately rather than as a source of shame. See: Blackadder. World War I gets the entirely conventional 'lions led by donkeys' treatment, for example.

- The traditional countryside. See: Four Weddings; Vicar of Dibley.

- The Union. Scotland is not forgotten. See: Four Weddings, mention of Sean Connery as one of the British greats (see below).

- Sexual infidelity treated very seriously. See: the Alan Rickman/Emma Thompson plot-line in Love Actually, and also Colin Firth's character's initial heartbreak. And that much-parodied Lincoln/Knightley scene with the notes is meant to be about how love should not surmount the sacred walls of matrimony - adulterers are not treated kindly in Curtisland. Note also that in Four Weddings Grant proposes a life-long relationship with McDowell: a marriage sans wedding, but only because the film has had enough of weddings.

- High culture also treated very seriously. How many mass-market films pause to include recitals of Auden poems (Four Weddings) or appreciation of Chagall (Notting Hill)? You may not feel that Curtis' characters are true believers in high culture, but it is interesting to see the direction in which they genuflect. 

- Straightforward patriotism. "Britain. We may be a small country, but we're a great one, too. The country of Shakespeare, Churchill, the Beatles, Sean Connery, Harry Potter. David Beckham's right foot. David Beckham's left foot, come to that. And a friend who bullies us is no longer a friend. And since bullies only respond to strength, from now onward I will be prepared to be much stronger. And the President should be prepared for that." We all know where that speech comes from.

- Heathrow Airport. An actual bit of solid infrastructure, done up and looking nice, and presented to us as a place for joy!

No actually-existing Tory politician could stand up for all of those things without being treated as an untouchable reactionary, somewhere to the right of Jacob Rees-Mogg. But Curtis manages to carry it off: just throw in Hugh Grant or Bill Nighy (or both), a character called "Bernard", a few jokes and the public laps it up. 

II. CURTISLAND AND BREXIT

Curtisland ought to be, at the very least, comfortably right of centre. So why does it 'read as' left of centre, as we say nowadays? 

To be clear, I think we have no difficulty imagining the Notting Hill Tories - those cheery heir-to-Blair-type Cameroons happy to go into coalition with Clegg - comfortably at home in and even governing Curtisland. But there is something about Curtisland, for all its respect for the pillars of the traditional Establishment, that doesn't seem to fit with the modern British right-wing. What is it?

I suppose you could blame the social liberalism. But that's pretty mild, isn't it? The gay couple in Four Weddings were discreet, educated and charming; they wouldn't exactly scare the horses. The disabled and ethnic minority characters in Curtisland are noticeable but, just like the American characters we occasionally come across, they are noticeable precisely because they stick out a mile: they have been plonked in to make a point (or sell to a market). Curtisland features a woman priest, but only in the context of a church that allows women priests. I think that as one watches Curtisland one becomes aware that Curtis wants to push the social liberalism further, but he's careful about observing the boundaries. And the Tories have been tolerably liberal on social matters for some time now. So no, that's close but not quite right.

No, I think the real issue is Brexit. And the way we see Brexit in Curtisland is through the lens of London: Curtisland is very happy in London - and the modern, post-Brexit Right is not. 

Following Brexit, I am sorry to say, London has become a half-symbolic and half-actual enemy for the Right. Perhaps the rot set in before Brexit, but Brexit has brought it into the open. If you want to know what is wrong with the Labour Party, according to the now-dominant thinking on the Right, it's that it is run by out of touch London lawyers such as Sir Keir Starmer, Emily "Rochester" Thornberry and so on, a bunch of 'elites' whose hobbies mostly consist of sipping lattes and accusing people of racism. 

(That, I should be clear, is an odd point of view for a party whose recent leaders include a qualified barrister with a North London seat (Thatcher) and a genuine QC (Michael Howard) - and did you know that Dominic Raab is ex-Linklaters and won the Clive Parry Prize for International Law while at Cambridge? - but there it is.)

I don't think I need to tell you that Curtisland is simply chock-full of Remain-y Londoners. Mark Darcy, of Bridget Jones, is said to have been based on Sir Keir Starmer, for Pete's sake. Maybe he isn't, but it's not impossible. Of the characters in Love Actually, which ones could plausibly have voted Leave? McCutcheon's family? Maybe. Kris Marshall's character? At a pinch, and he's hardly even a proper character. Certainly not Liam Neeson, or either half of the fractured Thompson-Rickman couple. Colin Firth is even given an embarrassing Remainer-fantasy charmingly quaint corner of Europe to live in. 

In real life, Remainland is home to David Cameron, Nicholas Soames and Jeremy Clarkson, all of whom, posh or right-wing as they might be, can readily be imagined in Curtisland, perhaps at a wedding reception in a marquee filled with fairy lights and moderately ribald jokes, squeezed in between James Fleet and every British actor called Hugh. But Dominic Cummings? Michael Gove? Nigel Farage? Even, to go to other end of the political spectrum, Jeremy Corbyn? None of them fits. 

Before Brexit, Curtisland was plausibly a gentle parody of the country as a whole. After Brexit, Curtisland is a gentle parody of half the country - the half that can't say "Barnard Castle" or "number on the side of a bus" without spitting.

III.  THE TORIES IN NON-CURTISLAND

Before I come to the challenge and the opportunity that that presents, it is worth saying that there are positive features about the disconnect between Curtisland's Remainer-London and modern conservatism. 

For one thing, Curtisland has little place for social mobility. It is, in a nice enough, old-fashioned, High Tory sort of way, rather snobbish about that sort of thing. The modern British Right is comfortable with strivers - people who want to own their own homes, move up in the world and so on. But they're not welcome in Curtisland: in Curtisland, you need to go to America if you want to change your social status (think of the broad comedy of the Kris Marshall story in Love Actually). People with proper jobs (i.e., not 'fun' jobs like acting, wrapping presents or being Prime Minister) are generally idiots: think of Hugh Grant's brother in Notting Hill, Hugh Bonneville, a successful-yet-failure of a banker. (But still, in the real world, bankers all voted Remain, just like luvvies and teachers and the Prime Minister.) One finds it hard to imagine a used-car saleman or an estate agent, for example, appearing as a sympathetic character in Curtisland. 

The Brexit divide has drawn the concerted attention of the political classes to people outside London. You've heard about the Red Wall and so on, and I write this in the wake of the Hartlepool by-election result (Hartlepool!). But a lot of the discussion about these people (from the journalism so brilliantly and mercilessly parodied here) would give you the idea that the new Conservative voters are former mill-workers or miners. Not so. They are Deano and Mrs Fiat 500. 

Who? Well, I have come across a curious substack called In the Sight of the Unwise, which I recommend to you (read episodes 1, 5 and 6 on this topic). This has introduced me (and, for all I know, introduced the world) to the two most most important people/concepts in the country, namely Deano (he works in property) and Mrs Fiat 500 (she wants a modern travel system for the kids). The author tells us that The Economist even found Deano himself when they headed north: "In Cramlington, Richard, who works in sales, earns around £28,000 a year and his partner, a part-time administrative assistant, earns £12,000. That is enough for a four-bed house and two cars. “If I’d moved to London and got a graduate job, I’d probably be renting a shitty flat and I doubt I’d have two kids,” he says." As the Unwise puts it, "Deano may have cracked the cheat code of modern Britain by (largely) not living in the South East." Yup: a 4-bedroom house, two cars and two children - just try getting that in Notting Hill for £40,000 a year. 

These people, Deano and Mrs Fiat 500, do not fit into Curtisland. One feels that the Ricky Gervais of The Office might know them. Gavin and Stacey thinks it knows them. Alan Partridge is at least aware they exist. But if they ever ventured into Curtisland then they would be completely lost. Why is this little road full of cobbles and very small houses so very expensive?, they would ask. What even is a "vicar" and why is he meant to be funny? It is not a bad thing that people to whom Curtisland is a foreign country are listened to and courted by Westminster. 

IV. WHY THE TORIES NEED TO RETURN TO CURTISLAND 

Deano and Mrs Fiat 500 are, in a way, people, and it is good that the political system can find them and respond to their concerns. That is as it should be. But what about the people of Curtisland? What about the graduate job lot in their horribly cramped, childless flats, with no prospect of owning a home? Or the richer ones living off trust funds in Notting Hill? Does modern, post-Brexit conservatism have anything to say to them? Are they to be abandoned to the latte-sippers?

One worry is that if the post-Brexit Right has nothing to say to these people then it will lose something of its legitimacy, something of its claim to speak for all of that One Nation that it purports to hold so dear. And this could be costly. 

You might not like the people in Four Weddings, Notting Hill and Love Actually, but they are the people who own the country and run its cultural institutions. If the Conservative Party is to remain the party of the Establishment it cannot - it must not - alienate the commanding heights of the financial and media economy. That way lies only resentment, raving about elites, opposition to universities and education, and ultimately Trumpism (or at least Faragism). The Conservative Party cannot become declassé, like some east-of-the-Atlantic Tea Party. 

Let me take an example of what is at stake: John Lewis. John Lewis is not a political institution. (Or rather, it is an intriguing glimpse of what an alternative history full of employee-owned businesses would look like, but that's a story for another day.) John Lewis is just a British institution: sensible, respectable, decent, reliable, unshowy, etc etc. It fits into Curtisland. One great achievement of Cameron and May was to persuade the head of John Lewis to become the Mayor of the West Midlands. Now, Starmer recently visited John Lewis to look at wallpaper. It was an uncharacteristic and silly thing for him to do. So why did he do it? Because of the chance - the mere off-chance - that Boris Johnson's fiancee's interior decorating tastes could push John Lewis out of Conservative territory. Someone on his team knew the value of that prize (if not how to achieve it).

Or here's another example of the danger, very different from that of John Lewis and the West Midlands. Do you remember all those financial jobs that were going to leave London and 'flee' to Frankfurt, Amsterdam or Paris in the event of Brexit? As we all know, they didn't. The jobs stayed here and the people stayed here. It was just as the sceptics said at the time: why would they go anywhere else when they could stay here, with all of London's schools and restaurants and cultural life? That argument was right, but let's look at what it means. It means that there is a significant number of well-paid, highly-educated and cultured people from other European countries - and not just those people but their children too - living in London, and they live here still. Before 2016, they were natural Conservative voters. Some are French people who happily voted for Sarkozy (he campaigned in London) but were more keen to vote for Fillon. Some are Italians, pleased that the UK had a normal, modern, uncorrupt, pro-business right of centre party. There are Germans who would support the FDP, or Scandinavians not afraid to talk about Muslim integration, or entrepreneurial East Europeans of various kinds, unsympathetic to scroungers - the list goes on. And Brexit, I fear, might have told them that the Conservative Party doesn't like them. That's a big mistake. They are now British citizens, and their children, who swell the rolls in expensive London day schools, are British citizens too, and tomorrow those children will be some of the richest and most influential British citizens. If the Conservative Party spends the next few years telling them that it is a party for Hartlepool, not Notting Hill, then it will be doing worse than missing low-hanging fruit - it will be actively harming its long term prospects. It will be bitter and it will engender bitterness. It has done no harm to the Conservatives to be the party that welcomed (to some extent) Asians fleeing Idi Amin, and it is doing no harm to the Conservatives to be the party offering passports to Hongkongese now - but the point goes beyond the Commonwealth.

That's one risk for the Conservative Party: losing Curtisland could well mean losing important sources of support and long-term legitimacy.

Here's another, more philosophical one. The modern Right has a problem with cities. It would be frankly stupid to say that London consists of nothing more than out-of-touch metropolitans, the opposite to those genuine salt-of-the-earth types to be found in Hartlepool. Untrue and unhelpful. And yet it somehow seems tempting to many. 

There have to be cities. There have to be lots of people of lots of different kinds living in close proximity. So how do they do it? What does that look like when it's going well? I don't think that the modern Right in this country has a vision - a model - for that. But Curtisland is a ready-made solution

The fact is that Curtisland's London is rather an appealing place. Notting Hill is, both in Curtisland and real life, quite nice. Bridget Jones is not Curtis' story, so I have not discussed it much, but the look of the film, with its loving depictions of London, is very Curtis. Even the social architecture of Curtisland is appealing: Love Actually is in some ways centred around what is meant to be an ordinary primary school Nativity play, but that Nativity features schools that cater for families including the sister of the Prime Minister, living a very comfortable upper-middle class life, Liam Neeson's equally middle-class family, an American family and Martine McCutcheon character's stereotypically warm working-class family. It is a diverse yet harmonious world. 

Curtisland's London is not made from whole cloth. It's based on a real place: the London that boomed on the back of all those financial things we are now supposed to be sceptical of - the Big Bang, the eurodollar market, being the financial capital of the EU, etc etc. They brought good times to London: those restaurants and art galleries and converted warehouse developments didn't come out of nowhere.

What's the alternative to Curtisland? What's the alternative to boom-town 2000s London? There isn't one. The Conservatives need to grow up and learn to love the best city in the world in its heyday. Curtisland sells itself: here is London looking nice! Clean! Safe! With its nice houses done up in fairy lights and its department stores bustling and its hotels hosting Horse and Hound reporters and all the classes in society, from Mayfair to tea lady, living happily together! Curtisland is a model for how a small-c conservative city should look.

V. CAN THE TORIES RETURN TO CURTISLAND?

 

Something like this has happened before. Do you remember when Tony Blair carried all before him and managed to maneouvre the Conservative Party into being best known as the party of foxhunting? The Countryside Alliance? The Liberty & Livelihood March (perhaps the biggest march before the Iraq War)? Ring any bells? At that time, the Conservative Party found its only (or at least best) friends were people who considered not just London but all urban areas to be the enemy. I recall Charles Moore, of all people, having to use words from Iolanthe to remind the party that "hearts just as pure and fair may beat in Belgrave Square" - or even in Seven Dials - as in the rural air of the Cotswolds or what have you.  

That period ended when David Cameron persuaded the country, or at least the media, that the Tories were not just a bunch of rural reactionaries. As I recall, it involved hugging hoodies and huskies. 

The Tories have the chance to embrace Curtisland. They must seize the chance now, before they become ossified into hating London (and vice versa), but they can do it. Shaun Bailey, a low-profile and not-well-resourced Conservative mayoral candidate just won 35% of the first preference votes, compared with Sadiq Khan's 40%. The Conservatives won 9 London assembly seats to Labour's 11. That's not too bad, all things considered. Not bad at all.

And there's this. There's no need to replace the current leadership. The Conservatives don't need a new Cameron. They have something better already. Back in the long-forgotten days before Brexit a younger Boris Johnson, with an older romantic partner, was a popular Mayor of London. Johnson is quite possibly the last remaining major politician from the era of pre-Brexit centrism. I know I go on about the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony, but its symbolism still resonates with many in real-life Curtisland - Johnson was there then, and he's here now. 

Moreover, Johnson embodies almost everything one expects from the metropolis: swagger, optimism, joie de vivre, education, sophistication, a taste for high living, an international background and a keenness to cycle. He even seems to have the archetypal metropolitan flaws: loucheness, libertinism and a lurking suspicion, somewhere in the background, of physical menace. 

Would winning back London mean losing Hartlepool? No. Deano doesn't really care about people drinking lattes if that's what they want to do. And if Mandelson and New Labour can win Hartlepool and London then it's not impossible for Johnson to do it too. 

Johnson is no Curtisland hero. (Maybe a Guy Ritchie one?) But he knows London, and he is ludicrously well-placed to sell the Conservative Party back to London before he moves on. If he can deliver both Brexit and Curtisland - well, he'll have earned his place in the pantheon of Conservative Party leaders.