Neither a cavalier nor a roundhead be
The English Civil War is tricky to transpose to modern politics
Most publics can keep one war in their heads at any one time – if you’re lucky. For the British this is currently the Second World War, which contains a comically implausible villain, a hero that looks like a baby, and enough atrocities to keep both the jingos and the oikophobes content.
Unsurprisingly, not everyone celebrates this monopoly of the British mind. Some bloke called Godwin thinks we may be overdoing it on the Hitler analogies, for one. And many history nerds would also prefer that we pay more attention to the English Civil War1.
One symptom of this is the desire to categorise modern politics in terms of cavaliers and roundheads, to name the respective royalist and parliamentarian sides in the war.
For the uninitiated, cavaliers are the fun ones: top banter, drinking, shagging, general revelry, keen on a bit of pomp, would cheat on their spouses, luscious locks, outrageous moustaches. Roundheads are the serious siblings: earnest, devout, good work ethic, would vote to ban Christmas, 17th century minimalists, at risk of being labelled killjoys by neoliberal think tanks.
Astute readers will have noticed soon-to-be-former prime minister Boris Johnson is only one moustache away from the full cavalier, alongside a side-hustle impersonating Flashheart from Blackadder. His predecessor Theresa May is a reasonable fit for the roundhead opposition, although she has yet to reveal plans to behead any monarchs.
The theory can also be extended back to all post-war prime ministers. GB News’ Tom Harwood – who previously advocated for castrating sex offenders – gives the gist of the argument with his own jock vs nerd analogy, saying that prime ministers swing back and forth between the two.
The trouble, as outlined by the nerds in the comments, is that the analogy is bollocks. If you squint you can pretend that politicians alternate between each stereotype, but few examples are clearcut. Johnson, who in personality terms is a cavalier, attempted regicide against May before taking office – clear roundhead behaviour.
Such debates can be defended as a bit of fun (the sort of things that roundheads can’t understand). But they point to a wider problem with historical understanding. The lines of inheritance in political traditions are rarely neat enough that one can talk in terms of an ongoing battle between cavalier and roundhead, nor most other examples.
This is mainly because the issues that caused the civil war have either been settled or can’t be transposed onto modern politics. Questions might linger over religious toleration, monarchical power and even parliamentary sovereignty, but they tend to be the domain of fringe activists.
What genuine lineages exist are also confuddled by the fact that the two sides in British politics often trade stances, even on major policies. Labour owned Euroscepticism not so long ago, and in recent memory conservatives were the ones pushing blasphemy laws.
And even the cavaliers and roundheads don’t fit their own stereotypes. For all their chill vibes, the cavaliers were defending the divine right of kings, which even at the time was a tad reactionary. Oliver Cromwell, the poster boy for puritan politics, enjoyed a bawdy joke as much as the latest cancelled comedian.
Hair lengths also varied within both sides, who were similarly a mess of different religious and political opinions. Cromwell became a figurehead partly because he could keep the army’s religious and democratic instincts that made the posh roundheads nervous in check.
It is only in defying this easy categorisation that the roundheads and cavaliers much represent modern politics. And in both sides considering each other devils, of course.
Look back in anger. A perceptive column from the New Statesman’s Philip Collins – Tony Blair’s former speechwriter, not the drummer – raises that old spectre of Brexit. And even though he wants to open discussions of us moving back into the club, I largely agree with his observations.
First, it makes little sense politically for the Conservatives or Labour to discuss Brexit. There remains (ha!) a significant constituency of rejoiners online, as can be seen in the retweets of AC Grayling. But for the Tories it is undoubtedly their Brexit, warts and all, while for Labour there is ample potential to alienate leave voters by discussing it.
The extremism of hardcore Brexiteers and radical remainers has also made politicians and public alike reluctant to reopen the question. “A lot more time will have to pass before anyone can change their mind,” as Collins says.
More than that, while the remain campaign’s warnings of economic damage have proven correct, the cataclysmic language used to describe it was a strategic error.
For the country at large Brexit made trade a bit harder. On a large enough scale that is significant, but it eludes easy demonstration – hence much being made of queues at passport controls in Dover and various airports. The arrival of Covid-19 and the supply chain crisis has further obscured matters.
All that said, Collins gets to the nub in the second paragraph. “If you believe power should reside in Britain then it doesn’t much matter what the practical consequences are.”
He uses this to snark about those Dover queues, but ultimately which authority you will submit to isn’t that amenable to practical considerations. For committed leavers and remainers this was always the point, deal or no deal.
You don’t have to be posh. Some weeks ago I complained about the kind of thoughtless criticism of rightwingers – and Conservatives in particular – that you get on the left. Of a similar theme is the assumption that privileged men are uniquely self-obsessed, a charge that is thrown like confetti.
The latest example I’ve spotted is from Jonn Elledge, a former New Statesman journalist and editor of the excellent and now-defunct CityMetric, which wrote a lot of good stuff about trains. His newsletter is also pretty good, apart from this bit:
Rishi Sunak is a man who cannot imagine what it is not to be Rishi Sunak, and, worse, does not even realise it.
Sunak is ambitious, for sure, and has behaved cynically in backing and then defenestrating Boris Johnson. But I can’t see how Elledge justifies this comment. It might be applicable to Johnson, but then Johnson is a unique personality, and given his treatment of colleagues and lovers is clearly callous.
More broadly, I’m sceptical that privileged men are especially unempathetic. I read a study some time ago that suggested rich people are colder to others as a result of not needing to rely on them, but the expensively educated should be more aware than most that others live differently from them, sometimes especially so.
Possibly I’m just wearied by the ubiquitous attacks against men with my “poncy” education, to use Elledge’s description, and a tad defensive. But I hold no special affection for private education, which I tend not to think worth the money.
Also called the British Civil War and more poetically the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, which has pleasing connotations of a Mexican stand-off.