Have we reached the apex of national division? Or do these terrible chasms open up so fast that, as you hurl yourself towards the next, you forget the last – like an 80s video game? Half the country is wondering how much public contempt a government can survive before it perishes; the other half is rejoicing over a return to imperial measurements – and not a moment too soon. How else could the Queen go gladly into her platinum jubilee, if she weren’t confident of a return to the standards of [checks Wikipedia] 1826, a full 100 years before her birth? Where else would we reasonably find a spirit of national optimism and modernity, except in the late Regency era?
Personally, I have no problem with imperial measures. I learned to cook from a 1940s oven manual, full of very detailed, thrifty and complicated recipes, all in ounces – intended to get women out of the factories and back into the kitchen. It became one of my few party tricks, being able to multiply almost anything by 28 to get it in grams, to which I added being able to multiply anything by 2.2, then divide it by 14, to get kilos in stones and pounds. It’s only fun because it makes no sense; otherwise it would just be arithmetic.
But is it significant that our government wants a system of measurement that only people who are 70-plus instinctively understand? Does it carry a subliminal message to the youth of the nation, the ones who predominately staff retail areas where weighing things matters? Might it indicate that their lives, futures, problems and concerns are considered irrelevant to public policy? Well, sure, but consider the upside: one day, maybe 20 years from now, we will have created a generation that can effortlessly convert a barleycorn into a mile and thence to a league, and think of how much depth that will bring to their understanding of crap devotional poetry.
What we’re witnessing is the hard limit of “dead cat” politics meeting nostalgia. In the Lynton Crosby school, where you explode the national debate with loaded, combustible but ultimately meaningless policy announcements, there’s often an element of longing for the past. “Why can’t we go back to a time when men were men, women knew their place, criminals were locked up for ever and migrants migrated somewhere else? Here are the ideas for people who feel that way.” Schools mustn’t “pander” to transgender people; let’s put gunboats in the Channel and lock up the Royal National Lifeboat Institution; death to the “woke warriors” of the National Trust, etc. These announcements are known as “red meat”, which isn’t inaccurate, since there usually is an element of spitefulness that only someone accessing their inner hyena would enjoy.
Imperial measures, though; it’s more Spam than red meat, isn’t it? Nobody’s pulse is going to race at the idea of having to do complicated conversions in order to buy the right amount of stuff. It might create a tiny fillip of superiority, the thought of watching a 20-year-old try to figure out what a yard is. Good luck with that when you need help removing your sim card.
This is an ultimately silly notion, whose only redeeming feature is that it’s not of very high consequence, and that puts it squarely in Dad’s Army territory, of faffing, busywork and self-importance. But the only reason people feel affectionate towards this Dad’s Army sensibility is that it is meant to be funny. The “dead cat” school of messaging relies on nobody having any sense of humour. The politics of unkindness simply cannot survive contact with a joke; it melts, like throwing water on a witch. But at least we might finally be reaching the endgame, where they have run out of mean ideas that can’t be laughed at.
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
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