It has been a baking hot summer in the UK. So hot that nothing – not even a piece about a soft-drinks company – can be published without wild hyperbole and the crow-barring-in of politics. Writing in Wednesday’s Guardian, one Ellie Mae O’Hagan wrote about the recent market successes of Fever Tree, the producer of alcoholic mixers, among other things. O’Hagan was particularly exercised about the question of what Fever Tree’s recent share price increases told us about ‘late capitalism’.
“What a pointless era we live in,” Ms O’Hagan opined, sounding as though she may well have had a couple herself. “How odd it is to see these examples of laconic decadence illuminated against our current political background of imminent climate crisis, political instability and the rise of the far right. How have these inane products retained their popularity in a world of unrelenting doom and gloom? Perhaps we’re trying to rise above the misery in any way we can.”
The paper’s headline writers summed up this piece with the subtitle, ‘We are sipping cocktails as the world burns’, suggesting that perhaps O’Hagan isn’t the only person at The Guardian in need of a lie-down.
The fact that ‘rise of the far right’ and ‘the world is burning’ rhetoric can find its way into a piece about fizzy drinks is rather beautifully illustrative of our hyperventilating times. The problem is that some people are finding this hyperventilating mode both attractive and politically useful.
Earlier this week, for example, the Shadow Chancellor made his own overheated intervention. Citing those demonstrations this year calling for the release from prison of Tommy Robinson, John McDonnell and adding as evidence Boris Johnson’s column on not banning burkas, he suggested that “It’s time for an Anti-Nazi League-type cultural and political campaign to resist. We can no longer ignore the rise of far-right politics in our society…. We should seriously look at emulating the work of the ANL and Rock Against Racism at a time when the far right once again poses a genuine threat to our society.’”
Only a hardened cynic would suggest that McDonnell might be attempting to divert attention from the antisemitism scandal in his own party.
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