Who will the Brexiteers blame when the milk and honey fails to flow?

Rafael Behr in The Guardian


There is a question that was never put to the leaders of the campaign for Brexit and has not, as far as I’m aware, been put to the prime minister since her conversion to the cause. It is this: what will you do on the morning of formal separation from the EU that you could not have done the day before?

What restored freedom, what action hitherto proscribed by the tyrannical bureaucrats of Brussels, will you indulge as the sparkling English wine is uncorked? Bend a banana, perhaps. Or catch the Eurostar to Paris and savour the sensation of no longer having the automatic right to work there. Oh! Pleasant exercise of hope and joy! … Bliss it will be in that dawn to be alive. Right?

Brexit enthusiasts will complain that my question is unfair. Objections to EU membership were all about democracy, sovereignty and long-term economic opportunity: not pleasures that can be consumed overnight. And while that might be so, it is also true that people tend to vote for things in expectation of tangible benefits. A weekly dividend of £350m for the NHS, for example. So the unlikelihood of quick gratification for leave voters is a problem.

Theresa May identifies a deeper imperative to Brexit than was written on the referendum ballot paper. She hears a collective cry of rage against the economic and political status quo, requiring radical change on multiple fronts. So, in parallel with the prime minister’s plan for a “clean break” from the rest of Europe, Downing Street is thinking of ways to address grievances that generated demand for Brexit in the first place: stagnant wages; anxiety that living standards have peaked and that the next generation is being shafted; the demoralising experience of working all hours without saving a penny.

Government thinking on these issues has so far yielded a modest harvest. Last week’s housing white paper was meant to address a chronic shortage of homes by nudging councils towards quicker approval of new developments. Last month saw the launch of an industrial strategy, embracing state activism to nurture growth in under-resourced sectors and neglected regions. Last year May appointed Matthew Taylor, formerly head of Tony Blair’s policy unit, to lead a review into modern employment practices – the decline of the stable, rewarding full-time career and its replacement by poorly paid, insecure casual servitude.

‘Ed Miliband’s focus on the squeezed middle anticipated Theresa May’s promise to help those who are just-about-managing.’ Photograph: Alamy
A notable feature of this non-Brexit agenda is how closely it tracks arguments made by Ed Miliband in the last parliament. The former Labour leader had a whole thesis about the structural failings of British capitalism and how it corroded people’s confidence in the future, leaving them anxious and angry. His focus on the “squeezed middle” anticipated May’s promise to help those who are “just-about-managing”. Miliband’s calls for state intervention in failing markets were derided by the Tories as socialist delusion at the time, but he opened rhetorical doors through which May is now tentatively stepping. Last week’s housing paper even used a forgotten policy that Labour had launched in 2013 – a “Use it or lose it” threat to developers who hoard land without building on it.

 

Meanwhile, Downing Street has taken a close interest in the commission on economic justice set up by the Institute for Public Policy Research, a thinktank that provided regular policymaking services for Labour in the days before its capture by Corbynism. The commission was recently invited to give a presentation to May’s leading policy advisers inside No 10.

Were it not for Brexit’s domination of political debate, May’s eschewal of conventional left-right dividing lines – her willingness to jettison Thatcherite orthodoxies – might have attracted more notice. But then, as the old Yiddish saying goes, if my granny had balls she’d be my grandpa. The idea that there is some parallel realm of politics that May can develop and for which she will be remembered alongside her EU negotiation is delusional. Timid little steps on housing, industrial strategy and job security are not going to get the prime minister to the promised land of fairness and opportunity in time for Brexit day. And she insists on a diversion to set up more grammar schools along the way, despite nearly every expert in the field warning that educational selection closes more avenues to social mobility than it opens.


Someone will have to level with the country. The dawn of Brexit promises no freedom that wasn’t there the day before

Even on immigration the government cannot meet expectations raised by the leave campaign. There will still be new people arriving because businesses will insist on a capacity to hire from abroad. Millions who arrived in Britain over recent decades, and their children born as British citizens, will stay because the country is their home. Even the most draconian border regime cannot restore the ethnic homogeneity for which some nostalgic Brexiteers pine.

At some point someone is going to have to level with the country. Much of what leave voters were promised is unavailable because the EU was never responsible for a lot of things that made them angry. The dawn of Brexit promises no significant freedom or opportunity that wasn’t there the day before. It isn’t a message that ex-remainers can deliver, for all the reasons that scuppered their campaign last year. It sounded patronising before the referendum and the tone isn’t improved by bitterness in defeat.

None of the original leave campaigners will dare admit their dishonesty in making Brussels the scapegoat for every conceivable social and economic ill. There is no point expecting Boris Johnson or Michael Gove to embark on a self-critical journey of public-expectation management. Far more likely they will be drawn deeper into the old lie: someone must be held responsible when Brexit does not unblock the sluices of wealth and opportunity; when the milk and honey refuse to flow. The obvious candidates are foreigners and fifth columnists – EU governments that negotiate in bad faith; alien interlopers who drain public services; unpatriotic “remoaners” talking the country down.

The question then is whether the prime minister will go along with that game. She has managed so far to sustain the pretence that dealing with the failure of Britain’s economy to share its bounties fairly and quitting the EU are kind of the same thing. If it turns out that they aren’t, and one ambition obstructs the other, who will she blame?

People are really, really hoping this theory about David Cameron and Brexit is true

A letter by Teebs to the Guardian

If Boris Johnson looked downbeat yesterday, that is because he realises that he has lost.

Perhaps many Brexiters do not realise it yet, but they have actually lost, and it is all down to one man: David Cameron.

With one fell swoop yesterday at 9:15 am, Cameron effectively annulled the referendum result, and simultaneously destroyed the political careers of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and leading Brexiters who cost him so much anguish, not to mention his premiership.

How?

Throughout the campaign, Cameron had repeatedly said that a vote for leave would lead to triggering Article 50 straight away. Whether implicitly or explicitly, the image was clear: he would be giving that notice under Article 50 the morning after a vote to leave. Whether that was scaremongering or not is a bit moot now but, in the midst of the sentimental nautical references of his speech yesterday, he quietly abandoned that position and handed the responsibility over to his successor.

And as the day wore on, the enormity of that step started to sink in: the markets, Sterling, Scotland, the Irish border, the Gibraltar border, the frontier at Calais, the need to continue compliance with all EU regulations for a free market, re-issuing passports, Brits abroad, EU citizens in Britain, the mountain of legislation to be torn up and rewritten ... the list grew and grew.

The referendum result is not binding. It is advisory. Parliament is not bound to commit itself in that same direction.

The Conservative party election that Cameron triggered will now have one question looming over it: will you, if elected as party leader, trigger the notice under Article 50?

Who will want to have the responsibility of all those ramifications and consequences on his/her head and shoulders?

Boris Johnson knew this yesterday, when he emerged subdued from his home and was even more subdued at the press conference. He has been out-manoeuvred and check-mated.

If he runs for leadership of the party, and then fails to follow through on triggering Article 50, then he is finished. If he does not run and effectively abandons the field, then he is finished. If he runs, wins and pulls the UK out of the EU, then it will all be over - Scotland will break away, there will be upheaval in Ireland, a recession ... broken trade agreements. Then he is also finished. Boris Johnson knows all of this. When he acts like the dumb blond it is just that: an act.

The Brexit leaders now have a result that they cannot use. For them, leadership of the Tory party has become a poison chalice.

When Boris Johnson said there was no need to trigger Article 50 straight away, what he really meant to say was "never". When Michael Gove went on and on about "informal negotiations" ... why? why not the formal ones straight away? ... he also meant not triggering the formal departure. They both know what a formal demarche would mean: an irreversible step that neither of them is prepared to take.

All that remains is for someone to have the guts to stand up and say that Brexit is unachievable in reality without an enormous amount of pain and destruction, that cannot be borne. And David Cameron has put the onus of making that statement on the heads of the people who led the Brexit campaign.

There are liars and then there’s Boris Johnson and Michael Gove

Nick Cohen in The Guardian

The Brexit figureheads had no plan besides exploiting populist fears and dismissing experts who rubbished their thinking

‘Prospered by treating public life as a game’: Boris Johnson leaves his home in Oxfordshire on Saturday. Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Reuters




Where was the champagne at the Vote Leave headquarters? The happy tears and whoops of joy? If you believed Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, the Brexit vote was a moment of national liberation, a day that Nigel Farage said our grateful children would celebrate with an annual bank holiday.

Johnson and Gove had every reason to celebrate. The referendum campaign showed the only arguments that matter now in England are on the right. With the Labour leadership absent without leave and the Liberal Democrats and Greens struggling to be heard, the debate was between David Cameron and George Osborne, defending the status quo, and the radical right, demanding its destruction. Johnson and Gove won a dizzying victory with the potential to change every aspect of national life, from workers’ rights to environmental protection.

Yet they gazed at the press with coffin-lid faces and wept over the prime minister they had destroyed. David Cameron was “brave and principled”, intoned Johnson. “A great prime minister”, muttered Gove. Like Goneril and Regan competing to offer false compliments to Lear, they covered the leader they had doomed with hypocritical praise. No one whoops at a funeral, especially not mourners who are glad to see the back of the deceased. But I saw something beyond hypocrisy in those frozen faces: the fear of journalists who have been found out.

The media do not damn themselves, so I am speaking out of turn when I say that if you think rule by professional politicians is bad wait until journalist politicians take over. Johnson and Gove are the worst journalist politicians you can imagine: pundits who have prospered by treating public life as a game. Here is how they play it. They grab media attention by blaring out a big, dramatic thought. An institution is failing? Close it. A public figure blunders? Sack him. They move from journalism to politics, but carry on as before. When presented with a bureaucratic EU that sends us too many immigrants, they say the answer is simple, as media answers must be. Leave. Now. Then all will be well.

Johnson and Gove carried with them a second feature of unscrupulous journalism: the contempt for practical questions. Never has a revolution in Britain’s position in the world been advocated with such carelessness. The Leave campaign has no plan. And that is not just because there was a shamefully under-explored division between the bulk of Brexit voters who wanted the strong welfare state and solid communities of their youth and the leaders of the campaign who wanted Britain to become an offshore tax haven. Vote Leave did not know how to resolve difficulties with Scotland, Ireland, the refugee camp at Calais, and a thousand other problems, and did not want to know either.

It responded to all who predicted the chaos now engulfing us like an unscrupulous pundit who knows that his living depends on shutting up the experts who gainsay him. For why put the pundit on air, why pay him a penny, if experts can show that everything he says is windy nonsense? The worst journalists, editors and broadcasters know their audiences want entertainment, not expertise. If you doubt me, ask when you last saw panellists on Question Time who knew what they were talking about.

Naturally, Michael Gove, former Times columnist, responded to the thousands of economists who warned he was taking an extraordinary risk with the sneer that will follow him to his grave: “People in this country have had enough of experts.” He’s being saying the same for years.

If sneers won’t work, the worst journalists lie. The Times fired Johnson for lying to its readers. Michael Howard fired Johnson for lying to him. When he’s cornered, Johnson accuses others of his own vices, as unscrupulous journalists always do. Those who question him are the true liars, he blusters, whose testimony cannot be trusted because, as he falsely said of the impeccably honest chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, they are “stooges”.

The Vote Leave campaign followed the tactics of the sleazy columnist to the letter. First, it came out with the big, bold solution: leave. Then it dismissed all who raised well-founded worries with “the country is sick of experts”. Then, like Johnson the journalist, it lied.

I am not going to be over-dainty about mendacity. Politicians, including Remain politicians lie, as do the rest of us. But not since Suez has the nation’s fate been decided by politicians who knowingly made a straight, shameless, incontrovertible lie the first plank of their campaign. Vote Leave assured the electorate it would reclaim a supposed £350m Brussels takes from us each week. They knew it was a lie. Between them, they promised to spend £111bn on the NHS, cuts to VAT and council tax, higher pensions, a better transport system and replacements for the EU subsidies to the arts, science, farmers and deprived regions. When boring experts said that, far from being rich, we would face a £40bn hole in our public finances, Vote Leave knew how to fight back. In Johnsonian fashion, it said that the truth tellers were corrupt liars in Brussels’ pocket.

Now they have won and what Kipling said of the demagogues of his age applies to Michael Gove, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.


I could not dig; I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?


The real division in Britain is not between London and the north, Scotland and Wales or the old and young, but between Johnson, Gove and Farage and the voters they defrauded. What tale will serve them now? On Thursday, they won by promising cuts in immigration. On Friday, Johnson and the Eurosceptic ideologue Dan Hannan said that in all probability the number of foreigners coming here won’t fall. On Thursday, they promised the economy would boom. By Friday, the pound was at a 30-year low and Daily Mail readers holidaying abroad were learning not to believe what they read in the papers. On Thursday, they promised £350m extra a week for the NHS. On Friday, it turns out there are “no guarantees”.

If we could only find a halfway competent opposition, the very populist forces they have exploited and misled so grievously would turn on them. The fear in their eyes shows that they know it.

Cricket: Step in before its too late

Michael Jeh in Cricinfo

Unless the umpires step in quickly and end the talk, we could have a repeat of Monkeygate © Getty Images

Enlarge

As a dramatic year in cricket draws to a close, I am reminded of the great philosopher Sophocles, who wrote in Oedipus Rex: "I have no desire to suffer twice, in reality and then in retrospect." He speaks cryptically of hindsight, that priceless tool of wisdom. But to use hindsight as a convenient excuse for not being prescient is sometimes the domain of fools and knaves.

A year ago, the television coverage of the Boxing Day Test was blighted by a skit that had nothing going for it, even with the wisdom of hindsight. At the time, a long time before the tragedy of Phillip Hughes could ever have been forecast, I wrote in scathing tones about the gross stupidity of one of the world's fastest bowlers hurling bouncers at an unarmed, unskilled participant with half the Channel Nine commentary crew standing around giggling. We didn't need an accidental death to tell us that Brett Lee bowling deliberate no-balls at talk-show host Piers Morgan, following him with short balls aimed at his head as he backed away to square leg, to the cackling of Shane Warne, Michael Slater and Michael Vaughan, with Mitchell Johnson and Craig McDermott watching on is just plain negligence on the part of all parties involved. These were the same people who visited Hughes in hospital, cried at his funeral and shook their heads in disbelief at the sheer bad luck of it.

Did it not occur to them that bowling no-balls at the body of an unskilled batsman might just have ended in tragedy? Did it take the death of a skilled batsman, a professional cricketer, early on a hook shot, for all those involved with The Cricket Show to reflect on the utter inappropriateness of this stunt? This from a programme that unashamedly targets young viewers (and does it extremely well in that genre).

To be fair, you only have to read some of the comments on that article of mine to see that this brain fade wasn't the exclusive domain of these star cricketers, production staff and medicos. Clearly many of the respondents, perhaps fuelled by a dislike of Morgan, did not have the foresight to imagine the sort of injury that could so easily have befallen the batsman (if indeed that can be called "batting"). Don't believe how bad it looks in hindsight? Find Brett Lee v Piers Morgan on Youtube. Ask anyone involved in planning, executing or being a bystander to this stunt if they would be willing to participate in something similar this year, perhaps getting a speedster like Pat Cummins to try and hit another celebrity in the head (and not even having the decency to bowl from behind the white line)? Any takers for a repeat show?

A series that has showcased so much high-octane cricket in the dignified shadow of Hughes' memory doesn't deserve to be remembered for all the wrong reasons

While on the "should have known better" theme, both teams involved in the current series need to look at the so-called "banter" being exchanged. With the IPL friendships that now exist, you'd think the Indians would have worked out that it rarely works to sledge an Aussie fast bowler. Where was the upside to poking a dormant brown snake? One can understand the tactic if Mitchell Johnson had been running rampant and they were looking for anything to put him off his game. Instead, for a brief but telling period in Brisbane, they riled him to the point where he not only scored 88 and turned a sizeable deficit into a crucial lead but then came out and blasted out the Indian top order. That Rohit Sharma was in the thick of it defies belief - here's a bloke on the verge of being dropped himself, having done very little in the series, taunting Johnson about his lack of impact. The only impact we are likely to see from Rohit for the rest of the series was Hot Spot on the edge of his bat as he was fired out for nought.

Shane Watson belongs in the same camp; he is never far from a chat, but for a player who continues to polarise even the staunchest Australian fans, he might be better advised to leave the verbals alone and try to convince the nation that he is a budding allrounder - if only he could learn to bat. How much hindsight is required to convince the selectors that he is not the answer at first drop? They might work on the reverse-hindsight theory - keep giving him enough chances until he makes a score and that vindicates the selection.

The Australians, too, need to rethink their targeting of Virat Kohli. Abrasive he may be, hot-headed he is, but by Jove, the boy can bat. Baiting him doesn't work, it just brings out the mongrel in him. He had to score three hundreds this series to underscore the futility of that tactic? His habit of spoiling for a scrap, regardless of whether it's his fight or not, will see him miss a Test soon for disciplinary reasons. You don't need 20/20 vision to predict that!

Ian Chappell, who knows a thing or two about playing tough cricket, has long been cautioning the ICC about allowing the incessant chatter to get to the point where someone gets too hot under the collar and a physical confrontation leaves an indelible stain on a game that is in an awkward no-man's land after the sombre events of the recent past. It is not enough to leave it up to the players to decide where that fine line is between banter, gamesmanship and that final sledge that sparks an unseemly confrontation. The umpires in this series have been far too lax in allowing the players the latitude of walking that fine line - the palpable tension after tea on day four in Melbourne threatens to descend into open warfare unless the umpires take more control.

A series that has showcased so much high-octane cricket in the dignified shadow of Hughes' memory doesn't deserve to be remembered for all the wrong reasons. The ghosts of that ugly series in 2007-08 do not need to be dug up from their uneasy graves. This is not a lesson we need to learn, again, in hindsight.

It is probably incumbent upon the match referee to gather both teams together at close of play and remind them that some situations, like the Monkeygate affair, are too hard to retrieve if tensions run too high. It would make a mockery of all the goodwill that has flowed through the cricket community in the wake of sadness, black armbands and moving eulogies. He might do well to remind them all of this old Irish proverb: "May you have the hindsight to know where you've been, the foresight to know where you're going and the insight to know when you're going too far."

At yacht parties in Cannes, councils have been selling our homes from under us

Property developers wining and dining town hall executives - it’s a jaunt so lavish as to be almost comic

• 
• • Aditya Chakrabortty
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 14 October 2014

The Mpim conference in Cannes has been wining and dining town hall executives for 25 years with intentions on the national silver. Photograph: Jean-Paul Pelissier/Reuters

Starting this Wednesday, 4,000 men (and, yes, they’ll mainly be men) will gather in a giant hall in London. Among them will be major property developers, billionaire investors and officials of your local council or one nearby. And what they’ll discuss will be the sale of public real estate, prime land already owned by you and me, to the private sector. The marketing people brand this a property trade show, but let’s drop the euphemisms and call it the sales fair to flog off Britain.

For the past 25 years, this conference – Mipim for short – has been held in Cannes. It’s a jaunt so lavish as to be almost comic – where big money developers invite town hall executives for secret discussions aboard private yachts, and whose regulars boast that they get through more champagne than all the liggers at the film festival.

Suitably oiled-up, local officials open talks with multinational developers to sell council housing estates and other sites. All this networking is so lucrative for the builders that they even fly over council staff. Last year, Australia’s Lend Lease paid for Southwark’s boss, Peter John, to attend Cannes. This is the same Lend Lease to which Southwark sold the giant Heygate estate at a knockdown price: 1,100 council flats in inner London to be demolished and replaced with 2,500 units, of which only 79 will be for “social rent”.

Events such as Mipim raise the flag on the land grab that eventually leads to thousands of people being kicked out of their homes – and in many cases out of London. It is a forum that relies on invitation-only lunches, secret talks and the public being kept well away. In a shamefully undemocratic development system, this is one of the most untransparent forums of the lot.

You might think that seven years after the collapse of an economic system built on property speculation and amid a historic housing crisis, Mipim would have no place in the UK. You’d be wrong. When it opens this week it will be to a welcome address from that loveable friend of big money, Boris Johnson. Even with 344,000 households in London awaiting a council home, the mayor is cheering on their flogging off and replacement with unaffordable luxury flats. Joining him will be Conservative ministers, senior civil servants and council delegations from Glasgow through Leeds and Liverpool and down to Croydon.

Many of these councils are coming because they have no other means of raising serious cash: three decades after Thatcher’s rate caps, and four years into the most painful cuts faced by local government, they are flat broke. Some council leaders will admit as much privately. But in all cases, the strong scent of neediness comes off their planned Mipim session titles (“Croydon: the economic powerhouse of the south-east”) – and forces them into the kind of rotten deals that jeopardise the livelihoods of their residents.

On Sunday afternoon, a group of about 40 Londoners convened in a Pimlico community centre. A greater contrast with the hangars of Mipim can hardly be imagined: no lavish buffet, just a kettle and some instant coffee; no PowerPoint slides but a dungareed bloke scribbling on a flipchart. But the people here knew about the property fest: they live on the council estates about to be demolished to make way for private developers. They reeled off where they were from: Chelsea, Elephant and Castle, Haringey, Barnet. Some had already been handed their court orders and were unsure if they’d even be in London next month. One woman, who had bought her Southwark council flat as Thatcher and Blair encouraged her to, had been offered a risible sum to get out. As the group planned meetings and demonstrations before Christmas, she kept repeating: “I might be homeless by then.” The first couple of times, she even managed to smile.

These people live in public housing built with public money on public land. And soon, their homes will be someone else’s speculative asset. The British Property Federation (BPF) published a report last year which showed that of London’s newly built homes, only 39% were bought to live in. The vast majority – 61% – were taken by investors. After the meeting broke up, a resident of Churchill Gardens in Pimlico walked me around her estate and pointed out the old people’s home and lovely modernist low-rise block that was earmarked for the wrecking ball. It faced out on to the Thames; on the other side was Battersea power station, being turned by Malaysian investors into luxury flats. In this part of London, that same BPF report found, 49% of new-build homes were bought by overseas investors.

Against that backdrop even the smallest victory looks historic. Up on the northwestern perimeter of London, in West Hendon, other council residents are fighting the borough of Barnet over the redevelopment of their estate on terms that suit the developer, Barratt Developments, not locals. Just under 700 homes are to be smashed up to make way for 2,000 new units. Just under 1,500 will be sold privately: the rest will be “affordable”, which in the doublespeak of housing means unaffordable.

The council cannot say how many social-rental homes will be provided, but it is clear that whatever provision there is will be grudging. With a quick Google you’ll find a video of the chair of Barnet’s housing committee, Tom Davey, claiming that his council is providing affordable housing because people are buying them. An objector points out that only the wealthy can afford them and the young Conservative thumps the desk and says: “Those are the people we want.”

Whatever the propaganda, when I turn up at West Hendon, I meet a telecoms worker and a full-time carer. I also meet a woman in her 60s who hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in years, and a man facing homelessness and suffering depression.

About a third of the estate’s residents have already been bounced from regeneration to regeneration. They have no idea where they’ll go when they’re moved out. Others are leaseholders who can’t afford to buy anywhere in London on the £165,000 offered by the council. The majority of the tenants will be moved to what was formerly a car park, surrounded by busy roads.

“A giant traffic island” is how it is described by Jasmin Parsons, who’s lived on the estate for over 30 years. From there, she and her neighbours can look at their old homes, which are now off-limits to them and their children. Their faces won’t fit the area, you see, and their bank balances certainly don’t go far enough. They’ll be barely tolerated trespassers on yet another private development.

Maybe there’s a metaphor in there for all of us.

The psychological dominance of Mitchell Johnson

Jon Hotten in Cricinfo
How do you stop Mitchell Johnson?

Beginning a post with that question naturally implies there is now going to be some kind of an answer. Well, there won't be one here, beyond the obvious, and that is that time will stop him, as time stops them all. He bowls with the ghosts of Larwood and Thommo and Holding and all of the other terrors behind him. (My own personal nightmare? Sylvester Clarke, the brooding Grendel of The Oval, who would come and knock on the hotel room doors of opposing batsmen to let them know exactly what he was about to do.) Johnson has, in a few short months, entered the realm of men who have exerted a strange psychological dominance with the overwhelming pace of their bowling.

The compelling aspects of the Johnson story lie there, because the hold he has is not just on batsmen, it is on the collective imagination of everyone watching him bowl. As Russell Jackson observed in the Guardian newspaper this week, each Johnson spell has become event television. The thrilling news the Centurion Test brought with it was that the Ashes was no one-off: if Johnson could do his thing away from home against Test cricket's best team, then it can happen anywhere to anyone. After a single game, there are echoes of what he did to England, which was to induce a kind of deep-rooted demoralisation that extended beyond the field and into the psyche (he was not playing alone, of course, but he was a spearhead). It was as if he had pulled out a pin that held the team and organisation together, and the unit just sprang apart - injury, illness, retirement, disharmony all had their way.  - injury, illness, retirement, disharmony all had their way.

As the Cricket Australia Twitter account reported a little too gleefully - Ryan McLaren will miss the second Test with Johnson-induced concussion. There is also a run of luck that feels familiar: Dale Steyn stricken with food poisoning, Morne Morkel falling on his shoulder, and other phenomena not directly connected to Mitch but part of a general entropic slide. Just as England had players central to their strategy reaching the end of the road, so South Africa are absorbing the loss of Jacques Kallis: it's hard to think of a single player more difficult to replace. The captains of both teams happen to be left-hand openers, and Mitch is regularly decapitating both.

At the heart of all of this, as many have observed, is Johnson's pure and thrilling speed, channelled now into short and violent spells in which he bowls either full or short. This is the game reduced to its chilling basics. And yet there is mystery here too, and while unravelling it offers no answer to stopping Johnson, it may explain a little further what is causing such devastation.

The speed gun says that Johnson is bowling at speeds of up to 150kph, areas that other bowlers have touched. Because of the way in which speed guns work, deliveries of the sort that skulled Hashim Amla and Ryan McLaren registered more slowly due to where they pitched. (I'm sure that was great consolation to both players as the ball thudded into their heads.)

However, as the great Bob Woolmer revealed in his book The Art And Science Of Cricket, the nature of speed is not absolute because it is relative in the eyes of the batsman facing it. His research showed that the very best players - those who are euphemistically referred to as "seeing the ball early" - are actually reacting to a series of visual clues offered by the bowler in the moments before release.

Players who have faced Johnson speak of the sensation of the ball appearing "late" in his action, as his arm swings from behind his body. This is perhaps a combination of a couple of factors: the "clues" that Johnson offers in his run-up and delivery stride might be slightly less obvious than in other bowlers, and that his already ferocious pace is magnified by the extra micro-seconds that a batsman takes to pick the line and length of the ball (all the more impressive given that Johnson essentially only offers two lengths, and little variation on his themes).

Thus, with Mitch, the flexible nature of speed perception is working in his favour. Only the truly blessed - AB de Villiers, Kevin Pietersen et al - can play him with a little more certainty.

Pietersen was moved to tweet last week about the huge difference between 140kph and 150, just as his near-namesake Alviro was dismissed with a waft to the keeper. He said that you can "instinctively" play the wrong shot in those circumstances. What he was driving at was that Johnson offers no time for anything other than instinct, no margin to correct that first thought.

This is theory, of course. What can't be conveyed as easily is the psychological pressure that speed exerts. Players are wobbling to the crease with their minds consumed by thoughts of what he can do, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. South Africa are on a slide that will take tremendous resolution, as well as skill, to stop. In Smith they have one of Test cricket's most redoubtable men, and in de Villiers and Amla two of the most sublimely talented. It is absolutely fascinating to watch, and Mitch has done the game a great service in his phoenix-from-the-flames revival. This is cricket at its sharpest physical and psychological point.

How Mitchell Johnson's speed scrambles the mind

South Africa thought they were well prepared to face Australia, but their plans overlooked the extra pace of Mitchell Johnson

Mitchell Johnson in full-speed mode during his devastating display in the first Test win over South Africa. Photograph: Themba Hadebe/AP

THE JOHNSON PROBLEM

Russell Domingo, South Africa's coach, never played first-class cricket. But he is a whizz with numbers. "I am," Domingo told Firdose Moonda, "very driven by technical and strategic aspects and analysis." AB de Villiers says of Domingo: "He likes his stats." No doubt, then, that his team thought they were well-prepared. Hashim Amla said before the first Test with Australia: "I don't think in this series there's too many surprise factors." Mitchell Johnson? "We've played against him before," said Faf du Plessis. "It's nothing we haven't seen … we're ready." All Australia's talk, Graeme Smith said, was just so much "bull". South Africa's batsmen had their plans, ones based on experience and analysis. "Everyone has a plan," as Mike Tyson put it, "'til they get punched in the mouth."

At 85mph, a ball takes 0.52sec to travel 22 yards. That's less time than it takes Usain Bolt to complete his first stride, and a little more than it takes you to blink. It's how long a batsman has to spot the length and line of the delivery, pick a shot to play, and then pull it off. To do it right, he needs to judge the position of the ball to within around three centimetres, and time the arrival of the bat to within three milliseconds. Any further, any sooner, any slower, and the ball misses the sweet spot. Put like that, hitting a cricket ball begins to seem like a preternatural act, as impossible as pinching a fly from the air with a pair of chopsticks.

They say it takes a minimum of 100 milliseconds for the brain to produce even the simplest action, and around double that to do something only a little more complex, like flicking a light switch. Benjamin Libet, a physiologist at the University of California, found that it took between 400 and 500 milliseconds for the brain to complete all the processes needed to produce a subjective experience. In cricket, the time constraint imposed by the speed of the delivery often exceeds the time available to process information. Against fast bowling, a batsman operates at a speed that outstrips his own consciousness. So how is it done?

It's not that the best Test batsmen have quicker reactions than anyone else. As Peter McLeod, a member of Oxford University's Department of Experimental Psychology, explained to John McCrone in the New Scientist: "There is surprisingly little difference between top-class athletes and good, fit ordinary people. In laboratory tests of reactions using unskilled tasks, most people show much the same reaction time of about a fifth of a second."

In his book Wait: The Art and Science of Delay, Frank Partnoy breaks that half a second down into still smaller chunks. Roughly, the first 150 milliseconds is seeing the ball. The last 100 milliseconds is spent playing the shot. In one of his studies, McLeod found that it is impossible for any batsman – he tested Allan Lamb, Wayne Larkins, and Peter Willey – to correctly react to any deviation the ball makes in the final 200 milliseconds of its flight. What matters then, is that chunk in the middle, the 150 milliseconds between seeing the ball and playing it. Partnoy calls this the "ball identification stage", a phrase he borrowed from the tennis coach Angel Lopez, who says similar processes are at work when a player returns a serve. It's what happens in this little window that separates the best from the rest.

When the ball is released, you and I might see a blur and have time enough to think through the first two letters of the curse we'll finish when the ball has passed. A batsman sees an ordered set of possibilities. He draws on information he has about the pace and style of the bowler, the condition of the pitch, and his own form. Add to that what he gathers from the anatomical position of the bowler during delivery, and finally, most importantly, what he observes during the first few milliseconds of the ball's flight.

After that, it is all anticipation. No one, despite everything your school coach ever told you, actually watches the ball on to the bat. Instead, the batsman's eye vellicates to the spot where he thinks the ball will bounce. The skill of a batsman, McLeod says, "lies in how they use visual information to control motor actions once they have picked it [the ball] up". It can't be taught, but is honed over hours of practice and play. We call it muscle memory.

At 95mph, a ball takes 0.47sec to travel 22 yards. That extra 10mph robs the batsman of 0.05sec. Which seems like nothing at all. But it's not. McLeod found that 0.05sec is the difference between a club and a Test cricketer. "We precisely measured how long different players took to swing and when they began their swings," McLeod explained. He looked at a range of players, from "true amateurs to top professionals". And he found that the professionals were quicker, "though not by much – just in the range of tens of milliseconds quicker". McLeod says: "What matters crucially is just a tiny time window of about fifty milliseconds in all. That makes all the difference."

Fifty milliseconds. The difference between an amateur and a pro, between 85mph and 95mph, between Mitchell Johnson and Jimmy Anderson. "There is," Kevin Pietersen tweeted last week while he was watching the Test, "a HUGE difference when facing someone at 140kmh compared to 150kmh … When you are facing someone as quick as Mitchell, your instinct occasionally makes you do things you shouldn't. PACE causes indecision."

The process must be disrupted, too, by the fear of being hit. The instinct to avoid being injured is even more ingrained than that of hitting the ball and the two can pull in opposite directions. It was telling that De Villiers, the one batsman who played Johnson well, explained afterwards "once you don't have that fear of getting hurt then I feel you play a lot better."

You could see that indecision in the first innings dismissal of Graeme Smith, who spotted the short ball, shaped to hook it, then changed his mind, and ended up spooning the ball to slip. It's only a little more speed, and a little less time. But it's enough to skew the complicated subconscious calculations of the best batsmen, accustomed as they are to having 50 milliseconds more to work with. Such slender margins, but such significant differences.

Why Mitchell Johnson fails the hipster test

Ahmer Naqvi

 

Mitchell Johnson: not one to delight old-school fans  © Getty Images

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Over the past few weeks, the cricketing world has been agog at the achievements of Mitchell Johnson in the Ashes. There has already been talk that his performance in two matches merits him being rated the world's best bowler.

In digesting and reacting to this news, I realised that I was a fast-bowling hipster. 

At its heart, the whole point of hipsters is not about being counter-culture, but rather laying claim to authenticity. You can't be a hipster if you jumped on a bandwagon or showed up without appreciating what you were there for. A hipster is authentic because an authentic experience means being there before it was cool and marketed. Consequently, while the rest of the world treats fast bowling as a seasonal fad, for Pakistanis it is more like l'bowling rapide pour l'bowling rapide.

As soon as I decided that I belonged to this ridiculous category, I realised I would need some codes to define what kinds of things fast-bowling hipsters, at least the ones from the Pakistani school of thought, would look for. The first person I turned to for inspiration was Osman Samiuddin, the high priest of the Pakistani fast-bowling cult. I remembered how he once related Shoaib Akhtar's reaction to Irfan Pathan: "Kaun Irfan? Saala spinner! Dekho ek cheez, paceispaceyaar. Can't beat it. [Irfan who? Damned spinner! Look here, paceispaceyaar. Can't beat it."]

Osman insists that in its true spirit, "paceispaceyaar" is one word, and so it is no surprise that pace - and an abundance of it - is the first sacrament of the fast-bowling hipster. Undoubtedly pace is at the heart of Johnson's prowess, and he manages to maintain his 90-plus speeds while bowling short. This means that he brings in the desire for mortal self-preservation into play in the batsman's psyche. This is a bowling tool so powerful that cricket has changed its laws to mitigate it.

Yet pace by itself means nothing - just take a look at Mohammad Sami, Fidel Edwards and a few others. A true fast bowler needs to develop all his skills with pace only as the foundation upon which they rest. Shoaib's point above is not about what Irfan can do with the ball, but rather that unless he is doing it at pace, he can't really be called fast. After all, paceispaceyaar.

The second major facet of this proposed manifesto is the bowling action and its aesthetic effect. I must qualify here that the aim is not to extol the virtues of textbook actions, since hipsters are not puritans. What the hipster looks for is a sense of uniqueness to the action. The sight of a bowler in full flight must be an intensely evocative experience, replete with a sort of hypnotic seduction and the ability to display vastly different facets of the action when watched at various speeds.

Take a look at the actions of Pakistan's great pantheon. Waqar Younis felt like a plastic footruler, bent outwards to its extremes before lithely snapping back. Wasim felt more like a snake that coiled up suddenly and narrowed its gaze before lashing out with a swift, fatal stab. The most majestic was Imran, who seemed to float like a bird of prey for several delicious moments, almost willing time to slow down before accelerating instantaneously.

Mitchell, though, is a slinger, from a breed of pacers who sometimes lack a sense of rhythm as well as lacchak (sway) that other actions provide. My favourite slinger was Shaiby (Shoaib Akhtar) , but a lot of his appeal had to do with his hyper-flexing elbows and the spectacle of his run-up. But the slinger ideal for hipsters would probably be Jeff Thomson, whose run-up was a bit bustly, but whose delivery stride and action were an absolute wonder to watch. Mitchell's run-up, in contrast, is quite stodgy, and he uses his bowling arm almost like an appendage that he hurls with rather than as an extension of a greater process.

This idea of synergy between the various facets is imperative, because it suggests both coherence and honesty. Many people have talked about Mitchell's new-found attitude and aggression, but it's not something I buy at all. Mitchell's wickets came while he was sporting a charity moustache during a particularly desperate and shrill search for redemption amongst the Australian media. In order to create a simple narrative, Mitchell was suddenly made out to be a bloodthirsty brute.

Mitchell's wickets came while he was sporting a charity moustache during a particularly desperate and shrill search for redemption amongst the Australian media. In order to create a simple narrative, Mitchell was suddenly made out to be a bloodthirsty brute

To me, this new perception of him is the latest example of cricket's habit of enforcing macho ideals on fast bowlers. For a long time, those in charge of cricket's narrative have tried to stereotype fast bowlers as a violent, angry, primitive lot. The appropriation of the shy Harold Larwood is the oldest example I can think of, but this has been repeated over time, and is patently unfair.

Mitchell himself has often been a victim of this desire to project alpha-male fantasies on pacers. For example, Michael Atherton once described listening to Johnson explaining his tattoos as similar to "listening to a warrior talk us through his flower arrangements before battle".

Despite my fondness for Atherton's writing, this opinion rankled, because I felt players like Johnson were needlessly criticised based on their personal choices. Who said that the leader of the attack needed to be some sort of medieval warrior? However, it now seems that Johnson has stopped trying to get people to understand that he is a soft-spoken, easy-smiling Australian who bowls fast, and is instead trying to look and act like a surfer masquerading as Merv Hughes.

Such charades are an affront to the hipster, since the persona of fast bowlers must be an organic part of their psyche. It is true that this translates into many pumped-up macho figures, but those are not the only kinds of demons a fast bowler has to deal with. In either case, for hipster appreciation eligibility, a fast bowler should never conform to what society deems desirable, but rather must force society to accept him on his own terms.

The third sacrament for the hipster is a cricket brain. This might well be the most important factor of them all, because it is the one thing that cannot be compensated for. For example, Glenn McGrath might have had a lot of vertical velocity and funny one-liners, but when he bowled, he looked like a grimacing elderly man trying very hard not to snap one of the metal pins in his replacement hip. Yet he remains one of the quintessential hipster choices, simply because of the suspense novels he wrote with his spells. Few other bowlers had his ability to not only predict what the batsman would do but also force him to willingly fall into the traps he had laid for him.

Mitchell Johnson's involvement with the psyche is so far limited to creating panic and fear. Now, that is not to be scoffed at, but as a Pakistani I have plenty of experience of watching panicked collapses, and like with Mitchell's wickets, these often come off poor deliveries. Take a look at his pitch maps from the two Tests and you see few deliveries pitched up, which means that there was little attempt at lulling players into false strokes or bamboozling them with movement.

Mitchell could claim that he didn't have to do anything more to pick off the English, and while he would be correct, the hipster cares not for such excuses. The hipster needs variety, needs elaborate plans, needs to see batsmen fail despite having tried their absolute best.

These three sacraments, or pillars, of the hipster faith can be represented as a set of stumps, and that brings us to the final point.

The Pakistani school of thought regarding fast bowling is inextricably linked to wickets, or more precisely, to flying, walking, cartwheeling wickets. Think of Waqar reversing the ball so rapidly and so late that you felt there had been a tear in space-time. Think of Wasim bowling round the wicket and taking the ball away to knock back off stump. It is the ultimate humiliation for the batsman, and a singular achievement for the bowler, who didn't need fielders to complete the job for him. In contrast, a catch at fine leg doesn't give the same sense of drama or spectacle.

Moreover, being able to bowl short is a luxury few teams afford their bowlers. For the hipster, then, being able to bowl short and fast isn't so impressive if all you have known growing up are fast and bouncy wickets. Bowling fast and full in a country and climate where there is no rational reason for doing so is what the hipster looks for, and that is why the Pakistani fast bowler has such a sense of romanticism attached to him.

So please don't offer me gentle souls dolled up in hairy costumes and tell me they are the real deal. Please don't insult cricket's answer to Keanu Reeves by pretending he's Sylvester Stallone. And please, please, please make sure to consult hipsters when jumping on your next bandwagon, so we can immediately tell you how wrong you are.

Greg Chappell on playing fast bowling

Ashes 2013-14: Ian Bell leads way in handling Mitchell Johnson barrage

Mitchell Johnson evoked memories of the West Indian attack of the late Seventies, and England need to learn from Ian Bell's example

England's Ian Bell looks on as he loses another partner to Mitchell Johnson of Australia, this time Graeme Swann. Photograph: Jason O'Brien/Action Images

It is often said by those that experienced it that the toughest most uncompromising cricket ever played came not in official Test matches, but in the no-holds-barred World Series Cricket. And it is further said that the most uncompromising of the uncompromising came not on the drop-in pitches of the Sydney Showground but in 1979 in the Caribbean, when WSC toured and played Super Tests. This was bare-knuckle cricket, jeux very sans frontieres, where the MCC equivalent of the Queensberry Rules, or even the Geneva Convention, were for cissies.

The pitches were hard and fast, there was no restriction on short-pitched bowling and in Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, Colin Croft, Joel Garner and Wayne Daniel, West Indies possessed a fighting machine to rival any in the game's history.

It was in the five matches of this competitive furnace that Greg Chappell, already a giant of the game, forged his greatest batting feats. It began quietly in Jamaica, with 6 and 20. But Bridgetown brought 45 and 90; Trinidad 7 and 150; Guyana 113 in his only innings; and finally Antigua 104 and 85 before Clive Lloyd ran him out. A total of 621 runs in the series at an average of 69. No one, legend has it, has played unrestricted fast bowling with such authority.

While Mitchell Johnson was laying waste the England batting at the Gabba and Adelaide Oval, it was hard to not think of this. I talked to him once about it and beyond the physical courage required, his rationale, the game plan that he employed, was fascinating. Twelve overs an hour, he said, is what you received from the fast bowlers and of those 72 deliveries, two thirds, or four balls of every over, would be going at great velocity past his nose. That left 24 balls an hour of which it was reasonable to assume his batting partner would get half. So twelve deliveries then with scoring potential, of which half he reckoned he would be defending. In other words, there were six deliveries from which he knew he needed to score and which he further rationalised, would be pitched up. "I was looking to come forward," he has said, "to drive. It was the percentage shot." All of which sounds counter-intuitive when placed alongside the more obvious back foot technique to allow more time to play the ball.

Whatever they may say, no one relishes facing extreme pace, and few have bowled faster than Johnson is currently managing. At times already in the series, the England top order batting has coped with him: Michael Carberry has done so twice, by letting the ball go in Brisbane and by lining him up from back in the crease in Adelaide; Alastair Cook was watchful in the second innings in Brisbane; and after his usual frenetic start, Kevin Pietersen just looked comfortable in the second innings at the Gabba until the second of three totally indiscreet shots in as many innings did for him unnecessarily. Johnson's real success, certainly in Adelaide, has come in blowing away the lower order. How would these batsmen cope with an incessant barrage such as Chappell received?

Ian Bell though, now there is a player. Here is a strange thing. Back in the days before helmets, when, say, Tommo and Lillee were terrorising England, and the high velocity short ball was a common currency, the number of batsmen who were actually hit, on the head specifically, was remarkably few, certainly compared with these days when scarcely a day goes by without someone "getting one on the lid" and invariably trotting a gentle leg-bye for their troubles. There is a good reason for this. Short of a crack on the head, little was to be gained by taking eyes from the ball and turning away. Instead there were two options, aside from taking on the short ball and hooking or pulling: either watch the ball and duck under; or drop the hands out of harm's way first and foremost, and then sway back to let the ball pass by. Photographs of the ball passing a batsman's nose show excellent judgment on the part of the player rather than a close call.

Bell plays as if a batsman from a bygone era. In the second innings in Brisbane, he swayed back to avoid the short ball like a reed bending in the wind. He does not attempt the legside cross bat shots, but keeps a square cut in his locker just in case. As with Chappell, he looks to get forward if he can ( there has been more opportunity offered on this pitch than the Gabba, and more, you can bet, than will be going at the Waca next week too). There is an unflustered calmness to him as well, as if he sees the ball in a slow motion dimension unavailable to others.

Just for a period, when Monty Panesar was showing a technique and fortitude that had proved elusive to those better qualified, there was the possibility that he might be able to engineer a remarkable century. He had stormed past his half-century by lofting Ryan Harris down the ground and now square cut him witheringly, clipped him to fine leg for four more and finished the most productive over of the match by lofting him elegantly into the crowd at deep extra cover. When Johnson, brought back for the coup de grace, pitched short, he leaned back and clipped the ball precisely over the slip cordon. These were the strokes of a man in control, a counterpoint to his teammates. An object lesson.