Administrative Note: I’m going to change to the premium version of Word Press this weekend. This will change the address of this blog to nickinshoreditch.com. If you are signed up to get notifications by e-mail, this may not matter, but if you are used to just getting it through a browser, you won’t be able to find my blog using the current URL. So if you are looking for nickinshoreditch.wordpress.com and it isn’t popping up, then I’ve made the change. I’ll post an announcement on Facebook and one more right before I make the change.

Trump from a Distance: I have been blessed to be in London for this election season. Things like the interminable primary debates were on to late to watch (and I’m sure that I would have compulsively watched many of them, given the opportunity). I have missed endless Trump stories and hours upon hours of blathering by various talking heads. Which is not to say that the BBC doesn’t pay any attention to the election, it just has other stuff to cover and only spends a few minutes on the proceedings. Trump was, at first, an object of fascination to most Brits, who all wanted to know if he was a serious candidate and could someone like him actually get nominated. I have to say that I discounted Trump for far too long. After he was nominated, the questions changed from “How could he have been nominated?” to “He can’t win, can he?” to “My G0d, what is going on in America?” I have taken to compulsively checking FiveThirtyEight (Nate Silver), as well as the Times and the New Yorker and the Guardian to try to get a sense of what is going on in this miserable excuse for democratic process.

Now that the Trump campaign seems to be in a Trump-perpetuated death spiral, there is a palpable sense of relief here and I suspect in large parts of the US. But, even if Trump does lose and even if he loses in a landslide (which seems more likely than not), it is hard to feel very good about the future. It is difficult to picture Hillary being able to govern effectively, since she is unlikely to have a cooperative Congress, is reviled by so many and faces a Republican machine that will do what they did to Obama only much worse. The Republican Party seems likely to fracture and be in such a mess that it cannot be a responsible partner in government (recognizing that a significant percentage of their leaders have no interest in such a role anyway). And all of those angry Trump people, who have now been energized, are not going to go away. (And, unfortunately, neither will Trump.) Americans should not feel too smug about the defeat of Trump or claim that “It can’t happen here.” In fact, Trump proved that it could happen and if he was a not so clearly a bat shit crazy narcissist and sexual predator, he might very well have been elected  President next month.

“Merchant of Venice”: On Yom Kippur, of all days, we went to the Globe to see “The Merchant of Venice” with Jonathan Pryce as Shylock. Our seats were not great (don’t get seats on the side there if you ever go) and there was a major rain storm about 30-40 minutes into the play, which soaked the people standing in the pit. (The Globe has no roof, although the seats and the stage are mostly protected.) Then the temperature dropped and the wind kicked up and it was positively frosty. Not at all Venetian. (It is strange commenting on the weather when talking about a play.) Despite all of that, I did enjoy the performance. I had forgotten much of the plot other than the Shylock bits, particularly the sections in which Portia’s suitors are tested to see if they can marry her. These scenes were wonderfully done. The cast was typically very good. British actors just do Shakespeare really well, although sometimes overeager directors with weird interpretations let them down. Perhaps it is part of their training that accounts for it. Shylock’s daughter was played by Pryce’s real-life daughter, which was actually more of an interesting footnote than something which added to the overall performance. Rachel Pickup, who played Portia, the dominant part in the play, was marvelous. I suppose that you could play Shylock differently than Pryce did, but it is hard to imagine it being played any better.

Of course, the overriding theme that makes the play great and the thing that you come away thinking about is the anti-semitism. It is actually remarkable that Shakespeare was able create the character of Shylock since, as the programme points out, there were virtually no jews in England during Elizabethan times. (It was dangerous enough being the wrong type of Christian in the era.) This actually seemed to make the anti-semitism of that time even worse, as there were no actual humans to put the lie to the crazy tales and conspiracy theories that dominated. Shakespeare’s audience would certainly have been utterly anti-semitic and ready to accept any sort of evil characterization of a jewish money-lender. But Shakespeare went out of his way to make Shylock human (“If you prick us, do we not bleed?”) and, it seemed to me, showed that he was responding to horrible treatment over many years by Antonio and the other merchants of Venice, who repeatedly spit on Shylock in the course of the play. Pryce’s Shylock was so reasoned and aggrieved that I found myself rooting for him to get his pound of flesh. But, of course, there was no way that Shakespeare could allow the Jew to win and Portia snatches victory away from him and replaces it with ruin and the humiliation of forced conversion to Christianity. Pryce’s performance made it clear that it was the latter result that was by far the worst. But in a way, Shylock brought this on himself by his hatred and desire for revenge. And I think that was the real moral of this production: that unreasoning hatred and the compulsion to get revenge can only lead to calamity.

Brexit Update: For some reason, the New York Times has suddenly become interested in Brexit and its impact on the British economy and government and has published a number of articles this week. I suspect this might reflect concern over the weakening pound and how this will play out in the world economy. Here are few impressions from this side of the pond:

• The pound has started to fall again, after seeming to stabilize after its initial plunge. I’d say that this reflects market worry about the future of the British economy. Until recently, you could kid yourself that it wouldn’t be that bad and that Theresa May wouldn’t let things get out of hand. You’d have been wrong. May made it clear at the Conservative Party Conference recently that Brexit was happening and that Britain would not accept any deal that included freedom of movement. The government later announced that it would not let any foreign nationals (even those who were teaching at the London School of Economics) participate in the Brexit negotiations (even though it is generally agreed that Britain is woefully short of experienced negotiators). And then it was announced that businesses would be required to disclose the number of foreigners it employed. As it became obvious that the xenophobic kooks were taking charge, the pound began to fall.
• This led to the Great Marmite Controversy. Because the pound had lost almost 20% of it value, Unilever wanted to increase its price for the items it sells to Tesco, the largest grocery chain in Britain. A stalemate ensued and soon Tesco began to run out of the beloved yeast goo. This caused outrage, only in part because Marmite is actually produced in England. I think what really scared people is that this was a clear harbinger of price increases to come.
• Meanwhile, back in Parliament, the tenuous Conservative majority was facing the same problems with delusional back-benchers that had bedeviled Cameron. This group of 100 or more MPs keep talking about “sovereignty” and returning Britain to it position of greatness. So far, their big idea is to re-commission a Royal Yacht for the Queen, with the supposition that everything will return to Rule Britannia. It would be pathetically funny if it all weren’t so serious. May’s honeymoon period seems to have run its course.
• Just this week, the highest British court has begun to hear a case which seeks a “constitutional” ruling (there is no written Constitution here) that May and her ministers cannot unilaterally invoke Article 50 to begin the process of leaving the EU. It is argued that the treaty that would be abrogated was ratified by Parliament and therefore can only be terminated by that body. Anther argument that the entire basis of unwritten British constitutional law is that Parliament is paramount and that an irreversible act of that import must be taken by that supreme legislative body. These seems like winning arguments to me. If the suit is indeed successful, turmoil is certain.
• And then there is Boris Johnson and the Brexit troika of ministers. Last week, BoJo said that the aim of Britain in the negotiations with the EU is to “have our cake and eat it to.” This was instantly denounced by European leaders and seemed to harden their negotiating resolve (not that BoJo and his buddies have any sort of negotiating position beyond bluster). The European President suggested that Johnson buy a cake, eat it and see what he had left.
• In the background, Judie’s bank clients are asking for advice about where to move their offices. Dublin, Frankfort and Paris may scoop up a lot of EU banking business that has been centered in London, which would be a complete disaster for the post-industrial British economy. A “hard Brexit”, in which the banks would lose their “passporting rights” (i.e., the ability to apply their British license throughout Europe) would make this inevitable. But this complete break from Europe is exactly what the most delusional MPs insist upon.