The so-called Project Fear mounted during the EU referendum campaign is associated with remainers, but the Brexiteers have their own version of it, so they may welcome the fact that the new opportunity to jump off the cliff coincides with Halloween.
Here’s Jacob Rees-Mogg, speaking at the London Palladium recently: “If we try to stay beyond the European elections, there will be only one winner from that, and that would be Tommy Robinson.” And last year at the Tory conference, Boris Johnson said, “The ultimate beneficiary of the Chequers deal will be the far right.” It really is deeply irritating when a multimillionaire Old Etonian says, “I’m going to get my mates from the working class to beat you up.”
Johnson and Rees-Mogg seem naturals for the Halloween Repertory Company. Johnson is just an all-purpose nightmare, while Rees-Mogg dresses like both corpse and undertaker. Iain Duncan Smith is another ghoul, closely resembling Nosferatu, and favouring Phantom of the Opera hats. It seems that he too, has some mates among the unhyphenated classes, and it might be that he’s been taking soundings in saloon bars among embittered people who are actually called things like Duncan Smith or Rhys Mogg.
I make this suggestion having heard something IDS said on the BBC recently. He pretended he had decided to support the prime minister’s deal for some reason other than that she had offered to resign if it went through. He said: “You think the country’s divided right now, wait until you hold that second referendum. There’s a very large chunk of people who will feel utterly betrayed and very angry and I just caution, look across the Channel – we are not that far away from that kind of process happening.” He could be right, but IDS likes to play with matches while hanging around that particular powder keg.
There’s more to the connection between the Brexiteers and Halloween than scaremongering, however. A little context is required. Halloween arose out of a Celtic celebration called Samhain, which involved the lighting of bonfires to honour the dead and defy malevolent spirits. The church both denounced Samhain as diabolic and instituted its own versions in the form of All Saints’ Day on 1 November and All Souls’ Day on 2 November.
In reaction to this neutering of Samhain, a mischievous element of what folklorists call “world-turned-upside-down” crept into the medieval Halloween. There was “soul caking”, for example, whereby poor (but physically imposing) young men would offer to pray for the souls of the departed in return for food. There is a grain of world-turned-upside-down in trick or treat (which we exported to the US, then imported), and more than a grain of it in Mischief Night, which occurs mainly in the north around 4 November.
The Brexiteers like to think that the world turned upside down on 23 June 2016; that it was a snub to the establishment (in which case you have to remove from your definition of “establishment” the majority of newspapers and most members of the governing party). A folklorist once told me that Halloween was essentially to do with the changing of the seasons from autumn to winter: “It’s as if this is a moment of confusion, when the big players in society are distracted and the small fry have their chance.”
Here, I think, the parallel between Brexit and Halloween breaks down. While some of the big players were distracted during the referendum campaign, others were not, and they will be running the country well before Halloween.
• Andrew Martin’s novel, The Winker, is published in June.
