Making sense of Giles Coren and why Australia exists

I wince at cliches. Yet they are so useful. Toss in a few and before you know it you have bashed out half an article; if you're super savvy, a whole article.

Or, if you are Giles Coren, two whole articles.

First in the Daily Mail and secondly in the Mirror, the gregarious food writer delivers a breathtakingly coruscating jeremiad of not just Australian cricket but of Australia itself.

There are differences in style (gauged to hit varying degrees of knuckle-dragging) but both articles are nigh on identical in terms of content and reliance on cliche. We are not offered revolutionary insights that change the way we think about Australian cricket, unlike how Coren's pen skills have sometimes made us think about restaurants. Instead, the reader is bombarded from every angle by anti-Australian cliches, until by the end of it you feel like you have been on the receiving end of a literary Gatling gun.

There are the usual jokes about antipodean machismo, barbecues, lack of culture, convict history and beer that tastes of pee; about catabolic TV soap operas and not one, but two, Minogue sisters. Pushing even those Corenesque circumscriptions, there are gags about skin cancer, aboriginal apartheid, and domestic violence.

You could say, because both articles were probably knocked off in a matter of minutes and offer little beyond blunt billingsgate, it is lazy bigotry. As many Australians are saying, what a bludger. Ben English, writing in Australia's The Daily Telegraph, calls it "repressed resentment" (worth reading that one too - it's like holding Coren's writing up to a mirror and putting on it a wide-brimmed hat with dangling corks).

You could say that. You would, on a level, be correct. The writing is hideously, viciously gratuitous. But you'd be missing the point. Both articles are brilliant. The incessant assault stupefies you into a neanderthalic rage. It should be accompanied by a YouTube video showing Coren bludgeoning Ricky Ponting with a cricket bat. With every myopic barb you clamour for more blood. Another one-liner, Giles! With no opportunity for response, the attack is as ferociously one-sided as the current Ashes. It is painful to read, you don't want to enjoy it, you shouldn't enjoy it, but Coren whips you up into a mental state akin to.....well, akin to those cavemen Australians that he writes about and despises so much.

Come to think of it, I used to live in Australia (Manly, as you ask - and isn't it apt that there isn't a town called Womanly?). It became quite evident that if an Australian isn't taking the piss out of you, he doesn't like you. Is Coren paying our southern cousins a compliment...?

Digressions. Basically, you shouldn't like the articles but you do, thanks to Coren's colourful language and way with words. So do read them. Leave principles at the door (sorry, I suppose you've already done that by reading the Daily Mail and the Mirror) and, for a moment, have a laugh.

However, there is more to these articles than polemic. Two things actually - one that Coren will probably wrinkle his nose at and nod sagaciously in agreement; the other I don't suppose he could give a t*ss about but I'll mention anyway.

First, Giles Coren is a Times columnist. The imposition of a paywall in front of Times and Sunday Times online content has done a number of things but the most regrettable of all is that I no longer get to read Coren's columns unless I buy the newspaper (the same goes for Messrs Finkelstein and Aaronovitch, and Rachel Sylvester). Coren has said he supports the paywall but has openly directed readers towards outlets, such as the Mail, where he can be read for free (see Twitter here). These two articles about Australia would not have appeared in the Times - probably for editorial reasons more than anything else, but perhaps also because Coren really wanted people to read them? They are the sort of articles that lend themselves perfectly to viral internet spread, a phenomenon now closed off to Times content with its little (£) caveats.

Secondly, the title of Coren's piece of the Daily Mail closes in the question: "just what is the point of Australia?"

Well?

History lesson: its primary purpose in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (for white British people, not the natives who had inhabited terra australis for centuries) was a depository for criminals. Ah-ha! A cliche! Yes, but true. It gradually became then a place for surplus, non-criminal populations from these isles (and post-WW2, fleeing European migrants). It was not principally intended, unlike other British colonies or imperial possessions (e.g. Caribbean, India, Hong Kong or Gibraltar), for strategic economic or political designs on trade routes, natural resources or military significance. It was an empty desert with a fertile-but-fragile littoral fringe to which excess people could first be sent and second be induced to settle and eke out some farming.

Over time, Australia developed stable institutions and made the straightforward transition to an independent democracy - a republic in all but name. People continue to flock there, not least from these shores, thanks to its laid back feel and good climate.

Yet that still doesn't explain what Australia is for. Economics, however, do, and they explain that Australia is for one thing above all: the exportation of natural resources. It is true that services comprise two-thirds of Australian GDP and that one of its biggest companies is media conglomerate News Corp (Mr Coren's employer, no less). Yet any country with a couple of brain cells to rub together (cliche, acknowledged) can create a services sector. What any country cannot do is possess the rich natural resources that Australia does and it is these resources that Australia peddles on world markets. And if you don't trade, you fade.

Agriculture and mining in Australia make up 10 per cent of GDP but a whopping 57 per cent of exports. Australia is the world's third largest supplier of uranium, iron ore and diamonds; the second largest producer of nickel, gold and zinc; and the greatest exporter of coal. The country produces 95 per cent of the world's opals and possesses significant interests in natural gas, bauxite, copper and silver. Not thought of as an oil nation, it is also the twenty-eighth largest producer of petroleum. As a country with wide open spaces and millions of sheep, there's a fairly large amount of wool going around too.

Most of this goes to China, which is Australia's biggest two-way trading partner and the owner of a sizeable wedge of Australian debt.

China's role in Australia is a bastardisation of its relationship to the USA and to Africa. Its massive trade surplus and financial heft are propping up Australia's flatlining, resource-driven economy; whilst its voracious appetite for raw materials is feeding on the continent from inside-out.

Today, the Chinese defence minister announced that China is preparing for armed conflict "in every direction" in order to defend its interests - the chief of which is continued economic growth. To achieve this, it needs a continued supply of raw materials.

In years to come, nations may come to blows over resources as they become scarcer and people in the developing world (particularly Chinese people) become more plentiful and more wealthy.

A couple of aircraft carrier squadrons off the coast of Darwin sounds ridiculous now but then again, a couple of months ago so did two Ashes victories by an innings, nearly 600 runs by Alastair Cook, and a 90 m.p.h. Tim Bresnan ripping through the Australian top-order.

And if all that's about as gratifyingly heavy for you this side of 31st December as a sack of Australian coal, pour a stiff drink (it's after midday) and read Mr Coren.

A Falklands War might not repeat itself, but a conflict could

Once elected to govern, the Conservatives embarked on the unenviable task of resurrecting the British economy. A Labour Government headed by a former Chancellor, who had replaced the elected Prime Minister halfway through the parliamentary term, bequeathed an economy in ruins.  The nation was mired in strike action or threats of action.  The spending cuts that followed were so severe, and the dosage of economic medicine so distasteful, that the Government was at risk of decimation at the next election by a Labour Party that, although divided, offered a radically different vision for the country.

The only thing that saved the Government was a victorious campaign in the far-off Falkland Islands.  Swept along by a jingoistic tide, the Conservative Party was returned the following election by a landslide and the economic recovery continued apace.

Sound familiar?

If it does, that is because we are living through it.  It is happening around us.  Apart from the last paragraph, this refers to the 1980s only.  Or does it?

Actually, in these non-partisan times – with civil partnerships enacted on the steps of Number 10 – I feel compelled to be a touch fairer.  The economy was not bequeathed to Margaret Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe “in ruins” in 1979.  In fact, thanks largely to the straitening stipulations of the IMF, but also in no small part to Mr Callaghan’s recognition that the Labour Government “couldn’t spend its way out of a recession”, the Conservatives inherited a Britain in which all major economic indicators were on the up.  The painful recession of the early 1980s was almost entirely a result of the painful but necessary restructuring and rebalancing of the UK economy enforced by Mrs Thatcher and her ‘dries’.

I would also argue that the Conservative Party would have won the 1983 general election without the Falklands campaign (although not here, that can wait for another time).

Nevertheless, I concede that on that assertion I am in a minority.  It is the overwhelming academic consensus that it was the ‘Falklands factor’ – and not the stirrings of economic resurgence, nascently upward poll ratings, a split left-wing vote and “the longest suicide note in history” – that handed Mrs Thatcher a second term.

However much Mrs Kirchner and her beleaguered Argentine government wish to indulge in sabre rattling, she is no General Galtieri at the head of a murderous and inept military junta (actually, ineptitude they might aspire to).  Moreover, Hilary Clinton can play the role of impartial observer as much as she likes but the simple fact is this: the Falkland Islands are British sovereign territory, this is backed up by international law and for as long as the Kelpers wish this to remain the case it will be so.

Of course, there is always a modicum of possibility that Argentina will try to retake the islands by force.  After all, the British armed forces, waging as they are an energy and resource sapping war in Afghanistan and only recently disentangled from southern Iraq, are hardly in a position to respond.  Yet this simply is not going to happen.  In comparison to 1982, the islands are heavily protected by RAF Mount Pleasant with its 2,000 personnel, Eurofighter Typhoons, and Sikorsky and Sea King helicopters.

However, the recent discovery by Rockhopper Exploration of sizeable oil reserves in the North Falkland Basin has elevated the ongoing dispute from minor irritation to a potential flashpoint.  Rockhopper will provide an estimation for the size of these reserves within the next couple of weeks but advance expectations are high.

The possibility of finding oil in the area has been mooted as a factor in Mrs Thatcher’s decision to reclaim the islands in 1982.  If so (and I doubt it, the sovereignty and self-determination case is stronger) then large deposits will soon put the Falkland Islanders on a par with the Norwegians and begin to pay back Britain for the services rendered in blood and treasure during the war and since.

Now let us suppose that drilling and extraction begins midway through David Cameron’s first term.  Argentina, eyeing these oil wells as a last-ditch lucrative counter to their own fiscal woes, send in the gunships and blockade the North Falkland Basin.  This would be in direct contravention of international law but did that stop the junta in 1982?  Of course not.  Did the absence of a second UN resolution stop us joining the Americans in invading Iraq in 2003?  Not for a moment.

Let us return to this vision of the future.  Cameron and Clegg’s coalition government is fraying at the edges in the face of massive opposition from a British public disbelieving (or refusing to understand) the necessity of the rebalancing of the public finances, with “cuts deeper than under Margaret Thatcher”, to paraphrase another former Chancellor of the Exchequer.

An Argentine armada sets sail for the Falkland Islands, blockading Stanley, bombing Mount Pleasant, seizing an offshore oil rig and capturing a couple of vessels, inflicting a handful of unnecessary casualties in the process. 

Our troops and America’s had left Afghanistan a year previously, midway through 2011 as planned, freeing up regiments and materiel for another courageous expedition to the South Atlantic.  President Obama is fighting an uphill battle to be re-elected for a second term in the face of the belligerent, nonsensical populism of a Palin-led Republican Party.  The President does not want to be seen abandoning the Special Relationship amidst this hostile political climate so although remaining nominally neutral the US fights Britain’s corner in the corridors of the UN and its Latin American backyard.  Cameron is criticised by colonial apologists in some sections of the press but generally applauded for his strong and decisive action.

After a brief, tense stand-off between Argentine and British naval forces, with shots fired across bows but no fatalities, Argentina backs down under the weight of international opprobrium and Britain’s greater military strength and resolve.  “GOTCHA”, the Sun is delighted to repeat its famous front page of yesteryear.

David Cameron’s coalition government survives to complete its five-year parliamentary term and the Conservative Party is re-elected with a landslide majority.

Fanciful?  Time shall tell.