CRISIS. DISASTER. DOOMED

It’s Wednesday and there’s no electricity. The pubs are shut. There’s no TV. Half the country is in revolt.  They’re talking about martial law.

What was it like? In the early months of the Miners’ Strike of 1972 it was actually rather wonderful. We sat around, drank and talked by candlelight. In the background we listened to the Stones and were glad to be alive in a civilised world.  The media were in paroxysms about the impending Armageddon but all else was relatively calm. The art of conversation reached new heights. We demonstrated nothing could blunt our appetite for living, loving and laughing.

So over 40 years ago I realised the three-day-week-crisis was not such a big deal after all. We even survived the inflation rates of 27% a few years later when there were typically two or three price increases a year and wage rises to match. Out there the world had surely gone mad but we all survived cushioned by friendship and our self-belief.

In 2002 when the Firefighters went on strike and the Green Goddesses manned by the armed forces were called into action it seemed like the world was falling apart (again).

It was then at a cocktail party at Lambeth Palace I ended any chance of ever working with or speaking again to the then Conservative MP Archie Norman who declared “I fear Britain’s now ungovernable” at which I burst out laughing and said “don’t be ridiculous”.

The point is that life moves on and as Churchill recognised so vividly you have to be patient and keep going. Alistair Campbell when Communications Director in Tony Blair’s office said wisely when yet another crisis blew up…”it will pass”. And of course it always did. What history cannot teach us is just how terrifying and raw these crises seem at the time. How do human beings recover from the loss of a partner or anyone close; from  injury or bankruptcy; from the loss of their job? Well they do (generally) and they do because human beings are very resilient. But they are also extremely dramatic and avidly seek out headlines or, in the case of our favourite Commander-in-Chief, create their own.

I have been a rather blasé spectator to decades of life-changing crises, almost always “the most important/dangerous/ruinous/catastrophic in the history of our nation/mankind”. We all thrive on it. In Italy they used to have a paper called La Domenica del Corriere  the raison d’être of which was disasters – train crashes, horrible murders, death by foul and unnatural means. It was very popular.

But very few of these crises have actually been life changing. A government falls, a President is replaced, a financial meltdown is averted, a union becomes disunited yet the sun rises and we try to do something extraordinary again. Whatever happens we’ll  be OK. And as Leonard Cohen said:

“When things get really bad, just raise your glass and stamp your feet and do a little jig. That's about all you can do.”

MONET, MONEY AND MARKS

I know…from art to retailing requires a leap of faith.

I’ve just been to the Monet exhibition at the National Gallery. The 70 paintings there would sell for over $1 billion yet he found it hard even selling his work until his mid-40s when sales took off with vivid Mediterranean coastline paintings which Americans loved.

Claude’s story matches that of most artists that we now rate as great with only a few becoming truly rich from their endeavours whilst young enough to enjoy it. Most relied on finding a sugar daddy or patron but the market itself was harsh. Yet they carried on tirelessly and in the case of Monet painting the same scene at different times of the day when the lighting was different.  In painting Rouen Cathedral he sat in a ladies changing room of a department store opposite the cathedral, ladies curtained off of course, and painted dawn to dusk.

Artists in general are not especially commercial, entrepreneurial or productive…they just carry on doing what they do regardless always trying to get better. For them quality beats cash any time. Money merely seems to be inconvenient (mostly by its absence.) And a century after they die their work (like ‘Nymphéas en fleur’) can sell for $85 million.

But it isn’t money you think about when you think of Monet, it’s the light, the colours the sheer joie de vivre.

And that’s what’s missing from M&S - retail bellwether, housewives’ favourite, the Monet of underwear. Unlike Monet its value is declining.  Unlike Monet it is no longer notable for its light, colour or joie de vivre. It’s about to depart the FTSE 100, close a dozen or more stores and ‘unify brand and culture’ (I really wish that I knew what that meant). The iron hand of Archie Norman, the man who saved Asda 27 years ago is Chairman. He is a McKinsey trained heavy who seemed short on small talk when I met him.

For years M&S has been a bit like the Brexiteers chasing new business in young markets unknown to them but “representing huge, yes huge and incalculable opportunities”, rather  than focusing on their core old market of loyalists– around 20 million of them. Instead it keeps on going hopefully after the deaf, dumb and blind kids like millennials who would rather be seen dead than in M&S. Because M&S is like grandad doing the twist.

M&S matters because when it does things well, like much of its food, like cashmere, socks, underwear or cords it does them rather well. When it flirts with the unknown it’s sorrowfully irrelevant. I shall watch its strategy of downsizing and trying to find an authentic voice intriguing but without much hope. M&S has stopped learning it seems.

Monet kept on learning. He has colour and energy. His pictures are timeless. M&S is not. Tom Peters said “you can’t shrink your way to greatness”. On that Monet and I (but not M&S) agree.