Cartoon – Very Well, Alone by David Low

One image that merits the overused and abused term, iconic, is in the news again because of Brexit.

Extracted from Gideon Rachman column in the FT – 2nd May 2017

The acute analysis about ‘Very well, alone‘ offered by Mr Rachman in his column should be supplemented by knowledge of the next cartoon – All alone in the world – displayed by Fougasse aka Kenneth Bird.

Cartoon – Fougasse (Kenneth Bird) on World War Two at Matthew Buck Hack Cartoons

Aside from being funny, Bird’s drawing was a more accurate depiction of the reality of late Imperial Britain’s efforts in the last world war – which ended almost seventy years ago.

I argue that in the murky realm of national mythologies these two cartoons occupy positions akin to yin and yang. the epitomy of complementary or conflicting opposites – emotion and reason – pride and pragmatism.

We have long seemed as a nation to have chosen World War Two as our national lodestar and these two pieces of imagery sum up the nation’s conversation with itself as well as anything else I know of.

My own modest efforts at reinterpretation of Low’s classic are below and are firmly #Brexit related – watching the Conservative Party become UKIP has been a most unedifying watch.

Flirting with Fascism – Matthew Buck at Hack Cartoons

And its consequences following the EU Referendum of June 2016 are becoming ever clearer.