I had to write about this fantastic cartoon from Ben Jennings on 23 December. Not only is the cartoon excellent, but it is a parody of one of the artists that got me into political cartoon observation. The one that first got me into political cartoons was one that was on the front of my GCSE history textbook, but that’s another story I’ve yet to tell on this site.

So, this cartoon I feel accurately represents Britain’s 2020. It’s a shame the political cartoon awards have passed, actually.

With a new, fast-spreading variant of covid being discovered in the southern part of Britain over the last week; a new Tier being brought into England; Wales bringing forward its plans for a nationwide lockdown by a week and everybody’s Christmas plans reversed, the French also decided to halt any travel by hauliers from the UK. Many other nations also banned travel from the UK, but this particular ban of the most mundane transfer of services put the country into a flutter.

As a no-deal Brexit became a closer and closer reality, the imagined pain of Kent and the M20 as lorries piled towards the Dover-Calais strait post-Brexit (or more accurately post-end-of-transition-phase) became a sudden reality, with locals decrying the lack of toilet and washing facilities for truckers who ended up having to use supermarkets. Even more soul-destroying, were the many hauliers who were on their last job before returning to somewhere on mainland Europe for their Christmas.

So, to the cartoon. In Ben Jennings’ excellent cartoon we see our PM, Boris Johnson sailing towards a closed gate. As the illustrator denotes, the cartoon follows the work of Mr James Gillray in 1793, below.

In this cartoon, Britannia is being steered between democracy on the left (denoted by the Phrygian hat of the French revolutionaries) and the whirlpool of absolutist monarchy on the right. The constitution is steering Britannia to the ‘haven of public happiness’, and is being chased by three sharks – the ‘dogs of Scylla’, Scylla being democracy. In Jennings’ cartoon, the whirlpool is that of covid, the ‘sharks’, that of three fish, which it has been well-documented that fisheries was one of the three key sticking points in the Brexit deal negotiations, and the gate is shut to the ‘haven of public happiness’, mas France has shut its borders to the ‘world-beating’ ship that the PM confusedly steers.

So much to note!

Firstly, what is the PM steering the ship between? It is an unanswered question, as the image is more ‘zoomed-in’ than Gillray’s. However, I like the interpretation that the ‘haven of public happiness’ is much like ‘the will of the people’, the much-used phrase of people wishing for the Brexit referendum to be respected, and therefore, the rocks here are much closer, much more in Johnson’s way; he must navigate his ‘world-beating’ ship (a reference to the beleaguered track and trace system) through the very narrow strait between covid and the will of the people towards a closed gate of Europe.

If the fish are the sharks of democracy I feel they represent the people snapping at the heels of Johnson, telling him that Brexit must be done, and that they will not accept anything less than sovereignty over their fish.

At the time of drawing, the Brexit deal looked far from being done, and so Johnson’s scratching of the head, whilst Britannia looks on, troubled, wearing her mask to protect from covid, and a life-belt round her middle, some may look upon her as a maiden in trouble.

Finally, the title of the piece is particularly perfect for 2020, ‘Britannia rules the second waves’ a nod not only to the covid crisis; the second wave that was not just predicted, but expected, but also to the anthem that in some parts has become controversial. Following the murder of George Floyd in America this summer and the subsequent protests around the world recognising the lack of equality of people of different ethnicities, the British anthem became something of a left-vs-right affair.