September 30, 2009
Put the Billionaire Back in his Box
So The Sun has come out for the Conservatives. Good. The Murdoch Empire just played its hand too soon. This now represents a golden opportunity for Labour.
When Parliament reconvenes on October 12th, there should be one priority for the final months of this government: to break up Murdoch’s control of key British media. After all, there’s nothing to lose anymore. The Sun will not volte-face and switch back to Brown; hostility from it – and eventually, The Times and Sky News too – is now inevitable. The election will be affected – and possibly dictated – accordingly. So Labour has absolutely nothing to lose by biting back.
The retaliation should go like this. The top legislative priority from October onwards must be to pass laws which make it impossible for one person – or better, parent company – to own more than one major national media outlet in the UK. No doubt, the details of how to do this will need to be worked-out by people far better informed than myself (how to target Murdoch’s Sky-Times-Sun set-up, whilst not preventing Trinity Mirror from owning local newspaper titles as well as The Mirror, for example). But where there’s a will, there’s always way*.
The aim should be to create legislation which offers an ultimatum to Murdoch: if you want to keep control of The Sun, and the massive political influence it wields, you must relinquish your other media interests.
The Murdoch press will cry that this is an attack on free speech and democracy. But there’s nothing democratic about one ultra-rich Australian press mogul using his media influence to so brazenly interfere with our political system. Whilst it would be undemocratic to interfere with The Sun itself (in a free country with freedom of the press, vile, lying demagogic shit rags just have to be tolerated) it’s quite a different matter to ensure that power in the media be dispersed, to reduce the overbearing influence of unelected, unaccountable foreign billionaires on our politics.
If the Tories have any sense, they will actually agree. The pendulum of Murdoch power may have swung back to them as of this morning, but they’ve been kept in the cold for 12 years at least in part by the influence of the Murdoch press. It’s not good for any political party to have to pay homage at Murdoch’s temple, and have their policy dictated accordingly. It’s certainly not good for our democracy.
Of course, preventing Murdoch from owning more than just The Sun will not prevent that particular publication from having the reach and influence that it does at present. That is just a fact about life, unfortunately: whoever owns that paper will wield an unbelievable amount of unaccountable power and influence in our politics. But by breaking up Murdoch’s British media empire, Labour can reduce his reach and influence, which currently extends way beyond The Sun. It can encourage the formation of rival power centres, whilst preventing its further concentration in a few select hands. Labour can kick back and say: “No Rupert, the elected government still runs this country, not you”.
The party will have to be brave, and shake off 15 years of deference, kowtowing and fear. But this is a unique opportunity to put the billionaire back in his box. Take it now, the chance won’t come again.
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* And where there’s the House of Lords, there’s the Parliament Act.
September 29, 2009
Marr on Brown Fallout: Something to be Thankful For
Andrew Marr has been getting a lot of grief for asking Gordon Brown whether he “took pills”. This is in response to unsubstantiated rumours that Brown has “mental health problems”, which originated on rightwing blogs and have subsequently built up into a sort of diffused smear-campaign, albeit one propelled by the power of repetition and malice, as oppose to centralised co-ordination.
What’s interesting to note is how hard many people have come down on the “Brown is mental” rumour, and heavily chastised Marr for effectively legitimating it and making it mainstream.
Sunny Hundal at Liberal Conspiracy has rightly been up in arms about the matter (and here, where he points us towards journalist Nick Assinder’s criticisms of Marr too).
Liberal Conspiracy is also carrying the story that several journalists have now openly criticised Marr for asking questions about Brown’s mental health with the effect of substantiating and legitimising smear rumours. In particular, Adam Boulton of Sky News has said:
“On the principle point as to, should interviewers be able to ask questions about the physical state or health of the Prime Minister – I think they should. So in that sense I don’t think its gratuitous.
My personal view is that on that specific point, I felt, and I think most of us working at Westminster felt, that question had been asked and answered, and we all felt that on that basis that it had been denied, and on the level of evidence we had, there was no basis to take that further.”
I think there’s something we should all be quite pleased about here, putting aside Marr’s much-condemned foolishness. It comes out if we compare the reaction to Marr’s question to the coverage of the “birther” movement in the USA.
The “birthers” claim – despite clear evidence to the contrary, including a birth certificate – that Obama was not born a US citizen, and hence cannot hold the office of President. The claims began before the 2008 election, but were largely ignored. However, over the past few months the conspiracy theory has exploded, largely because it has been fuelled by those seeking ways to discredit Obama’s healthcare reforms.
Astonishingly, 23% of Americans now think Obama was not born a US citizen, and 18% say they are unsure. In large measure, this is because the “birther” claims have been recycled and repeated by the US 24hour television networks. Some – like Fox News – have undertaken only the barest of attempts to pretend they are doing anything other than deliberately spreading the birther conspiracy. Others have gladly fallen into the lazy trap of reporting the birther story under the guise of “lots of people are saying Obama is Kenyan, we are covering the fact lots of people are saying this”, or, in even more Kafkaesque style, reporting the birther story under the guise that “lots of other TV stations are reporting the birther movement, so we are doing a media story about other media covering the birthers”.
The effect is for a wild and wholly unfounded rumour about Obama to have entered the mainstream of American political discourse, and been accepted by significant numbers. Nobody should doubt that in a nation where patriotism carries so much importance, the suggestion that Obama is not American will have huge impact upon the success or failure of his healthcare reforms. As the birthers and their apologist-enablers know quite well.
So we here in Britain should be very grateful. Our media is apparently coming down on Marr like a ton of bricks, and in the process making clear that the rumour about Brown is mentally unwell is nothing but a rumour, and has no rightful place in our national politics. And far as I can tell, the rumour is being quashed by all mainstream media outlets, including right-of-centre ones like Sky News and the Spectator, as well as the usual leftwing suspects.
Our brothers and sisters across the pond are not so lucky. Let’s feel sorry for them, but be grateful for our own good fortunes.
Crazies in Cambridge
After the disaster of the Iraq War, and the quagmire that is Afghanistan, you’d think that most politicians would have lost their appetite for exporting liberal democracies to sandy places that don’t appear to want it.
You’d think that. But it might be worth checking with a few of them. Let me explain.
Some readers will already be familiar with the now-defunct “Project for a New American Century“: the neoconservative “think tank” that was extremely influential in the Bush administration, and which many saw as a key driving force behind the Iraq War (in 1998, PNAC sent a letter to Clinton arguing for the invasion of Iraq, which was signed by Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, John Bolton, Richard Armitage, and Elliott Abrams…who all went on to be big players in the Bush administration, and were mostly members of PNAC).
It hardly seems like exaggeration to describe PNAC has having been committed to full-blown American military imperialism. It’s “Statement of Principles” included that:
-we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;
- we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;
- we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad; [and]
- we need to accept responsibility for America’s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.
Which didn’t leave much to the imagination before 2003, and left even less afterwards.
In 2006 PNAC officially disbanded. Post-Bush and the collapse of neoconservatism, there certainly seems little prospect of any demand for it to be recalled into existence. (Though no doubt its prominent Straussian co-founders Robert Kagan and William Kristol will be up to something in some dark corner of Washington, waiting patiently for the end of the Democrats).
With PNAC gone, the Iraq war an unmitigated disaster, and the Afghan war going so horribly badly, surely nobody any longer proposes the aggressive export of liberal democracy at the point of a gun? And certainly if such people were to be found, they wouldn’t be located in, of all places, a sleepy university town in placid Britain.
Would they?
Er…yes, apparently they would. For based at Peterhouse College, Cambridge is the “Henry Jackson Society”. And what a bunch they seem to be. Founded in 2005, the HJS appear to still be very much in existence. As their website indicates, they clearly took a large tip from PNAC.
Indeed, the HJS’s own “Statement of Principles” is quite something to consider. Apparently the HJS:
1. Believes that modern liberal democracies set an example to which the rest of the world should aspire.
2. Supports a ‘forward strategy’ – involving diplomatic, economic, cultural, and/or political means — to assist those countries that are not yet liberal and democratic to become so.
3. Supports the maintenance of a strong military, by the United States, the countries of the European Union and other democratic powers, armed with expeditionary capabilities with a global reach, that can protect our homelands from strategic threats, forestall terrorist attacks, and prevent genocide or massive ethnic cleansing.
You don’t need to do much reading between the lines to see that the HJS appears to still be in favour of 2003-style regime changes, so long as they are justified on the grounds that they “assist” other countries to become “liberal democracies” through the use of “forward strategies” and forces “armed with expeditionary capabilities and global reach”.
Why am I relaying this to you? That there’s a few nutters in Cambridge who haven’t caught up with the fact that “exporting democracy” was tried, and that it failed rather spectacularly with all sorts of nasty consequences, is not all that remarkable. There are cranks everywhere, even at some of the world’s most illustrious universities.
What I think is of a great deal more interesting is to have a glance at who has signed-up to the HJS’s “Statement of Principles”. More specifically, I would like to ask…
- Rt. Hon. Michael Ancram QC MP (Conservative Member of Parliament for Devizes)
- Chris Bryant MP (Labour Member of Parliament for Rhondda)
- Stephen Crabb MP (Conservative Member of Parliament for Preseli Pembrokeshire)
- The Rt. Hon. Dr. The Lord Gilbert (Labour Member of Parliament for Dudley, 1970-1974 Member of Parliament for Dudley East, 1974-1997 Minister of State for Defence, 1976–1979 and 1997–1999)
- Sir Philip Goodhart (Conservative Member of Parliament for Beckenham, 1957-1992)
- Michael Gove MP (Conservative Member of Parliament for Surrey Heath)
- Fabian Hamilton MP (Labour Member of Parliament for Leeds North East)
- Stephen Hammond MP (Conservative Member of Parliament for Wimbledon)
- Greg Hands MP (Conservative Member of Parliament for Hammersmith & Fulham)
- Dr. Denis MacShane MP (Labour Member of Parliament for Rotherham)
- Greg Pope MP (Labour Member of Parliament for Hyndburn)
- Lord Powell of Bayswater
- David Ruffley MP (Conservative Member of Parliament for Bury St. Edmunds, Stowmarket and Needham Market)
- Lord Soley of Hammersmith (Labour Member of Parliament for North Hammersmith and successor seats, 1979-2005)
- Gisela Stuart MP (Labour Member of Parliament for Birmingham Edgbaston)
- Rt. Hon. Lord Trimble (Ulster Unionist Member of Parliament for Upper Bann, 1990-2005)
- Edward Vaizey MP (Conservative Member of Parliament for Wantage)
- David Willetts MP (Conservative Member of Parliament for Havant)
…in particular whether they still feel that they can pledge their continued support to the HJS’s “Statement of Principles”?
I’m willing to be charitable. 2005 may still have been too soon for the dust to settle over Iraq. But it’s 2009 now. So I want to know which members of our political class continue to think that regime change is something that Britain can and should be exporting to the rest of the world. I expect those who – with the benefit of hindsight – find the idea discredited and indefensible to demonstrate this revelation forthwith by asking the HJS to withdraw their signatures from publication on their website.
Those that don’t ask for their signatures to be withdrawn need to explain why, in 2009, they think the HJS is something fit and proper for them to be signed up with.
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Hat tip to James Arnold for putting the Henry Jackson Society on my radar.
1. Believes that modern liberal democracies set an example to which the rest of the world should aspire.
2. Supports a ‘forward strategy’ – involving diplomatic, economic, cultural, and/or political means — to assist those countries that are not yet liberal and democratic to become so.
September 28, 2009
Stupid Government Go Back In Your Box
So i’ve just recently returned to higher education for a postgraduate degree, and I hear that the government wants to do more mad things to the sector. Specifically, it wants to introduce a “Research Excellence Framework” which will deny funding to research which is not “socially or economically useful”.
Great. New Labour and its obsession with quantifying everything, and its manic compulsion to impose targets wherever and whenever it can, strikes again.
Fortunately, David Mitchell has what’s wrong with this latest nonesense nailed down. Dear government, sit still and pay attention: when a comedian gets it far better than you do, it’s time to realise that you’re getting it badly, badly wrong.
September 27, 2009
What to do about footballers?
It’s not exactly controversial* to say that top professional football players in the UK are paid gross, disgustingly inflated and unjustifiable salaries. Big-name players at the richest clubs – Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal, and now also Manchester City – can expect to receive over a £100,000 a week. Some of the not-quite-so-massive clubs are starting to get there too.
So it may come as something of a shock to find out that many football clubs are being subsidised to the collective tune of £40 million a year by UK taxpayers. Furthermore, and according to the FT (h/t Paul at Though Cowards Flinch):
Clubs are immortal chiefly because creditors dare not pull the plug. The clubs’ brands are strong enough to cow banks and taxmen. And so clubs can incur debts without fear………….. Much of football’s debt will never be repaid. So it will be written off.
…..Large chunks will be nationalised. In many countries football lives off state support. The prime example is Argentina, whose government last month bailed out the clubs by “buying” football’s television rights for almost triple their previous price. In Italy and England, governments have quietly accepted that many clubs will never pay their back taxes. Even Dutch city councils bail out profligate clubs. Taxpayers are therefore funding footballers’ Porsches.’
What to do about this?
One answer is to get hardline: cut the subsidies and claw-back the taxes; enforce the law stringently on the grounds that these clubs can afford to pay for themselves, especially when even second-tier players can expect to pull in salaries way in excess of ordinary people’s wildest dreams.
This is unlikely, however, for broadly similar reasons to those set-out by Paul (link above).
Another answer – though perhaps just as unlikely – is to take Compass’ momentum on a high pay commission for bankers, and apply it to UK footballers. That footballers didn’t cause the recession should be entirely besides the point. As I’ve already noted, banker’s bonuses didn’t either. A high pay commission is a good idea on solid left-wing grounds about equality, and (partly as a consequence) opposing the continuation of gross material inequality. That applies to footballers as well as bankers.
Imposing a wage-cap on football players would be a good idea on grounds of justice and equality: football players do not deserve to be born lucky enough to be able to command the ludicrously high salaries that the market now bears for top players: if those players had been born 60 years ago, they’d be no better off than your average civil servant. The luck of their birth having arbitrarily conferred upon them the ability to kick balls better than 99.999% of the rest of us (no matter how much subsequent training they put in), and the luck that at present this is remunerated with astronomical wage packets, cannot justify those wage packets in a country where others were – through no fault of their own – born not so lucky.
But there might be other benefits too. They’re not quite so obvious, however, as they are the potentional result of the likely mass-exodus of greedy top-flight players to Spain and Italy. (I think it’s sadly the case that, with the exceptions of players like Gerrard or before him Shearer – who hold genuine club-loyalty and do so above money – most of the big names would be gone in a heartbeat**).
For a start, the Premiership might admittedly lose its status as the league exhibiting some of the best football skill in the world, as the very best players leave these shores. That would be sad. (But then, we could always watch the great players on television, playing away for millions in Spain and Italy). Yet it wouldn’t follow that the Premiership would cease to be one of the most exciting leagues in the world. A lot of what drives the excitement of English football is the passion and commitment of the fans, which in turn surges through players and managers, and in the words of Bill Shankley makes football in England far more important than life and death.
Clubs would still retain huge tribal loyalties; the passion and commitment would remain. But with a cap on wages, clubs would no longer be in the situation of either being able to rely upon rich owners funding the buying of the top players – which effectively translates into poaching the talent of other clubs – or desperately trying to hold onto their talent for as long as possible before it gets poached. Instead, clubs would be motivated to nurture and cultivate their own talent, without fear of it being stolen by bigger wallets. Players might more easily form long-standing attachments to clubs. The differences between sides would narrow and fluctuate – a possible end to the “Big 4″, and possibly even a return to the currently impossible days when a team like Derby could win the old second division and the very next year win the top flight as well. (For more thoughts on this, go here).
In turn, the consequences of teams having to nurture their own talent instead of poaching it could have fantastic effects for the national team. England may look good at the moment under Capello – but this is how they looked under the first years of Sven. Until they turn up at a major tournament and manage to put in more than 3rd-rate performances before being dumped out at the quarter final stage by clearly superior opposition, I refuse to believe anything fundamental has changed. English players still lack the technical ability and tactical comprehension of their top international rivals. Part of the reason for this is that top English clubs no longer need to cultivate such skills in their own players: they can buy foreigners with those abilities, and the English can fit into an overall unit where the very top skills are imported.
Yet if English clubs were unable to import talent and had to grow it themselves, then England might start to produce top players of the technical and mental calibre that are required to win major tournaments. We’d still have our Rooneys and our Terrys – but we might also end up with our own Torreses and Gattusos as well. Then we’d really be up there with Brazil, Italy, Germany and the other truly world-beating teams.
We might have to accept, of course, that our very best players were all lured overseas over a certain age and ability. But hey, we’d have two things to be happy about: a society in which indefensible, unjustly enormous wage packets for arbitrarily-remunerated footballing skills were a thing of the past, and a national team which might once more be truly great.
After all, the French national football league has never been much to shout about, and certainly not in my lifetime. But in 1998 and 2000 France produced one of the greatest national sides ever to have played the beautiful game on the face of this Earth. There’s a lesson in that.
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* Unless you’re a libertarian, of course. Which might go some way to show what is wrong with libertarianism.
** Because in the case of footballers, I’m thinking of drastic wage-caps: like down from £100,000 a week to at best £100,000 a year. Which is still a huge amount of money. And, incidentally, helps explain why I think a “boots-drain” would happen with football, but not a “brain-drain” with the 50p top tax: the magnitudes involved in salary reduction are divergent enough to produce the difference.
September 26, 2009
Paedophile Hysteria: A Tentative Foucauldian Analysis
That Britain is a nation which suffers, to varying extents, from a mass hysteria about paedophilia would seem a relatively uncontroversial statement. This, of course, is not to suggest that paedophilia is anything other than a heinous, deeply disturbing and horribly abusive practice. But it is to observe that the tabloid frenzies and mass panics about paedophiles – so fantastically satirised by Brass Eye – are a very real part of modern British society.
The latest manifestation of this came a couple of weeks ago, with the launch of the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA). This almost universally derrided mad-cap government scheme would apparently have “blacklisted” parents from being able to organise activities with their neighbours’ children if their behaviour had ever been reported as having involved the use of…sarcastic comments.
The ISA appears to have been bumped on the head – for now. But it’s worth asking, what was it that made the government initially think that the ISA was a good idea: an appropriate response to a widely-perceived social problem which would satisfy public demand for solutions to that problem?
A fairly standard story is usually trotted out at this point: New Labour is slavishly obsessed with chasing tabloid headlines; tabloids stir up paedophile frenzies to make money for themselves; ergo the government introduces crazy legislation as a way of pandering to mass hysteria on the paedophile issue.
All those things are, it’s worth stressing, true. But I’ve recently been wondering if perhaps there is a great deal more to it than just that. Here’s my very tentative early analysis.
I’ve recently been increasingly influenced by the thought of Michael Foucault, in particular his analysis of the prison system in Discipline and Punish. In that work, Foucault analyses the evolution and change of social systems of punishment, which includes the rise of individualised punishment, surveillance and importantly, the birth of the prison. The book is absolutely rammed full of ideas – many of which I’m still a long way from fully appreciating – but one aspect of Foucault’s analysis seems to me as follows.
There appears to be a paradox at the heart of modern penal systems. Prison is the default punishment for everything except the pettiest of crimes in our society. As soon as a crime breaches a certain level of (perceived) seriousness, prison is the inevitable and unchanging response. Yet if prison is intended to deter others from transgressing the law, to prevent individuals re-offending or to make society less crime-ridden, as we are frequently told, then it manifestly fails on all these counts – and badly*. Michael Howard was very wrong to claim that “prison works” if he meant it addressed those concerns. Prison is a school for criminals, and what is worse, a revolving-door institution of repeated incarceration for the majority of those who come into contact with it.
What Foucault does is flip the analysis on its head. Prison’s function is clearly not deterrence, correction or prevention – hence why it fails to achieve all these things, and why no serious efforts are implemented to try and make it achieve these things. Given this is in fact the state of affairs we are presented with, Foucault argues that it must in truth be the case that prison’s purpose is actually not to deter, to prevent re-offending or to make society less crime ridden at all. That those are prison’s functions is a common and deep-running misperception. In truth, it’s functions must be something else entirely (and certainly prison must have some function or functions, after all why else would prisons continue to exist unless they were doing something useful for which they were needed?).
Rather, prison’s function is far darker, more sinister and complicated than we are commonly encouraged to believe. It is something to do with the facilitation of methods of social control and surveillance, the entrenchment of the powers and privileges of the ruling classes, and the maintenance of classes of illegality which reflect social hierarchies of power (hence, for example, why very few “white collar” criminals go to prison, and most of the world’s prison populations are poor and working class criminals).
In providing this analysis – which one may or may not find plausible – Foucault presents the prison not as a simple institution offering simple solutions (deterrence, prevention, rehabilitation etc) to a simple phenomenon, but as a complex institution, responding to a very complex phenomenon with apparently simple solutions, which in fact mask vast underlying complexities about what prison’s true function is.
These vast complexities are, Foucault apparently contends, the product of a milieu of factors and tensions embedded within – and to a large extent, underpinning – our society. One of the more obvious ones to consider here is what can be termed the forces of the means of production (to borrow some Marxist-esque language): the way that relations of property influence not just society’s laws on property, but also the social hierarchies that grow up in relation to those property distributions and laws. These forces of the means of production shape our society in fundamental ways, one of which is the creation of certain classes of “crime” and “criminals”, defined in relation to the ownership of property under the particular property laws of a society . Prison must be seen as, in part, a complex product of those underlying forces of production.
Prison does have a function, therefore – but it’s function is not straightforwardly to deter, prevent and rehabilitate. It is rather (at least in part) to reflect the distributions of material and social power, and to be conducive to ends which those who control the most material and social power find beneficial (consciously or otherwise). Prison is not a simple response to a simple problem: it’s a complex phenomenon which is a product of not just the likewise complex phenomenon of “crime”, but also of the underlying features of our society which define what “crime” is in reference to fundamental forces, and relations that structure and define society in the first place.
So what on Earth does this have to do with paedophiles?
What I want to borrow are Foucault’s ideas that we need to analyse institutions or happenings as being the products of complex social phenomena in order to properly understand them, rather than offering easy, surface-level explanations.
The paedophile hysteria example looks like a case in point. The story which goes “there is paedophile hysteria because the Daily Mail creates it” looks to me far too simple. Sure, the Mail feeds a hysteria, and to a certain extent no doubt helps create it too. Yet we need to step back and ask: what is it about our society which means that creating hysteria about monstrous paedophile bogeymen hiding in every bush preying on every child is so easy, and so easily-received? Our society is highly conducive and receptive to this sort of hysteria in the first place. That the Mail et al. feed it – and the government respond with things like ISA – is indicative that something more fundamental is at play.
So what is it? Frustratingly, my analysis here comes up short. Certainly, there appears to be an age-old need – or perhaps better, demand – by human societies for the creation of enemies against which to define and oppose themselves. This is commonly done with external enemies who are perceived – sometimes rightly, but more often wrongly – as being fundamentally different and alien, as well as a mortal and perennial threat. Think the USSR until the early 1990s; think Islamic fundamentalism today.
There is also apparently a parallel need (or demand) to create enemies within societies; the terrifying threat of “the enemy within” which Thatcher, for example, identified, articulated and employed with such great effect. At this point crass and crude analogies to the persecutions of witches in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries appear, at least tentatively, useful: the demonising and hunting-down of the internal enemy which – perhaps even more so than the external enemy – was a fundamental threat to life and limb. The same can, tentatively, be said of McCarthyism in 1950′s America: the zeal and fervour of the need to expose internal enemy agents working from within one’s own society – though in this case, on behalf of the external enemy too – created a truly terrifying possibility for many Americans caught-up in that particular hysteria.
So society’s appear to need – or possibly, demand – enemies, both within and without. It looks, again tentatively, as though a plausible story can be told about paedophile hysteria fulfilling – and being the product of – something fundamental in our society: a need for internal enemies; for demons that must be hunted down, exposed and destroyed. The behaviour of tabloid newspapers, and kowtowing populist governments, is only the surface of a very complex picture.
Because we surely must not simply stop at noting that paedophile hysteria appears to fulfil a need (or demand) for internal enemies. We must in turn ask: why do we collectively need (or demand) these internal enemies, and what are the underling social forces that create this demand? Furthermore, what is it about society that makes us turn to paedophiles specifically as the bogey-men of choice? Clearly, it has something to do with sex – but that in itself opens up a whole can of worms about the way our society conceives of, orientates itself towards, and responds to the notions of sex, innocence, vulnerability and chastity. Which, again, goes to show how complex this is – and also, incidentally, how society-specific: in the United States, the media hysteria centres around kidnapping**, and not paedophelia. The obsession with child molestation appears to be a very British thing, even if the need for internal enemies appears more universal.
So what is it about our British society – about all of us , you and I, collectively – that facilitates and enables the paedophile hysteria? Blaming tabloid newspapers and demagogic politicians can only be one chapter of a much longer story.
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*I’m going to leave out considerations about retribution and revenge. Foucault addresses these, but they’re far too complex for present purposes.
** This was my marked experience when spending two months in the USA last summer: kidnapping stories dominated the 24 hours news networks in the way that paedophile hysteria is seized upon by British tabloids.
September 25, 2009
1 Way for Cameron to prove his “progressive” credentials
Clarificatory Edit: My penchant for sarcasm didn’t translate very well in the original post (thanks to Grace for pointing this out, in a round-about sort of way). Consequently, I’ve put the term “progressive” in quotation marks, to help clarify that I think it’s a stupid term, and how the notion of Cameron being committed to this stupid term is itself even stupider, as is now hopefully demonstrated by the post below, with this extra pre-face. Hopefully.
On Wednesday evening, David Cameron gave one of the compulsory Tory leader talks to the nauseating Carlton Club.
According to Stephen Pound MP at yesterday’s Royal Society of Arts debate, Cameron (or D-Cam, as some like to call him) went significantly off-message about anticipated Tory spending/cutting plans. Unfortunately, I’ve seen no further proof of this (just a triumphalist piece in the Mail). At the time, Iain Dale rubbished Pound’s claims. But then, the two had been bitching already for a solid 30 mintues, after the debate opened with Dale and Pound calling each other “twats” and “fuckers” in front of the entire audience, just before the debate got going. (Seriously. And no, they weren’t joking).
Regardless, the Carlton Club leads us to an interesting little question regarding Cameron’s progressive credentials: whether he’ll take steps to end the ability of such clubs to exclude women.
This doesn’t, it’s worth saying, apply to the Carlton Club anymore. Since 2008, women have been permitted to become full members of “The oldest, most elite, and most important of all Conservative clubs”.
Here’s a funny thing though. When Cameron became Tory Leader in 2005, he was offered automatic membership of the Carlton Club but refused, ostensibly on the grounds (as Ian Duncan Smith had done) that Carlton excluded women. This was a little ironic, as Cameron was at the time a member of the men-only Whites’ Club. In 2008, Cameron did actually resign from White’s citing the fact it excluded women as his reason (even though he’d been a member for, erm, 15 years).
The thing is, whilst the Carlton Club has begrudgingly entered the 21st Century, White’s still hasn’t. As far as I can tell, it still excludes women from membership.
So here’s my challenge to Cameron: Put your money where your mouth is, and prove to us that your revitalised Conservative Party is – as you claim – the true force of “progressive” politics in Britain. You can do this in many ways, but an easy one is as follows:
Make a commitment, now, that clubs like White’s will no longer be able to discriminate on the grounds of sex. Make it clear that this is anachronistic, and unacceptable. That even if such clubs are the bastions of Tory privilege and elitism, this is now irrelevant because the Tory Party is committed to meeting “progressive” ends – and there is nothing “progressive” about chauvinism, discrimination and sexism. Grasp the bull by the horns and use the power of the state to institute the “progressive” aims you claim to champion. And then honour all of the above commitments when you get into power.
If Cameron is serious about being the true proponent of “progressive” politics in this country, he can prove it by taking on his own old-guard, and taking a principled stand on a matter which nobody with any genuine commitment to “progressive” politics could surely disagree with. Right?
I’m not holding my breath though.
September 24, 2009
What is Brown up to with Trident?
It is very hard to think of good arguments for retaining the Trident nuclear deterrent, let alone replacing it at a cost into the upper-tens of billions. To spend that sort of money on weapons required for wars that will now never be fought, when essential public services are being lined-up for the chop, is ludicrous.
So what to make of Gordon Brown’s pledge to order only 3 (instead of 4) replacement submarines, cutting Trident spending by £3 billion?
Clearly, it’s not a move designed to lessen the need for public sector cuts. £3 billion is peanuts compared to the size of the slashing which we’re being told is going to be inflicted.
And it’s hardly a commitment to nuclear non-proliferation, either. Britain will still have an independent nuclear deterrent, just with one fewer submarine. So this isn’t a move from Brown to spread peace and harmony.
Nor is it designed to fight “the wars of the 21st Century”. Maybe the £3billion savings from scrapping one submarine will be channelled into providing proper armour and equipment for troops in Afghanistan, currently so woefully under-supplied with combat basics. Maybe. But even if that happens, what’s the point of nuclear weapons in a world where the hated, dangerous, perennially violent and merciless enemy (which we are constantly told is out there, and which our society uses as an existential reference point) is no longer the “evil empire” or Soviet Russia with its own batch of nukes, but disparate bands of religious fanatics against whom the use of nuclear weapons is a blatant impossibility? Why have any nuclear weapons in this world, either as a strategic imperative, or to fulfil the needs of a society in huge measure defined by reference to external enemies (be they real, imagined or exaggerated)?
Even more baffling, it’s not like there’s broad popular support for keeping Trident. According to the Left Foot Forward YouGov poll, only 27% of people want to replace Trident with an equally powerful deterrent, 40% say Britain should retain a minimum nuclear system, but it should be less powerful and cost less than replacing Trident, and 23% favour giving up nuclear weapons altogether. If Brown was politicking on this matter and trying to play to the crowds, it would seem highly ineffectual: the 27% who want to maintain trident won’t be pleased, and nor will the 23% who want to see nuclear weapons go altogether. As for the 40% who want a scaled-downd deterrent, well reducing the procurement by just one submarine and at tiny overall cost reduction isn’t likely to please them either.
So what are Brown and the Labour leadership playing at? It could just be incompetence, of course. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve failed disastrously to read the public mood. But I have another theory, of which the bare bones are as follows.
Brown is walking a tightrope between deference to the Americans and attempting to retain Britain’s status as a “first tier power”. The unilateral declaration that Britain will offer a reduction in its nuclear deterrent is clearly in line with Obama’s efforts to reduce the American deterrent. But as The Guardian points out: “Critics of Brown will argue his move to reduce the deterrent is the minimum possible, given the international disarmament momentum.”
And those critics are right – but it’s because Brown is walking a tightrope. If Britain gives up too much of its independent nuclear deterrent, then one thing in particular will be threatened: it’s already ludicrous possession of a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.
The Council, which reflects now defunct power-balances from the immediate post-War era, affords Britain an international status that its military, economic, political and diplomatic stature can no longer justify. If Britain gives up her nukes, it will be beyond question that her permanent seat on the Security Council is untenable.
Now, those of us who happen to believe that this would be no bad thing – that not only is Britain a second-tier power (at best), but that we would all do better if that was acknowledged – might jump in to cry: so what excuse has Brown got then!? But there’s more to it than that.
Although a simple story can be told about Brown and the Labour leadership being egregious megalomaniacs, hell-bent on maintaining the illusion of Britain’s manifestly non-existent great power status as a boost to their own egos, such a story is inadequate. I do suspect a little something like that is going on (we’re talking about politicians, after all). But then again, Brown et al will have been on the receiving end of enough American, Chinese, Russian and German snubs by now to know that Britania’s star waned long ago.
More plausible is the following. Labour do not want to be remembered as the party that officially ushered-in Britain’s era as a second-rate power. For as long as we retain a permanent Security Council seat, and for that matter an independent nuclear deterrent, the illusion of greatness continues. That it’s a mere illusion is besides the point: the party that shatters that illusion will be vilified as the party that destroyed Britain’s greatness.
For while a combined majority of people may want Trident scrapped or scaled-down somewhat, this is a long way from a majority of people believing Britain is or should be a second rate power, or that if it is, this is no bad thing. In many ways, Britain has never come to terms with its post-Imperial decline. Part of the reason Thatcher’s rhetoric about “the Sick Man of Europe” was so effective was that it reminded people just how far “Great” Britain had fallen.
The Conservatives have long been adept at portraying Labour as the party which bankrupts and ruins Britain. If Brown ushered in an era in which our second-tier power status was officially confirmed – e.g. by ending the nuclear deterrent and losing the permanent seat – it would mark Labour forever. Just think of how it would be portrayed for decades to come by the right and its supplicant media, exploiting the angst of post-greatness and international marginalisation.
Over at Liberal Conspiracy, Dave Osler writes that “It is high time Labour got its head around the idea that Britain is no longer a superpower.” Maybe. But to what extent can it both do that, and then put the consequences into practice, in the context of a nation which has yet to accept this post-superpower status, and an opposition which would use it as a beating-stick for decades to come?
September 22, 2009
PoliticsHome bought by Ashcroft – are you suprised?
Title idiocy corrected, thanks to Jim Jay for pointing that out!
The following is shamelessly stolen from Next Left (I hope they don’t mind):
Andrew Rawnsley has issued the following statement, resigning from the PoliticsHome website setting out his belief that the majority stake of Lord Ashcroft in a new company which owns the site makes it impossible for users to retain sufficient confidence in its political independence.
Ashcroft is deputy chair of the Conservative Party and the party’s largest donor, funding the active constituency campaigns of many candidates in marginal seats and having a significant voice in campaign strategy.
Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome, which has established itself as the leading grassroots forum, blogged about the deal under which Lord Ashcroft now has a 57.5% per cent stake in the site. Montgomerie tells readers that is confident in the assurances of editorial independence which he has received from Lord Ashcroft, that he will not seek to influence the editorial content of the ConservativeHome website.
Intriguingly, the investment (which I have not seen quantified) is to create a new centre-right online “newspaper”.
“I have today resigned as Editor-in-Chief of PoliticsHome.co.uk.
Thanks to the dedication and flair of the team, PoliticsHome has been an outstanding editorial success. The site has attracted plaudits from many other media organisations and across the political spectrum.This is Andrew Rawnsley’s statement about PoliticsHome.
That praise has been generated by its ground-breaking methods of surveying opinion at Westminster, Whitehall and beyond along with its impartial reporting of all strands of news and commentary.
It has been both professionally and personally satisfying to work with the talented people who have achieved this in the eighteen months since the inauguration of PoliticsHome.
I therefore greatly regret the decision made by Stephan Shakespeare, the chairman, to do a deal which places PoliticsHome under the ownership of Michael Ashcroft, the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party. The site has been folded along with ConservativeHome into a new entity in which Lord Ashcroft is the majority shareholder.
I became Editor-in-Chief on the basis that PoliticsHome was dedicated to being a non-partisan site clearly independent of any party both editorially and financially.
It was essential for users of the site that they could feel absolute confidence in the political independence of PoliticsHome.
I do not believe that can be compatible with being under the ownership of the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party.”
I don’t think anybody should be suprised about this, for two reasons.
1. ConservativeHome and PoliticsHome already share the same offices (tucked away just behind Westminster Abbey). This should come as no surprise, as both were already owned by Stephen Shakespeare prior to the Ashcroft sell-off. Shakespeare, who also part-owns YouGov, is himself a former Tory Parliamentary candidate.
There should therefore have been clear doubts about PoliticsHome’s editorial independence a long time ago.
2. The sell-out to Ashcroft is not a surprise, and should be viewed as entirely logical. Both ConservativeHome and PoliticsHome have been growing in size and influence. The Tory right has been consistently ahead of the game in using the internet to good political effect. It makes perfect sense to combine the officially non-partisan site with the partisan one, creating an online Tory “newspaper”. Selling-up to a major Tory donor and deputy chairman is good strategic sense.
This all shows that the internet is being taken extremely seriously by top Tories, not just marginal geeks like Iain Dale and Paul Staines (who kid themselves that they are of profound political importance, but aren’t).
Ashcroft no doubt smells a profit. But just as importantly he thinks the on-line frontier is an important one for his party to fight on.When blogs cease to become the preserve of nerdy losers, and real power-players like Ashcroft move in, it matters.
The right is attempting to consolidate and extend its grip on the internet political discourse. The significance of such moves should not be missed by the left.
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Disclaimer: My cynicism has absolutely nothing to do with the fact I applied for an internship with Politics Home and got rejected at the last round. Absolutely nothing.
Mansion Tax
A shorter version of this piece is posted here.
So Vince Cable has announced Lib Dem policy to introduce a “Mansion Tax” targeting the very wealthiest. The tax would be paid at a rate of 0.5% on the value of properties over £1m, and would affect around 250,000 people who would pay an average of £4,000 a year.
Cable – unlike the Tories – has apparently been reading his Adam Smith:
“The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principle expense of the rich; and a magnificent house establishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be any thing very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expence, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in proportion” (The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Ch II, Pt II, Art 1).
Those Smithian sentiments are certainly captured by the new Lib Dem plans. But it’s also a shot across Tory bows: “You want to give millionaires a tax break? We want to reel them in and help ordinary people”. Not only is this the right thing to be saying in a country where inequality has increased (with all its attendant evils), poverty remains a fact of life for many, social immobility is getting worse, and middle-class families are now struggling to keep themselves above water – it may also be electorally wise.
Whilst south-east Lib Dems like Susan Cramer (facing millionaire Tory opponent Zac Goldsmith in Richmond Park) may well suffer, the Lib Dem leadership has likely calculated that in the rest of the country, taxing the rich will play well. After all, Labour have got more seats to lose than the Tories and disillusioned Labour voters are likely to be highly responsive to a “Mansion Tax”.
But then, if one was being cynical about Lib Dem tax policies, one might well be significantly less generous about the latest announcement.
Until 2006, the Lib Dems had a long-standing commitment to a 50% tax for those earning over £100,000. Then, under Ming Campbell, the party dropped that position in a 2-1 vote. Many of the stated reasons for opposing the 50% tax were highly respectable (if debatable): that it was “totemic”, “symbolic not substantial”, and that anyway top-rate taxes don’t bring in all that much money so don’t help the worst-off, who need a tax break.
Unfortunately, what nobody in 2006 saw coming was the financial crisis and ensuing recession, with New Labour dropping its core Blairite (and formerly Brownite) pledge never to increase top-rate taxes, promptly introducing a 50% rate in spring 2009. Suddenly the Lib Dems found themselves in a squeeze. By September 2009 the 50% tax is attracting broad popular support – yet the Lib Dems would look like fools if just 3 years after making a fanfare over dropping commitments to such a tax, they switched to supporting it again with equal gusto. Accordingly, they’ve had to fudge the issue by condemning the tax-hike when it was announced as “counter productive”, but quietly accepting it now as a fiscal necessity.
The party thus finds itself stuck between a rock and a hard place: they can’t openly support the 50% tax to make a pitch for their progressive credentials, but they recognise that increasing the social burden on the wealthy is not only flavour of the month, but also likely to play well with disillusioned Labour voters and those worried about Dave’s sharp public spending axe (which is conspicuously not being blunted by promises of increased revenues from the rich).
The Lib Dems have been playing around with some (good) ideas to target the rich whilst not falling-back on increased top-rate taxes for a while (local income tax and scrapping council tax obviously spring to mind). Yet the new “Mansion Tax” could do a lot to get the Lib Dems from the rock to the hard place: it is claimed to increase revenues, targets the ultra-rich, and would apparently reduce the tax burden on lower-earners too.
So maybe being cynical is to miss the point (this is politics, after all). The Lib Dems are in something of a bind over progressive tax (not least because it’s an open secret that the party is riven by division on tax-and-spend issues). Yet the “Mansion Tax” could be a shrewd move indeed. On the one hand it puts clear blue water between them and the Tories. On the other, it adds substance to recent Lib Dem claims that they are the natural home for British “progressives” and are ready to supplant Labour. Of course, one policy alone won’t be enough to “break the mould” of British politics – but more like this, and who knows?
