August 10, 2011
Riot of a Time
Very quick thoughts on the recent riots.
1. Clearly it is true that poverty, alienation, deepdisgruntlement with the police and lack of opportunity are important background facts that any serious attempt at understanding will have to take into account.
2. But these alone cannot explain what was clearly, in many cases, opportunistic theft and glee in destruction.
3. So where do we go from there?
4. I take these to be true and important components of any description of modern British politics and society: that it promotes self-interested greed, materialism, the possession of ostensive goods for status, immediate gratification, and a toleration (even encouragement) of ruthless competitiveness with a deep disregard for the welfare of others. (Call this the “no-such-thing-as-society society”, if you like.)
5. Putting 1 and 2 together with 4, and adding in conditions of spontaneity, anticipated impunity and evident opportunity, a basic yet broadly sufficient explanation appears to emerge.
6. Note that the things described in 4 above constitute the core tenets of the political ideology broadly known as ‘Thatcherism’ (or if you want to bring things up to date post-1997, ‘neo-liberalism’).
7. Also note that the conditions described in 1. have been massively and continuously exacerbated by Thatcherism (or ‘neo-liberalism’), especially if enormous inequality and its debilitating effects on individual well-being and self-respect are included too.
8. So actually this may not be such a mystery after all. If you constantly tell people to be selfish, ruthless, competitive, greedy and disregarding of the welfare of others, then you can’t really be surprised when they behave as they are told they fundamentally are and must be (even if they forget about the bits to do with obeying the law).
9. However, if you happen to be the prime minister just invoke some vacuous covering fluff about ‘moral responsibility’. Continue to condemn loudly, and then get back to promoting the elements in 4. on a daily basis. Without wondering about which ways the knife may cut.
January 21, 2011
Blair’s Heirs
The other day I noted the sheer scale and audacity of Coalition lies and u-turns. My intended point was that the volume of dishonesty is staggering, and has potentially corrosive impacts upon our politics in the long term.
My piece was cross-posted at Liberal Conspiracy. Sadly, LibCon is no longer a place for reasoned exchange. The fate of any highly successful blog is (almost) inevitably an exponential increase in morons until sensible debate is suffocated.
Still, amidst the whataboutery and “Labour also lied; two wrongs make a right!” lines of “argument”, something vaguely sensible was being articulated. Namely, that even if I’m right that the scale of Coalition dishonesty is astonishing, this isn’t wholly new. So it’s worth asking: where did it come from?
By sheer co-incidence, Tony Blair has again been up before the pointless farce of the Chilcot Inquiry. Aside from giving him the opportunity to intone about the threat of Iran – whilst straight-facedly denying that invading their immediate neighbours to the west and east has made that worse! – we also know that:
Summing up the contents of the statements, [Blair] said he had told Mr Bush: “You can count on us, we are going to be with you in tackling this, but here are the difficulties.”
The message he wanted to get across, he added, was “whatever the political heat, if I think this is the right thing to do I am going to be with you, I am not going to back out if the going gets tough. On the other hand, here are the difficulties and the UN route is the right way to go”.
One reason Chilcot is a farce is, precisely, that any remotely impartial spectator already knows Blair lied about Iraq. And whatever Chilcot determines, there will be no consequences for Tony.
Regardless of retrospective justifications offered by the Iraq conflict’s apologists, never forget that what clinched the Parliamentary vote for war was the claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, and was an immediate and dangerous threat. But that was complete baloney.
Blair lied about the evidence. He had already promised Bush that Britain was committed to an invasion, regardless. Blair was never going to pull out. Even when the Americans continued to make unilateral decisions with total disregard for British action or interest.
Blair misled Parliament to secure British backing for America. He has never shown an ounce of remorse. He still acts as though his declarations of unfailing moral vision are all the justification he ever needs. He shows us a putative sincerity, against a clear backdrop of dishonesty. He expects that to be enough – and in a lot of ways, it is. For blair and Labour were re-elected in 2005. He walks the streets a free – and very rich – man.
Now recall the ascensions of David Cameron and Nick Clegg to their respective party leaderships. Cameron – a moderniser despised by much of his own party – beat the favourite David Davis largely because many Tories thought they had finally found their answer to “Teflon Tony”. As for Clegg, he too was a Blair clone if also with a dash of Dave. (The Liberals picked the more rightwing contender, because the country’s mood was at that point moving towards the Conservatives.)
Tony Blair, along with Alistair Campbell and Peter Mandelson, initiated an era in British politics where the truth was a worthless commodity. One easily traded for pious intonations, technical get-outs, and straight-faced declarations of hollow sincerity. Iraq was the apotheosis of this, not least because all those responsible got away with it.
By the sheer scale of their recent dishonesties, Cameron and Clegg may simply be confirming that they are, indeed, Blair’s heirs. But perhaps not in the ways their parties originally hoped.
January 18, 2011
Coalition Lies and the Corrosion of Politics
The sheer scale and breadth of the present government’s pre-election lying and post-election u-turning is quite something to behold. Let’s trot through the big ones, that we actually know about.
First and foremost, the stupendous Lib Dem betrayal on tuition fees. From categorical pledges to oppose all fee rises, to backing a lifting of the cap to £9,000 a year. Quite spectacular, and utterly impossible to hide.
Further down the list and marginally less egregious: Cameron denouncing as “Labour lies” any suggestion that the Tories would restrict bus passes for the elderly, cut the Winter Fuel allowance, or get rid of the pension credit. After promising to protect all these things on national television, the Coalition has done the exact opposite.
There’s also the general category of systematic dishonesty about the NHS. The Tories explicitly promised not to touch “frontline services” and to protect the NHS before the election. They are now instigating massive back-door changes. Changes described by “seriously concerned” leading healthcare experts as “unnecessary risks” which are “damaging” and “potentially disastrous”.
Less enormous (but by no means less important) lies that may have escaped your attention include: pledges from Cameron and Clegg to end child detention for those seeking asylum in Britain which have been totally reneged on, and the recent joke of the departure of Control Orders by the front door and their immediate return via the side window.
Oh, and the emergence of a video showing Cameron claiming he wouldn’t cut EMAs. And pledges to protect school funding from cuts, but instead playing jiggery-pokery with the accounts to disguise reduced funding beneath the veneer of a hollowed-out pupil premium. And Tory promises to protect child benefit. And the building of a massive snooping database both Liberals and Conservatives promised they wouldn’t pursue.
Well, you get the picture. Those are really just the ones that came most quickly to hand. I’m sure there’s plenty more.
But don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you with some sop that it Pains Me Dearly to see such dishonesty and untruth in our political class. The magical optimism fairy didn’t pay me a visit last night; I’m still as cynical as ever. Politicians lie (often by unavoidable necessity), and being a Tory/Tory-lite Coalition, this bunch lied even more than usual in order to get their paws on power.
What concerns me, however, is the sheer scale and audacity of the Coalition’s reneging on earlier promises. I know the standard line is that none of this is done joyfully, but is the necessary price to pay for “Labour’s deficit”. (Or even more ludicrously, that this is all the outcome of “coalition policy” produced by party compromise, thus wholly divorced from any pre-election pledges.) But fewer and fewer ordinary voters will believe this (if any still do), and such justification will increasingly have traction only with the already-converted.
The real problem is that systematic large-scale dishonesty in politics is corrosive. The present government’s flagrant disregard for its own promises threatens to undermine even the minimal levels of trust Britons place in their political system. If this goes too far, there’s the very real risk that lying and dishonesty will become normalised. And that spells trouble.
Because if voters conclude that all politicians are lying mendacious bastards who just say one thing and do the other, then it eventually becomes acceptable for politicians to be lying mendacious bastards who just say one thing and do the other. As voters become disillusioned and resigned, all political sides play the same dirty game because only suckers remain honest. It’s a downward trajectory from there. And where do you end up? Well, basically, you end up in Italy. Which is not a good place to be.
So whilst I’m not surprised that Nick and Dave are presiding over a pack of lies dealt by a pack of liars, I do wish they would lie a little less – or at least, a little less obviously.
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Thanks to Guy and Paul for helping to assemble and source the compilation of lies in under 30 minutes.
October 28, 2010
Ideology vs. Fantasy
It’s been frequently suggested that our current Lords and Masters – messrs Cameron, Osborne, Clegg et. al. – are pursuing a hyper-ideological agenda. How else to explain a government cutting public spending at a pace and depth that might make Old Maggie weep?
Some suggest that this ideology is forefront in the Lords and Masters’ minds; that they know exactly what they are doing. I’ve flirted with that explanation myself. Others, like John Gray, suggest that any ideology is deep and thereby virtually subconscious. That Cameron, Clegg et. al. are so wedded to a state-minimalist right-wing worldview that they do not see this to be ideological any more than fish see water to be wet.
In general there is a consensus (at least on the left) that our Lords and Masters must have some underlying coherent purpose. After all, it’s generally acknowledged that what is being done to the economy is – at best – astonishingly cavalier. Quick re-cap: economic theory and history indicate that Boy George’s cuts are more likely to slow down or reverse recovery than aid it, whilst suggestions that bond markets will punish Sovereign Britain if her deficit is not immediately and drastically reduced appear both false and incoherent.
But assuming that our Lords and Masters know this, the puzzle correspondingly emerges: why carry out the cuts regardless? “Ideological agenda” slips-in as the obvious explanation.
Yet it’s always important to guard against inadvertent projection (or at least recognise it when it’s happening). By that I mean: we must be careful about not reading ourselves into the world around us, then mistakenly believing we have found something new.
Right-thinking people look at the assault on the economy – including many measures which will save miniscule sums but have dramatic effects on the lives of thousands – and conclude that it must be motivated by something coherent, i.e. something like an ideological agenda. After all, that’s what might motivate them, if they were in equivalent positions of power.
But what if this is a mistake? What if our leaders are actually not motivated by anything coherent at all? What if they are actually…mad?
Hypothesise with me: what if our Lords and Masters are conducting this savage economic assault because they talked-up deficit reduction so hard in the run up to the last election that they now believe their own strategic rhetoric, and have forgotten that it was precisely that. Accordingly, they may have lost their grips on what the rest of us would class as reality.
We have evidence that this sort of stuff happens, after all. For a start, intense high-level politics apparently requires a certain level of insanity in order to function on a daily basis. Indeed, look at recent case studies. Gordon Brown is by some accounts a pretty deranged individual. Tony Blair appears to have taken a long vacation from reality. His wife appears to have joined him, as evinced by her mad-cap schemes to auction off Blair’s autograph for a tenner a pop.
It’s thus very possible that our current Lords and Masters are not crafty ideological head-bangers, but individuals who’ve become dangerously detached from reality. And that need not be because there is anything especially wrong with them; that would be to commit the fundamental attribution error. It may simply be that life at the top of politics pre-requires and necessitates a certain level of delusion. Mixed with the present context, however, this may have very unfortunate consequences.
But here comes the twist: does this alternative possibility actually matter?
We will probably never know whether Cameron, Osborne, Clegg et. al. are really ideological Thatcherite crusaders, or just delusional rightist fantasists. And one key reason we may never know is, precisely, because the outcome may well be the same either way.
October 7, 2010
Fairness: The Academy vs. the Electorate?
Did academic “luck egalitarianism” yesterday receive it’s most unexpected convert? I ask because David Cameron apparently affirmed one of its core principles:
“Fairness means giving people what they deserve – and what people deserve depends on how they behave.”
Luck egalitarianism is built around thoughts which very much include a principle like Cameron’s. Namely, that the level of inequality a society tolerates needs to be responsive to the choices and actions individuals make in the process of generating that inequality. For example, if I work hard whilst you surf all day, then it seems fair that I should end up with (at least some) more money than you. I worked for it, therefore I deserved it; you didn’t, therefore you don’t.
Yet I fear that any hopes of David Cameron coming out of the (luck) egalitarian closet are soon to be dashed. A commitment to academic (luck) egalitarianism would also mean Cameron affirming another closely-connected idea: that inequalities that are undeserved are, in turn, unfair – and that ceteris paribus we have reasons (though not necessarily decisive reasons) to correct such undeserved unfairness.
For example, if I have more money than you because my Daddy was a banker and left it all to me when he died, this is unfair. I did nothing to earn that money, therefore I do not deserve it, and it’s unfair I should have it when you receive no such inheritance because of brute bad luck that your father was a lowly bin cleaner.
Similar thoughts apply to private education: we know that people who are privately educated are much more likely to go on and earn higher salaries. But children do not deserve to receive this privilege of private education; they get it from the brute good luck of having wealthy parents. So how can fairness tolerate this undeserved privilege?
Plainly, David Cameron is not going to announce a massive increase in inheritance taxes and a ban on private schools. Even though failing to do so makes his rhetoric of fairness and desert, aimed squarely at society’s poorest, obviously hollow.
Then again, I’m hardly surprised by this (and I’m sure you’re not either). There is, however, an important observation worth making; one that will bring even more gloom to leftist egalitarians.
The people of Britain are clearly not outraged by Cameron’s inconsistency. Rather than decrying his talk of fairness as hypocritical – due to a manifest lack of concern for undeserved inequality at the top end of society – this attack on (by implication) “scroungers” is greeted as free-standing, and even praised by many.
There thus seems to be a disturbing (for egalitarians) asymmetry in popular views of equality and desert. Many ordinary people spontaneously agree with one quite specific (luck) egalitarian thought: that if you don’t work hard, you should have less (nothing?) than others who do. But a logically corresponding thought, travelling in the opposite direction, is not affirmed with anything like as much commitment: that inequalities that are undeserved and result from brute luck should be corrected for.
This asymmetry allows Cameron to bash the “undeserving poor”, Victorian style, whilst heading a party that wants inheritance tax cuts for millionaires and supports private education. And that, I suggest, is a severe practical problem for egalitarians (whether “luck” or otherwise) who affirm that a basic principle of fairness is that undeserved inequality is objectionable and should be corrected, whatever we may or may not think about deserved inequality.
Or, to end on an esoteric note, Samuel Scheffler has his finger on the button:
“If, as I have argued, there is a surprising degree of agreement among contemporary philosophical liberals [Scheffler means liberal egalitarians] and their critics about the advisability of avoiding any appeal to pre-institutional desert, then why should it be a special problem for political liberalism if it too avoids any such appeal? The answer is that although liberalism’s most prominent philosophical critics may be reluctant to appeal to preinstitutional desert, its most prominent political critics most certainly are not. On the contrary, conservative politicians do not hesitate to invoke traditional notions of desert and responsibility in attacking liberal [egalitarian] positions. Thus if political liberalism does require the rejection of pre-institutional desert, then although it will be in tune with the prevailing philosophical consensus, that may not suffice to prevent its political isolation.”
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Update: Stuart White is exploring similar thoughts at Next Left
September 28, 2010
Ed and Ideas
For those believing ideas to be powerful forces, the fallout from Ed Miliband’s leadership victory is fascinating.
Yesterday on this blog, several people expressed their distaste with Labour’s electoral college system; that some Labour members could have up to 12 votes appalled them. But I confess to being bemused, and fear they are too-quickly applying a general rule – “fair elections are always one person, one vote” – where it may not apply.
In something like a general election “one person, one vote” is a very sound principle. For a start, it enshrines the desirable equality of citizens in possibly the most important decision-making-process of a sovereign state. National democracy – especially following histories of exclusion on class and gender grounds – (probably) requires absolute voting equality if fairness is to be secured.
But the Labour Party is not a sovereign state. It is a private club where some trusted affiliates are allowed to partake at key moments. It is thus not – at least, prima facie – unreasonable that those who are more deeply invested in the Party (e.g. by being paid members of Labour and of politically affiliated groups) should get more of a say in its big leadership decisions than others.
I therefore do not find the fact that some Labour people get more votes offensive. But to others the electoral college’s structure calls into question the legitimacy of the system, and by extension Ed Miliband’s victory. Differing ideas of (electoral) legitimacy thus produce different political judgements.
Consider next the much-heard claim that it was the unions wot won it for Ed. A major objection to this claim is that it’s not really true – or at least, no more true than other “what if” scenarios. Example: if 6 Labour MPs had used their second preferences differently, David would have been triumphant.
To those who complain that former Brown bully-boy Charlie Wheelan pressured key MPs into voting in a Union-approved way – I struggle to see the problem, if it’s intended as one sticking specifically to Ed Miliband. Lobbying is part and parcel of politics, within and without parties. I’m sure Wheelan tried to turn the screws. But nobody seriously believes that back-door deals and threats weren’t made in securing David Cameron’s 2005 victory as leader of the Tory Party.
People are complaining about “union influence”. Yet when Cameron secured a huge chunk of initial support by treating Tory MPs to a lavish champagne launch party (a trick picked up no doubt at the Oxford Union, where quasi-bribery is the electoral norm), this attracted no comparable opprobrium. The mass preferences of organised workers – long-time supporters and fund-raisers of the Labour Party – are a No-No. But wining and dining MPs, to out-shine a less-well financed David Davis, is by contrast, OK.
Now, this may be the right way of thinking about things. I’m not saying one way or the other. The point is, thinking about things this way around casts a shadow on Ed, but not on Dave. Again, ideas of legitimate conduct matter.
But to stick at this Union question, it’s remarkable the extent to which commentators and the right are using it as a stick to beat Miliband Jnr with. Rather than being the legal organised representation of 7 million British workers, you’d be forgiven for thinking “trades union” is a term synonymous with “international paedophile network”.
The fact Unions have received relatively little from the Labour leadership since 1997 – instead being treated to PFI, attempts to privatise the Post Office, and zero efforts to roll-back anti-Union legislation – and yet have loyally funded the Party regardless, is widely ignored. Contrary to the accepted media angle, I’d be inclined to say that the very least Labour should do is give affiliated Unions some extra voting power, so as to recognise the Unions’ enormous, on-going support for the Party.
And if critics complain that “the real problem is that Unions hold the purse-strings”, I’ll offer two words back: Michael Ashcroft. Labour are painted as being in the pocket of sinister vested interests, but the Tories are not. Despite much Conservative finance and organisation – especially for campaign funds in marginal seats – being dependent on one very influential man.
But it’s not hard to see the root of such divergence. The Unions lost the culture wars of the 1980s, as well as the ones fought on picket lines. In the national psyche, the Unions are a force of darkness which needed to be crushed before good times could shine – and which must be held in deep suspicion in case their demands for fair working wages and responsible work-place legislation plunge Britain back into some economic darkage.
This, of course, is a simplified and misleading account of history. But it has been propagated especially in media organs owned by politically manipulative billionaires. The kinds of billionaires who, unsurprisingly, are this week turning on the representatives of organised labour – their natural political and economic enemies. Yet these media organisations have in the past largely stayed quiet about the power and influence of a fellow billionaire, who just happens to pull the levers of the Tory Party. A party which, it just-so-happens, is also an enemy of the trades unions too.
Aren’t these political co-incidences simply remarkable?
There may well be something rotten at the heart of how Labour elects its leaders – I don’t want to rule that out. But equally much distaste at the outcome of the contest may in fact be a function of ideas which, upon closer examination, turn out not to be as straightforward – or as innocent – as they might first seem.
September 15, 2010
Virtue vs. Virtù: Machiavelli, The Pope and David Cameron
Despite his name becoming a by-word for gangster thuggery, Niccolò Machiavelli was an extremely sophisticated political theorist. One of his most important ideas was that for a ruler to be successful, he had to learn when to be bad.
According to Machiavelli, all rulers had to come to terms with fortuna; the cycle of good and back luck that could favour a prince one year but plunge him into adversity the next. And whereas Hamlet merely questioned why one should suffer “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” (in a play infused with Machiavellian and counter-Machiavellian themes) the Great Florentine advised rulers on how to deal with them.
Crucially, rulers must learn that “virtue” – in the sense of doing conventionally “good” acts – would not be enough to guarantee success. Whilst treating enemies with respect and being loyal to allies might work in certain circumstances, in others this might lead to military subjugation and unanticipated betrayal.
Machiavelli therefore advised rulers to acquire virtù. This was distinct from “virtue”, and encompassed whatever was required for rulers to succeed, conquer and triumph. Whilst murder, betrayal and dishonesty would not be on a list of traditional “virtues”, they might well be classed under the head of virtù if they led to success and glory.
Yet truly successful rulers also had to have guts; they had to know when the occasion demanded that they be really bad. And whilst most rulers knew how to be bad in petty, fleeting, insignificant ways, few could grasp the thorns of dangerous opportunity when the stakes were high.
A case in point was Giovanpagolo Baglioni, tyrant of Perugia. Baglioni was a vicious man who had murdered cousins and nephews to secure the throne, and even slept with his sister. Yet when Pope Julius II came to remove Baglioni from power, the latter was suddenly gifted an opportunity. Baglioni could murder the pope – who had foolishly left his guards outside the city – seizing papal power and international renown. But Baglioni floundered, and let himself be taken away by Julius II in chains. Despite being a man of vice, Baglioni did not know how to be “entirely bad”. He thus squandered his chance to secure greatness – much to Machiavelli’s disgust.
Which brings us to the 21st Century. Tomorrow Pope Benedict XVI will arrive on a state visit to Britain. The former Cardinal Ratzinger embodies the worst aspects of the Catholic Church’s discrimination against women and homosexuals, and continues to oppose measures which could save millions of lives every year. He is also at the heart of a world-wide paedophile scandal, protecting abusive priests by shielding them from legal justice.
So it’s worth asking: what would the ghost of Machiavelli urge David Cameron to do as the Pope sets foot upon these shores?
The obvious answer appears to be that whilst virtue would have the Pope arrested for his criminal paedophile-protecting activities, virtù demands respect for international power politics and cosying up to this distasteful pontiff.
But that is to think too narrowly, too unambitiously; without proper regard for glory!
If David Cameron were to withdraw the Pope’s diplomatic immunity and arrest him as a facilitator of child sex abuse, it would annoy the Vatican rather a lot. Southern European countries and Latin America would probably be a bit peeved too. But they’d get over it, and they’d hardly risk a war over the matter. The world’s 1 billion Catholics might also be annoyed for a while, but the more liberal wings – and those bishops in South America fighting for the right to OK condoms for their congregations – might actually be quite pleased.
Domestically, Cameron would swiftly shift the news agenda away from his government’s programme of insane economy-destroying cuts, and his dodgy media adviser’s phone-hacking troubles. The Pope-arrest story would run for weeks. Cameron would gain international renown as a man to be reckoned with. So as Machiavelli might have put it:
“[Cameron should] dare…to make an enterprise where everyone would have admired his courage and which would have left an eternal memory of himself…and would have done an act, the greatness of which would have overcome every infamy and every danger that could have resulted from it.”
Just a thought, Dave…
August 14, 2010
Dave and the Price of Beer
Liberal Conspiracy and Political Scrapbook have been poking fun at David Cameron’s belief that “tins” of larger cost 25p each:
“I think if what you’re trying to do is stop supermarkets from selling 20 tins of Stella for a fiver that’s what we’ve got to go after.
Where I want to try and help is ending the deep discounting on alcohol”
This incident recalls the old “what’s-the-price-of-a-pint-of-milk?” question politicians are supposed to answer to show how “in touch” they are.
But how significant is it when a top politician fails the ordinary knowledge test?
There seems to be a good reason for saying “not very”. After all, the Prime Minister (of all people) has much more important things to do than trundle around Tesco buying the weekly groceries. This fact extends backwards to when s/he was leader of the opposition. The truth is, top politicians don’t know basic facts about how the rest of us live because they are busy running the country, and that’s probably to be expected and somewhat welcomed.
And I’m not sure we should pressure politicians to know myriad facts about “ordinary” life, either. For that – in the modern age of 24 hour media spin – might just mean ministers rote-learning pre-prepared lists of factoids, designed to manufacture an image of being “in touch”.
But nonetheless there is something significant about Cameron’s ignorance over the price of beer.
Dave thinks 20 cans of larger sets you back a mere £5; what a nice world that would be for many! For better or for worse, alcohol is a major source of recreation for many Britons. Yet alcohol is expensive, and takes a significant chunk of many people’s disposable incomes. If 20 cans really did cost just a fiver, many people would be effectively richer than they are at present because they’d have more money left over to spend on other things.
Cameron’s 20-for-£5 gaffe illustrates that he – and presumably the politicians who surround him – lack any accurate conception of the cost of living for most Britons.
Minimum wage is currently a paltry £5.80. If you know the price of beer, the complete inadequacy of that sum is especially clear. If, however, you think that beer (and presumably other basic goods) is as cheap as D-Cam does, then suddenly minimum wage looks a lot more satisfactory.
Furthermore, the present round of Tory cuts is set to disproportionately affect Britain’s poor, as this graph stolen from the FT shows:
If you’re under the impression that 20 cans of Stella cost a mere £5, then a 7% reduction in yearly income might seem an altogether manageable reduction. Thus if you’re a Tory who doesn’t care about inequality anyway, ignorance about the basic cost of living will make it much easier to push-through measures likely to make the poor poorer.
Of course, it’s almost certainly true that Gordon Brown and Tony Blair were equally ignorant about such things as the cost of beer. The latter, especially, was probably more partial to a vintage Merlot donated from a wealthy chum, than a can of Carlsberg piss-water from Asda.
But nonetheless, Labour’s relative – albeit heavily imperfect – concern for both absolute poverty and inequality, especially compared to the Tories, meant that such ignorance was less likely to provide support for policies that penalise the most vulnerable. So when people say there’s no difference between top Labour and Tory politicians, although at a superficial level that may be true, the consequences are nonetheless likely to be different.
And that’s why lefties are entitled to laugh at Cameron’s ignorance about the price of beer, whilst having a serious axe to grind.
August 9, 2010
The Maximum Political Odium
When life starts imitating Armando Iannucci, ought we to worry?
Yesterday’s no-milk/yes-milk fiasco certainly looked like something straight from The Thick of It: Junior minister writes to Scottish politician suggesting free milk for under 5’s be abolished; senior minister defends proposed policy on live TV; Prime Minister spikes policy whilst senior minister still on live TV; farce and hilarity ensue as press has field day.
From what I can tell, the overwhelming reaction to this story is derision and ridicule (well, except for the Daily Mail, of course). Which raises the question: wasn’t this actually a great victory for people power?
David Cameron spiked the no-milk policy instantaneously upon hearing of it. And the reason he did was obvious: the haunting chant of “Thatcher, Thatcher, Milk Snatcher” ringing in his ears.
Thatcher herself went on to describe the decision to scrap free school milk for the over 7s as incurring “the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit”. Cameron has learned this lesson already.
We thus have a demonstration of the power of opinion in politics: Cameron moved swiftly to defend free milk, simply because cutting it would associate him with too many bad things in people’s minds. It wasn’t the economic power of the milk industry, or the threat of coercion by some external group, that stayed the Coalition’s axe. It was Cameron’s recognition that he cannot afford to be too-closely associated with That Woman.
Thus popular derision alone blocked a potential government policy. Recognition of this should give pause to sections of both left and right.
The loony-right that thinks the Conservatives would sweep to power if they just emulated the Iron Lady should take this as evidence that their fantasy does not track reality. They should also recognise that Cameron is an astute politician, one who reads the popular mood well and acts decisively. Accordingly, many Tories should be rather more grateful for his helmsmanship than they presently are.
Those of us on the left, by contrast, should be more deeply concerned. As Mehdi Hasan recently pointed out, the Coalition is cutting deeper and faster than the Thatcher administration of 1979-83 ever dared. In policy Cameron is outstripping the Iron Lady. Yet in presentation he is successfully painting an altogether cuddlier image. This is “compassionate” conservatism at its PR best: soft on the outside, resolutely rock hard on the inside.
Leftists who want to “strategise” about resisting the cuts should therefore take note: the power of opinion can clearly elicit instantaneous effects in the right circumstances. “Delegitimising” the Coalition’s cuts programme in the popular mind could accordingly be the most effective way of mitigating it.
But then, it’s hard to shake the nagging feeling that if yesterday was a victory for “people power” it was a fleeting and unsatisfactory one.
And there’s a good reason for that. Any satisfaction at Coalition humiliation is bound up with the farce of yesterdays proceedings. And that farce cuts deep. Government policy (from this administration and the previous one) is now almost perennially made on the hoof, under the watchful gaze of the Sky News ticker tape. The Thick of It is so funny precisely because it’s often so true – as yesterday’s events demonstrated.
Yet the circus of modern political spin is precisely the result of government obsessively attempting to manage and control public opinion; of manipulating the media to ensure we think what they want us to think. Hence, if you’re feeling that Cameron’s climbdown was at best a particularly hollow victory for people power – you’re probably right.
June 29, 2010
Jeremy Hunt: The Importance of Class in Politics?
Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, recently revealed his vast ignorance of British footballing history whilst managing to insult thousands:
“[A]s a Minister I was incredibly encouraged by the example set by the England fans, I mean not a single arrest for a football related offensive and the terrible problems that we had in Heysel and Hillsborough in the 1980s seem now to be behind us and I think, you know, there is small grounds for encouragement there even though obviously we are very disappointed about the result.”
Anybody with even a basic knowledge of English football will know that what happened at Hillsborough had absolutely nothing to do with hooliganism. They will know that the disaster – which left 96 Liverpool fans dead – was the result of poor crowd management, as confirmed by the 1990 Taylor Report (PDF). Suspicions, however, have long lingered about the role of the police and its account of events following the disaster.
Hunt’s comments cannot be easily dismissed as a “slip of the tongue”. The controversy surrounding Hillsborough ensures that nobody with even a basic understanding of the disaster could now make the mistake of blaming hooliganism. That the Secretary of State is apparently more influenced by the outrageous lies of the Sun Newspaper than with what actually happened calls into question his competence to be a minister for sport. That Hunt was shadow secretary for the same office during last year’s 20th anniversary Hillsborough memorial services is an even greater indictment of his callous ignorance.
But could there be something more going on? Economists and psychologists frequently employ the concept of cognitive bias. It’s worth asking whether any are at work here. I can think of 3 possibilities:
1. Not only is Hunt ignorant about the history of English football, but he is predisposed to think of football as a yob sport where trouble is usually caused by yobs. Given that 44-year-old Hunt would have become socially aware in the 1970s and 80s (when English hooliganism was rife), this explanation is very plausible.
2. Hunt, as a conservative, is predisposed to trust figures of institutions and authority over the masses in need of control. This means he is more likely to assume that fault lay with yob crowds than with police authorities.
3. Hunt is extremely privileged and has grown up and worked amongst similarly privileged people, likely to have low interest in football and low interest in a disaster that affected working class Liverpool fans. Accordingly, he’s never been in a social situation whereby 1. and 2. above could be adjusted, or his ignorance about Hillsborough corrected.
Number 3 will, of course, set the cat amongst the pigeons. But I suspect there’s something to it. Having grown up lower-middle class and attended a normal state comprehensive with lots of working class kids, it is unimaginable to me that someone could not know the truth about Hillsborough. Yes, I grew up on Merseyside. But in Southport there were as many Manchester United as Liverpool fans. And for crying out loud, by Mum knows what happened at Hillsborough and she’s French and doesn’t like football.
Of course, we musn’t be deterministic. Plenty of people have privileged backgrounds and manage to care about those less fortunate than they. Harriet Harman, for all her faults, stands as a good example. Equally, sometimes people from working class backgrounds can’t wait to join the elites and dump on those they’ve left behind. Hello David Davis, hello Norman Tebbit.
And believe me, I know how irritating it can be to have your (perceived) class background used against you. Just ask Captain Swing. But all that having been said, does Jeremy Hunt offer proof of what I and many others were saying about Double Dip Dave and Boy George before the election? That class matters; that being a millionaire Bullingdon Boy will affect the way politicians see – and attempt to influence – the world around them.
