June 5, 2011
Telly Don University
So Telly Don University – or the New College of Humanities – has been unveiled. Professor A.C. Grayling is the mastermind, and apparently the head honcho too. “Top” academics have been recruited to the cause. Proper academics, predictably, don’t like it.
Now don’t get me wrong, TDU definitely suggests some unpleasant prospects. As Chris Bertram has pointed out to me, an institution charging £18K a year will give other university Vice Chancellors a pre-text to both bust open the new £9K fee cap, and maybe even privatise in a bid to “compete”.
Personally, however, I see TDU as being – at most – a catalyst. My sense is that the flood gates are open on fees (not least as the maths was done so badly that the Treasury is going to have to fork out loads under the current regime anyway), and that universities not receiving significant state support may opt to privatise anyway. After all, why put up with the constant government interference if you’re not even getting the money any more?
In any case, what’s happening to British higher education looks like part of a much bigger process. Namely, the systematic marketisation of publicly provided services, coupled with a belief that in the brave new world this is the only option. Meaning that assaults on state-provided services are seen as both status quo, and as inevitable developments, by the politicians carrying them out. Thus drastically reducing any room for alternatives to find a voice, or for policies to be reconsidered and reversed.
In sum, I think that British higher education is undergoing a sea change that started (at least) with New Labour when it bought the basically pro-market vision of politics which reduces the state to the fawning provider of safe-habitats for business,whilst abandoning anything that can’t make a profit to die in the cold. I don’t know what will happen to Britain’s university system over the next 20 years, and I’m not optimistic. But I doubt Telly Don University alone is going to make that much of a difference.
Accordingly, we might like to do a spot of pointing and laughing to cheer ourselves up. TDU bills itself as attempting to rival Oxbridge (a boast Mary Beard has already queried). Its main claim to this appears to be two-fold: 1) that Famous People will do some teaching, and 2) students won’t just do arts subjects they will also have “science literacy” and business-type awareness programmes to boot.
Both of these things make me chortle. Let’s first consider some of the Famous People who will allegedly be teaching at TDU:
- Richard Dawkins: loud-mouthed pop-biologist, who writes exceptionally bad books about religion and who would fail any decent undergraduate philosophy first year course.
- Steven Pinker: pop-psychologist, generally not taken seriously by large sections of the psychology research community because he allegedly ignores and manipulates data that doesn’t fit his story-book narratives. [If anyone genuinely qualified on this subject could say one way or the other, it would be good to hear from you - this is just reporting what I've heard from people in the field.]
- Niall Ferguson: telly-don extraordinaire, who will apparently be teaching economics, even though he is not an economist. He is in fact a pop historian (who hasn’t done any serious work for donkey’s years), who has appointed himself a finance expert following his success in the oh-so-tricky world of making money in hedge funds. (Amusingly, rival telly don Tristram Hunt claims that Ferguson’s successful book on the history of money and finance – later a TV series, of course – manages to hardly mention Marx and Engels at all. So a rounded education can no doubt be expected from a man who is certainly anything but a right-wing ideologue.)
- A.C. Grayling: telly-don philosopher, who is mostly famous for writing a lot of books. The reason he writes so many books, so quickly, is of course that none of them are any good.
- Ronald Dworkin: actually a serious academic with an incredibly illustrious publishing history, who had an enormous impact upon both political and legal philosophy over the past 50 years. But still notorious at Oxford – about 30 years after he left – for being the laziest and most unhelpful supervisor imaginable (I was warned not to expect any contact with Dworkin at all if I went to NYU for a masters degree, whatever it said on their website.)
Also a huge hypocrite, given that he spent most of his career writing about egalitarianism, and is now a flagship academic at an institution which is anything but.
You get the picture. Big famous names are not the same as good, serious educators of university minds. If you go to TDU thinking you’ll get a good education just because some famous people are there, you’re a fool. As anyone who’s actually been taught well at university level knows, the best teachers are not the big public names (even if they are famous within the academy). But given that TDU will charge £18K a year, you’re a rich fool if you go there. So more fool you, as at least hopefully this will free up some places for serious young thinkers at Britains’ other, proper, universities. Who can hopefully be drawn from the state sector thanks to some reduction in competition from brats who just want a primer course for the City.
As for the second alleged benefit – science literacy and business awareness – this is highly amusing. If you want “science literacy” you can read Ben Goldacr’s book Bad Science, and then bother with some of Stephen Jay Gould’s wonderful output. If you want more than mere science “literacy”, then you have to do a science degree and become a scientist. Sorry about that, but the human mind is limited and specialization is required if you want to acquire a serious understanding of any contemporary field. TDU can’t undo the complexities and advances of modern day academic divisions of labour, whatever else it may claim.
Regarding “business awareness”, or whatever, this is also silly. You don’t get good at “real world” thinking by “studying the real world”. You get it by training your brain to think sharply and analytically, applying these skills elsewhere as and when it is fit to do so. Some people never learn to transfer these skills, and some people have them without being any good at academia. Either way, it actually turns out that the best education for business is not a business education. (You may be surprised to learn this, but apparently it’s actually philosophy.) So you’d be just fine at normal, proper university.
So overall I’m inclined to laugh at Telly Dons University. It looks like a big con, taking the money of rich people silly enough to think they can buy a proper education, at premium rates, simply because there’s some Famous People on the tin.
But, sadly, that’s not the end of the story. Because TDU is plainly responding to a certain sort of demand, and a wider and ever more entrenched expectation of what universities should be, and what they should provide. And if TDU is successful – which it may very well be – it’s exactly what Vice Chancellors and politicians will point to as the model for the rest to adopt.
Hence, we should laugh and be merry this evening, for in the morrow the hangover is coming. And it’s going to be a nasty one indeed. Even if TDU is only one small part of the bigger mess.
UPDATE: I see that Peter Singer and Simon Blackburn are also members of the Telly Don 14.
Peter Singer: Philosophical charlatan par excellence. A disseminater of complete nonsense, from a man who couldn’t think his way out of a wet paper bag. Even if he did do exceedingly well for himself by generally just being controversial and annoying.
Simon Blackburn: Actually one of the most distinguished and sharp-thinking philosophers of the past 30 years. A seriously impressive mind (even if he’s spent the last decade saying the same thing over and over again). However, by all accounts a close rival to Dworkin for Laziest and Least Helpful Teacher On Offer. At least judging by the reports of his supervisees. Whose testimony can be effectively summarised as: “He doesn’t read your work. Even if you’re his PhD student”.
What a stellar teching line up the TDU has on offer!
March 1, 2011
Gew-gaws
For reasons I’m not entirely sure of, I’m subscribed to the emails of the “Yes to Fairer Votes” campaign. I tend to delete messages on sight, because if I want ill thought out tub-thumping, I can just log-on to the Compass website or read something by the nef.
But I’ve been trying to put my finger on what exactly it is about the upcoming referendum on voting reform that at best leaves me cold, and at worst makes me frustrated and angry. And I think I’ve worked out what it is.
A friend who knows about these things assures me that the political science literature indicates that moves towards proportional systems correlate with marginal increases in social democracy. Which, of course, is lovely. At least in and of itself. As a good leftist, I’m all for more social democracy.
But the important word in that paragraph is marginal. Because any improvements to our political system – and to our ever more unequal and unjust society – derived from voting reform are indeed going to be marginal. Especially given the way things appear to be going in terms of long-term political and economic direction. (And don’t forget that AV isn’t actually a proportional system, it’s just a marginally – that word again – less worse system than first-past-the-post).
So excuse me for not giving a fig about whether we get AV or not. Because in case you haven’t noticed, the wolves are at the door.
We live in a world in which national elected governments are increasingly unable – or unwilling (and therefore, in effect, unable) – to set economic and social policies as they would choose. Instead, tax rates, labour laws, redistributive policies, investment decisions, employment levels and decisions regarding national borrowing are increasingly subordinate both to the direct and indirect demands of global economic actors that do not answer either to electorates or their representatives.
What the great crash of 2008 taught multinational capitalist behemoths was that they can do whatever they want, and nation-states will bail them out if they fail. Indeed if they do fail, they can just keep doing whatever they want. Including leaning on national governments (directly or indirectly) to uphold and enforce domestic economic arrangements that benefit ever more detached sections of well-off individuals and private corporate actors.
What the great bail-out of 2008 has revealed is that it is certainly not multi-national corporate entities who will pay for the great mess. It is the little people whose collective will has less and less impact upon the determination of available economic – and thereby, social – futures. So because global financial capitalism collapsed under the weight of its own hubris, the British health service must be destroyed, British education must become a socially exclusive and divisive good, inequality must grow, unemployment must rise, care for the vulnerable must be taken away, the social safety net must be removed and millions of people’s lives must suffer.
Amidst all this destruction, the financial behemoths – in whose name your health service is being taken away, your social settlement renegotiated beyond your control – see fit to pay their privileged and favoured sons and daughters bonuses which could keep some families fed and sheltered for several years. Indeed, the terms of our new economic and social settlement are so unjust, so grotesque ,and so deeply unequal that this unashamed self-aggrandisement is simply the unreflective norm for its perpetrators. And rapidly it is becoming the unreflectinve norm – last gasp editorial outrage aside – for the rest of us, too.
It is usually false when people say that it makes no difference which party is in power. British society tends to be a somewhat fairer and less unjust place under Labour than Tories (recent obsessions with spying on everybody and dropping bombs on brown people not withstanding). But when it comes to caring about whether we have, in five years’ time, FPTP or AV to elect a marginally preferable centre-right Labour leadership to replace a vociferously destructive Coalition of right-wing ideologues, seems to me gloriously irrelevant.
And indeed for many its irrelevance may be precisely its attraction. Focusing on the gewgaws and shiny baubles of polling results, campaign tactics and collective enemy-hating serves as a far more enjoyable political pastime than staring into the abyss of what the present bunch of elected representatives is actually doing. It also puts to one side the frankly terrifying promise of a world in which it is increasingly irrelevant which bunch of bastards are elected to rule, and how they are elected, because their room for manoeuvre is so drastically – and increasingly – limited by the realities and dominant conceptions of the ever more global new economic order.
But having said all that, there is perhaps one reason to care about the AV referendum. Which is that a loss would be a terrible blow to the Lib Dems, and would indeed be a fine poke in the eye for Nick Clegg. Clegg. That scion of immense privilege; that craven political bastard-child. The man who under the guise of a Liberal party has enabled and assisted the reversal of a welfare state the likes of which his political forbearers dreamt of, and fought to make reality.
And suddenly, the AV vote acquires a certain sort of meaning – even if only a human, all-too-human one.
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 2, 2011
Party Animals
“ALL untaught Animals are only sollicitous of pleasing themselves, and naturally follow the bent of their own Inclinations” - Bernard Mandeville, An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue
Just under a year ago I joined the Labour Party. I will not be renewing my membership.
This is not, however, because of some ideological disenchantment. Neither
is it due to dissatisfaction with Ed Miliband’s faltering start, or the Party’s lamentable response to the Coalition. The truth is, I’ve done nothing for Labour since the 2010 General Election. I’ve not even bothered updating my CLP membership since moving to Cambridge. And the basic reason for this is that I intensely dislike political campaigning, and party-political activities.
I find knocking on doors at best boring, and at worst utterly unpleasant. This isn’t so much because I’m averse to meeting the general public, as that I’m averse to looking them in the eye and lying. Like when they say “Labour has a rubbish policy on Trident/ID cards/immigration/the 10p tax”. Or “Gordon Brown is a crap Prime Minister, I’m not putting him back in power”. And I’m supposed to sit there and pretend that they’ve got it all wrong. Because The Party is fantastic and if it wins everything will be sunshine and kittens.
Likewise, away from the doorsteps I find the experience of party-politics pretty nauseating. The herd mentality in particular is stifling. It’s like being stuck with a bunch of football fans who only want to talk about their team and how great it is – apart from the heretics and traitors trying to ruin it from the inside, of course. That, and the constant, compulsory mantra about how awful and evil the other teams/parties are.
These tedious diatribes rarely track facts, reality or careful analytic judgement. But they pass the hours in many a constituency office. I say this, of course, as somebody who was (of all things) a Lib Dem MP’s researcher for most of 2009.* The above is certainly not unique to Labour. It’s the essence of party politics. Petty, bickering, self-indulgent, tribalistic and relentlessly tub-thumping in the face of reality. Your side against theirs. The Greater Good, pursued via the medium of Shit Policies.
The fact is, to stay active in grass roots party politics you have to enjoy this. Or at the very least, be able to engage in it whilst not contantly battling the urge to shove pins in your eyes.
Of course some people are able to so partake and nonetheless maintain good judgement, political sense and basic moral principles not determined by party policy. Don Paskini is the outstanding example here, though Chris Brooke gets a mention too. But these types are, in my experience, very rare.
The typical party animal primarily enjoys the petty, tribalistic, self-deceiving (our out-right lying) drudgery of party activity itself, and for its own sake. That, after all, explains why many are still engaged, year after long year.
But furthermore, those that go on to be seriously successful – to head local councils, become MPs, or even government ministers – have to invest enormous amounts of time and energy in this world of perma-propaganda, dogma, and tedious tribalism. So they, too, must find the entire process in some way satisfying. Or else they’d go off and do something else. Like make money, or save the whales.
Which leads me to some conclusions. Real world party politics is far removed from any vision of individual political agents striving-forth to right wrongs by clear-sighted application of moral principle. It’s far more to do with the actions of individuals deeply-involved in a daily process of tribalistic, competitive political hustling .
Sure, these individuals will possess moral values and principles, of varying degrees of coherence and sophistication. But what drives many is the appeal of politics as a participatory activity. They do politics because politics itself is how they like to spend their time: propagandising, disseminating and tub-thumping for their chosen tribe.
Which this leads again to the conclusion that there’s something very misguided about conceiving of politics as being fundamentally an exercise in applied ethics. And that any political theory maintaining otherwise will be quite seriously deficient.
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*It was partly seeing how shit the Lib Dems are that made me think Labour was some sort of superior alternative. Which I still think it is, overall. But not enough to keep me paying yearly subs.
October 20, 2010
Thatcher’s Children
Most people remember where they were on 9/11. Epoch-changing events have that effect, especially when they are so spectacular and obviously far-reaching in their ramifications. But not all epoch-changing events are spectacular, and they don’t always advertise themselves so obviously.
With that in mind, remember where you were today. The 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review may become a date historians return to.
Much of Britain’s post-war history can be summarised – simplistically, but with some accuracy – as follows. After the devastation of global war, and the realisation that unchecked economic and social strife leads to the violent recourse of desperate extremist politics, west European nation states erected new social settlements both to rebuild shattered economies and polities, and to serve as prophylactics against the politics of extremism.
During the 1970s the social settlement in Britain underwent extreme strain for complex reasons, but in particular due to economic difficulties of both domestic and international origin. In 1979 Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister, and the first phase of a radical re-settlement began. The position of organised labour within Britain was crushed, and the role of private enterprise was drastically increased. Deregulation of finance and industry expanded the scope of market provision, and contracted the role of the provider-state. However the core of the post-war social settlement – what we loosely call “the Welfare State” – was left essentially intact, although modifications were made to the way it provided services, reflecting moves towards a general market-default.
From 1997-2010 Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s New Labour put the Thatcher project on hold, but did not reverse it. If anything the role of private enterprise in particular was expanded. Although core components of the welfare state – in particular education and healthcare – saw enormous increases in spending from 2001 onwards, this was undertaken within the framework of accepting the Thatcherite re-settlement on the economy as a whole. Although laudable efforts to reduce poverty were undertaken – with some considerable successes – socio-economic inequality increased, as the marketisation of everything continued apace.
From May 2010 onwards, what can be described as the second phase of the Thatcherite resettlement began. Under the banner of massive fiscal retrenchment – justified (rightly or wrongly) as a necessary response to the devastation of the 2008 financial crisis – the Conservative-LibDem Coalition has proceeded to instigate massive spending cuts which are fundamentally over-turning the post-war “Welfare State” and attendant social settlement.
Indeed, it is worth noting what has already been pushed through since spring 2010.
Whilst Michael Gove’s highly ideological free schools programme, and parallel withdrawal of ordinary state school funds, has attracted much attention it has simultaneously distracted from the massive reconstitution of the NHS being conducted by Andrew Lansley (arguably without democratic mandate). Universal child benefits have already been withdrawn. The affordability of higher education for all may be finished as the LibDems U-turn on one of their oldest electoral promises. The system of state benefits has come under severe attack from Chancellor George Osborne, as dramatic welfare caps are introduced. And reports ahead of the CSR going official indicate that the Government already expects at least half a million new unemployed from public sector redundancies alone.
And this is only the beginning, the warm-up; the light shavings of the razor before the axe falls proper.
As John Gray has explained so well Cameron, Osborne and Clegg are Thatcher’s ideological children. They see this as the only way, for they have known no other way. And thus, it may very well come to pass that 20th October 2010 will be noted by future historians as the day the British social settlement completed the change of direction begun in 1979, entering new – and as yet, uncharted – waters.
So remember where you were. Your grandchildren may want to know.
October 14, 2010
Divide and Rule
Chris Bertram’s excellent article on the Browne Report’s proposals for raising university tuition fees makes an important point:
“On the other hand, I have the sense that some of my colleagues will be somewhat relieved by Lord Browne’s report . This is understandable. In the current climate many academics fear for their jobs and the gradual erosion of state support has been tipping many university managements into cuts, hiring freezes and the threat of compulsory redundancies.”
Indeed, I must myself confess to a sort of guilty relief that student fees may be increased.
In three year’s time I will be looking for a job in academia. Yet with planned cuts of 20-25% my future is potentially bleak. That kind of assault on higher education, if not off-set, will lead to departmental closures and massive job freezes. Not only will I be competing against other post-docs for fewer places, I’ll also be competing with established academics boasting long lists of published works, who have been turfed-out of other institutions.
Yet if universities are able to off-set central cuts with fee increases, the devastation may be considerably mitigated. That’s good for academics, who do far more than just teach undergraduates. They are primarily researchers, who only teach as a secondary role in their professional duties and need to protect their primary research-bases accordingly. Thus, whatever the social injustice of raising fees – and the long-term impact on British social mobility – academics worried for their own skins may (understandably) be somewhat relieved at the prospect of fee increases.
Crucially, they may therefore not support student protests against these increases in any meaningful way. Call me cynical, but I don’t much rate the power of British students to block government policy. This is not the France of ’68. And the NUS is nothing but a talking shop of aspiring lobby fodder whom the government can easily ignore. Assuming no unanticipated mass protests by the students of today (acting on behalf of those of tomorrow) breaking out and bringing the country to a standstill, student resistance to fee increases will likely fail. To make a difference, my estimation is that student opposition would have to be backed by significant numbers of academics and vice chancellors, all willing to display a united front against fee-increases.
It looks like the Coalition thus has the advantage of a divide and conquer situation. But it’s worth asking: who laid the groundwork for this?
After all, many academics are of leftist persuasions. In the 20th century student protests on issues of social justice were often backed by their professors, both on and off campus. Even with the threat of cuts today it’s not clear that this alone would determine academics to save their own bacon at the expense of students.
What may well tip the balance, however, is a fairly deep-running resentment against central government. It comes off the back of 13 years of target-setting hoop-jumping philistine managerialism spearheaded by New Labour. Many academics are sick of being told that they must deliver economic “impact” from their taught courses and professional research (Impact of what? Measured how? By whom? Taking place how quickly?). They are sick of being told that research is worthless unless it has immediate and measurable economic pay-off. They are sick of having to jump through the hoops of the frankly insane Research Assessment Exercise.
If universities don’t take government silver, they can resist dancing to government tunes. For many that is a very attractive prospect – meaning that even those vice chancellors who are not pusillanimous government stooges may refrain from fighting fee rises.
So if it’s true that a divide-and-rule dynamic – pitting academics against students – allows the Coalition to push through fee reform, it’s worth remembering who helped foster the possibility of such a dynamic in the first place.
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 27, 2010
Some lessons for Ed
The idea that it was “the Sun wot won it” for the Conservatives in 1992 is common. But it’s almost certainly false. Most political scientists believe that whilst newspapers are very good at telling voters what to think about, they do not exercise a decisive influence in telling people what, exactly, to think.
And the decline of the print media means the influence of newspapers is likely to be decreasing further. Although The Sun crowed that by backing Cameron in 2010 it was making a game-changing intervention, it’s far more likely that widespread dislike of Gordon Brown and a build-up of resentments against New Labour sealed the electoral fate.
With this in mind, Ed Miliband should look to his own recent election experience and draw some valuable lessons. Except for the basically irrelevant The People, not a single national newspaper backed Ed over David. Whilst New Statesman magazine picked the younger Miliband , The Guardian, Observer, Mirror, Economist and Times all came out for his brother.
Now, you can complain that David actually “won” on first preference votes, and that the electoral college system rewarded Ed in a way that could not be replicated in a First Past the Post (or even AV) British general election. There may be some merit in that argument. But consider also this.
If newspapers have a significant influence on how, exactly, voters cast their ballots (as opposed to what sort of things they’re likely to be thinking about in the run up to an election) then why did the Lib Dems fail to take Islington South last May? Labour was defending a majority of just 484 in Guardianista Islington. And yet it held the seat despite The Guardian coming out strongly for the Lib Dems.
Of course one case study is not enough to be decisive. But if anywhere has a strong claim for being the ideal test-case for whether or not a newspaper endorsement can influence key swing voters Islington South was surely it. And yet the impact there was non-existent.
***
The New Labour years were characterised by an obsession with newspaper – and especially tabloid – headlines. By the belief that if desirable headlines could be secured then voters could be mechanically manipulated as a function of media control. But it seems this simplistic view is just false.
It remains that newspapers can tell people what to think about. So the media (obviously) can’t be ignored. But what the past 15 years have shown is that on many traditionally “right wing” issues – crime, immigration, defence – the right-wing press will not jump to a government tune, no matter how reactionary. Newspapers will not be conveniently controlled, and will instead pump-out dogmatic mantras regardless. Mantras happily used to attack a Labour government if that’s what sells copy.
This is one reason why New Labour attempts to outflank the Tories on the right did not work, and just ceded ground to a right-wing agenda where the Tories could always hit harder.
***
Ed Miliband and his “new generation” should draw some basic lessons. Firstly, that newspapers don’t decide elections. The Labour party need not cower in fear of Murdoch headlines. Secondly, that even if newspapers shape what people think about, the way to deal with that is not by attempting to manipulate headlines (which ultimately doesn’t work anyway).
It’s far better to engage with people at a grass-roots level, find out what the specifics of their concerns are (rather than those of Daily Express subeditors or lunatics hanging around in the Westminster village), and work out local solutions to those concerns. If Labour builds viable grass-root engagement and concrete problem-solving mechanisms, the content of the latest Mail editorial will become even more of an increasing irrelevance than it already is.
September 4, 2010
Don’t Elect Hamlet
Well my ballots still haven’t arrived. And I’m moving house tomorrow, hence I probably won’t get to vote in the Labour leadership election. So I’m going to compensate by telling everyone else how to vote instead.
I must confess to having been apathetic in the extreme about this contest. In large measure that’s because I am possibly the most useless Labour member in the country, having done zilch since May 6th and not being particularly enthused to go out and do more. Nonetheless, I’ve forced myself to have a think and here are the results.
Andy Burnham and Diane Abbott have both run appallingly bad campaigns. The former was already pigeon-holed as a New Labour Blairite drone, and his standing has only deteriorated. A complete inability to use his experience as Health Secretary has only worsened his standing. As for Abbot, I’ve never been impressed with her when I’ve heard here speak in the past, and her campaign has been insipid and uninspiring in the extreme.
Ed Balls absolutely should not be Labour leader. Whatever his economic credentials, the man is quite manifestly unfit to be the figurehead of the Labour party. This is, in large measure, because those who pay attention to politics already have him down as a thug and a bully (which I think is pretty much right). As for those voters who don’t already know who Balls is, the fact that he has the eyes of a toad and the smirk of a pedophile set free on a legal technicality, and that he appears to be constantly sneering at the person he’s talking to, will make him seriously off-putting. You may think I’m being superficial. But we know that politics is as much about personality as policy. Put Ed Balls on TV four times a week as the face of the party, and Labour will be long in the wilderness.
So as we know, it’s all down to the Milibands.
When Don Paskini says vote David Miliband, that is something to take seriously. And some of the reasons Don lists are desirable. Look at this set of policies:
- an economic strategy which aims to halve unemployment
- a living wage
- doubling the bank levy
- a mansion tax on the wealthiest homeowners to reverse housing benefit cuts
- withdrawing charitable status from private schools to pay for an expansion of free school meals
- defending universal benefits
- marriage equality for same sex couples
- a comprehensive strategy to rid the world of nuclear weapons
- training 1,000 future leaders to campaign in their communities
- building more affordable homes and creating more green jobs as part of an industrial strategy to reduce Britain’s dependency on the City of London
All appealing to a leftist like me. But it’s not enough – not least because it’s easy to say you want these things when your little brother has pushed the focus on to a more left-leaning agenda. I’m yet to be convinced that Blair’s protegé really means it.
But in fact whether he means it or not is largely besides the point: we should judge David on his past record. And that record is not good, for three reasons.
Firstly, I cannot forgive David Miliband for his disgraceful role in denying Iraqi employees who had collaborated with the “coalition” forces post-2003 the right to seek asylum and work in Britain. Second, the shadow of torture hangs over the elder Miliband’s time as Foreign Secretary. The latter point will be used against him by the opposition parties especially, but regardless in both these cases there are serious moral issues at stake which David Miliband failed.
More important than this, however, is the fact that if we know anything about David it’s that he lacks guts and that he is seriously indecisive. He wanted to oust Gordon Brown and take the leadership priori to 2010. But on several opportunities he backed down and lacked the decisiveness required to act – as well as the bravery to risk failure. This is a serious, abiding and deep-running flaw. A leader must, if anything, be decisive. The follies of hesitation and pusillanimity are illustrated well enough by the Brown premiership. Labour cannot afford such a leader again. David Miliband threatens to be the Party’s Hamlet if elected.
Is Ed any better? The truth is, on the important fact of decisive leadership we actually don’t know. But at present that has to play to his advantage. We know that David isn’t up to the job, and hence a leap into the relative unknown offers better odds than backing a proven loser. And certainly, Ed’s more leftist approach is welcome in itself and appears to represent a more genuine break with New Labour than the highly managed efforts of his brother, themselves somewhat undermined by Tony Blair’s recent tacit endorsement of him.
I do, of course, worry that Ed is not as smooth an operator as his brother, especially in front of the camera. Ed is also less telegenic, and there’s no doubting that David is more statesman like. Ed will be a gamble, for sure. He may prove to have the same failings as his sibling. But right now he nonethless seems to be the best person on offer.
And if that endorsement reads as convoluted, and based on a lack of enthusiasm all round, well that should probably speak volumes about the candidates to choose from.
Nonetheless, Bad Conscience advises you to vote:
1. Ed Miliband
2. Ed Balls (because he does punch Tories in the face very effectively, so let’s at least have him around)
3. Dianne Abbot
4. Andy Burnham
5. David Miliband.
September 3, 2010
Unreasonable Reasonable Blogging
I should start by making clear that I like and respect Anthony Painter. Although he blogs relatively infrequently, he’s always worth reading. However, his latest post seems to me misguided in a few ways, and so I’m going to use him as a stalking horse for gripes about personal blogging niggles. Hence, apologies Anthony – it’s not personal.
Although Anthony’s blog starts strongly and gives a good diagnosis of why many people experience what John Rentoul calls “Blair Rage”, Anthony then goes fundamentally wrong.
First, a small gripe. Anthony says:
“However, none of this warrants the vengeful attacks on Tony Blair’s integrity. He is a man of honour and integrity. He takes responsibility for his decisions but just makes a different calculation of the justice of the Iraq War.”
I’m afraid this isn’t good enough. Sure, by his own standards – and perhaps those of others – Blair acted with honour and integrity. Indeed as Anthony says, Blair has been nothing if not consistent. But this isn’t enough.
Carl Schmitt arguably acted with honour and integrity…from within the paradigm of Nazi German rule.* Less controversially, General Robert E. Lee was indisputably a man of honour and integrity. Yet he led the U.S. Confederate forces in a war to preserve black slavery, and his military genius delayed the victory of the Union thereby guaranteeing many more deaths in an atrocious and drawn-out conflict. Sometimes “honour and integrity” are vices when the ends to which they are put are morally unacceptable.
Yet what really bothers me about Anthony’s post is this:
“But we bear collective responsibility for the Iraq War also- ‘not in my name’ is an easy refrain. And the best way to handle that responsibility is to insist that the mistakes aren’t repeated- we never accept arguments for regime change that are pre-emptive and insufficiently conclusive, we weigh the risks alongside the mission, our media becomes far more questioning, our politicians far more insistent on better evidence and more sufficient post-war planning, and we have a better awareness of what we may be walking into. Some did of course, most notably Robin Cook whose reputation can do little but rise. The vast majority did not and in this we are bound by collective responsibility as a nation.”
I fear that Anthony’s close proximity to the Westminster village and daily involvement in politics distorts his perspective here.
What, exactly, were people like me to do except shout “not in my name” and publicly protest and demonstrate? We held – and hold – no power and influence. Shouting the “easy refrain” was all we could do. As for not accepting arguments for regime change and weighing the risks alongside the mission – we on the anti-war left did exactly that in 2002 and 2003, and concluded the conflict could not be justified. As for the media and politicians becoming better at their jobs – well that’s out of the hands of ordinary Joes like me.
To say that “we” are bound by “collective responsibility” is frankly absurd. Those who opposed the war outside of politics and the media were revealed as being completely impotent and utterly ignored. That, incidentally, is one reason Blair Rage is so widespread; because the casual dismissal wasn’t confined to Iraq. New Labour was built around the view that the citizenry was to be ignored when it couldn’t be manipulated by media management. To say that anti-war protestors bear “collective responsibility” for the actions of Blair, Bush and their inner circle beggars belief.
So why might Anthony – a normally incisive and astute commentator – say such a thing? Apologies for the arm-chair psychoanalysis, but I fear this is a manifestation of a common over-compensation found amongst the better class of bloggers.
Whereas vile slanderers like Paul Staines and Devil’s Kitchen – or the maniacs who populate Harry’s Place – tend to go about launching one sided hate-filled attacks, more intelligent bloggers adopt the principle that there may always be two sides to every story; that responsibility may be a two-way street.
Which is a very sound principle to adopt. It leads to careful analysis, and a more accurate picture of events. But it can also spill over into something that is not desirable: the mistaken principle that there must always be responsibility on both sides, no matter what.
Yet as illustrated above, that’s simply not the case. Sometimes treating “both sides” as though they are equally responsible reduces us to inaccuracy; it can promote a breed of blogging so bent on being “reasonable” that the wood is missed for the trees. For there are times when it’s quite correct to call one side out as the culprit, without apportioning blame to the other. The case of Blair, Iraq and the disempowered and ignored anti-war left is clearly one of them.
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*Note to tiresome trolls: I am not comparing Blair with the Nazis. It’s just an example to illustrate a point.
