Why we need a new sense-of-justice system

 Fraser Nelson, individual, individual responsibility, justice, moral crisis, moral deficit, moral democracy, Spectator, state, state bureaucracy, state regulation, tax code, tax dodgers, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Dec 082012
 

We come back to the subject of legalised tax avoidance, almost as if we were talking about what it must have been like living under Prohibition in the US.  We are so unable to resist the temptation to avoid taxes – especially those of us who command those corporations out there – that we just about appear to be addicts to a game: this is a game we cannot avoid; a challenge we cannot ignore; a process we must implement; a procedure we must action.

Don’t believe me?  Read this detailed report by Reuters, published a couple of days ago, on Amazon’s $2 billion surplus – built up it would seem through plenty of totally legal tax engineering.

Not the most unhappy example, I am sure.  Just one more example, I guess.  But in that $2 billion surplus there are surely many nursing, teaching and lawyerly jobs which have gone down the drain, as our welfare state is trimmed, cut and finally slashed with the excuse that there is no resource left to fund it.

The Spectator, meanwhile, attributes the blame to the politicians who passed the laws which made such addictions legal:

[...] The people power that drove Starbucks to make its announcements should now turn its attention to political power pushing for reform of the whole tax system, not a make-do-and-mend policy where a loophole is sewn up here, and another avoidance scheme darned away there. Fraser outlined what that reform would look like in a recent column, arguing that a flat tax would remove the hiding places for tax dodgers, and remove the incentive to avoid tax, too.

I’m afraid I disagree.  For a publication which tends to find itself on the right of our political spectrum, the Spectator ought surely to be thundering on about the lack of personal responsibility in our systemic failures, instead of blaming the pork-barrel politicians owned to the hilt by their business sponsors and fund-raisers galore.

In my humble opinion, and this perhaps puts me to the right of Fraser Nelson’s own editorial line, it’s not our tax laws which need changing but our immoral addiction to finding ways of getting them round them.  Any and every system will be open to abuse: just take the sexual shenanigans which are unspooling before our very eyes.  You’re not going to tell me that because people abuse hundreds of young girls and boys, we should change the laws to make it more difficult to criminalise.  And yet Nelson does say (see the last link above), in relation to our tax system, that (the bold is mine):

Britain now has a tax code so monstrously complex that no one single person can understand more than a fraction of it. Avoiding tax was always possible in Britain, but for many years the rich did not really do so, and paid up in full. The mistake was to push the tax rate to the point where, the world over, widespread avoidance is the inevitable result. [...]

He then goes on to conclude (again, the bold is mine):

This is why higher tax rates end up with lower tax yields. Architects, software engineers and entrepreneurs will all have taken such decisions to lower their British tax bill, perhaps by leaving the country. [...]

So here we have the moral – or perhaps immoral – underpinning of everything people on the right of politics want to do with the British tax system.  Because rich people avoid it, because they are almost physically addicted to getting round what they should pay, we should reduce the burden on them in order that they may happily cough up more of what they are less liable for.

To return to the sexual shenanigans for a moment, if we applied the same principle it is clear what would happen: a quick feel up the skirt would lead to a simple caution from the friendly neighbourhood bobby and even abuse of a fairly disgraceful kind could mean little more than a small fine.

No.  We cannot run the justice system – our sense-of-justice system – only on the basis of how many people are prepared to easily run with and abide by a law.  And tax is nothing if not a sense-of-justice system.  We aim with our tax laws to ensure that society takes care of everyone’s needs.  Those needs do not disappear simply because the rich find it difficult not to get involved in legal but immoral tax scams.

And we shouldn’t make it easier for them to choose not to do so by taking down the moral barricades that bolster our sense of societal propriety.

Whether you work as a sole trader or you work in the accounting office of a large corporation, every decision you take is steeped in both its legal and moral implications.  That we choose to go with the first and ignore the second is surely more significant – more worrying – than the technical nature of our state.

Where the second continues to be something we refuse to occupy ourselves with, no tinkering, no reform, no widespread re-evaluation of the first will ever take us to any better place.  For a left-wing blogger – and this may sound a strange thing to say – I’m convinced that before we can tinker with the state, we must tinker with the individual.

And in order to do so, we need a new sense-of-justice system in place: a system which conceptualises our key, dearest and nearest principles in one space.  Perhaps a virtual online constitutional space where everyone can input and everyone can access.  Where everyone can be that citizen which democracy should help to create and sustain.

We can’t improve the moral workings of our systems through processes and procedures alone.  There must come a time when how we behave is just as important as what we do.

No doubt about it.

No doubt at all.

Gordon’s Secret Army? This is Cameron’s Fifth Column!

 a con, Big Society, David Cameron, Fraser Nelson, Gordon Brown, Iain Duncan Smith  1 Response »
Oct 262012
 

I have a theory.  But before we proceed, let me lay the facts before you.

First we had Lord Bichard suggesting that pensioners might not get their full pension if they refused to sign up to voluntary work in the community:

Retired people should be encouraged to do community work such as caring for the “very old” or face losing some of their pension, a peer has suggested.

Lord Bichard, a former benefits chief, said “imaginative” ideas were needed to meet the cost of an ageing society.

And although such a move might be controversial, it would stop older people being a “burden on the state”.

Imaginative ideas, eh?  Not imaginative ideas which aim to stigmatise the elderly I hope.

Then we get Iain Duncan Smith arguing that families with more than two children should basically tell the successive ones that society doesn’t care to help them become employable workers and profitable consumers.  Talk about rubbing the runt of the litter’s nose in it:

Iain Duncan Smith told the poorest families to “cut your cloth” according to their “capabilities” and the money available.

The Work and Pensions Secretary suggested limiting benefits to the children of the unemployed as he pledged to end the “madness” of taxpayers housing large families in expensive homes.

Madness, right?  Not the kind of madness which aims to stigmatise the poor I hope.

(Oh, and if you’re interested, here’s a fact check on Duncan Smith’s declarations.  Just if, by any chance, the truth still interests you.)

Finally, tonight, and – sadly, to my mind anyhow – from the pen of Fraser Nelson, we get this absurd piece of tosh on how the charitable opposition to this Coalition’s welfare reforms is completely down to Gordon Brown’s Secret Army of Labour subversives.  Yes!!!  It’s Fifth Column time once again in our country: on this occasion, mind, this Cameron-careering juggernaut of a propaganda-driven excuse for a government aims to blame the failure of its own policies on the Machiavellian powers of a supposedly once-vanquished – as well as impotently ineffective – enemy.

Thus it is that it’s not the government which is failing to convince the country its medicine is the right and only one: instead, it’s (still) all Labour’s fault that sensible people refuse to behave insensibly.  As Nelson awfully sustains:

We saw this yesterday, when Iain Duncan Smith trailed a speech about welfare and poverty. A now familiar welcoming committee rose up early to greet him. The Child Poverty Action Group declared that there are no jobs to be had, so why punish those on welfare? A revered charity, Save the Children, has identified government cuts as a major threat to British children. Even the National Society for the Protection of Children warns that the “most vulnerable” children are “bearing the brunt” of Cameron’s cuts. And hearing them all, who would your average listener believe: a politician, or charity worker?

But these charities are not the kindly tin-rattlers they were. In 2008, Brown changed the rules so charities could join political campaigns. In theory, they could support any party – but as Brown knew, not many would use these powers to demand smaller taxes. It was a masterstroke. The charities sharpened their claws by hiring former Labour apparatchiks. Save the Children is now run by Justin Forsyth, Brown’s ex-strategy chief. The NSPCC has hired Peter Watt, a former Labour general secretary. Damian McBride is working for Cafod. Britain’s charities are nurturing a colourful, talented and efficient anti-Tory alliance.

Look.  You can’t have it both ways.  You can’t argue that Brown is a yesterday-politician one day and a tomorrow-politician the next.

Unless, of course, he wasn’t the yesterday-politician they so cruelly painted him out to be.

Now I hadn’t thought of that.

Had you?

A matter, perhaps, for another post.

But back to this evening’s thesis: Lord Bichard announces there’s no money for pensioners who don’t work; Iain Duncan Smith announces two kids is all you’re going to get; and Fraser Nelson announces any opposition to Cameron’s Tory-led government is an evil throwback of secretive individuals burrowing under the very transparency of parliamentary democracy itself.

And so to our theory.

Does this really not sound what a Fifth Column of insurgents – who’d taken over control of Parliament by barely legal means (say a group of politicos practised in the Goebbel-like arts of advertising) – might say of anyone else who was looking to defend democracy’s integrity?

Well, quite.  It does take a thief to catch a thief, after all.

If truth be told, I really don’t know what Nelson & Co are up to here.  From no benefits for a third child, it’s a small step to legislating against families having more than two children.  Once governments start fiddling around with such numbers and choices, the slippery slope of hubris leads them to all kinds of dreadful things.  And just remember, big families help create future workforces and consumers who consume.  Without biggish families down the line, they’ll be no one to pay the pensions.

Oh, but – bless him! – that’s where old Bichard comes in, isn’t it?  In this brave new web of Coalition policies, pensioners will end up paying for themselves.

We don’t need big families any more.  We don’t even need the poor to have families at all.  All we need is a land army of old people prepared to die on their feet and a pool of little rich kids who, with the right kind of schooling, will acquire exactly the right sort of voting habits.

This is, in fact, the Big Society by force.  People haven’t stepped forward in their droves to volunteer to make the state run for free, so now those in power have decided you will volunteer.

Or you won’t procreate.

Even when the English language and culture always taught us that both were blessed and honourable choices which humanised us.

*

So perhaps Gordon does have his Secret Army.

But in the Second World War, Western democracy couldn’t have beaten back the evil hoards if we hadn’t had our Resistance to hand.

Now could it?

The two big questions, of course, run as follows: does Nelson speak for Cameron tonight?  And does Cameron really want to frame the next three years as a war amongst the people?

Was the Spectator interview an ambush – the Tory Party vs Osborne?

 Ed Balls, Fraser Nelson, George Osborne, Spectator, Tories, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Jul 062012
 

I posted yesterday on the famous Spectator interview with George Osborne, in which he is clearly at ease spreading muck around the Westminster farmyard.  To date, the interview has been interpreted as, initially, a clever move by Osborne to muddy the waters for a public inquiry into banking and bankers, a sector which funds the Tory Party to the tune of fifty percent of its income; and then, latterly, as an example of Osborne continuing his unhealthy obsession with the career of Ed Balls.

But there is a third interpretation I’ve yet to see – to please you all, a conspiracy-theory interpretation at that.  As I just tweeted, it goes thus:

Did the #Spectator publish that interview with #Osborne *in order* that he might overreach himself? #conspiracytheory #justwonderin

And is the Spectator actually guilty of a cunning entrapment – an entrapment which Osborne, for all his alleged political wiles, has walked straight into?

I wonder.

A Spectator sport

 a con, Ed Balls, Fraser Nelson, George Osborne, Labour, political chicanery, political guerilla warfare, politics, Spectator  No Responses »
Jul 052012
 

There seems to be a bit of a palaver going on at the Spectator at the moment.  Yesterday, this content was launched upon the web, making the following accusations about Ed Balls MP.

George Osborne has now let it be known that he withdraws any allegations it is alleged he has made.  I do wonder, however, if any legal proceedings were to take place as a result, who might be alleged to have fallen foul of the truth.  It’s true that Osborne himself only alludes to the possibility that Balls might have had something to do with the scandal.  As any clever politician would, he chooses his words with great care.

And if you read very carefully, the only clear reference to any accusations as such resides in a very weasel-like phrase which – allegedly – must have come from either the Spectator‘s own author, sub-editing or style team.  The phrase in question runs as follows:

One wonders if it is also intended to bring into question Balls’s defence that he couldn’t have known about any rate-fixing as he was Secretary of State for Children at the time.

I say weasel-like simply because of the use of the word “one”.  Who, exactly, does “one” mean?  Osborne; the collective intelligence of the Tory Party; the writer of the article; or simply a vacuous humanity?  And if so, how on earth are you going to take such a humanity to court?

It’s nasty stuff, isn’t it?  People around Brown; discussing reports; the regulatory system devised by Brown and Balls (without mentioning the fact that – at the time – the Tories were pushing for more deregulation rather than less) … almost, in fact, as if both Osborne and the author of the article are deliberately throwing out political coals for the rest of us to foolishly attempt to leap across.

Nick Robinson, not my favourite journalist, tweeted this evening this choice phrase:

George O will be delighted if row about Labour’s handling of the banks in office trumps argument about whether to hold a public inquiry.

Politics really is a disgusting business.  A spectator sport for the vast majority of those affected.

And as another bank – this time RBS – is also apparently on the point of being fined hundreds of millions of pounds for fixing Libor rates (more here), the Osbornes of this world can only continue to delightedly dance on our encroaching graves.

"Osbornomics: political stardust but an economic placebo"

 Fraser Nelson, George Osborne, Gordon Brown, in a hole, latterday socialism, New Labour, Telegraph, the Real George Osborne, Tony Blair  No Responses »
Jan 272012
 

A few choice phrases from Fraser Nelson’s latest piece over at the Telegraph:

George Osborne should be having similar thoughts. His old routine is now failing. The embarrassing truth is that, for all his talk about how you can’t borrow your way out of a debt crisis, he is now trying to do just that. [...]

And this (the bold is mine):

Treasury officials who have worked for both men are struck not by the differences between them, but the similarities. Brown was nicknamed Macavity for his habit of disappearing at the first sign of trouble; Osborne is known as The Submarine, surfacing only a handful of times a year. Both see economics as a game of political chess, each policy designed to outwit the opposition. [...]

Not a way of making the world a better place, then – more a tool to batter what the rest of us can only define as a proxy enemy.  For the real enemy is what we live from day to day.

Nelson also points out that:

[...] The political narrative thus detaches from the economic reality. And this is why a Government that is widely regarded as radical, and hawkish on the deficit, is making virtually no economic progress, while running up the debt like there’s no tomorrow.

And this:

Even Osborne’s critics cannot deny that, politically, his policy has brought devastating success. He has won the argument on cuts, even though – as the monthly spending figures show – he has hardly made any. [...]

Whilst for Labour the comfort is getting forever colder:

[...] The Chancellor told friends that he expected to be the most hated man in Britain by 2012, but there is surprisingly little hatred. Instead, there is ridicule – and it is largely heaped upon a Labour leader whose skills seem not to extend much beyond solving a Rubik’s Cube in 90 seconds.

Or, indeed, not eating a chocolate orange …

As I sift through Nelson’s piece – as always tightly, pointedly and fairly written (you can tell he worked for a tabloid, can’t you?  Nothing better for those with the verbose tendency to write about politics than to have to do so in the context of flashy headlines and tawdry entertainment stories) – I can’t avoid coming to the conclusion that Osborne is actually truly some politician of considerable standing.  More adept, perhaps, at the presentational arts than the PR man that is Cameron himself.

What has Osborne – in reality – achieved then?  Well.  He’s increased the indebtedness of the nation whilst at the same time savaging all manner of social services.  “And this is an achievement?” you wonder.  Well, yes – mightily so.  Because Osborne is a three-dimensional politician who plays the long game.  “And what may that be?” you might ask.  Why, make it financially impossible – absolutely out of the question – for Labour ever to bring back the socialism by stealth we enjoyed for so many years under the New Labour regime.

Osborne, in his apparent ineptness, has shown himself to be not a son of Blair but a son of Brown.  For neither have ever been inept; both are consummate manipulators of the body politic.

This isn’t, after all, a battle between right and left but – rather – between those who would use politics as a tool to do something useful in the outside world – and those who do politics simply to keep the opposition at bay.

The pursuit of power above all is at the heart of Osbornomics.  As Nelson so memorably points out in his piece:

[...] Osbornomics: political stardust but an economic placebo.

With one small caveat: whilst the placebo is designed to strategically convince us he’s doing everything he should, in reality it’s there in order for him to have the time to burn all those bridges back to any kind of British socialism.  That is to say, on his part it’s not unconscious at all.  It’s a deliberate administration of a drug which allows us to die.

And therein my absolute misery this morning.


http://youtu.be/zxg7j6rQDLM

If modern politicians were a bank, we’d have bailed them out three times already (or how everyone is retrainable)

 Big Society, CEOs, corporations, Europe, Fraser Nelson, in a hole, police, police state, policed state, politicians, students, training, tuition fees, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Nov 102011
 

The hashtag #nov9 was used on Twitter in the days leading up to yesterday’s march in London – a march which involved students who continue to protest the tripling of tuition fees.  I spent most of yesterday working online, though did not follow this hashtag myself.

I did, however, have cause to favourite a handful of tweets which seemed particularly relevant to what appears to have become a Titanic of a country, as we lazily rearrange the green benches of Parliament whilst everything else around us collapses.

These are the tweets in question.  I’ll include the times I received them in square brackets, so you can see why they struck me as so incongruent:

RT @MissEllieMae: Protesters in an impossible catch 22: mask up and get arrested; stay uncovered and get filmed #nov9 < democracy in action [16.47]

Democracy is meant to be disruptive. That’s why the right to demonstrate is an integral part of it. We forget that at our peril. [16.57]

Bedford entrepreneur Lance Haggith is the Prime Minister’s latest #bigsociety award winner bit.ly/stCwIw [17.02]

What a joke our Govt are. Kids are protesting about being priced out of education, yet #hoc debate footballers being allowed to wear poppies [17.03]

And then, last thing at night just before I signed off, we had this one from Fraser Nelson:

@oflynnexpress afraid I am in the minority that wants to save our eu membership, albeit by renegotiating terms then holding referendum. [23.06]

A few of us might argue with the idea of a referendum – but saving EU membership, in the light of Europe’s traumas over the past two centuries, is hardly something anyone should care to disagree with.

I do wonder if the terrain we are entering is not dissimilar to the sandwich of chaos that was eventually the Weimar Republic.

Anyhow, back to the first four tweets.  I bet you can’t guess which one belonged to the Prime Minister’s office.

Or – which is what I really mean to say – I bet you can.

Whilst the majority of the people I follow seemed worried about the attack that police threats, police tactics and an overwhelming police presence may be doing to our concept of democracy, Mr Cameron is most interested in promoting the dead duck of a concept that is the Big Society – a concept I have previously argued is actually designed to exclude.

The truth of the matter is that if modern politicians were a bank, we’d have bailed them out three times already: over the first credit crunch; over MPs’ expenses; and over the ongoing saga that is the Murdochs and the spells they cast – with relatively few exceptions – on all our political class.

We pay them what we pay them – to get it right!  Failure isn’t an option, I’m afraid.  Failure is only an option for those of us who earn what our work is actually worth.  For those who earn far more than they should … well, there is really no excuse.  And allowing light-touch regulation, the expenses issue and the insidious influence of the people who work in tabloids to get as out of hand as they have all got is a clear sign we have corrupt individuals who like to game the system in their very own interests.

Which brings me to this post – which I strongly urge you to read and weep.  Is it true?  The comments below it would seem to indicate it is.

So for these CEOs, who in some cases earn 475 times what an ordinary worker takes home, the option to fail is even less appropriate than in the case of our highly-paid politicos.  And yet, as banks disintegrate and at least one of their leaders has to take time off due to the weight of his onerous responsibilities, they continue to maintain such ratios in the face of all reasonableness.

If the world is really on the edge of total upheaval, why can’t we put aside our combative ways and try and work together?  This would require a change in behaviours, of course – but, as most big companies would like to argue, surely everyone is retrainable …

On not herding readers back into the "creed"

 Britain, burning bridges, Fraser Nelson, on a high, Peter Oborne, riots, Spectator, sword and shield, swords into ploughshares, Telegraph  No Responses »
Aug 132011
 

mulberrybush makes an excellent couple of points in an exchange of tweets we had yesterday evening.  The first as follows:

@politicsworld @eiohel with the riots, papers are back to trying to herd readers into the “creed”. Need to get beyond this.

Whilst the second continued the theme:

@eiohel @politicsworld I am certain it is important to build bridges. Have spoken to a number of Teleg readers who think so too

Meanwhile, also yesterday evening, and in response to comments from tris on my post on this awful story from Wandsworth (more here from Munguin and Co, and further background here), I couldn’t help myself bleating just a little woefully this sadness on our current state of affairs:

The quality of our political class, and the ability of our institutions to engage with ordinary people, is definitely wanting though.

This clearly has a history behind it, and it truly makes you want to get your own back on the political miscreants involved.

But there’s something else: I didn’t start writing about life and politics to turn into some vengeance-seeking male harpy. I’d far rather we were able to create a society which supported its members, was intelligent in its actions and institutions – and relatively free of corrupt and ingrowing practices. Unfortunately, we simply don’t seem to be any closer to such a society at all – if anything we are moving away from it.

With my Croatian background, I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually I turned into a nationalist of some kind myself. No small can ever be as ugly as big and lumbering London-centric style.

And I suppose I resist the impulse because I’ve seen the damage it’s done in my mother’s homeland.

Even so, it’s a temptation when you see all this disconnected mediocrity.

I’ve already mentioned Peter Oborne’s courageous writing from the heart of Tory thinking over at the Telegraph.  I first noticed this “getting it” during the Cameron-Coulson-Murdoch matrix of half-truths at the centre of the News of the World phone-hacking scandals.  It was almost as if a certain threshold of evidence – a watershed of truths – had been uncovered.  This allowed certain honourable souls to accept that the legacy of spin – which has led us all to doubt any theses about public behaviours, as well as acquire a corrosive cynicism which concludes every accusation has an angle – did not necessarily mean that everything said about top-level governance was inevitably going to be the spoutings of the envious mob.

That people like Oborne are able to tell us home truths the political class feel unable to is both worrying and heartening.  Worrying, because our politicians ought to be braver and more principled; more convinced of their own ability to persuade a frightened populace that societal cohesion is still worth pursuing.  Heartening, because at least there are some prepared to put their reputations on the line.

Even if, objectively speaking, they speak what we can only describe as blindingly obvious and self-evident truths.

In the modern world of spin, 24-hour rolling news and social media, however, such truths are often the first casualties of this killing-field where reality is edited.

And so I come to another heartening piece – again, from the heart of Tory thinking; again, from a writer of note.  This time we find Fraser Nelson concluding in the Spectator with the following even- and open-handed appeal to cross-party cooperation:

The LA report was called “To Rebuild Is Not Enough” – a very good title, which applies to Britain. The report led to the unlikely Clinton/Gingrich welfare reforms. An inquiry is a Labour idea, but if there is to be consensus on any issue in British politics, it should be over tackling poverty, joblessness and lawlessness.

As with the Oborne article, this is well worth a read and careful consideration in full.

Enough has been burnt in the past few days.  This is not a time to also burn bridges with aimless self-justifying rhetoric.

Swords into ploughshares?  How about enemies into friends?  And if friends is not possible, then at least functional colleagues …

The victims of the News of the World are both external and internal

 Fraser Nelson, in a hole, John Naughton, News of the World, Stockholm syndrome, Sun, victims, Wapping syndrome  No Responses »
Jul 092011
 

Three links so you know what I mean.  First, this shocking story which came my way via John Naughton’s Twitter feed.  As Naughton points out:

Just in case you’re feeling sorry for the poor ‘innocent’ NoTW staff who came after Coulson/Brooks, try this for size: http://bit.ly/on2C9y

Then two pieces by Fraser Nelson, writing his last column in the News of the World here – whilst in the Spectator you can find a broader and more discursive analysis of the paper’s achievements here.

Read them and reach your own conclusions.  Mine for what it’s worth?  The beast that is corporate hierarchies these days has a lot to answer for – at least as far as the dynamics of what’s happened is concerned.  And as the victims of this awful affair – both external and internal in my opinion – begin to dust themselves off over the coming months, the trauma and pain they’ve all had to live under will only, in its progressive absence, become finally apparent.

I do wonder if it isn’t all symptomatic of a much wider malaise, though.  We love what these large companies can do with their massive concentrations of wealth.  Gadgets, energy, fast food and ideas.  What would we do without them? 

I just ask myself whether the bad that so demonstrably exists really has to accompany the good that so clearly is generated.  If, as Nelson claims, tabloid journalism is such an art (and I’m inclined to agree – at least from a purely linguistic and technical point of view) …

When I was an aspiring journalist, I was in a class where we were addressed by  the (then) editor of the Glasgow Herald. “Please tell me I’ll never have to write tabloid” one of the students said. “No you won’t, son, because you’ll probably never be good enough” came the reply. I was struck by that, an later found out how true it is. It took me ages, trying to do whatthose brilliant red-top journalists can do instantly: distill complex facts and issues down to their essence, write not wasting a single word or a second of the reader’s time. No broadsheet waffling. It is respect for the readers, and their appetite for serious and substantial scoops, which made the News of the World so successful.

… then where and why did it all go so sour? 

And keeping in mind the reality of the first story I linked to today, isn’t it fair to say a degree of self-delusion is – even now – operating amongst the industry’s workforces?  Even amongst such quality writers and observers of the human condition as Nelson clearly is?

A final tweet to finish – allegedly deleted tonight from the Twitter feed of the News of the World‘s sister paper, the Sun:

Quick, blame anyone but the man to blame MT @Sun_Politics: NotW RIP. Miliband, Guardian & BBC; how proud you must be of your work this week

If true, the delusion is complete.  And it doesn’t half sound like a serious case of Stockholm syndrome – but this time for journalists working in massive corporate organisations. 

Perhaps we could redefine the condition for 21st century purposes: how about Wapping syndrome? 

Would that suit?

"Labour needs a psychiatrist, not a strategist"

 "The King's Speech", David Miliband, Ed Miliband, Fraser Nelson, in a hole, Labour, Luke Bozier, Refounding Labour  No Responses »
Jun 122011
 

I’ve just watched “The King’s Speech” on DVD.  The first time I’ve seen the film in fact.  If you haven’t and plan at some time to do so (I can highly recommend it), I defy you not to blub at least once during its beautifully paced 113 minutes.  It does, incidentally, involve an unqualified Antipodean speech therapist who helps out the future King of England to overcome a terror of public speaking.

Back on the Internet, Luke Bozier just tweeted the following phrase – picking up on a piece by Fraser Nelson, writing in the Spectator:

‘The (Labour) party needs a psychiatrist, not a strategist.’. Always love Fraser Nelson. And not just for the accent. http://bit.ly/lvxDyr

There’s a good deal to be said for this.  We might even want to extend it to all organisations and workforces where dysfunctional behaviours are currently causing disrespect and waste.  Of which there are rather too many for comfort.  Not sure it’s going to be possible, mind, in a world where private bureaucracy is burgeoning and health systems worldwide prefer pharmaceuticals to expensive talking therapies.

Talking of which, the recent policy consultation process on Refounding Labour (more from myself on how a session made me feel here and more from Paul on what he thinks should really be taking place here) was already quite prescriptive.  Whilst the answer wasn’t exactly 42, someone had clearly done a lot of work on what they were looking to get out of it.  And it did feel a little as if the questions we were led through were couched in terms of conclusions which had already been more than tentatively arrived at.

So in a way, it may be a tick-box exercise.  In a way, it may be a primitive form of therapy.  In a way, it may seem designed to heal.  In a way, it’s probably destined to fail.  What the Labour Party prizes, above all, is its heroes.  Even more, perhaps, than those on the right amongst us.  It spends so much time searching its soul and saying its analyses are based on solid fact and evidence – but the leap of faith that being a socialist requires is both substantial and honourable at the same time.  As well as – primarily – primal. There’s nothing stronger than the emotion to be experienced when witnessing injustice by those with the power to cover it up.

If I find it difficult to believe in God, it’s perhaps because I’m a socialist.  And it’s not that my being a socialist prevents me in a theological sense from believing in God.  It’s that my being a socialist makes believing in God quite unnecessary for my peace of mind.  In a way, socialism is a faith – just as Roman Catholicism and Protestantism before it.  I have my existential support in my socialist philosophies – even as you have your existential support in your religious ones.

Fraser Nelson may be on the ball when he says that right now Labour needs a psychiatrist more than a strategist.  But perhaps he would be even more accurate if he said we all needed a Father Confessor – essentially to heal our aforementioned communal soul.

Meanwhile, David Miliband is right to declare that:

“I have moved on from the leadership election and so should everyone else. Ed won, I stand fully behind him and so should everyone else. I called for unity last October and I repeat that now. We all have our part to play in supporting Ed and the front bench team to ensure we expose this government for its reckless policies that are damaging the country. The rest is soap opera of which I want no part and the public have no interest.”

He is also right in declaring it a soap opera.  Where he is wrong, however, is in assuming the public has no interest in soap opera.

For it most evidently does.  And “The King’s Speech” is a quite superior example amongst many products these days which serves as living proof of this.

The Spanish have a saying for what we really should be getting up to: “Hablando se entiende la gente.”  Loosely translated, this means: “We understand people by speaking to them.”  Pretty simple really.

Even if there’s not much of it about any more.

So less consultation folks.  And a bit more real and equal dialogue.

How about it?

Fluffy Labour or Fuzzy Labour?

 Fluffy Labour, Fraser Nelson, fuzzy intelligence, Fuzzy Labour, on a high  No Responses »
Jan 162011
 

Today, at the Spectator, Fraser Nelson has a characteristically honest – even where partisan – assessment of Ed Miliband, the Labour Party, political strategy and the general state of play in British politics.  You can read more on these subjects here.

He’s a meticulous writer with a wonderful turn of phrase but – quite uncharacteristically – slips between two simultaneously viable but different concepts to describe where Miliband’s Labour currently finds itself (the bold is mine):

 [...] Ed’s latest weapon is branding: not New Labour but Fluffy Labour. He offers, of course, “a broad, open, progressive majority built on a coalition of values.” Sometimes it’s a “broad movement of the mainstream”. What else? To Labour, it’s the party led by Red Ed that wants to tougher on nasty capitalists. To Lib Dems, it’s led by a proud “progressive”. To ex-Tories (and let’s remember about 10 percent of Oldham Tories defected to Labour at the last election), it’s a small-c conservative party led by a nice, middle-class guy concerned about preserving high streets. In other words, Fuzzy Labour is all things to all people.

I wonder if this is his subconscious at work.  Fluffy Labour ties in to those perceptions of Ed Miliband as a kind of political teddy bear (perceptions which, by the by, I honestly don’t feel are supported by the facts – apart from anything else, a carefully couched ruthlessness in covert bucketloads was his modus operandi during the Labour leadership campaign last year.  Brotherly love?  Hardly!).

Meanwhile, Fuzzy Labour seems to feed off all those 21st century dark arts relating to those puzzling intelligences which drive sophisticated thinking machines and ways of doing in so many disparate fields of business and pleasure these days.

So is to be Fluffy Labour or Fuzzy Labour?

A bit of both would, indeed, be a killer application.  As Nelson points out:

[...] Inaction has its merits. One of my favourite put-downs in cinema is this line from Casablacca (click here, 64 secs in). Ugarte: “You despise me, don’t you?” Rick: “If I gave you any thought I probably would.” Now, if voters gave Ed Miliband much thought, they’d probably object to him. But they don’t. Nor does he plan to give them cause to. As Reagan said: “Don’t just do something. Stand there.” Inaction often has its merits.

____________________

Further reading: the virtues of living a fuzzier intelligence.

Fraser Nelson’s well-turned phrases (or how Tony Blair shakes off the shackles of democracy)

 Anthony Painter, Fraser Nelson, on a high, sorted, Tony Blair  No Responses »
Sep 022010
 

Forgive me for continuing for a moment to ponder the past.  I promise in the very near future to do my best to resist all temptation – where, of course, this is at all reasonably resistible.

This evening, Anthony Painter very kindly retweeted my response to an article he published yesterday on the upsides (and, let it be said, the downsides too) of Blair.  My post with a link to his original article and my response can be found here.

At the same time he pointed me in the direction of a beautiful article published by Fraser Nelson on the Spectator website, also yesterday but later in the day – and before Blair’s interview with Andrew Marr was aired on the BBC.  To follow, some lovely nuggets of political English Nelson provides us with (that is to say, not simply well-turned phrases but also bitingly on target) – nuggets to be found in what you might describe as industrial quantities in a very particular mine of audacious perspicacity:

Say what you like about Blair, but he is something of a political entrepreneur. He detects a gap in the market and fills it: he did with New Labour in the mid-1990s. And he detects a trend in the globalised world: a system where governments don’t matter so much and power is held by a global elite.

[...]

A look at the book’s chapters shows you that this is a case not of a man selling a book, but a book selling a man.

[...]

He wants to keep on being a leader. To become a statesman without a state. To keep the trappings of power, and lose the traps.

(Now don’t you just love that last phrase?)

And there’s more:

Just as he spotted a gap in the political market for New Labour, he spots a gap in the world market for Blair Inc.

Whilst this entire paragraph is more a basket of exclusive top-flight truffles than a mere panning for verbal gold:

Blair’s book tells about how the world is changing, and governments are losing control of it. He paints a picture of a new global elite, and it’s easy to see that he regards himself as a potential master of this new universe. No one elected Bono, but – Blair gushes – “he could have been a Prime Minister or President standing on his head”. Bill Clinton has this status, of Global Leader For Hire, and even found himself resolving real disputes – taking hostages back from North Korea last year. Blair is transcending both party (there’s nothing left-wing about his memoir) and even country (he’s being less and less British every time he makes a guest appearance here). Like Clinton, he has discovered that a smile and a contacts book can be worth a lot of money.

Nelson concludes his piece, quite rightly, with the following line:

This book is about promoting a global brand: that of Blair himself. So we should not waste too much time scouring it for his thoughts about the country he has left behind.

Indeed we should not.

(Oh how I do so wish I had written that phrase myself: “To keep the trappings of power, and lose the traps.”  In fact I could die happy authoring something half as good.)

No.  I’m not looking to kick Blair whilst he’s down.  For Blair is actually looking to detach himself from everything he is preparing his psyche to believe held him back, dragged him from office and prevented him from fulfilling his destiny.

That is to say, detach himself from both his electorate and his political party.

We thought we were electing a servant of the masses.

We didn’t realise that the masses were at the service of an ultimately brazen exhibition of sad and sorry power politics.

If Cameron is a throwback to a sadly previous decade, Blair is fast becoming a throwback to a sadly previous century.

We thought he gave in to Murdoch & Co, when it was actually the other way round – we thought that it was Labour which needed a pact with the devil to get out of the wilderness, not Murdoch & Co who desperately coveted the access.

What we didn’t realise at all was that it was Blair who was the devil incarnate and the pact of real import was made between him on the one side and comrades and Party members on the other.  All those rich capitalists were simply his cover -  a mad distraction to keep us chattering.

The souls that were really compromised belonged to ourselves.

For he does – after all – believe in governing elites.

He doesn’t – after all – believe in the shackles of democracy.