The white-rabbity nature of liberal values – a bankruptcy of belief?

 Chris Dillow, moral crisis, moral deficit, moral democracy, moral industry, moral relativism, normblog, Paul Cotterill, unclassifiable  1 Response »
Mar 162013
 

Chris attempts to mediate between Paul and Norman on the subject of the relative primacy of the individual.

I’m a lover of liberal values myself.  But when you get examples such as the one I’m going to quote from, you really do begin to wonder if the problem ain’t values at all but – rather – their relative white-rabbity impermanence.  This is a story on the behaviours of one of the biggest corporations in the world – a product of liberal values if there ever was one.  The original in Spanish can be found here; the robot English translation here (from which I will proceed to quote from and amend where appropriate).  In essence, this report describes how Facebook has just withdrawn from its pages a manual on stoning people to death, not because it contravened its rules on representing or fomenting violence but, rather, because it infringed copyright legislation:

A Facebook spokesman told El País that, although the content might be offensive, it did not violate its policies, which seek “a balance between freedom of expression and the maintenance of a safe environment [in the network].”

What did provoke it to finally act was the following assertion of intellectual property:

Finally, on March 14 the pictures were removed but for a very different reason: they infringed the rules on intellectual property rights, as they came from a report on executions in Iran published in 2010 by the Canadian newspaper The National Post.

Now I do understand that one swallow (or is that a gulp?) does not make a summer.  But even so, in the light of so many other copyright-associated cases where corporate dosh weighs far more heavily than flesh-and-blood people, I do get the definite impression that liberal values are creeping towards crisis.  If Paul, whose humanity, global vision and ability to keep a multitude of ideas moving at the same time I respect immensely, finds it necessary to say, as Chris does quote him saying, that:

There are other worldviews, which do not depend on the primacy of the individual, which are potentially as valid.

then I am inclined not to verbally stone him for his crimes (Norman seems to a little; Chris doesn’t at all) but, at least in a tentative first place, ask exactly why he should be tempted to say such stuff.

Liberal values are fine as they might stand in theory, but not everything they are currently leading to in practice leads us to a happy place.  The right of the individual to speak out freely must always be balanced by the damage it does to others by so doing.  And if one of the world’s prime technology companies now finds it possible – and what’s more, in the name of liberal free speech – to permit instructions on how to stone people to death to remain on its pages, and only think twice about the matter when the hoary old capitalist construct of copyright rears its ugly head, then we really, surely, are living some kind of bankruptcy of belief.

Money, once again, in a liberal context, weighs far more heavily in the event, and in that practice I allude to, than those theoretical rights not to be abused.

Perhaps that’s what makes Paul’s humanity think the unthinkable.

Precisely because the white-rabbity nature of liberal values is fast coinciding with a parallel bankruptcy of its economic model.  For which it can hardly disavow its primary responsibility.

It’s not that we object so much to liberal values but, instead, much more importantly, to what is being done in their name.

Which is to say, in the name of that justly prized individualist prism of valuing equally every single life on the planet.

The problem being that liberal values are beginning to mean far more often “every man for himself” instead of “every man of himself”.

With the emphasis, I guess, at least in the light of today’s Facebook story, on the word “man”.

The Three Pauls: Reality, Structure and Passion

 Paul Bernal, Paul Cotterill, Paul Evans, sorted  No Responses »
Nov 272012
 

There are three articles I’d like to draw your attention to today.  First, from Paul Evans on the reality of the “unregulated” British press:

I understand the principled arguments against press regulation. Really. I do. I probably agree with most of them as well, in all of their impoverished fiddling-while-Rome-burns glory.

But can everybody else who opposes this please also acknowledge that British journalism has been a recurring car-crash for decades now? We don’t have regulation already? Apart from the right journalists have to only print the prejudices of their proprietor that their advertisers don’t object to?

And as he painfully concludes:

Democracies and markets rely upon wide access to reliable information and our press is not, currently, an asset to civil or commercial society. If anything, it’s the opposite – and that needs fixing whatever else Leveson comes up with.

Second, from Paul Cotterill on the structures we need to pay more attention to:

Norm and Chris are in disagreement over who can represent effectively.

Chris thinks background doesn’t matter:

[H]istory shows that posh MPs can serve working class interests. Leading members of the 1945-51 government such as Attlee, Dalton and Cripps were public schoolboys.

Norm thinks, statistically speaking, it does:

Because it can happen that a woman makes good decisions for the men she represents, and a rich man likewise for people much worse off than himself; and because it can also happen that a person from the very same group or stratum as those she represents can make very bad decisions for them, even ‘selling them out’; these are not reasons for denying the old truth that one of the things individuals are moved by is their interests. Representatives do not escape this generalization, at least statistically.

I think both are missing the point.   They’re focusing on agency to the exclusion of structure.

Third, from Paul Bernal on the passion we must strive to maintain coolly:

None of us want twitter to turn tepid – if all we get is lukewarm discussions of celebrities and cold-hearted press releases from politicians then what’s the point? And yet sometimes, just sometimes, things can get too hot to handle on twitter. Arguments reach boiling point more often than they should, tempers flare and we all turn into hotheads and firebrands. Does it help? There are times when it does – when we need fire in our hearts and the heat of passion – and I for one would never want to lose that. There are other times, however, when it goes over the top, when the ‘freedom’ of twitter brings out the torches and pitchforks, and we seem to turn into a fiery mob. What is needed is a cool head. Now, for me, is one of those times. If we can stay cool, calm and collected, we can turn this possible chill into something that helps us – but we do need to stay cool.

Whilst at the same time concluding:

[...] Keep cool – but don’t lose the passion in our hearts.

The saintly trio of Pauls have certainly delivered a triplet of useful lessons in these three pieces.  Reality, structure and passion: what a powerful linking of concepts.

We must, of course, continue to ground ourselves in reality – just as we must be aware, in a personality-driven age, of the importance of structure and system when analysing the true whys and wherefores of our outcomes.  But equally important to understanding better how latterday society is operating is that acknowledgement of the power and impulse the flesh-and-blood passion of human beings can engender.

So let us analyse reality coldly; let us engage with structure creatively; and let us do all the above with a passion that never fails to push us towards better ways of thinking, seeing and doing.

I do hope we are up to the challenges thus presented.

Don’t you?

What can you do to understand a world careering out of simplicity?

 a con, copyright, copyright madness, euro, Greece, greed, Paul Cotterill, Paul Evans  3 Responses »
May 152012
 

Paul C tells us that socialists are daft to suggest Greece is better out than in the euro.  Paul E suggests that copyleft activists don’t get copyright at all.  In the meantime, I am beginning to wonder if the world is getting too complex for anyone to understand.

Before, we had experts.  Specialised folk who could boil down from a vast understanding of the ins and outs of a subject the essence an audience in particular might require.  But as life became more complex, such specialisms began to acquire an encysted relationship to each other: crossover skills are now the exception, not the norm.  Niches are what everyone strives to establish.

For a magpie mind such as mine, there is no place in the modern world of business and social interaction.

So when Paul C, from his undoubted ability to understand the self-fulfilling, tells us that the rest of us are speaking bollocks, and when Paul E, from his undoubted ability to disentangle the self-interested, tells us that the rest of us simply do not get it, there is little left for the rest of us to do but shake our heads in confused shame.

Only the real problem is that the Paul C and Es of this world are few and far between.  And whilst with the latter I would find myself on slightly firmer ground if pursuing my instincts to disagree, and whilst with the former I could not react without emotional bloodshed, with most of those often self-proclaimed experts out there we are now gaining an absolute right to totally distrust their judgements.

As the Sunday Times list of the top UK thousand demonstrates, those who have a lot and get it utterly wrong are rewarded with further power and wealth:

Top 1,000 on ST RichList increased their wealth by £155bn in 3yrs: enough to pay off Nat Debt: Many of the 1,000 caused crash to begin with.

It’s only the poor sods at the bottom of the pile who will get the poor pickings they most definitely do not deserve.

There is nothing unusual in what I am saying, of course: you know all of this; we all do.

But I do wonder if what has afflicted us isn’t a question of personal and evil greed, after all.  Rather, it may have a lot more to do with the fact that no one, whether at the bottom or the top of the pile, really has those magpie-mind skills I mentioned earlier on: we only know how to do well what our apportioned role in life allows us to.  None of us can manage, however, for reasons of training, education and upbringing, to bring to a world careering out of simplicity a broad and comprehensive understanding of its weaknesses.

No one at the top, no one at the bottom, no one anywhere can comprehend any more this world we survive in.

We are lost because the relationships between our component parts have become too complicated to appreciate their extent.  A single glance, whilst still enough to lead us to love at first sight, is no longer enough to allow us to understand the socioeconomic implications of our civic and political acts.

Democracy is a simple idea whose time has come and gone.

The world has become a tangled ball of wool whose complexity can only continue to multiply.

Paul C and E, if only there were more of your type.  Unfortunately, there aren’t.  We are doomed.

As Ofsted junkies tell Ofsted porkies, political barriers are broken

 a con, bad business, bad capitalism, competition, competitive deficit, corporate Communism, corporate hooligans, corporate lobbies, Ofsted, Paul Cotterill  No Responses »
Mar 162012
 

Yesterday, I described – from my own point of view as a language trainer – how Ofsted’s recent claim that what was wrong with the English education system was the “levels” of literacy didn’t tell quite the whole story.  This morning I read, over at the always excellent Though Cowards Flinch, that not only did the claims not tell the whole story, they actually appear to have told a few porkies.  Paul summarises the results of his investigations thus:

We have a Chief Inspector -  head of a supposedly independent organisation - operating in apparent collusion with a government department to give a deliberately false and negative impression of literacy standards and English teaching in England.  Why else would he discard the information provided in his own report, which he’s been asked onto radio to talk about, in favour of other, more negative figures apparently dredged from a dodgy press release?

The phrase that really catches my eye is that “head of a supposedly independent organisation”.  If few organisations in previous regimes were entirely out of the grasping reaches of professional politicos – ask the question “Who policed those who policed?” and the answer will almost certainly engender unhappiness – then this current government appears to have finessed to a fine art the ability and desire its makers and shakers have to totally disregard any nominal attachment to evidence-based politics.  From Legal Aid to the NHS, from welfare reform in general to our blessed political football of an education system, it’s quite clear that what counts these days is a brazen affiliation to money, wealth, power and their charms.

The public no longer expects probity in its politicians – and, as any teacher or trainer or educationalist will point out, or even any professional politico when it suits them, expectations define and create individuals in the image of their wisdom or lack of it.  It’s not even as if politicians are on a hiding to nothing any more.  They can now do what they want because – in a sense – they have broken through a crucial barrier of expectations and obligations: the political barriers which have been broken involve serving Queen, country, fellow citizen and political beliefs before one’s own grimy and sordid pockets of self-enrichment.

This Coalition government of the self-interested is interested in nothing more nor less than a socioeconomic landscape which rewards bad competition and bad capitalism above and beyond any other version of society; especially any other version which any other political ideology might wish to collaboratively sustain.  For these politicians, the only good business organisation is that which aims to become transnational; the only good politician is he or she who is prepared to be paid off by the former; and the only good voters are those who are happy to believe every lie which the aforementioned complex of interests can peddle.

As Paul concludes in his piece:

[...] it’s hard to avoid the sense that Sir Michael Wilshaw is much more than a Gove lapdog, happy to bash teachers and children for narrow political purpose, and to use manifestly incorrect data to do so.

In the current political environment, therefore, he’ll go far.

Too true, my dear Paul.  Far too true for anyone’s good.

How David Cameron’s speech on God and monopolistic competition gets it embarrassingly right

 a con, David Cameron, God, monopolistic capitalism, Paul Cotterill, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Dec 172011
 

Paul, as always, takes to pieces our base knowledge of the Bible.  Though in this post, he takes to pieces David Cameron‘s base knowledge of the Bible:

What interests me is that his speech yesterday was so bad, and how arrogant he must be to think he can pass off a selective bible quotation as a proper reflection on the proper place of Christianity and Christian values in modern society.

The quotation comes at the heart of his speech:

The Bible runs through our political history in a way that is often not properly recognised.

The history and existence of a constitutional monarchy owes much to a Bible in which Kings were anointed and sanctified with the authority of God…

….and in which there was a clear emphasis on the respect for Royal Power and the need to maintain political order.

Jesus said: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

I can see how Cameron might love to misinterpret that bit about “political order” – but never fear, Paul is here to set the world to rights.  Which he does.  His post is well worth reading in full.

My attention is, however, drawn to the first part of the quotation above when Cameron says: “The Bible runs through our political history in a way that is often not properly recognised.”  And I’ll say it most certainly does.  This, from Wikipedia, on the Bible’s true place in the power structures of our society:

It is often mistakenly thought that the Authorized Version is out of copyright. In fact, the Authorized Version is actually under United Kingdom Crown Copyright, though this is not enforced outside the United Kingdom. The rights to the Authorized Version are held by the British Crown under perpetual Crown copyright. Publishers are licensed to reproduce the Authorized Version under letters patent. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the letters patent are held by the Queen’s Printer, and in Scotland by the Scottish Bible Board. The office of Queen’s Printer has been associated with the right to reproduce the Bible for centuries, the earliest known reference coming in 1577. In the 18th century all surviving interests in the monopoly were bought out by John Baskett. The Baskett rights descended through a number of printers and, in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the Queen’s Printer is now Cambridge University Press, who inherited the right when they took over the firm of Eyre & Spottiswoode in 1990.[135]

Other royal charters of similar antiquity grant Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press the right to produce the Authorized Version independently of the Queen’s Printer. In Scotland the Authorized Version is published by Collins under licence from the Scottish Bible Board. The terms of the letters patent prohibit any other than the holders, or those authorized by the holders, from printing, publishing or importing the Authorized Version into the United Kingdom. The protection that the Authorized Version, and also the Book of Common Prayer, enjoy is the last remnant of the time when the Crown held a monopoly over all printing and publishing in the United Kingdom.[135]

So what Cameron is really praising to the very highest heavens in his speech is the grim and grimy old industrial model of the very worst kind of monopolistic competition: a state monopoly, in fact, as it was, over all expressions of freedom of speech, where the word of God (in this case) belonged to that awfully prevalent and all-consuming 1 percent we have recently come to love so very much.

And where, indeed, the monopoly still belongs to those in power – everywhere, that is, except the rest of the world!

David Cameron really couldn’t have chosen a better metaphor to describe the state of the United Kingdom today, now could he?

What a communicator!  For even when he gets it so shamefully wrong, he gets it so embarrassingly right.

Announcing the (not entirely mickey-taking) launch of Silver Labour

 Black Labour, Blue Labour, change, democracy, experience, learning from experience, Paul Cotterill, Purple Labour, Red Labour, Silver Labour, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Nov 262011
 

Not long ago I suggested that democracy needed change more than it needed experience:

This leads us to realise, happily perhaps, especially in the light of youthful campaigns such as the #occupylsx movement, that – in order for democracies to function at all well – we need rolling change in all its pillars rather more than we need the traditional experience of old.  That is to say, we don’t only need to refresh the politicos on a regular basis; we also need to refresh the journos and – in particular – their owners.

The problem, of course, with such a conclusion as this is how – at the same time – we take advantage of the steady hands of wisdom which most societies over time quite rightly engender.

Thus it is, by felicitous coincidence, that Paul comes up with the following idea:

@eiohel Not sure why no-one’s started Grey Labour yet, to take on Young Labour. You in?

I immediately agree, of course – though say that I prefer Silver Labour as it sounds more distinguished.  We then both decide on the latter, and spend the next couple of minutes exchanging appropriately pro-elderly “policy ideas”.

However, there is a serious point behind all this malarkey.  If Labour needs to define itself so unambiguously in terms of shades of an overt rainbow coalition which it may yet disintegratingly become – remember that Blue, Red, Purple and Black Labour have all now made pitches of one sort or another to an evermore bemused membership – then clearly we have an issue here of how best to manage change.

That is to say, the experience we have and the change we need really are finding no point of fruitful encounter.  We thrash about in full view of the public with a futile and half-baked process of political branding – when really we should be taking the battle to the enemy and defending the needs of the vast majority of the voting public.

But in order to do that, we have to be clear who the real enemy is.  And the multicoloured banding of Labour’s broad church gives us every reason to believe that, right now, the internal enemy weighs far more heavily on our thoughts than any other.

So what could a Silver Labour usefully achieve in all of this?  Apart, that is, from adding yet another colour to an already well-populated rainbow?  A union of the safely and objectively experienced perhaps – the elders of the tribe maybe – those, in fact, who are no longer a potential political threat to anyone looking to climb the greasy pole … yes, Silver Labour could be all this and more.

A manner, then, of separating the accumulated data of wisdom from the desire to lever it as a tool to control.  In such a way, those of us who might wish to belong to a Silver Labour could provide the disinterested advice – those steady hands I mention above – without encroaching on the territories of anyone.

Silver Labour members could become the most trusted and respected elders of all our tribe – and all its individual elements.

No ambitions but to help and support those wrapped up in the political battles of parliamentary and local government life.

No objectives but to improve Labour’s engagement with and understanding of the broader voting public.

So does this mean free hair implants on the NHS?  Absolutely not.  Nothing – I tell you – could be further from my thoughts …

:-)

Rather, and far more seriously, we might be looking to ensure democracy can – as I describe in my earlier post – both engineer that broad and rolling change amongst all its component parts as well as maintain, without fear of corrupting influences, a productive contact with the experiences of a consultative and supportive older age. 

For something clearly needs to be done to bring together – in modern democracies – the desire for generational change alongside the manifest importance of tapping the added values of experience.  Especially when we get responses like these from our voters:

The nation’s dismay with Washington turns up in an array of polling results. To understand why the moment may be ripe for a real surprise next November, consider just these numbers: Ross Perot, who won nearly one in five votes in 1992 to become the most successful independent candidate in modern presidential politics, ran at a moment when 39% of Americans said they were dissatisfied with how the nation was being governed. Today, Gallup reports, 81% say they are dissatisfied.

The English experience is probably something pretty similar.

So maybe the time for Silver Labour has, in some shape or other, indeed come.  Non-threatening figures who nevertheless are able to provide useful direction and intelligence.

Despite – or perhaps precisely because of – all our horsing around.

Normblog versus Paulblog on the relative virtues of hierarchy

 hierarchy of power, normblog, on a high, Paul Cotterill, pyramid politics  No Responses »
Nov 232011
 

Norman has been consistent in his support of traditional politics – at least, that is, whilst it maintains some semblance of utility before the vacuum of the most disagreeable.  In “Indignant and weak”, he admonishes the Spanish “indignados” for joyfully proclaiming the fall of the left:

I wonder what it takes – in Spain, after Franco! – to drive home the idea that, whatever else you might think necessary to further democratizing a political system, not being able to get people elected who represent your views is not a sign of strength in the country at large, it is a sign of political weakness.

Whilst in “No end of politics” he quite rightly points out:

[...] there is no end of politics in sight; there are only better and worse forms of politics. Where democracy is really in jeopardy, that is because a worse kind of politics threatens to take its place – whether of dictatorship, fascism, technocratic oligarchy, or whatever. It may be as well not to shout about the end of politics in political systems that still retain functioning institutions of democratic representation and competition, the free articulation of interests and opinion, when these are among the most important mechanisms for asserting control over the distribution and use of wealth.

There are other posts which have contributed to a thesis weaved nobly over the past couple of weeks – and they generally seem to support traditional politics as a dirty example of the necessarily expedient.  “There is no alternative – as yet!” would seem to be the battlecry.  And whilst I can see the logic behind such a point of view, I can’t summon up very much enthusiasm.

So it is that Paul’s post today cheers me up immensely.  In it, he argues the following:

Emma Burnell, who puts together conferences and events, is understandably angry that men dominate conference platforms.  She offers a challenge:
Find me an all male panel – in fact, find me any topic on which you could reasonably hold an informed public debate – and I’ll give you the names of five women who could hold their own on the panel.

I think it’s the wrong challenge.

The problem is not primarily that men dominate platforms.  The primary problem is that there are platforms for them to dominate. Platforms are reflections of patriarchal domination in the first place, and simply reinforce patriarchal power structures.

The real challenge is not to change the gender of who gets to dominate the rest of us from those platform, but to get rid of the platform entirely, and in so doing create the ‘informed public debate’ which is actually so lacking from the usual event format.

As, in fact, Paul usefully concludes (and I think this is more widely applicable to the politics Norman probably supports quite sadly at the moment):

Then, I suspect, you’ll start to get gender equality amongst paid participants, no longer ‘platform speakers’ in the traditional sense, but something like ‘expert facilitators’.  The male windbags (and a few female) will fall off the conference gravy train, to be replaced by women committed not just to the display of their supposed expertise, but to using it for the common good.

Politicians who – following in the footsteps of all good teaching and training professionals everywhere – made that leap to becoming enablers and facilitators of true dialogue and learning instead of just chalk-and-talk droners interested only in transmitting unidirectional wisdoms …

Surely we could agree that this would be a far better kind of politics all round.  What’s more, it wouldn’t be impossible to use existing institutions and simply change the behaviours of those who occupied positions of responsibility.

It’s been done in many a hidebound school.  Why not in the political arena?

Is this the big(-hearted) society Cameron once proclaimed?

 a con, Big Society, David Cameron, Paul Cotterill, Though Cowards Flinch, Wandsworth  No Responses »
Nov 142011
 

In order for the blessed Big Society to work, we need time to volunteer and participate.  There have always been suspicions, from the very beginning, that the concept is actually a myth and a cloak: a marketed soundbite on the one hand designed to knock those of us who believe in the state onto the ideological back foot; on the other, a sneaky way of hiding a rather more unhappy true purpose.

But I’ve always been prepared to contemplate an alternative to corporate state-ism.  Whilst the objective should be clear – a society which supports and empowers its less fortunate members at the same time as it creates opportunity for the luckier ones amongst us – the tools should always vary according to the historical moment we find ourselves in.  Volunteering, after all, is good for the soul – and where properly channelled and encouraged may engender benefits all round.

Paul has, however, uncovered this morning an extremely disagreeable pincer movement from the Tories which makes it impossible to even contemplate doing anything else but work like a slave from dawn to dusk.  In his own words:

Tory-run Wandsworth Council is proposing to evict people who don’t get a job.  The council says:
If the policy is adopted, people would be given a council home on the condition that they find work or enrol on a training course. If they fail to stick to their side of the bargain they would face the prospect of losing that home.

This comes in the context of government policy being developed to evict people if they do get a job:

The PM said fixed term contracts should be issued so that people can be evicted if they get a job or start earning more.

And whilst I am still inclined to give as much benefit of the doubt as I might manage to rustle up in the circumstances, I’m really not quite ready to roll over and think of England and its corporate sponsors.

I think the purpose of these moves is absolutely clear. Force people into wage-slave jobs and then ensure they are too fearful to protest about their state.

And by doing so, disenfranchise democratically-speaking the less connected even more than they are by ensuring they simply don’t have the time to attend key meetings and decision-making forums outside their morale-sapping jobs.

Neither the time nor, indeed, the energy.

In fact, impoverish the already poor and enrich the already rich just about sums it all up.

Is this, then, the big(-hearted) society Cameron once so proudly proclaimed?

Does money need to swill for the poor or for the rich?

 a con, democratic socialists, John Steinbeck, money, Paul Cotterill, socialism, Sunny Hundal, super-rich, the rich, triangulation, wealth  No Responses »
Nov 112011
 

Paul has an interesting piece up at Though Cowards Flinch today, where he argues that the real object of our endeavour should not be the excesses of capitalism but the very subject of money itself.  As he concludes in a post which deserves to be read in full:

Ed Miliband said at the weekend:
In every generation, there comes a moment when the existing way of doing things is challenged. It happened in 1945. It happened in 1979 and again in 1997. This is another of those moments because the deeper issues raised by the current crisis are too important to be left shivering on the steps of St Paul’s.”

True, but Ed needs to be clear that the moment is not about taming the excesses of capitalism, but about taming money itself on behalf of the citizens of Britain and (if Habermas‘ advice is followed) the whole of Europe.

Which brings me to a post of my own which I dug out this morning and where I say the following from the perspective of the 2008 credit crunch (I’ve added the bold today as I reread what I wrote then):

I also find it curious how some democratic socialists should spend the past decade berating the evils of triangulated capitalism, only then to spend the past six months defending the evils of propping up (perhaps) poorly-run (and clearly iconic) representatives of all that was once so bad. Does no one else see beyond the dangers of the immediate headlines? Is the need to keep money swilling round the economy so great that – whatever its source – we must keep it swilling?

Where’s the intellectual coherence behind all these policies? Is this simply downhill racing for beginners?

I wonder.

I wonder if the avowed need to keep this money moving isn’t blinding us to simpler truths. Robert Maxwell was once allegedly quoted as believing wealth was not a question of possession but access. Perhaps the vast majority of the allegedly rich – companies and individuals both – falls into this latter category. These individuals and entities with access to money can only live the high life if that money is kept moving. Perhaps the urgency for us to spend, spend, spend comes from this stratum of society, more than any other. Perhaps the great achievement of the past ten years was to increase the proportion of the population which believed it formed a part of the former category of possession without letting on to the fact that it actually formed part of the latter one of access.

I don’t think people’s capitalism will ever provide anything more permanent than the access Maxwell so accurately described.

Possession will only ever be for the truly rich.

And they will always be wealthy, whatever happens to the economy and the rest of us.

So. We have a choice. Keep it swilling or realise the chimera you’ve been living for the past decade.

Now which would you choose?

For as Steinbeck is quoted as saying:

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

It does beg the question, though, doesn’t it?  That is to say: does money need to swill for the poor or for the rich?

The poor can only ever strive to live within their means.

Whilst the middling- and upper-rich have the psychological tools to hand to convince their investors they’re richer than they really are.  And so it is that the swilling I describe – and which underpins the chaos that has befallen the world economy in recent times – must continue as disastrously as it has of late, simply so that these supposedly wealthy personal economies do not fall utterly flat on their brown-nosed faces.

Nothing to do with the needs of the vast majority of the population.

Entirely to do with the mad careering of the top thirty percent.

Paul on Cameron’s operational code of government

 Coalition, David Cameron, delusion, in a hole, Paul Cotterill  No Responses »
Oct 202011
 

This explains everything that’s happened since the last general election.  The principle problem we have here is not people who act in bad faith (though this may be the case) – but, rather, a total disjunction between different mindsets; which, in a sense, is an even more serious matter:

What makes Cameron and his chums tick, as I have set out in depth here, is not so much their rightwing ideological assumptions, but an operational code of government – quite different to that under Thatcherism and Blair – where matters of detailed policy formation and implementation are simply not considered important.

This would also explain why it’s often be very difficult to get public traction on serious issues by asking such politicians serious questions about how they may be mismanaging the country – or, indeed, their ministerial responsibilities.  In previous regime changes, the objective was to move the public’s perception of where the centre ground of policy-making was – either more to the left or more to the right, depending on who had just come to power.  It seems to me, however, that Cameron & Co are not interested in this.  The goalposts they’ve moved do not have so much to do with public perceptions as such: rather more do they relate to how acceptable it is in modern British politics to get away with barefaced lies.

Those of us on either side of the parliamentary divide who may feel this might not be the most constructive way of proceeding will obviously feel a certain degree of frustration as this Coalition government continues to churn out the tall tales.  But perhaps, as I suggested the other day, this is not because they consider them tall tales at all.  Perhaps this is because in their own environments and habitats – outside politics I mean – such behaviours are par for the course, and are essentially what makes everything work.

They’re not trying to tell tales, these powerful shakers of public office: instead, they simply don’t any more know the difference between truth and fiction.

Are, then, the members of our government now becoming so utterly delusional?  This normally takes a decade in traditional political regimes.  Perhaps the world that is this 21st-century Internet-inscribed medium has led the latest generation of politicians to speed up the process.  Maybe rapidly-developing delusion, just like 24-hour rolling news and communication, is a side-effect of the email button and SMS text we simply didn’t expect.

Paul’s piece is a lovely summary, anyhow – well worth a full reading.

Can democracy be efficient? (II) (or the "Good Democracy")

 Good Democracy, left-wing blogging, Paul Cotterill, Refounding Labour  1 Response »
Jun 032011
 

I met up with one of my fave bloggers this evening – and he didn’t disappoint.  The occasion was Chester’s Refounding Labour event.  But more of that shortly.

Meeting people you have first got to know through their writings can sometimes be a disconcerting process.  Just because someone can show integrity and brilliance in the written word doesn’t mean they may necessarily exhibit such qualities in the spoken.  Paul Cotterill does, however, exude integrity and brilliance from every pore.

Honestly.

This isn’t hagiography.  It’s just the plain and simple truth.

Anyhow.

Hero-worship moment over and done with, let’s get back to the job of refounding Labour.

The format of these events works as follows.  We’re sat in teams around several tables, get an intro from a visiting MP, read through and discuss four or five pages grouped thematically and then finish off the exercise by supplying a number of short sharp pieces of advice aimed at changing the way Labour works.

It’s not a bad format – overly prescriptive for my liking, but then almost any format probably would be.  You know what I’m like, after all.

So what did we achieve on this wonderful warm Chester Friday when most of us were almost certainly looking to be elsewhere?*  Quite a lot actually.  Or, at the very least, it clarified for me the need to continue developing the theme of simultaneous democracy and efficiency which I touched on yesterday.  Though I’m not absolutely sure that the time allowed for us to provide feedback (five minutes per team) and discuss the results in an open forum (no time whatsoever) was the best way of harvesting the ideas.

Some of the feedback sounded more soapboxish than was necessarily useful – though, of course, understandable in circumstances where a political party’s members have, for so long, had absolutely no real input on the subject of process, and very little on the subject of policy.  But even so, if we are happy to accept that no real democracy can aspire to be so without also aspiring to be efficient in its functioning, a wider and more intelligent use of modern technologies such as video cameras and computers would have improved the ability of all those present to get their views across.

This, for what it’s worth, is what I took away with me:

  1. firstly, if the Labour Party wants to engage both members and supporters more effectively, it needs to empower CLPs so that they can track the behaviours and actions of their MPs, councillors, prospective parliamentary candidates and other representatives in the community.  A process whereby such representatives were required to present regular action plans for ratification and review would require no changes to structures, rule books or procedures – and yet would add a tremendous sensation of control and inclusion to all members
  2. secondly, Party Conference needs to be what it has become: a stage-managed opportunity and showcase to generate positive headlines for Labour.  If it should, also, in some way continue to be the place where true debate is allowed to happen, then this should happen behind closed doors – and should be as true as it needs to be
  3. thirdly, CLP decision-making meetings and management processes in general should be split off from what we might broadly describe as political education events: by all means, let delegate and/or all-member meetings briefly ratify or dismiss decisions already structured and proposed a priori by the CLP’s Executive, but please please please do not any longer start off monthly all-member meetings with interminable apologies, accounts and complaints about a membership which doesn’t like to see itself simply as envelope-stuffing fodder.  Instead, let’s open the Party up to all the components of our society and invite along single-issue organisations and other guest speakers from anywhere along the political spectrum
  4. finally, whatever we do, wherever we do it and whenever we manage to get there, let’s keep in the forefront of our minds the importance of nurturing a democracy which offers both equality of voice and efficiency at the same time – as, in fact, I said yesterday, a democracy we could call and, indeed, market as the “Good Democracy”

All in all, a surprisingly hopeful experience.

Oh, and did I mention I got to meet one of my heroes?

:-)
____________________

*Back gardens, barbecues, setting the world to rights over pints of beer and packets of crisps … you get my general drift.

The United Federation of Lefty Group Blogging anyone?

 Andrew Regan, Bloggers4Labour, blogging, Last.fm, Last.fm of thought, left-wing blogging, Mick Fealty, on a high, Paul Cotterill, Paul Evans, sorted, Though Cowards Flinch  No Responses »
May 272011
 

At the beginning of this week, Paul raised the question of whether the writers at Though Cowards Flinch should move to the group blog The Third Estate.  Many people replied – much to Paul and Carl’s surprise.  Their comments are well worth reading.

I then felt obliged – by writing my thoughts out – to discover more clearly for myself why I wasn’t entirely happy with what was proposed.  Let me hasten to add that this has absolutely nothing to do with the proposed destination but, rather, far more to do with the leaving behind of a primal soup of frame, original inspiration and particular voice which has meant that TCF writers, whatever their origin, provoke especially constructive commenters and dialogues to their always usefully erudite posts.

Reuben for The Third Estate then added a comment to the whole caboodle which, with his and TCF’s permission, I reproduce in full below:

I wasn’t sure whether in would be appropriate for me to comment, so feel free to delete this, but a fewthings caught my eye.

I wasn’t actually aware that we came across as *that* youthy – but the accumulating evidence suggests that we do. That’s not something I aspire to. The tendency amongst to associate left politics and social media with youthiness really grates on me – and if a joining up with TCF could partially rectify our apparent youthiness, that would be great from my perspective.

Mil’s post is incredibly interesting. I recommend everyone reads it. What he suggests is that a process of corporatisation is going on online, with the likes of facebook and google building their own empires, and that this proposal is in some way analogious to that ( I hope my summary hasn’t done too much violence to his argument). “There are” he says, “other ways to bring free voices together which don’t require a submission to common corporate image, tools and philosophies”.

What occurred to me as I read it is that some kinds of agglomeration are completely different from others. Take, for example, the coming together of many different organisations to form the original labour representation committee – this was analogious to the formation of a business conglomerate. That might seem like a glib comparison, but I think it is relevant particularly here. That’s because for most of the C20th Labour was very self consciously a composite organisation, comfortable with its identity as a coalition of potentially divergent interests and opinions. This I hope is very much how the third estate comes across, and how a TTE-TCF project would be. We are, as commenters have noted an underpredictable , pluralistic left blog – wherein, I think it would difficult to unproblematically distill a single “corporate image”. (oh shit I’ve just compared myself to Keir Hardie). I don’t think it is a place where the TCF voice would be “subsumed”, but where it would coexist.

What is awful about the emergence of corporate on line empires, is that content is pulled together and concentrated, but not on the basis of any actual commonalities. There is no coincidence values or ideas that bring me and my next door neighbour to pool our content on the same websites, like facebook or twitter. Much like the conglomeration of industry in the C20th was driven by the logic of the machine and not the agency of man/woman. This however is something different. This is about people with shared ideas, and similar aims, potentially making the concious decision to pool our efforts.

Along with this clarification:

correction! – meant to say the formation of the LRC WASN’t analogious to a business merger!

I then responded tonight with the following idea:

I think the idea of what we might call a federal structure along the lines I think you might be suggesting is better. A common homepage along the lines of:

http://labour2.net/

could be set up.

This would allow individual personalities and thoughts as expressed in the physicality of the web to continue to exist in their own places behind such a page – each then could thus choose, as now, the software code, tools, permissions, infrastructures and image which most suited, and yet still collaborate in a common project with a common image as a starting point (perhaps gathering point would be better).

The best of both worlds perhaps? Question is, what to call it …

Now I guess I’m rather at an advantage here because, along with Andrew Regan as the brains, guiding light and software architect, and Paul Evans as editor-behind-the-scenes (which is where all of the very best editors choose to remain), we’ve spent the past few years trying – probably a little too half-heartedly – to push the virtues of blog aggregation over what was the traditional individual and now evermore popular group blogging.  I suspect aggregation hasn’t really taken off as much as it could have done because, essentially, blogging almost always starts out as an ego trip – whilst the aggregation of the sort I suppose we have been proposing aims to deflect attention towards the quality of a wide range of content. 

Not big names then – big ideas.

Anyhow.  Whilst Andrew’s ambition is to create the best aggregation tools the world has ever seen (and it is my honest belief that most of what’s needed under the bonnet is now firmly in place), I in my ignorance of things technical was looking to focus on a much smaller idea: basically, do for political thought what the music site Last.fm has done for music. 

Which is where Paul Evans comes in: at the end of last year, after a short conversation at an Edinburgh event which Mick Fealty and Paul had both hosted, and where, thankfully, the penny finally dropped, we managed between the two of us to pull together an essay on the subject of how best to bring together and share content – with the aim, that is, of widening people’s intellectual horizons and, essentially, encouraging readers to see the virtues of regularly reading outside their comfort zones.

Yes.  I know.  You may feel that the penny which finally dropped is actually that bad penny which never fails to return.  But I still find myself enthused by its possibilities – ever since I went on two weekend political seminars in the heyday of New Labour Salford.  And that, in some way, is exactly how I see it: an online academy of thought for everyone who cares enough about politics.  An Everyman’s Library for the 21st century.  But instead of publishing the classics, we would publish, connect and share the best of current thought as generated by existing blogs across the globe.

No need for people to up sticks and learn how to use new content management systems in order to achieve some kind of visibility.

No need to squeeze individual voices into common boxes in order to achieve some kind of communication.

No need to carve out Internet real estate and impose software constitutions on users in order to achieve some kind of user-friendly navigational coherence. 

Rather, all that would be needed would be some conceptual nous (easily acquired, I can assure you) – and, far more importantly than money or material resources, an intellectual and emotional support, as well as an understanding of the implications long-term of what is being proposed.

Andrew wants to include the world’s entire political DNA in his box of tricks – and, in my dreams, I also imagine my Last.fm of thought leading us from the most progressive to the most regressive ideas at the click of a mouse and user tag.  However, I am also quite a pragmatic person (though a superficial reading of this blog might not lead you very easily to such a conclusion) – as, I think, deep down, is Andrew. 

His previous incarnation, Bloggers4Labour, worked so well precisely because it was partisan.  So perhaps it is now time we moved back into the real world.  Perhaps it is now time, in the light of everything everyone has said over at TCF this week, and in the light of some of the things I have published here on 21stCenturyFix.org, for us to bite the political bullet and say: “The battle before us is far too severe for us to want to choose to wallow in the luxury of non-partisan projects.”

Is it time then – on the back of Andrew’s marvellous tools, Paul Evans’ perspicacious editorship and that small but not insignificant inflection of my own which has dared to convert a wonderful music site into an aggregation community for and of thinkers – to nail our scarlet standard to the mast?

The United Federation of Lefty Group Blogging anyone?

When the Special Relationship becomes a real burden

 a con, ALEC, Atlantic Bridge, in a hole, Paul Cotterill, Paul Evans, Wisconsin  No Responses »
May 112011
 

It’s always dangerous to adduce conspiracy when things happen in an apparently coordinated manner.  Flocks of birds fly together in glorious synchronicity – but this doesn’t mean they are evil plotting creatures.  The essence of what we might term benevolent or good socialism lies in a clear and honest recognition of the essentially societal nature of human beings.  We actually like doing things together in harmony.  Our education systems may try and convince us otherwise.  Our business organisations may generally try and pigeonhole us into a savagely competitive mindset.  But when we are left to our own devices, I truly believe we prefer gentleness over violence, cooperation over disagreement, support over abandonment.

There would, however, appear to exist pivotal moments in history where conspiracies do operate and where, mostly in hindsight, tell-tale signs are later uncovered – when, clearly, it is often too late – which point to their rank realities and corresponding intentions.  And so it is that I am beginning to wonder if the working- and middle-classes in our Anglo-Saxon worlds – a suddenly burdensome Special Relationship if there ever was one – are now being subjected to a fearsome process of disenfranchisement which may yet lead us to question whether this isn’t a return – in some awfully inverted kind of a way – to the destructive dynamics of the Cold War.  Except, here, it is the socialists amongst us who should take up the mantle of inquisitors.  Whilst the Communist infiltrators and spies are these libertarian monsters who aim to make volunteering obligatory and part and parcel of a contract between the state and its voters.  From the Atlantic Bridge (more here) to ALEC’s alleged activities in Wisconsin (more here), what would appear to be a coordinated and rolling attack – that is to say, by the powerful on the support mechanisms which the working- and middle-classes rely on simply to survive – seems to be taking place.

The latest article which has drawn my attention to the apparently coordinated nature of what may reasonably be described as a resurgence of fascism can be found here, from Paul (Cotterill) at Though Cowards Flinch.  It would now appear that the working- and middle-class attack-dog meme which is now going the rounds runs as follows:

Why don’t we restrict votes to people who actually pay something into the system? No, I am not suggesting a return to property-based eligibility; although that system worked quite well when Parliament administered not just Britain but most of the world. Today, income would be a much better test, setting the bar as low as possible; perhaps including everyone who pays at least £100 of income tax each year.

So.  Let’s be clear about this.  The right to participate in the democratic process should apparently depend on the principle of whether one is taxed or not.  Carers who receive no income, dutiful wives and husbands who do what their high-flying husbands and wives demand of them, people who work out a way of eking out an income that doesn’t depend on monetary gain … they can all forget about the lessons and battles of the 20th century and wisdoms of universal suffrage.  In the meantime, we simply give up on any principle where the empowerment of the people should be our goal.  Under such circumstances, the only way out of poverty and distress which society will begin to sanction will be an unconditional rendition to the power of corporate money, mindsets, politics and pigeonholes – as well as a grand obsession with all things competitive.

The very reverse of the essence of human beings when kindly left to their own devices.

This may be fascism, as Paul suggests.  On the other hand, just as easily, it doesn’t half strike me as a tatty and mouldy blueprint from the beginning of the last century for the kind of unhappy Communism which dominated our planet for far too long.  Let’s just go through the list:

  1. all animals are created equal – just some are more equal than others 
  2. compulsory participation in voluntary activities
  3. political rights tied to a correctly evidenced engagement in the community
  4. freedom for others, autocracy at home
  5. power for an elite
  6. a single model for societal behaviour
  7. a robotised and statistical understanding of the value of human beings

And so we might go on.  Another Paul (Evans) picks out this quote in this marvellous piece on the importance of microparticipation:

[...] One could take the view that this quote from the 19th Century Anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon could apply equally to our relationship with corporations today:
“To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.
To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.
It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonoured.
That is government; that is it’s justice; that is it’s morality.”

Is that a description of government today?  In which case, should the libertarians get our vote?

Or is it a resurgent fascism?  In which case, should the socialists get our vote?

Or is it a new layer of Communism perhaps?  In which case, do we need to take a McCarthyite stance (shades, incidentally, of Wisconsin again)? 

Or is it – just as easily – a frank description of a conspiracy taking place under our very noses by the already very powerful who inhabit Anglo-Saxon corporate nexuses (that is to say, in both government and business)? 

People, in fact, we might argue, who are (sadly) only interested in how much money they can extract from their fellow human beings – rather than, potentially far more usefully, in how much good they could do making the damn stuff circulate throughout all society?

We might also argue that these are people who have little interest in anything but pressing those robotised and statistical buttons I allude to above. And they have become part of the problem because our society has, in a sense, with its rendition to the rules of bad money, made them that way.  If we – the rest of us, I mean – had been as “lucky” as them, perhaps we would now find ourselves defending our own moral high grounds, our own justifications, our own tightly-knit communities of the wealthy in dollars but not in social moralities … and all in much the same way.  But, fortunately, the rich are different from the rest of us.  Fortunately, that is, for ourselves.

We, the poor, still believe in good money.   Money which creates rather than concentrates wealth.  Money which accelerates a societal rather than an individual growth.  Money which leads to the kind of growth that renews and improves – rather than turns into the sort of cancer that imperceptibly, but then quite inevitably, degrades the quality of life of a majority.

To finish, a simple question.  Why now?  Why all this now?  Why are these unpleasant organisations attacking working- and middle-classes across the Western world?

Opportunity perhaps?  Strong governments which choose to intervene in the markets for the wider good are on the back foot at the moment.  The recent examples of socialism for the rich have drained the capability of such governments to protect their voting publics.  It’s a firm possibility.

Revenge for recent political impositions?  I’ve said on those pages before that I firmly believe the radically destructive nature of British Coalition policies is a knee-jerk reaction to more than a decade in the political wilderness.  So this too may be the case.

Finally, then, may it be fear?

“What?” I hear you ejaculate.  “Fear?  These powerful people acting like this out of fear?”

Well, here I am absolutely positive I am right.  Blogging, social media, open source and other movements in recent virtual pasts have all given very ordinary people the opportunity and very real freedom to communicate, organise and even exchange goods and services outside the standard and clearly understood nexuses of democratic and de facto power.  It is no surprise the British police are now to use software developed by the American military to track the movements of individuals via social media, financial transactions and satnav usage.

The very ordinary people are not only getting restlessly good at communicating with the outside world, they’re also doing it for peanuts.  And this latter point, above all this latter point, for the dinosaurs of communication that are large organisations (whether they be private or governmental) anywhere on the globe, must generate all kinds of awful nightmarish scenarios which their risk managers have to contemplate.

A conspiracy then, do we say?  In most of my life, I’ve generally chosen to believe in cock-up over conspiracy – every time.  It’s better for your mental health – and, in any case, it’s generally the case.

A flock of birds then?  A synchronicity of unfortunate events?  Perhaps.

All I can say is that from where I am sitting, the poorer in society are being punished for the actions of the richer – and in the meantime, the richer are simply getting just that: richer and richer as time goes by.

Isn’t it awful when life truly becomes a cliché?

I don’t mind losing fair and square – but …

 Alastair Campbell, Compass, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, in a hole, Paul Cotterill, Paul Evans, Peter Mandelson, Tony Blair  No Responses »
May 062011
 

This is me losing fair and square.

Upton-By-Chester Parish Council
Upton Grange Ward
Five candidates to be elected
Candidates

Name
Party
 Votes
Bennion, Alison Elizabeth
 Conservative Conservative 496 (E)
Dixon, Nick Labour Labour 351
Evans, Jean Liberal Democrats Liberal Democrats 334
Gibson, Ian Labour Labour 342
Gibson, Yvonne Labour Labour 344
Hopkinson, Ian Liberal Democrats Liberal Democrats 170
Houlbrook, Jill Conservative Conservative 701 (E)
Lloyd, Mary Elizabeth Conservative Conservative 461 (E)
Lloyd, Stuart Conservative Conservative 456 (E)
Main, Michael Kenneth Liberal Democrats Liberal Democrats 249
McNae, Hilarie June Conservative Conservative 626 (E)
Reeve, Christopher Ennew Liberal Democrats Liberal Democrats 212
Smith, Sarah-Jane Liberal Democrats Liberal Democrats 154
Williams, Miljenko Labour Labour 297

And I really really don’t mind.  But, after having read Paul’s piece on democratic renewal, with a thesis I find most engaging, I can’t help feeling that much of our Western democracy is a massive sham (though not, I would hasten to admit, at the parish council level I have been privileged to know over the past few years).  For in reality, in its pyramidal structures where political parties earnestly, persistently and pervasively pursue charismatic leaders who – it is always strongly believed – can lead them and their meek followers out of their periodic wildernesses at the drop of a hat, we mirror with an unabashed obviousness the old structures of kingdoms, kings and queens and subjects of various assorted and put-upon kinds.

That is to say, democracy is little more than a cloak which provides the old-fashioned urges to achieve total power and domination with the kind of legitimacies the old guard could only have dreamed of.

Yes.  As the SNP steamroller Scotland (I can understand why), as Labour advances in the North of England and Wales (hardly difficult to take on board) and as the Tories hold their own in Middle England (and Daily Mail land more generally) (take note, Mr Miliband), we can only conclude that the unity Messrs Blair, Mandelson and Campbell fashioned between them was of the saddest Polyfilla sort of papering over the cracks.  Whilst they were around to make us feel guilty about keeping our wealth to ourselves, a type of redistributive corporatism by stealth operated with all our permissions.  As the boom continued without bust, we didn’t really care that the poor became less poor on the backs of the riches our final salary pensions and retirement homes brought to Ryanair and its ilk.

Now – in much the same way as the famous Balkanisation of what (for a while) was that perhaps useful and necessary lie which was the ex-Yugoslavia – the UK is beginning to disintegrate.  And this, I believe, was always Cameron’s aim.  First, disembowel the Lib Dems – and for far more than a generation – whilst at the same time keeping the inaccurately named first-past-the-post electoral system in place.  Then keep the lid on the more unpleasant members of the Tory Party whilst edging the public’s perception of where he might stand to the right-hand side of the centre ground thus vacated.

Little by little, if we do not do something about this, all that will be left to Labour will be the unelecting left.  Yes.  As another Paul suggested the other day, it should not matter what electoral system we use:

In the long term, socialists should be able to win under any system, because we should be able to represent, and be seen to represent, the interests of the majority.

But if Cameron should have his way, the majority will identify with the Tories.

I strongly believe there is a progressive majority to be forged in the United Kingdom.  But Labour, as it stands, as it might be tempted to stand in the not-so-distant future, is not necessarily the instrument best placed to forge that majority.

Maybe it has too much history to be able to assess where the useful moral and political high ground stands with any accuracy.

Maybe, after all, although it pains me to admit I might have been wrong, Compass were on to something when they decided to open up their membership to non-Labour supporters.

As a broad movement looking to govern Britain, the Labour Party should look not just to attract Lib Dem voters who are unhappy with their current leadership but Conservative voters who don’t trust what Cameron & Co are up to.  But I do truly wonder and ask myself the following questions:

  • Have we thought to be that ambitious?  
  • Is Ed Miliband too much of a trimmer for his own – and our – good?
  • Can the politics of fudge ever win another general election? 
  • Will we lose the next general election because we are too fearful to believe in very much better?

____________________

Further reading: unlikely candidates sometimes win. This, from Canada, via a family member, for example!

On our obligation to see beyond the Coalition’s short-termism …

 Coalition, in a hole, Jonathan Todd, Labour, Labour Uncut, navel-watching, Paul Cotterill, Though Cowards Flinch  No Responses »
Nov 082010
 

… and perhaps our own navels as well.

Two pieces recently published in widely differing blogs – here by Paul at Though Cowards Flinch and here by Jonathan Todd at Labour Uncut – make me realise it’s time to understand better how society can be encouraged to fit together, despite the awful circumstances we find ourselves in.  Even though the Coalition is doing its level best to detonate everything that British public discourse has become over the past decade and a half – from the digital and broadly available nature of the BBC to the patient-focussed NHS, from public and private sector partnerships which have put the roofs back on our schools and have tied both halves of society together in a constructive whole to those improved levels of support for both very young children as well as the neediest of our elderly – I think it is clear we still have a moral and economic obligation to see beyond what is happening in the short-term; an obligation to attempt to impose a perspective of optimism – in the words of the second piece by Todd – on the horror of despair, on the horror of the kind of inflammatory language Iain Duncan Smith prefers to use when he demands that the long-term unemployed “play ball” – on the horror of the cuts that Osborne relishes and his Tory MPs cackle wildly in favour of.

Meanwhile, on, amongst other things, the subject of the creativity of business, Todd also concludes most usefully (my bold) that:

[...] we risk the perception that we see fiscal stimuli as the only motor of growth and monetary and exchange rate conditions as irrelevant. In opposition, we can only impact how we are perceived, not policy outcomes. So, as well as raging against iniquity, we should kill this perception now.

The question is, after a decade and a half affecting – and effecting – policy outcomes, are we ready to fully accept that, for the moment, we can only impact how we are perceived?

And not only that.  For I do wonder if we are also ready to understand the implications of such a comprehension.  From the kinds of extra-parliamentary action we are prepared to sanction to the extent we are prepared to go down the populist route of exploiting those very private stories of misery I am sure will shortly begin to emerge …

How we take on board these issues both Paul and Todd raise in their very different posts will determine how successful we are at intervening in the perception a wider – and possibly floating – voting public will gain of us over the next four years or so.
____________________

Update to this post: as Paul berates us ever so slightly for moaning about the Coalition in his previous post, this morning he brings us evidence of how this very same government is foolishly hobbling its big society idea from the kick-off.  This is where we are at right now: wanting to move forward and present an optimistic future whilst being forced to examine such a future through the prism of a miserable present.

We are in a quandary of monumentally psychological proportions.

The whole country (those who don’t subscribe to its Osbornification, that is) will shortly require psychiatric help.

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