Unite » 21stCenturyFix.org.uk

Why should I say that? I don’t mean from a technical point of view, of course. Watching or interrupting people’s access to websites and general Internet activity is surely the daily stuff of what GCHQ is supposed to do.

So I don’t mean all that kind of thing when I ask the question in the title of the post. I mean, rather, the Internet’s political dynamics: how a million clever eyes react to a perceived threat to their environment as might a flock of birds. The web’s ability to bring to the surface a bright (or subversive) idea – which then proceeds to quickly propagate itself – is hardly a new thought to keep our virtual minds engaged. Here’s one from this morning which, for example, leads me to such conclusions. On the back of prior tweets which suggest we should voluntarily forward all our communications to existing government email addresses, we then get this intriguing idea:

#TellDaveEverything Let’s all join the campaign and cc every email we send to david.cameron@number10.gov.uk

Whilst not inclined myself to participate in such a campaign, it does, as I said earlier, make me wonder if anyone in government, the civil service or even our blessed security services understands anything at all about how the dynamics of web interaction really operate.

Surely any ordinary user of the web with a little bit of Internet nous could imagine that if a government which in a space of two weeks has just penalised four million middle-class pensioners for being pensioners; raised the standard of living for only the very richest in the country; increased the cost of using the postal service; increased the cost of cheap hot food for particularly the poorer in society; told people to go out, fill up with and store jerrycanned petrol (possibly illegally), an act which then led to widespread panic over fuel supplies; apparently encouraged ministers to believe a bit of petrol panic wouldn’t actually be a bad thing; and had a co-treasurer of its party resigning for promising ministerial access in exchange for hundreds of thousand of pounds … well, that a government like this should then proceed to propose a policy whereby every Internet interaction and transaction would be automatically observed by the selfsame government can surely only be interpreted as an example of sheer political madness and incompetence. The kind of behaviours, in fact, which in quite different contexts, and in any private company worth its salt, would lead to an immediate disciplinary.

And after a correctly due process, properly defended by the unions these incompetents so despise, a presumably summary sacking.

Thatcher had the unions to vanquish – which she did.

What Cameron hasn’t realised, however, is that his turn won’t be the unions. This won’t be a replay of either Thatcherism or Blairism. The way things are going and the foolishness with which the government proposes and disposes will surely, predictably and quite sadly mean if Cameron wants to win the next election, he’ll have to beat the Internet itself.

Cameron’s battle won’t be with Unite. Cameron’s battle will be with a million crowdsourced eyes. No centralised bureaucracy you can either strategically flatfoot or charm with beer and sandwiches. Just a decentralised yearning for true freedom of expression and communication. As well as its fair dollop of truly bad faith.

And how on earth can the centralising instincts of this evermore foolish Coalition manage to conceive a policy capable of properly containing that?

We’re not talking of technologies any more, dear friends at GCHQ. We’re talking of millions of people getting sincerely pissed off by a government which deliberately doesn’t care to care.

Here’s a suggestion, then – before you go ahead and legislate. Don’t change the legislation to force your people into pigeonholes many of them will, in any case, learn to escape. Change the government’s direction in order that the people want to get voluntarily onside.

Simples, eh? Well, that’s the way it seems to me.

But then I am a naive kind of soul. And in my own foolish way, I still – after all the above – strive to believe in the essential goodness of humankind.

Yesterday, I wondered the following:

[...] I really wouldn’t be surprised if the often worthy and positive cuckoo that was the New Labour tendency mightn’t end up destroying the heart and soul of the Tory Party over the next two governments in much the same way as it has already manifestly managed to do to what used to be Labour, its class movement and its society-loving instincts.

The truth of the matter is that our “top-flight” politicians – the ones who lead parties and get to the top of greasy poles in a multitude of hierarchies (organisations, institutions and committees various) - are generally, almost without exception in fact, intellectual hypocrites. The meme that currently dominates our Western societies is that of choice: we are no longer patients, parents, students or victims of crime but end-user consumers of services the state provides. And so it is that our “top-flight” politicians – those who run our lives, those who plan how to win us over despite ourselves – structure our needs in terms of socioeconomic McMenus.

Except, of course, in terms of the political parties they lead. There, it would seem, curiously enough, we have blessed little choice at all.

Another example of do what I say and not what I do:

The Labour party’s chief union backer has accused Ed Miliband of undermining his own leadership, disenfranchising the party’s core support and leaving the country with all three main parties bent on using austerity to save capitalism.

In an article in the Guardian, the Unite general secretary, Len McCluskey, launches a strident attack on Miliband and Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, prompted by the party leadership’s weekend decision to endorse a continuation of the government’s public-sector pay freeze.

He suggests that their stance “challenges the whole course Ed Miliband has set for the party, and perhaps his leadership itself”. He also claims Blairites will seek to capitalise on their policy coup and come for Miliband himself, a path he says “will lead to the destruction of the Labour party as constituted and certain election defeat”. [...]

I hate being manipulated by clever political bods such as these. I really do. And I do seriously wonder if McCluskey isn’t right in what he says when he suggests that Blairites might seek to remake Labour in their very own image once again.

In fact, I have to say it wouldn’t surprise me if over the next two governments we didn’t see a new centrist political party in Britain: based around the most Blairite of triangulations; cementing together the UK out of an artificial fear of the unknown; centralising even more the power bases around strong-arm tactics in Westminster, with a trivial agenda of petty localism as a sop to the decentralisers amongst us … all this and more would simply confirm that for Blairites Labour was merely a conditional stepping-stone to “better” things.

Never a certain bet nor fundamentally organic relationship of the altruistic.

A shaky foundation, in fact, to be defec(a)ted on when necessary.

What say you?