Political axis - a few alternatives

Lady Antonia Fraser was on the wireless yesterday, saying how surprised she was when her husband - Harold Pinter - was awarded the Nobel Prize a few years ago. She had assumed that his outspoken politics would get in the way.

I'm not sure what the most deluded assumption behind this statement is. Is it that Pinter's self-serving blend of idealism and cynicism (Will always points out that the two are indistinguishable) is courageous, or some kind of a career-limiting liability?

(update 29/7: Will has provided some detail in response here).

Is it that she believes that Pinter is some kind of thorn in the side to the establishment with his sclerotic ranting? Does Whitehall quiver under his rhetorical blows? Or does it notice them at all? Or - better still, does it look forward to them?

Perhaps she believes that he is a threat of any kind to anyone in power, and that they would normally seek to contain him by lobbying against the Nobel Prize?

And thinking about Pinter and his fellow-travellers, I have to admit a prejudice. I tend to automatically disagree with any argument that comes wrapped in idealistic or cynical packaging.

I'm saying this as a prelude to a question about the various political axis that I've seen pedalled in recent years as an alternative to the poles of left and right. Personally, I'm quite wedded to left / right, though they seem to becoming more and more fuzzy and unreliable.

The most common alternative is the alternative poles of 'libertarian' and 'authoritarian' - (generally as a cross-cutter to the left/right axis) - one that is championed by (amongst others) the Political Compass application. I have problems with this one, not least because of the fairly subjective notion of the two words. I draw the same conclusions about most of what passes for libertarianism these days that others drew in the 1980s about Lord Hailsham's 1970s Tory notion of 'an elective dictatorship'.

Hailsham curiously forgot all about this liberalism when Mrs Thatcher carried out the most sweeping acts of political centralisation that the British state has ever seen. David Davis can be expected to do the same if the Tories end up in power. Show me a self-styled libertarian and - nine times out of ten - I'll show you a closet Tory (and usually a right-wing outlier).

Other work on political axis includes one of the best political uses of the web that I've seen is the clever, late, Chris Lightfoot's opinion-plotting application. Chris chose a much more complex set of axis, but the resulting graphic is the most valuable output of the whole thing. It's very good because it tells us a great deal about democratic politics. The lessons include...

1. Almost no-one agrees with you about very much, even though you think they do


2. When politicians don't say what you'd like them to say, they are doing it for a damn good reason. They're not saying anything that many people agree with


3. If you think that unelected individuals should be able to directly influence legislation, then you should also know that you are arguing for a lifetime of utter repression.

The 'everyone agrees with me' fallacy is - I suspect - one of the biggest causes of disillusionment with government by the elected, and the perceived disconnection between politics and the general public. The recurring question is often 'why can't they do what we want them to do?' Sadly, the answer is that they often try to do exactly that - and they really shouldn't be doing so in the first place.

So, for most of the time writing this blog, I'd be prepared to advocate set of oppositions that ignore left and right for the most part, and concentrate on 'pro-direct democracy and pro-representative democracy axis.

I could back this up with the argument that illiberalism and a general retreat from social-democratic principles can be largely explained by the fact that elections are much less a measure of partisanship, and much more a complex set of auctions - the kind that Burke warned against. Thus the kind of triangulation that Shuggy touches on in this great post here. If politicians feel forced to trade specific policies with the tiny fraction of the electorate that have the outcome of the next election in their hands, the outcome will always be a more reactionary and authoritarian set of policies than those proposed by politicians who see themselves deliberating in the interest of the general will. For this reason, I've often argued, (and sometimes believe!!) that this is the almost only really relevant axis in the modern politics of a liberal democracy.

Other axis that I've seen recently include Marko Atilla Hoare's very flawed decent / indecent opposition. Chris Dillow has a much more interesting variation on the bland 'authoritarian / libertarian' opposition here with his cosmos v taxis opposition.

For me, returning to my original point, I'm beginning to suspect that the most important one is not the direct / representative split, but the opposition between idealist/cynics and those of us that cringe or weep every time we hear them.

For some reason, being a cynic / idealist appears to be very attractive to the popular culture of advanced democracies. As James Hamilton argued a while back, it certainly helps to get you laid. It gets you on the telly, and it is vary rare to find a satirist that doesn't dive into this pit.

Marcus Brigstock sometimes avoids it, much to his credit, and watching Have I Got News For You, I deceive myself that Paul Merton silently detests Ian Hislop for it. Its ubiquity, I suspect, led the likes of Bob Geldof and Bob Marshall-Andrews (both idealist / cynic pin-ups) to back David Davis recently. It appears to be the key motivator for Simon Jenkins, Rod Liddle and Steve and Martin Bell. It seems that you need to demonstrate a command of this particular nasty little art before you can get a job anchoring a news programme anywhere these days.

It makes for lazy journalism, self-righteous commentary and cheap comedy. If Trevor Griffiths were ever to revive his very good 'The Comedians', he could replace the old 'alternative comic / racist club comic' opposition with this one in an attempt to define a comedy that avoids the cheap shots and gotchas that often pass for satire.

None of this would be hugely damaging if it weren't for the fact that the idealist/cynic hegemony didn't make life so awkward and unattractive for elected politicians. The 'man in the white suit' commentator will inevitably eventually force representative democracy to recast itself as either a judicial or clerical function - not one that either proposes or revises in the way that legislatures are supposed to do. Judicial and clerical politicians can only follow - they can never lead. Henry Ford famously said that - if he'd just given his customers what they said they wanted, they would have all got slightly faster horses.

The only way to avoid ridicule or censure in such circumstances is to find a way of getting the lowest bidder to supply these nags to the general public. This is no minor transgression on the part of idealist/cynics. Making things difficult for elected politicians without doing the same to their rivals is the same as setting yourself up in direct opposition to representative democracy.

For this reason, I'm tempted to contact the good people at Political Compass to see if they would consider replacing the 'authoritarian / cynic' questions with ones that identify either idealism / cynicism or something that works out just how deluded you are about the fairness or usefulness of referendums and the need for politicians who are more 'mandatable'.

I suspect that either would be a good deal more useful than the 'authoritarian / libertarian' opposition.

Reasons to be cheerful

Arthur Seaton: Abrasive irony and nihilism at its best.

I'm slightly torn on this one. On the one hand, I'm sort-of inclined to agree with Henry Porter here, commenting on the prevailing professional disdain and cynicism that characterises much of public life these days:

"My response ... is to ask what right have these people got to be so disappointed and world-weary? There is no sense that they have earned the privilege of this 'abrasive irony and nihilism'.

And I cannot escape the suspicion that the objects of their disdain - commonly politicians and celebrities who get into a scrape - may have done rather more with their lives and probably risked more than the wise guys in the TV studio or those who comment with truly jaw-dropping rudeness on the web. Weltschmerz and Cynic Inc have infected so much of the public discourse that you forget people are not like this. They are in the main more trusting, more hopeful, more resourceful and a lot kinder than is ever acknowledged in the public arena.

This could all be written off as a rather silly turn-of-the-century mood if the pessimism did not affect so much of our politics and our attitude to the huge problems we face, not just as a nation, but as a species. Speaking last week at the launch for Philippe Sands's book Torture Team, Lord Bingham, the senior law lord, mentioned in passing that he was an optimist. It was a striking admission, not just because the most senior judge in the land probably has every reason to view humanity with exasperation, but because so few people in public life will confess to optimism.

Optimism is held to be the preferred tipple of unrealistic fools; the optimist is still seen as Pangloss, the brave idiot in Candide who finds reasons to be cheerful as he is enslaved and faces execution. Voltaire casts him as the enemy of reason, a triumph of hope and faith over experience, if you like. Today, it is the other way round. The pessimists - the Panglooms - are the enemies of reason because they believe with a vigorous but untested faith that we are doomed and that nothing can be done. So they crumble into feckless nihilism.

The point about Bingham's optimism is that it has philosophical basis and is born out of a belief in reason, and the conviction that human beings can improve their lot if they believe in each other, the rule of law, and put aside fear and fear of failure to address the difficulties we have created."

On the other hand, Peter Ryley mounts a spirited defence of disrespect here, and I think that - if anything - he understates his case. So how can these two positions be reconciled?

Its actually quite simple. When Ian Hislop parades his ill-earned superiority over anyone who has ever actually done anything worthwhile in their lives, we can draw our own conclusions. Porter is right to remark that our debased market elevates useless turds like this in a fairly artificial way.

Hislop's main focus is political corruption, and he's jolly angry about it as well. Yet he lives in a country, and an age, where political corruption is no more than a residual sideshow. There is no comparison between Britain today and, say Italy, where almost every piece of legislation and judicial decision is bought and sold like so many kilos of Marscapone. Or Belgium, or even Ireland (though the latter is somewhat overstated IMHO).

And if you globalise this comparison, and anchor it in time, Hislop is probably in history's bottom 0.01% of the population as a 'victim of political corruption.'

This is not to say that we don't live in a corrupt age. We do. We are, daily, cheated by bureaucrats who take our money in taxes and do nothing of any value with large chunks of it while remaining unaccountable to anyone. We are cheated by the fund-managers who control what stock we do own in crude ways that damage our own interests.

We are cheated by the intellectual dwarves who claim that the massive disparities in wealth can be explained by our 'meritocracy' when, in reality, it can be explained by the simple formula: Wealthy parents nearly always equals wealthy children. We are cheated by a dishonest and lazy media, feeding us a low-grade Prolefeed that Big Brother would have killed for.

This previous paragraph could have quadrupled in length, but I think you get the picture.

The reason that Ian Hislop is a worthless little shit is because he is another cheat. He takes a seven-figure paycheck on the pretence that he somehow 'speaks truth unto power.' He is able to take the piss out of politicians because they are easy targets. They don't have the lawyers or the resources that their plutocratic rivals have. The old man had something to say about this, and it doesn't really need adding to.

Porter is right to be disappointed with his own cohorts - the paid commentariat. I can even understand his consternation with us rude bloggers - after all, no matter what we say, we really want to join that commentariat, that professional elite of critics, don't we?

But is he right to be pissed off with a wider, more incohate, public cynicism?

I think not. Most of us don't really aspire to actually run the country. I suppose I shouldn't include myself in that last sentence, but bear with me, will you? I think that the public probably understand that individual politicians aren't totally to blame for any recent ills in a way that our demagogic commentators don't. If this weren't the case, Labour wouldn't have even held on to 24% of the voters last week.

We don't really aspire to directly influence policy very much because we don't understand it, and wouldn't want the responsibility. As Chris has pointed out repeatedly, we make our best decisions in the same way that stockbrokers do - when our modus operandi is led by 'ironic detachment'.

We need no more get emotional about individual issues that don't directly effect us, or that we don't have a well-informed position on, than we need to get emotional about stock (if we were born lucky enough to own some, in lots of cases).

Part of me would love it if more of the electorate were able to leave the relatively nihilistic disdain for the forces that envelope them behind, and felt that they were in a position to change things themselves. But they don't, and the rate at which most people - those who live in that large pool - bleed into the much smaller pool of people who think that their opinions actually count for shit - is far too slow. If this process were to speed up, it would make sense to be annoyed about public cynicism. But it will only speed up when the people who compete with our elected politicians start to feel a similar heat, or a need to be accountable to the rest of us.

Everyone has their own magic bullets that would cure this, of course. Mine is political decentralisation and democratic socialism, and if you cast around the blogosphere, there are plenty of similar memebots churning out their own answers. None of them are perfect, of course.

But, in the meantime, a resentful and slightly contemptuous population will create a tide that is slowly lifting all boats - even if they do so by electing a shower of inbred clowns to run the country in 2010. After all, Things Can Only Get Better - like they have done in this country for the last century - regardless of who is temporarily in power.

Hoping for the worst

A good post over at Freemania, and the punchline is worth waiting for.

And, while we're about it, I recall writing up Oliver Kamm arguing that Tory bloggers were not always an asset to the Tories. Well, it's nice to see the way that ConservativeHome is proving to be a valuable tool in the Tories internal debate. The stupid party really do believe all of this Direct Democracy crap.

Good.

Every other British party that has taken this particular powder had watched itself fall to bits. Now, in the interests of transparency, Mr Miraj should name the Conservative frontbencher who offered him a seat in the Lords in 2005.

Heh heh.

Everyone else on 'demoralisation'

Still, sadly, up to the eyeballs in it (life). So here are more signposts-off.

First-off, demoralisation: SCWR offers a thought for the day (a few days ago - only just seen it tho')

Second-off, Baggage Reclaim and Aaro on depressing survey results.

"They're all the same and they're all in it for themselves."

Chris Dillow is also continuing his exasperating habit of not only saying things I've been meaning to say for a while - but adding good arguments that I would never have thought of.

Here, he rather bafflingly makes an excellent case for representative democracy while - at the same time - explaining why our current political culture undermines it:

"...we shouldn't judge politicians by such low standards. You can train a scabby dog to obey rules. There are millions of people who obey laws, but you'd cross the road to avoid them, and wouldn't trust them to so much as clean your car.

Instead, we should judge politicians by virtue, not rules. We should ask: are they people of great soul, worthy to represent our nation and to be entrusted with big decisions?"

This is absolutely the question that we should ask. One that few politicians would be able to answer very well. But it is the question that will not be asked because they have bigger questions to answer concerning the TOTALLY ILLEGAL receipt of a COWBOY HAT.

I say baffling, because he generally argues for a more direct democracy. It's always disconcerting when someone argues against you but can still come up with better arguments supporting your own position than you can.

More on this in subsequent posts.

Finally, abandoning the demoralisation theme, his argument in favour of inheritance tax also makes the case for a Citizens Basic Income rather well. But I expect he knows that already.

Negativist manifesto - part two

Back to D-Squared's justification for negativism.

It's long, and I said that I'd respond to it like you eat an elephant - piece-by-piece. I almost lost the will to live in covering part one, it really is so rare for anyone to attempt to justify the permasulk that dominates to lower levels of public debate these days. It needs to be understood.

In part two, we're offered a vaguely liberal justification. Paraphrasing, 'progressives' always want government to do things, and it often better to just leave well alone. Now, leaving aside the fact that I'd largely agree with this, and have argued as such quite a lot, I'm puzzled as to how this can be used as an argument for criticism of public figures and institutions on any particular issue that doesn't give a credible outline of why and how action can be avoided.

So, if you want politicians to do less, it is worth understanding why they do more than they should. If you can remove those reasons, then maybe you will get a government closer to your tastes.

Or you can, of course, take the easy option and decide that it's just because they are bad people.

A few of the supporting arguments are a bit odd as well. We're told that 'there is no such thing as a general purpose expert'. I agree, as does Mr Bourdieu (passim). Indeed, I've argued that political parties should be encouraged to cultivate specialists, not generalists. I've also argued that the media is packed full of commentators who seem to be able to turn their hands to everything. Much of the negativism in public debate can be traced directly to the process that Bourdieu referred to as 'demagogic simplification' - a process that relies largely upon the collaboration of political generalists.

For instance, I'd agree that it's impossible for any one individual to be expert enough to expect to be taken seriously on a very wide range of subjects. So, if someone were to comment authoritatively on MMR, how relations between Muslims and the wider civil society should be handled, Iraq, Religious Education, security and surveillance, microcredit, statistics, physics, business takeovers, humanitarian intervention, tax loopholes, global trade agreements, regulation of the water industry, IPOs, the NHS, youth employment, or the golden rule.

Here, we are being either being burdened with low-value commentary, or we’re in the presence of a brilliant polymath.

I'd be happy to read a balanced article on any of those subjects from an acknowledged expert, by the way. But I don't know which of these is expertise, which ones are throwaway opinion, and which ones are naughty polemic dressed up as expertise. I’d certainly struggle to find particularly good investigative reporting on any of these subjects, so we have to put up with agenda-driven commentary.

I'd go further: This country would be a better place if columnists in general were decimated (not killed, obviously, but redeployed). Some of them could be given jobs as reporters, but I doubt if most of them would be capable of writing anything without sneaking in some pet thesis or other.

We're also treated to a defence of criticism here ("... easier to spot the flaws in someone else's work"). The thing is, if you can surpass someone’s expertise, you can spot the flaws in their work and then point them out - with precision or with wit, or a combination of the two. And you will be taken seriously if you can demonstrate that you understand what the real wrong reasons why real wrong decisions were taken.

But most of what passes for comment simply has a sulky adolescent quality. So much of it simply stakes out an uncomplicated moral high ground in which the need for consistency goes out of the window. Flicking v-signs at politicians is not criticism. It's corrosive, counterproductive and ultimately stupid. I'd like to see more authoritative criticism in print. As Jean Seaton points out, the current snarky negativism plays into the hands of the most powerful people and institutions. They get protected, journalists get their vanity stroked for them, and everyone else is the loser from this negativism.

At the moment, most reasonable criticism gets lost in a white noise of snotty abuse or it gets spiked because it's not interestingly knockabout. It simply gets ignored most of the time.

Elsewhere, we are told that positive change just happens anyway and 'progressives' (them again) are not factors in that ... er... progress. If this were the case, and D-Squared's views really are an expression of a desire to thwart 'progressives' (and not a post-hoc justification for freebooting abuse in public debate), then we have a contradiction. If I believed what DSq purports to believe, I'd just shut up and let them get on with it. I'd ignore it, leave it all uncommented upon. But that isn't what happens, is it?

You see, there is a positive way to argue for smaller government: Government in which less is done. Government that has fewer powers and where those powers are mediated. And this can be done in a way that communicates that the critic would like to see this change happen enough to try and come up with a means by which it can be achieved some time within the foreseeable. It is quite possible to argue for exactly the kind of governance that D-Sq argues for without really resorting to negativism. Here's proof! Check it daily!

Let's not forget, this is really very simple. Argue civilly. Sensibly and fairly. Try and know what you're talking about and play the ball - not the man. Why is that so complicated?

I'm all out of energy now. There were references to Orwell and Karl Popper in there that need dealing with anon.

And the next section of this negativism manifesto - "why progressives are in general odious" will follow in due course. It may contain conclusive proof that this negativism is simply old fashioned misanthropy dressed up as rational argument. I've already argued that it steps party from cowardice and partly from narcissism.

Misanthropy may round the trinity off nicely.

Roundheads

Here, Peter Wilby illustrates the gulf in understanding between journalists and politicians.

Writing on a subject that I've been onto a lot here (the mutual contempt that appears to have grown up between politicians and the more vocal sections of the public), Wilby covers his arse by name-checking the usual explanations. Among them, he has:

"...it is not quite enough to say that our politicians turn out to be rotten leaders and bad people, always letting us down. Other explanations for our hatred make more sense. A fiercely competitive media, dedicated to cheap theatrical thrills rather than sustained policy analysis, has induced profound cynicism in the population, which grows further when leading politicians themselves play the media game.

You could argue, too, that the constant scrutiny of 24-hour news makes us over-familiar with politicians. Just as no man can be a hero to his valet, so no leader can be a hero to a voter who, almost daily, sees him (or her) sweating under the TV lights."

Being a journalist, of course, this explanation only has to be put on the table briefly before it can be mysteriously withdrawn. Once that's out of the way, he turns to the real explanation.

In his view, 'nannying' - the way that politicians tell us how to conduct our lives while noticeably ignoring their own advice - explains most of it.

And there is something in this argument. I'd agree that the role of politicians should usually be to pull big levers rather than to micromanage. But there is a particularly influential group of them who believe that they know otherwise. And Wilby would need to come up with better arguments than he has done to contradict them.

When I was a lot more actively involved in the Labour Party in the mid-1990s, there were loads of MPs, candidates and part-builders who used to breeze in and out of the London HQ. There were the dilettantes, the careerists, the lobbyists, the Union hacks, the crypto-trots and hippies, the wonks, and many other subgroups thereof. There were quite a lot of plain nutters as well. Not that I want to generalise or anything.

But the one that everyone watched their backs around were the roundheads. The ones that took grassroots work seriously. Siobhan McDonagh MP was always thought of as one of the high priestesses here. From memory, Luke Akehurst (who blogs here) was another.

According to them, the local party needed to be built. Doors needed to be knocked on, databases updated, core-voters targeted and dragged out on election days. It was a big, painstaking job that involved doorstep work, and a willingness to be seen to take the known concerns of those voters seriously.

Prospective MPs needed an army of dedicated activists knocking on doors. Theirs was an inelegant and unfashionable voice that is almost unheard outside of HQ, but one that dominated and shaped the party at a local level. A voice that also had a significant say in the distribution of political patronage, and all that flows from it. 'Want a safe seat? Forget that Fabian Pamphlet and knock on some fucking doors then!'

A large section of the party were weary and wary of the roundheads. Theirs was a relentless logic. The policies that they advanced were – they claimed - shaped by talking to Labour's core voters (they didn't waste as much time canvassing areas that didn't have a high Labour turnout).

And – even more annoyingly for the Labour’s liberal-left, this realism was hard to dismiss. Because new Labour had another – less respectable – shaper of it’s message - the Focus Group.

Focus Groups were a more sophisticated and savvy way of finding what key voters really wanted - particularly the crucial ones who lived in areas where there was a lower concentration of prospective Labour voters. The ones that would decide the election. Focus Groups were needed because, as any fool knows, people don't tell you what really bothers them. They tell pollsters and canvassers one thing and the ballot box another.

And the received wisdom was that focus groups were evil. They were lazy, dishonest and unprincipled. Their use made Labour worse than a bunch of populists – a party with no principle other than simply gaining power and holding it. Not only that, but they were delivered by people who worked in advertising!

And the reason that the Roundheads were so awkward, was that they were the real viable alternative to focus group-led politics. The Roundheads went and talked to ‘real people’. The kind of people that Labour lefties always said that Labour should be listening to.

And those real people wanted something doing about the noisy threatening twat with the nasty dog who lived two flats down. Those people wanted things banned, and they wanted people locked up. They wanted something to be done, and they read newspapers that wanted action as well.

The Roundheads were happy to recruit them in a campaign against the liberal bourgeois sentimentalism of the more Fabian elements within the party. The ones that dragged out CLP meetings with tedious discussions about Nicaragua when they could be arranging leaflet-drops, ‘blitz’ canvassing and street-stalls.

The Roundheads were prolier-than-thou, and their moral clout grew with every strip of shoe-leather that they went though.

The Focus Group wonks and the Roundheads combined to quieten that large midriff in The Labour Party that thinks of itself as ‘value based’. The one that doesn’t really have a clearly-identified agency, a programme or any credible connection with the people that they claim to represent.

This is what new Labour is. Peter Wilby offers no evidence that his irritation for ‘nannying’ is shared by a wider section of the public than the people that he rubs shoulders with himself. He cites a Private Eye column’s perspective in his defence. He should bin The Eye and watch the more widely-read sections of his own lousy profession. If he did, he’d know that they – and their readers - don’t want politicians who just pull levers. They want someone to do something and quick.

Politicians do have a huge problem in this country. There is no valuable dialogue going on that they can tune into or participate in. They are stuck between what the more outspoken constituents tell them on the doorsteps, and what the alchemists of public opinion analysis will have them believe. Or they can watch the Newsnight Specials, Question Time or even start reading a few of the more popular political blogs!

But, in the meantime, don’t be surprised if they keep ‘nannying’ until that particular problem is fixed.

Honourable exception

As this is a regular theme here, most regular visitors here would expect me to agree with almost every word of Terence Blacker's tilt at our complacent satire industry.

"....the view of political leaders is identical and largely based on cliché. Blair is opportunistic, Prescott inarticulate and stupid, Campbell a bully, Mandelson smarmy, Darling a dalek - on and on it goes. These stereotypes represent more than mere lazy writing and second-hand observation; they are an expression of an easy, cynical assumption, which the audience is invited to share, that every politician is contemptible, is less moral and more greedy than, say, a writer, a comedian or a director."

I still think that 'The Thick of It' is an honourable exception though.

It would be easy to note the Bloggers4Labour link on this site, see the Euston Manifesto badge and just assume that any objection that I have to criticism of politicians springs from some devotion to The Third Way.

This is not the case. I've no objections to politicians being ridiculed - as long as the ridicule acknowledges the circumstances that help them look even more ridiculous than they already are. I'd never discount the posibility that they are stupid, devious or malicious in one way or other - and in ways that they don't always need to be. I doubt if many of Blackers 'writers commedians or directors' would be able to put up with the bullshit for long enough to get themselves into a position whereby they were ridiculed.

A friend of mine is quite a senior civil servant in Whitehall, and he assures me that The Thick of It isn't a satire at all. Apparently it's a documentary. From what I've seen, I'd be inclined to agree.

On the other end of the scale, do you remember when Rory Bremner did that sketch in which Tessa Jowell was played by a blow-up sex doll?

What a complacent tedious cunt that man is.

Flagging Vs

Chancing on David Lipsey's latest in Public Finance, it reminds me that it is easy to assume that many people share your views when they don't.

I agree with every word that he's written here. I'd go further. It is a terrifically banal article. It says nothing that I would normally think controversial or even particularly interesting. But since I've started saying similar banal things rather a lot, I've been quite surprised to find that only a small proportion of those who choose to comment on the government of this country actually agree with this article.

Here's a sample:

"Brown’s inscrutability is a matter of choice. Although he is determined that his premiership will be very different from Blair’s, he is equally determined not to show his hand too clearly. Indeed, his more recent tactic has been to suggest that he agrees with the present prime minister on everything (replacing Trident, for example) on the grounds that the more Blair can be convinced that Brown is his clone, the sooner he will leave Number 10.

What has been less noticed, however, is that the same choice — inscrutability over transparency — has been made by practically every would-be prime minister before he got the job."

And...

"the capacity of prime ministers to shape events is limited. They are leaders of a medium-sized power in a world dominated by globalisation and big international companies. They are blown about by forces outwith their control; in particular today a press that is powerful, ignorant and vicious. They have their party to consider as well as their country.

And anyway, beyond all this, they are largely the creature of the electorate, who have either voted them in or will get the chance to vote them out."

The interesting question, to me, is this: Is Lipsey's article really an accurate reflection of how government works? And if it is, is it a satisfactory state of affairs that we - as a society - are increasingly prepared to allow people think / pretend to think otherwise to shape public debate in the way that they do?

And do the political class / chattering class have a role to play in providing a counterweight to the idiotic generalists that make up the paid commentariat? Or should they just sit on the sidelines, gloating about it, blaming everyone else, and flicking random V-signs instead?

It's a tough one, innit?

Keegania

For some reason, Victor Keegan's best stuff (from his technology column in The Guardian) has avoided the death-trap that is Comment is Free.

If it is a deliberate strategy on his part, he's a wise man. I've said it before, but CiF really is a shithole. Everything that goes into it gets swarmed upon by a bunch of nasty shit-for-brains. It provides a kind of therapy for the green-ink merchants who've spent their whole lives writing letters to newpapers without ever getting them printed.

The tragedy is, of course, that lots of people who only dip their toes in the blogosphere think that CiF is a representative sample.

Anyway, the last last couple of Keegan's non-CIF articles are worth a look. Try how the BBC drives innovation for a start.

And today, he's looking at CCTV + audio.

"We have forestalled the onset of a governmental Big Brother by meekly accepting surveillance and even doing much of it ourselves."

QED

The other day, David Aaronovitch saw this article by Martin Kettle and said this.

Kettle's article is particularly interesting because the comments thread under his article makes the point far more effectively than any article ever could.

(ta Will & Ivan)

Did satire die when....

• Henry Kissenger was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize
• Liverpool was chosen as 'European City of Culture'
• Spiked launched a 'Miserablist of the Year' award

?

They are looking for 'cantankerous curmudgeons' apparently.

No need for counterproposals

Apologies for the light posting lately. While I was busy, I was put firmly in my place in the comments here last week:

"Whenever I hear the word “progressive”, I reach for my revolver. I thought that we had tried “making the world a better place” in the 20th century and a hundred million dead bodies later we were beginning to realise that “letting people get on with their lives” was actually not as bad as it had previously seemed. My way of “making our political culture better” would be to harass and bully the likes of Campbell, Clarke and Prescott out of it, in which capacity I would say blogs are doing their bit."

When I mentioned that this struck me as 'gibberish'...

"Libertarianism isn’t “nihilism”, and the fact that you progressives want to pretend that it is, is *precisely* why I’ll be hanging on to that revolver."

So, Mr Dsquared is a libertarian then? And should we 'progressives' (the opposite of libertarians?) be worried about Mr Dsq's revolver? *insert your own 'firing blanks' joke in here*

Funny. I looked around for a bit here and couldn't find even a squeak of libertarianism anywhere. Plenty of negativism, of course.

I admit, I didn't read every post, but you'd think that a random sample may, somewhere, contain a hint at how a smaller state of one kind or another might work? Or, lowering the bar a tad, you'd think that you'd find something suggesting how things could be done a little better than they are? Still, I expect it's all written down elsewhere.

Have a look - let me know if you find anything. And remember, if you find him just outlining what he's against, that's not going to be good enough.

The thing is, I can see why some particular types of libertarian would like to promote this kind of political climate. Take Guido, for example. One of the reasons that Guido's blog is better than most is that he is quite clear about what he is in favour of. He has ample form as a conservative anarchist - someone who thinks that no situation is so bad that it isn't made worse by some do-gooder getting in the way of the benevolent hands of the market. Guido has a vested interest in poisoning the well of public debate because it's something that he regards as counterproductive in itself.

Leftish libertarians distinguish themselves from their right-wing counterparts by outlining how the minimal state can work. Whenever Chris Dillow, for example, dismisses a politician as some kind of pond-life, at least he has the decency to outline how things could work. Modesty forbids me from linking to examples of other libertarian bloggers who offer suggestions on how power can be decentralised or how the means of production can be controlled by co-ops.

But what about the purely negativist leftish 'libertarians'? The ones who think that it is simply sufficient to "...harass and bully the likes of Campbell, Clarke and Prescott out of [our political culture]"

They certainly aren't adding anything here. We are already at saturation point with smartarses who think that this is what they are paid to do. Bloggers that join them can't really be expected to stand out very well, can they? Especially in the company of about 99% of political cartoonists, our self-styled 'satirists', a large percentage of the paid commentariat along with the more tedious stand-up comics.

So, why bother then? As far as I can see, there are two possible reasons:

1. One possibility is that it's a form of cowardice. If you spend half your life charging around hoisting others on their own petards, it is a bit risky leaving a few of your own lying around, isn't it? In which case, claiming to be a 'libertarian' is just a way of distancing yourself from everything that has been, or could be tried in the foreseeable.
2. The other possibility is that it's a half-witted form of narcissism. The vain lure of protest. It's the reason why Che T-shirts used to sell so well (before they became just another image in the gallery of po-mo 'iconography'). The writers seem more interested in mentally photoshopping themselves onto the cover of a Clash LP than in adding to any constructive dialogue.

I wish someone would apply for a grant to do a study on this. What percentage of political writing is designed primarily to cast the author in a fetching light? This isn't just a feature of the pseudo-left either - neo-Nazis are practically addicted to this kind of preening - here's an example I found a while ago.

The thing is, this self-righteous abdication of responsibility is nothing new. I had a comment from someone called Larry Teabag on my own post here:

"In fact I think the suggestion that [a counterproposal to a proposition that one is criticising] is needed is at best idiotic, and at worst a disingenuous debating-tactic to allay awkward criticism."

A point that is so obvious, I think you will agree, that it doesn't need an case being made to support it. Which is why this point is only ever really asserted (instead of being argued).

I've heard this from journalists as well - in particular, when Pilger is being defended: Again, it's always a case that doesn't ever get elaborated upon. The argument that paid journalists (not just unpaid bloggers) are not under any obligation to provide counter-proposals whenever they criticise a policy or the actions of any entity that seeks to address a problem.

And it's an argument that I'd agree with - halfway. If the journalist concerned is simply a reporter, then maybe they are under no obligation to do so. Their role is to report, and perhaps to interpret - perhaps in the way that a (non-expert) witness is invited to in a courtroom. But the moment that a journalist starts to editorialise, they should either....

• Honour an obligation to outline a more suitable and workable solution, or
• Brand themselves forever as a negativist fuckwit of the highest order

So, reader. Which side are you on? Tough one, innit?

Orwell re-invoked

Recent skirmishes - here and elsewhere - reminded me of an article by Orwell on 'neo-pessimism' I read (and blogged) a while ago.

I've since found a full version online. Read the whole thing there.

But still buy a copy of Paul's book. The perfect christmas present for the decentist in your life?

Against ID cards?

For me, the acid-test that most 'anti' lobbies fail is their ability to answer the question "what are you in favour of then?"

I'm not suggesting that every proposal should be met with a coherent and workable counterproposal on day one. But some evidence of a debate would be nice.

Take ID cards: This debate seems to generate a lot more heat than light. The starting point for many people appears that we have a fairly satisfactory settlement around privacy at the moment. When pressed, those same people will acknowledge that this is not really the case.

Any fule kno that The Man, with a bit of time and energy - would probably be able to piece together your movements, phone calls, personal finances and transactions, and use it in evidence against you. CCTV and imaging software combined with other commercial data can complete a detailed (in my case, tedious) picture. Put together with similar data about alleged associates of mine, then this could provide the kind of info that the Stasi would have envied. And if legal failsafes continue to be eroded and a more pernicious government were to succeed this one, this could form the thin end of a wedge.

Personally, I'm just as worried by the way that non-state actors can access this information. The Man isn't always The Man From The Ministry.

So, with ID cards, while all of my instincts tell me that, as a scheme, it should be opposed, I can't think of any other way to assert privacy rights over my identity. Unless it is defined in a robust and secure way, then we have something that is actually worse than the state having a monopoly of power. We have a situation in which anyone with a budget and a few lawyers can know anything they need to about me.

Sure, privacy campaigners will say that they can keep fighting on all fronts without any consolidated personal ID to protect. But that hasn't been the case so far. Generally, most of us don't seem to be able to identify and stop the initiatives that continue to cause our privacy to leak further. Or when we do, the utility - say, of having a cashpoint card, a mobile phone, e-mail or an Oyster card - over-rides our objections. The slowness of legislative processes mean that the law can provide little protection either.

As it happens, I'm inclined to think that ID cards may, eventually, have a similar appeal to the general public as mobiles / cashpoints / Oyster Cards have. Having one would probably save us all a lot of time and grief.

The man from the ministry who is in charge of this project says:

"Maybe we should start arguing the case that ID Cards will reduce the threat of the Surveillance Society and help safeguard civil liberties."

Maybe he has a point. I just doubt that this has entered the government's thinking yet. The first part of that sentence provides the clue:

"Maybe we should start arguing the case that..."

My mama always told me, "Son. Beware of post-hoc rationalisations."***

But if we are opposed to ID cards, what should we be in favour of instead?

(Via Europhobia)

*** This is a lie. She just told me to get to Mass on Sundays.

Bitter and Twisted

I found an old newspaper (Xmas 2003) lying around the other day. It provided a perfect illustration of the way our newspapers urge us to look at the world.

In New York, a tipsy pilot has been arrested and a planeload of passengers queued up to tell an eager media about how dreadfully it has all been handled. (i.e. they were forced to stay an extra night in a nice New York hotel and they have all been given a free flight as compensation). One of them was a pretty Actress! (interviewed by all networks on both sides of the pond).

Again, the dynamic between a highly risk averse company culture combines with an increasingly litigious population to create a shril climate of over-reaction and recrimination.

Elsewhere, competing pressure groups are moaning about the proliferation of air travel – now within the financial reach of millions. The particular issue exercising everyone is the location of the new runways that are being planned, the noise and the traffic that they will cause.

The contribution that aviation fuel makes to global warming is also uppermost in all of our minds.

Like everything else, flight is only discussed with a pervading sense of doom. Yet the progress in the last century is barely believable. A TV programme a while ago (can’t remember the name, date or channel – sorry!) tried to recreate the circumstances in which the Wrights worked by attempting to complete a rival project that was cruelly curtailed by the death of it’s project leader. In 1903, flight was precarious and rickety affair. The first journey lasted less than a minute.

When we then bear in mind that the vast majority of progress – Kittyhawk to Concorde - took place within one lifetime, it is astonishing that the ‘celebration’ of this fantastic acheivement wasn’t more ostentatious.

But then, a major celebration of any kind these days will simply provide a backdrop for a new round of recriminations, over-reaction and hysteria.