It's hard to feel sorry for Theresa May. So hard even a big old softie like me can't manage it. She might presently enjoy double-digit leads in some polls, but the campaign is not going to plan. To think, it could have been very simple. It should have been very simple. With a huge lead in the polls all May had to do was be very boring and robotic - an effortless task - and carry on Brexiting this and Brexiting that. The public would have switched off, but she'd have got back into Number 10 over the electorate's snoozing bodies. Everyone knows strong and stable is a load of bollocks, but you've got to at least look the part. And she did, for a time.
Consider the dementia tax debacle alongside the means test for winter fuel payments and abandoning the triple lock on the state pension. Just why? Dave achieved a Tory victory because his scaremongering about nuclear weapons and a Labour/SNP coalition frightened enough people into voting for them. When you make people feel insecure, it gives the Tories an advantage. The lesson lost on May, however, is you're not supposed to issue naked threats. When your passage to victory demands the annexation of the volatile UKIP vote, it's the height of stupidity to be seen to destabilise the core support in the arrogant belief they have nowhere to go. The question going begging is why a politician of May's experience and her aide, Nick Timothy, could make such a mistake?
Consider this. Labour's manifesto is a collaborative effort. Shadow cabinet members and their spads all contributed to the drafting process. There were debates and discussions among the leadership and it finally went to the NEC for approval. At each and every stage more than one brain was making a contribution. How different this is from the Tory approach. Timothy, intuiting his boss's intentions, was left to get on with it himself in the utmost secrecy. Apparently, not even Lynton Crosby himself saw a draft until the day before it went to the printers. And we know what happened - because no one saw it, no one was exercising oversight, no one was there to say "hold on Nick, this isn't a good idea". That's how we have the politically damaging dementia tax and the gross underestimation of the schools' breakfast spending (Timothy had budgeted 7p per day per child), and why the manifesto spectacularly unraveled. Such is Timothy's much-vaunted genius that he derailed the campaign and forced May to make a humiliating climb down almost entirely on his own. Labour couldn't ask for a more effective sleeper agent.
After a few days pause which Theresa May tried her presidential damnedest to look like a strong leader, uncomfortably for her her past has come up. While the Tories and their media friends are determined to drag politics back onto Jeremy Corbyn's relationship with Sinn Fein in the 1980s and 90s, it's May's relationship to police and intelligence budgets that's now posing the Tories the most difficulty. Yes, crime is in long-term decline, but we know that has little to do with the reduction in police numbers. Deficit determinism was the hallmark of the coalition government - actual need (as well as economic realities) played second fiddle while the Treasury taps were turned off. And Theresa May as Home Secretary was perfectly happy to go along with this. Therefore, if the attack lines cast by Amber Rudd and "Handbags" Fallon this weekend are how the Tories are going to play it over the next 10 days, banging on about how terrorist attacks are more likely under Labour is going to be a bit of a risk. Firstly, because cutting the police by 20,000 over the last seven years is hardly the actions of a government "serious" about security, second it just draws attention to Labour's manifesto pledge for more coppers and extra help for the spooks - points on which the Tory manifesto is silent, and third it's downright distasteful - to use the murder of 22 people for electioneering while there isn't a palpable national panic about terror attacks is risky bordering on reckless as far as Tory chances go.
There is also the game we've seen the Tories play time after time. It's called 'project your weakness and watch us get away with it'. Wibbly-wobblyness is a characteristic of Jeremy Corbyn, so Rudd will declare as she stands in for her frit leader in tomorrow evening's debate. Uncosted pledges and a burgeoning debt mountain are the price paid by Labour's plans, despite the provision of figures that say otherwise and the government's own spending record. It's Labour's plans that will turn Britain's streets into a terrorist playground, despite 10,000 extra police and the promise of 3,000 intelligence service recruits. And it's Labour who are going to put taxes up and cost you your home for adult social care, while the manifesto pledges to the contrary.
In short, the Tory campaign is in disarray. As it relaunches, they will be using their leverage in the media to hammer Brexit and counterpose May to Corbyn. Their problem is she has already got found out and further blunders could put the election into question, never mind the promised landslide. A month ago, the Prime Minister was unquestioningly the greatest asset the Tory party has possessed since Thatcher in the early 80s. Now she is increasingly looking like an albatross.
Another night, another poll. The latest for The Telegraph puts the Tories on 44% and Labour on 38%. A gap of six points, which follows last week's YouGov effort reporting a five per cent gap. I'm trying not to hope, so that excitable little beastie is getting packed away as we look at what's going on at the bottom of the polling. There's still no sign of the LibDem revival, and as we've talked about them recently it's time UKIP had their turn. For poll after poll has them tanking badly. Four per cent in this ORB poll, two per cent in YouGov. To think this ex-party, this brittle husk held together by small mindedness and the ambition to keep hold of one's councillor allowances once held British politics to ransom. Times they are a-changin' and they're changin' bloody quickly.
If UKIP doesn't disintegrate following post-general election acrimony, its dirty bomb of backward, hateful politics could see it eke out a long half life on the fringes of politics. The odd council seat could tip into its radioactive soup, but for the most part the party's own decay shall keep it contained. Harmless if handled properly, at least until such a time when powerful forces need a faux anti-establishment outfit for their establishment interests. Broken as the party is (and never forget who smoked them), shedding votes, members disappearing, it does still have a little room for manoeuvre. Parties may well be aspects of classes and class interests, but they still have agency, and it is within UKIP's gift to remain half-way relevant.
Understanding this requires a very brief lesson in recent history. At the European elections in 1999, 2004, and 2009 UKIP slowly built up a base of voters as the preferred middle finger to mainstream politics. It guaranteed air time here and there, but they were not regarded with the same degree of seriousness afforded the less influential but even more repugnant British National Party. They were a nuisance, particularly to those in mainstream parties wanting to get to Brussels. And that way they could have stayed, were it not for Dave's uncharacteristic stand over a matter of principle: equal marriage. The blue rinsed bigots, the turnip taliban, and those who get excitable (if not excited) about what other people get up to in their bedrooms decamped from the Tory party en masse. Constituency chairs, Association board members, councillors, the yellowing grass roots were all outraged by Dave's concession to 21st century life. UKIP with its strident anti-Europeanism, little England sensibilities, its free market fundamentalism and, under Nigel Farage, its "libertarian" opposition to equal marriage hoovered these people up as members and supporters. It was this more than anything else that catapulted UKIP into the big leagues, it was a crisis in the Tory party that gave the UKIP project legs.
As we know, Dave completely and disastrously misread the danger to his own electoral coalition. Rather than fight them politically, he conceded ground on the EU referendum and immigration to try and lock them out from the right. And, well, here we are. However, while UKIP rode high and bagged themselves a couple of Tory MPs, from the standpoint of their own viability they made a critical mistake. In the local elections following the equal marriage crisis, in 2013, the year UKIP went big, they gained 139 councillors. In 2014, they went up 163 and won the European elections. And in 2015 they gained another 176 local authority seats. These gains came disproportionately from the Tories and yet, part connivance, part stupidity - I can't decide which - UKIP was said to pose Labour an existential crisis - a position they were happy to talk up. Lazy London commentators lapped it up too. Nigel Farage was the authentic voice of the non-metropolitan British working class (which they always identify with middle-aged-to-elderly white men). And while they were an irritant, they did not endanger Labour. For example, in the 2016 local elections, Labour was defending the 2012 high watermark established under Ed Miliband, with poor poll ratings and months of public infighting, the kippers netted just 25 while Labour suffered a net loss of 11. Despite the hype, Labour support was more resistant and proved so time and again.
Every new (or renewed) political party has to build a base around a stable(ish) set of interests if it's to enjoy a long shelf life. UKIP's error was believing its own hype. Had it gone harder on the Tories after 2013, it is reasonable to assume it would have been more stable and better placed to resist the exodus back. Last year they had the chance to change course, but instead plumped for the empty-headed Paul Nuttall, a man lacking thought beyond that morning's Daily Mail headline. He, his dimwitted followers, and not a few arms-length cheerleaders thought a Scouse accent would be enough to see Labour's northern strongholds fall to a purple surge. If only someone had argued this was bollocks all along. If UKIP wants to bump along the bottom of the polls and fall behind the Greens, then they should carry on with the "Labour first" strategy.
That said, humiliation in Stoke followed by an organisational and vote collapse, it appears that Nuttall has finally twigged, that it might be an idea to go for the voters that made the party and Farage a household name. He's standing in Boston and Skegness, a Tory-held seat in which UKIP finished a very strong second in 2015. It is also the Brexit capital of Britain. Yes, even more so than the Potteries. At the UKIP manifesto launch, apart from the ritual opportunistic sop to the NHS, this was "blukip", not "red UKIP": of holding the government to account on any Brexit backslides, of stressing one-in-one-out immigration over Theresa May's aspirational "tens of thousands" figures, and calling for a splendid isolationist foreign policy to keep Britain terrorism-free. Stuff plenty of hard right Tory voters would find attractive. The problem for UKIP is it might be too little too late, and the window of opportunity has slammed shut with them on the wrong side.
Here's what's been happening in the local authority by-election scene this last month.
Party
|
Number of Candidates
|
Total Vote
|
%
|
+/-
Apr
|
+/- May 16
|
Average/
Contest
|
+/-
Seats
|
Conservative
|
113
|
86,701
|
41.0%
|
+1.8%
|
+11.3%
|
767
|
+11
|
Labour
|
90
|
58,504
|
27.7%
|
-2.9%
|
-9.8%
|
650
|
-8
|
LibDem
|
88
|
40,269
|
19.1%
|
+2.9%
|
+9.6%
|
458
|
0
|
UKIP
|
48
|
8,338
|
3.9%
|
+1.4%
|
-5.9%
|
174
|
-2
|
Green
|
55
|
8,573
|
4.1%
|
-1.2%
|
-1.8%
|
156
|
+1
|
SNP*
|
0
|
|
|
|
|
|
0
|
PC**
|
0
|
|
|
|
|
|
0
|
Ind***
|
24
| 6,395
|
3.0%
|
-2.6% |
+1.7%
|
267
|
-3
|
Other****
|
14
|
2,576
|
1.2%
|
+1.2%
|
+0.6%
|
184
|
+1
|
* There were no by-elections in Scotland
** There were no by-elections in Wales
*** There was one Independent clash
**** Others this month consisted of WEP (40), Yorks First (46), Elvis Bus Pass (51), National Bocialist (0), Residents 4 Uttlesford (623), English Democrats (188), TUSC (37, 25, 27, 83), Liberal Party (64), St Neots Ind Group (854), Monster Raving Loony (33), and Health Concern (506)
Overall, 211,356 votes were cast over 113 local authority (tier one and tier two) contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. 24 council seats changed hands in total. For comparison with April's results, see here.
Now this is interesting. The Tories hold a massive lead while Labour languish well behind, and a strong showing from the Liberal Democrats too. Compare these results with the projected vote share from the local elections held in early May: 38%, Labour 27%, LibDems 18%, UKIP 5%. They fair resemble them, don't they? And I think it would have been a reasonable prediction back then to have suggested Labour was in for a drubbing. However, as we've learned these last two years politics moves, and it moves fast. There was an about turn in the polls suggesting something of a Labour recovery anyway, but the unforced dementia tax debacle, subsequent collapse of the Tory campaign and the fall out from the Manchester attacks has put a ramjet under Labour and the polls are closing. In approximately a month we've gone from no-hopers to in with a shout of winning - incredible.
Two weekends left and the dynamism is with Labour. This weekend on the doors is going to be very interesting.
In the red corner is Skwawkbox, the pro-Corbyn site that has carved out a market for itself providing the inside track from among the Corbynist left in the Labour Party. And in the black corner of deepest reaction lives Guido, the establishment's "anti-establishment" site and their preferred go-to for Westminster gossip. Bearing in mind the lies and smears Paul Staines and retinue have indulged and boosted over the years, they're the last ones to cast aspersions on other sites. But cast them they have.
It goes something like this. Skwawkbox is read by some people in Corbyn's team, and there is the suggestion it may benefit from leaks from this quarter. Therefore, because site proprietor Steve has "blamed" Theresa May for the Manchester bombing, it follows that Labour's leadership must believe it too. There you go, a criticism so sharp you can dice granite with it. Naturally, Skwawkbox is happy with the coverage. Extra audience is extra audience, after all.
Could this be just a hastily-concocted "exposé" while Alex Wickham had nothing better to do than mash the morning's tea? Yes, it's what they do. But it also means granting Skwawkbox et al some grudging recognition. As examples of the latest wave of blogging, Skwawkbox, along with The Canary (also getting its own Guido sting today), Another Angry Voice, Evolve Politics, and people who've proven adept at working social media like @Rachael_Swindon, they have carved out a large audience and following many times bigger than most established lefties. I have my issues with these sites, but they haven't so much as found a niche but blown it open. They do play a valuable role in mobilising people online and, increasingly, encouraging them to get involved in "real life" politics too. Take Another Angry Voice, for instance: a quarter of million likes on Facebook equals a mass audience for everything shared to that page (if you haven't already liked All That Is Solid by the way, now's your chance ...).
And here's a problem for Guido. Starting out as a Tory gossip site back when blogging was the new rock 'n' roll, it quickly established itself as the go-to for leaks across the political spectrum. They only ever and continue to publish stuff that serves their political agenda, but that hasn't stopped some Labour Westminster people from spilling their guts, even if it damages the party and the movement. However, as Corbynism has completely upset the balance of establishment politics and right wingers are peeling away from the PLP or seeking careers outside the lobby/Portcullis cafe axis, the old sources are drying up. Skwawkbox represents a left alternative to Guido and therefore a possible competitor. Because of the friendly relations between it, Corbyn's team (allegedly), and increasing numbers of Labour MPs, how long will it be before Guido goes back to just being an outlet for Tory Party tittle tattle? That ultimately means lower revenues and decreasing relevance among a press pack where they're already pretty reviled.
Guido may hate Skwawkbox because the latter is animated by socialist values. But I'll bet they hate them even more because of the threat it poses their standing and cash flow.
Police numbers are falling. In England and Wales between March 2015 and March 2016 (the most recent government figures), "frontline" positions shrank from 110,853 to 106,411. Recruitment was down and the number of dismissals and resignations were up, continuing a five-year trend.
It has also been widely acknowledged, not least by the Prime Minister herself, that her decision to deploy troops to guard key public buildings today frees up some armed police to do policing. Of course, the optics of looking very serious by calling in the military has absolutely nothing to do with a certain date in the diary, especially after Conservative campaign strategy has collapsed. It also helps cover the fact that the numbers of coppers have slid since her "team" took power with the Liberal Democrats in 2010, at least for those folks who look at politics askance.
As campaigning starts returning to normal after Monday night's outrage, the Tories and their media friends will probably throw propriety aside and scaremonger. Threat and the threat of threat is what they do and how they won last time. They don't really need to explicitly say it, though. The mood among some is bound to be unsettled. As @IanPMcLaughlin put it, "I don't feel particularly reassured by seeing several heavily armed officers today. I feel like I'm being reminded to be fearful."
The police have repeatedly called for intelligence and counter-terrorism to be properly financed, and these were pleas that fell on Theresa May's tin ear. While there is no guarantee any amount of security can stop a suicide bomber, more resources makes the uncovering and thwarting of plots more likely. Here below then are two charts for England and Wales that show how policing numbers have fallen since 2010 in context. The first are the government's figures looking at absolute numbers. The second, by Matt Ashby from Notts Trent University looks at the numbers of police per 100,000 of the general population. On this metric the cuts are even starker. As the number of Britons grow, forces are having to do more with less.
Please feel free to share far and wide on social media.
It's a truism that the worst in humanity brings out the best in humanity. Yet amid the solidarity and support shown folks caught up in last night's suicide attack in Manchester, there were those for whom another concern came to mind: themselves. It takes a real decency bypass to think about how the murder of 22 people can raise one's profile, or score petty points, but the laws of probability indicates such people are bound to exist. A coincidence then that exhibitors of amoral psychopathy are clustered in our leading news media organisations?
Out front was, of course, the execrable Katie Hopkins who, for the sake of a higher profile and several hours as a trending topic, called for a "final solution" to Islamist-inspired terror. Yes, that's right, the language of genocide is fine and dandy for a few extra retweets. Paul Waugh of HuffPo got into the soulless spirit of things by using the occasion to imply Jeremy Corbyn was soft on terrorism. Not to be outdone, and in full knowledge of what had taken place, The Sun ran this front page penned by a former Special Branch plant in the IRA, while The Mail went to print with this cartoon. Then we have sundry trolls circulating fake news.
If this was a one off, we could put it down to individual turpitude. Unfortunately, it happens time and again. Any tragedy, any awfulness, there are commentators and "celebrities" eager to pile in. There are trolls looking to shock, poltroons sharing bullshit stories, and the vacuous scoring points no one's keeping track of. Unlocking what's going on requires something, and that would be understanding the political economy of the moral lobotomy.
Naturally, Hopkins is the queen of the scene, but she's harvesting what was long-cultivated by the likes of Melanie Phillips. Or, to be more accurate, benefiting from a media business model based entirely around trolling. As papers lose physical sales and have moved operations online, scraping profit revolves around selling ad space, and that demands large audiences. The Daily Mail, as a case in point, runs creepy celebrity stories because there's a huge international appetite for tittle-tattle and ogling celebrity bodies. Trolling with racism and the usual bigotry has the same effect - it cottoned on long before most that outraging left wing and liberal audiences who would never buy their paper could nevertheless drive page views. The Sun, was a late comer to running a free "news" website, now try and get the audience in to sell them services. Advertising, after all, is an unstable business - websites dependent on it for sole income are taking a risk.
The logical extension of trolling-for-business is adapting it as a strategy for personal media branding. It doesn't turn on advertising in this case, but the attracting of attention to remain relevant. Again, Hopkins is the master, even if it has led to occasional brushes with the law. And her notoriety gives her gigs. She'd be long forgotten as a former Apprentice contestant if it wasn't for a sustained and cynical outburst of calibrated bigotry. And what it required was a surgical removal of her moral centre and her continual parading of the fact. This logic then is abroad. And so Paul Waugh sacrificed what was appropriate for a smidgen of notoriety. The Sun and The Mail were banking on a surge of concern in terrorism for their hatchet jobs in their hope to reverse the slide toward Labour in the polls.
And the bottom feeders who do the same? The same attention-seeking logic is at work here, even though paid-for bigoted berths in the mainstream are already rammed. Retweets and shares means attention, and can flatter a mutilated sense of self-importance. What does someone else's suffering and pain mean as long as you're being seen to matter, that you are the centre of a storm you summoned? For people crippled by a sense of everyday irrelevance which, let's face it, is the lot of the overwhelming majority of us, it's a heady brew for some. Particularly as being and being seen to be a special individual is the pinnacle to which one can aspire in Western cultures. Having a moral lobotomy as a route of getting there as good as any other.
Why this happens then is because there's an economic logic underpinning callous hot takes. And, as night follows day, economic dynamics transmute into cultural dynamics, made all the easier by the quantitative character of social media. But there is only a market for hateful fare for as long people sustain it by serving it, and here responsibility lies squarely with the media operations of the right.
Cross post from Picture Amoebae, AKA @catherinebuca
To my followers in the UK – we have a real chance to end years of Tory austerity and misery.
At the last general election, more people didn’t vote at all than voted for the Tories.
Tomorrow is the deadline for registering to vote. Register today to be sure. Even if you haven’t made your mind up whether to vote at all, by registering you still have that choice. If you don’t register, that choice is taken away from you.
The Tories changed the rules for how people are registered to vote, meaning that 25% of school leavers are no longer on the electoral register. This was their attempt to gerrymander the vote, meaning those who are more likely to vote against them would be deprived of a vote altogether, while those who consistently give their vote to the Conservatives had their right to vote protected.
There are more plans to increase this gerrymandering in the Tory manifesto, by introducing the requirement for photo ID in order to vote – we can all see how that turned out in America. The poorest, the disenfranchised, and minority voters are all less likely to be able to access photo ID. All of those are less likely to want to vote for the Tories. They are also trying to change constituency boundaries, which will see fewer MPs, with the effect disproportionately hitting Labour.
YOU have a voice. Make sure you use it. All the polls are showing a large lead for the Tories, which is leading a lot of people to say there’s no point, the Tories are going to win anyway. But Labour have cut the Tories’ lead in HALF since the election was called, and look at that chart above. If even just half of those who thought there was no point went out to vote instead we could easily show the Tories the door and elect a party with a wonderful, inclusive, socially just platform that promises to protect the NHS from private sell-off, protect education from Tory cuts, protect the disabled and vulnerable from Victorian cuts, and to elect a Prime Minister who has proven over the course of his 30 year career that he has been on the right side of history arguing for women’s rights, LGBT rights, against apartheid, against the Iraq war and countless others, and for a politics and a country that puts people first and corporations and profits last.
We do have a choice. You can make a difference.
Register to vote.
Vote Labour.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions, about registering, or about Labour’s manifesto. But either way, please register to vote.
REGISTER TO VOTE NOW
On page 67 of the Conservative Party manifesto (analysis here), Theresa May's "team" announces a significant shift in the way elderly care is going to be paid for. Their plans have generated a great deal of controversy which, combined with means testing for winter fuel payments and ending the triple lock on pensions, moves the Tories away from protecting pensioners from the squeeze they unnecessarily put on public finances to one where they're going to have to also pay. It has proven hugely controversial. Some Conservatives are very unhappy with it, and you can bet this view is shared by more than a few of their MPs. Setting aside the politics of the changes and why the Tories have decided to put this policy in their manifesto, what do the measures mean and why is Labour dubbing it the 'Dementia Tax'?
Presently, recipients of residential care have to part fund the service they receive if they have assets in excess of £23,250. If they are applying for a place in a home, they have to include the value of their house in the means test. As around two thirds of pensioners are home owners, this often means selling the house from under them to pay for their care package - though an option exists to defer costs. To demonstrate, assume a 75 year old pensioner requiring residential care has £25k in savings and their house is worth £89k. Leaving aside income and assuming that person then lives for a further six years (in line with current life expectancy), according to care costs calculators for Staffordshire (because that's where I live) you're talking upwards of £190k. Note this will vary from county-to-county and by local authority area. Therefore, our pensioner would presently be required "contribute" almost £91,000. The remaining £23k of their assets will remain theirs. If on the other hand our pensioner requires domiciliary (at home) care, the application in this case would take into account their savings only. This care is cheaper, costing between 70-75% of being in a home and their contribution would be just £1,750 (again, leaving aside income from their pension(s)).
What they giveth in one hand they taketh with the other. Under the proposals in their manifesto, our imaginary pensioner above wouldn't have to pay anywhere near as much as the Conservatives promise to raise the capital floor to £100,000. Their contribution would shrink to just £14,000. Sounds alright, doesn't it? But here's the catch. The Conservatives want to redefine the asset base so the house is counted for residential and domiciliary care. Another change is they will only come for the assets after the person in receipt of care has died. On the surface then, pensioners who are poorer or moderately okay like the example given would benefit. But older people whose combined assets are in excess of £100,000 are going to get clobbered. Or, rather, their families and children are. The problem for the Tories is this is their vote base, and there are millions of pensioners in this position. All of a sudden, estates of people in receipt of domiciliary care are going to receive steep bills after their loved one has died.
This sets up all kinds of problems and difficulties. For pensioners living as couples, how does this recoup costs from shared assets like a home? If their house is £250,000, would the estate be expected to pay £150,000 or £25,000? And in either case, would the surviving partner be expected to liquidate their shared asset to pay the bill? Likewise, for live-in carers who might be sons, daughters or whatever, can we safely assume that they will be expected to sell up their inheritance to pay the balance off? And what will they do about the scramble of elderly people transferring ownership of assets to relatives before they put in a care application and therefore avoid the charges? Unfortunately, none of this is clarified in their manifesto. Unlike Labour who provided costings for their pledges, the Tories chose not to.
The Conservatives say they're doing this to put adult social care on a firmer footing. Since 2010, the Coalition and then the Tory majority government have foisted tough cuts on most local authorities by chopping down the local government grant year-on-year. As budgets have got tighter, councils of all political complexions have had to redesign, strip down, and withdraw services. This has mean adult care could not but be hit too. Waking up to it belatedly last year, partly thanks to the winter beds crisis in the NHS, the government have allowed councils to increase council tax by an addition 2% to pay for adult social care only. But this cannot fill the gap, and so the Tories are moving to a model whereby the user pays after the fact.
The result would be to grow the number of people eligible to pay more for their care. Hence why it has been dubbed the dementia tax. None of us know what care needs we might require when we get old. None of us can really do anything about avoiding them either. We all get weaker, a good chunk of us will suffer health complications, an unlucky number are going to develop dementia. Whatever happens, the state will look after us and when we die, grieving relatives can look forward to demanding letters from the council asking them to hand over tens, and in some cases, hundreds of thousands of pounds. The dementia tax is a tax on old age and that's why, despite everything, it could cost the Tories the general election.
As Zygmunt Bauman passed away in January, now is as good a time to dip into his books. What's interesting in his Liquid Modernity (published in 2000) is how perceptive he was on matters relating to ontological anxiety/insecurity that have wreaked havoc on established politics across the world. He expands on these further his 2006's Liquid Fear, which is on the book pile.
Urban legend among sociologists has it that in his latter years, Bauman used to spend his mornings writing and the rest of the day watching Jeremy Kyle and the like. He was immersed in everyday television culture, but only as a spectator ultimately cut off from it. This was nothing new. As an immigrant, having been exiled by the Stalinists during an anti-semitic purge of Polish society in the late 60s, he self-consciously had something of the outsider to his observations of what was going on in Britain and the West. This immediately came to mind when I read the small passage below. It's not a profound insight by any means, but is something anyone who writes on politics and current affairs who is a) not in London, and b) not tied to the Westminster apparatus, can relate to.
Writing on why Scotland was the centre of social thought and political economy scholarship in Britain in the late 18th century, Bauman noted:
The tendencies at full swing in the 'centre' are, as a rule, most promptly spotted and most clearly articulated in places temporarily relegated to the 'fringes'. Living at the outskirts of a civilisational centre means being near enough to see things clearly and yet far enough to 'objectify' them and so to mould and condense the perceptions into concepts. (p.141)
Marx would be a fitting case in point. A refugee from Germany whose life was one of grinding poverty, albeit alleviated by the occasional cheque from Engels, and for whom daily life was bounded by a devoted family, trips to the British library, and the petty intrigues of exile politics, this man who was very much on the outside of the first industrial nation was able to produce the most accurate picture of its dynamism and tendencies, most of which still stand up.
I digress. In the age of social media, of feeds from multiple sources pumping information into the brain, and of always being switched on, don't be surprised if the most penetrating diagnoses of our condition come from brains sat at some remove from it.
