John Harris

Instead of one-nation Conservatism, we are getting a two-tier Britain | John Harris

Friday, December 24th, 2010

Catchphrase of the year goes to David Cameron’s ‘we’re all in this together’. As 2010 ends, it is evident we are not

Ending the year with little to do except wait for the snow to melt and wonder where my Amazon orders might be, I have been trying to nail 2010’s decisive catchphrase. “I agree with Nick” has become one of the most frequently used tropes on Comment is free threads, and has the added bonus of massive post-facto irony – but the unchallenged champion must surely be the Tory incantation that backhandedly captured where Britain has ended up: “We’re all in this together“.

Self-evidently, what with bonus season looming while job centres are empowered to hand out food vouchers, we’re not – something my new series Anywhere but Westminster is intended to explore. So, by way of extending the conversation slightly beyond simple matters of wealth and income, as 2010 ends, it’s worth noting the wildly diverse experiences of various parts of the country. From where I’m sitting (the south-west, for what it’s worth) one-nation Conservatism looks as distant a dream as ever, and Britain’s divisions seem once again to be deepening, at speed.

As it continues to bang away in the manner of a dull national headache, I’ve had my say about the north-south divide already: suffice to say that as we head into 2011 and the cuts kick in, the extent to which London and the south east sit apart from the rest of the country is only going to get worse. That’s not a matter of leftist troublemaking: if you don’t believe me, listen to the chief executive of Whitbread, who’s in charge of such brands as Costa Coffee, Brewers Fayre and good old Premier Inn: “It is definitely true that the London market is strong and it is definitely true that in the regional market life is tougher,” he reckons. “I would expect that to continue.” In other words, macchiatos, pub lunches and awaydays all round in the capital – but in your Boltons, Bradfords and Burys, times are hard, and getting harder.

That said, the more pinched parts of the capital and south should not be forgotten. This, after all, was the year that such towns as Southend and Hastings became bywords for the likely exodus caused by the government’s proposed cap on housing benefit (since delayed for existing claimants, though the predicted shifts in population will surely happen as of January 2012). And soon after that story grabbed the headlines, there came further proof of what a divided city London is. Thanks to Eric Pickles’s cuts to local government funding, the three biggest losers will be Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Newham, all of whom have been hit with reductions of between 8.9%; among those who will only suffer the merest pain are such places as Dorset (0.25%), Surrey (0.31%) and Buckinghamshire (0.6%).

But to truly grasp what a sliced-up country we are, consider some other stories. When other parts of Britain are squealing their pain, people from Essex seem to be having a great time: as a recent Guardian shortcut pointed out, the county gave us the winners of Strictly Come Dancing and I’m A Celebrity, as well as the fastest-selling non-fiction book ever (though before anyone gets too carried away, let us bear in mind the London-Essex borders, and the ongoing travails of Barking and Dagenham). By contrast, Cumbria suffered the long aftermath of 2009’s floods and an earthquake, Cornwall was once again swamped, and the list of what we have to call “unemployment blackspots” was headed by Middlesbrough, Liverpool, south Wales, and the often-overlooked Isle Of Wight.

Thus, millions of us end the year living on different metaphorical planets. I’ve been quoting Dickens a lot lately, so I may as well carry on; as Tiny Tim put it: ‘God bless us, every one!’ But maybe start with Hastings, Hackney, Toxteth and Teesside first, eh?

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In this Dickensian season, a Victorian clique still rules | John Harris

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010

Austerity, deference and a little charity to the poor: the nation is being recast according to the ancient mores of the upper class

Let us put aside those tweeted greetings, online orders and Jamie-authored canapes, and acknowledge it: the British Christmas is an essentially Victorian concept, and will for ever remain so. Peel back the facade of modern consumerist flash, and it is all still there: not just the bells, carols and trees, but the season’s three pillars – of family, charity and enforced jollity.

Just to heighten the sense of a season essentially unchanged in more than 150 years, we should doff our caps to a ruling clique who might have been dragged through time from the mid-19th century. Now, surely, we can confidently scoff at the coalition’s claims to being somehow “progressive”, and feel a shiver at so many of the Victorian fundamentals of Con-Dem politics – noblesse oblige, an updated notion of the undeserving poor and, naturally enough, fiscal exactitude.

It may be the time of year, but as all those budgets are hacked back, you really have to reach for your Dickens and either laugh or cry. I am certainly not the first this year to quote Mr Micawber: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and – and in short, you are for ever floored.” If only George Osborne could put it like that.

Anyway, herein is a truth that most of the media have so far been too polite – or too frit – to mention: that as decisive proof of a return to 19th-century practices, we now find ourselves governed by people from a narrower social category than has been seen in years, and one of their motivations becomes clearer by the day – to somehow recast the country according to the ancient mores of the English upper class.

The evidence is plain enough. In the wake of the election the proportion of new MPs educated privately stood at 35%, against 13% in 1997. Among Tories, the arriviste accents of the Thatcher era have gone quiet. That Nick Clegg was educated in much the same milieu as David Cameron clearly accounts for how famously they get on – at the end-of-term press conference their personas again threatened to blur into each other like a well-heeled boy band. When Vince Cable sooner or later goes, the cabinet will lose one of its few senior members with anything approaching the common touch. And inevitably, the elevated world in which so many ministers cut their teeth colours their every move. As they apparently see it, this may all be to the good. “Knowing what a great education means means there’s a better chance of getting it for all of our children,” says the prime minister. To oikish ingrates like me, their backstories prove they know far too little of the real world. Either way, the lines to be drawn from past to present are inescapable. How could it be otherwise?

Consider, for instance, schools policy. Turn to page 37 of that scholarship boy Michael Gove’s education white paper, and there it is. Among the proposed keys to good behaviour is “having traditional blazer and tie uniforms, prefects and house systems”. He has proposed his own version of a “troops to teachers” scheme whereby demobbed soldiers will bring the firm thwack of strictness into more classrooms. In all that recent parliamentary sparring about what happens on school playing fields, you will also have heard endless veneration of “competitive sport” and the glories of inter-school matches. The vision is clear – deference and discipline for all, forged in the rigour of the Officer Training Corps and the first XV.

There is more, most of it seen in the delusions that surround austerity. Jeremy Hunt (Charterhouse) sells us a sepia-tinted vision of private philanthropy filling the arts funding gap, presumably because he knows the kind of people with fat enough wallets – though out in the shires, theatres and galleries know of far too few local millionaires. And in a flourish worthy of a Dickens villain, Clegg (Westminster) tells us that “poverty plus a pound does not represent fairness“, while failing to elaborate on what his government’s chosen policy of poverty minus several might entail (result misery, I would wager).

But the best example of what might be termed the Great Regression is the mirage we know as the “big society”. I have heard it said the idea was at least partly born in David Cameron’s constituency – Witney, where Oxfordshire meets the Cotswolds – and the theory makes perfect sense. Here, Toryism remains plummy-voiced and patrician. The poor are few enough to be helped by scores of charities, plenty of other people have enough time and money to lend a hand – and as the state withdraws and leaves the “chaotic” scenes advocated by Cameron’s outrider Nick Boles (Winchester), a lot of people will rise to the challenge. But how one applies a model that might work in Woodstock to, say, Manchester’s Moss Side, is anyone’s guess.

Still, such problems will doubtless be smoothed over by an elite who govern with a very familiar mixture of elegance and sophistry. As ever, what is harsh andquitous is sold to the great unwashed as a matter of self-reliance and the cleansing of the soul, while the odd sop – such as the paltry pupil premium – creates the impression of bigger hearts than they actually possess. These are much the same tricks as those used by the English ruling class down the ages, though this lot at least have a few updates. Behold, for instance, a government busy throwing hundreds of thousands on the dole and increasing poverty, but then assuring us of their compassion via a plan for a “general wellbeing index“. You might like to think of it as Dickensian cant redressed in Boden casualwear.

This, as well as the chill spread by the cuts themselves, may be part of the reason why some people end the year in such an angry state. Note another scene worthy of the 19th century: in the midst of a biting winter, the mob so cruelly attacking the heir to the throne as his carriage crawled down Regent Street. Brief seasonal cheer may cut through the bitterness – but now, as then, all in the kingdom is far, far from well.

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In this Dickensian season, a Victorian clique still rules | John Harris

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010

Austerity, deference and a little charity to the poor: the nation is being recast according to the ancient mores of the upper class

Let us put aside those tweeted greetings, online orders and Jamie-authored canapes, and acknowledge it: the British Christmas is an essentially Victorian concept, and will for ever remain so. Peel back the facade of modern consumerist flash, and it is all still there: not just the bells, carols and trees, but the season’s three pillars – of family, charity and enforced jollity.

Just to heighten the sense of a season essentially unchanged in more than 150 years, we should doff our caps to a ruling clique who might have been dragged through time from the mid-19th century. Now, surely, we can confidently scoff at the coalition’s claims to being somehow “progressive”, and feel a shiver at so many of the Victorian fundamentals of Con-Dem politics – noblesse oblige, an updated notion of the undeserving poor and, naturally enough, fiscal exactitude.

It may be the time of year, but as all those budgets are hacked back, you really have to reach for your Dickens and either laugh or cry. I am certainly not the first this year to quote Mr Micawber: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and – and in short, you are for ever floored.” If only George Osborne could put it like that.

Anyway, herein is a truth that most of the media have so far been too polite – or too frit – to mention: that as decisive proof of a return to 19th-century practices, we now find ourselves governed by people from a narrower social category than has been seen in years, and one of their motivations becomes clearer by the day – to somehow recast the country according to the ancient mores of the English upper class.

The evidence is plain enough. In the wake of the election the proportion of new MPs educated privately stood at 35%, against 13% in 1997. Among Tories, the arriviste accents of the Thatcher era have gone quiet. That Nick Clegg was educated in much the same milieu as David Cameron clearly accounts for how famously they get on – at the end-of-term press conference their personas again threatened to blur into each other like a well-heeled boy band. When Vince Cable sooner or later goes, the cabinet will lose one of its few senior members with anything approaching the common touch. And inevitably, the elevated world in which so many ministers cut their teeth colours their every move. As they apparently see it, this may all be to the good. “Knowing what a great education means means there’s a better chance of getting it for all of our children,” says the prime minister. To oikish ingrates like me, their backstories prove they know far too little of the real world. Either way, the lines to be drawn from past to present are inescapable. How could it be otherwise?

Consider, for instance, schools policy. Turn to page 37 of that scholarship boy Michael Gove’s education white paper, and there it is. Among the proposed keys to good behaviour is “having traditional blazer and tie uniforms, prefects and house systems”. He has proposed his own version of a “troops to teachers” scheme whereby demobbed soldiers will bring the firm thwack of strictness into more classrooms. In all that recent parliamentary sparring about what happens on school playing fields, you will also have heard endless veneration of “competitive sport” and the glories of inter-school matches. The vision is clear – deference and discipline for all, forged in the rigour of the Officer Training Corps and the first XV.

There is more, most of it seen in the delusions that surround austerity. Jeremy Hunt (Charterhouse) sells us a sepia-tinted vision of private philanthropy filling the arts funding gap, presumably because he knows the kind of people with fat enough wallets – though out in the shires, theatres and galleries know of far too few local millionaires. And in a flourish worthy of a Dickens villain, Clegg (Westminster) tells us that “poverty plus a pound does not represent fairness“, while failing to elaborate on what his government’s chosen policy of poverty minus several might entail (result misery, I would wager).

But the best example of what might be termed the Great Regression is the mirage we know as the “big society”. I have heard it said the idea was at least partly born in David Cameron’s constituency – Witney, where Oxfordshire meets the Cotswolds – and the theory makes perfect sense. Here, Toryism remains plummy-voiced and patrician. The poor are few enough to be helped by scores of charities, plenty of other people have enough time and money to lend a hand – and as the state withdraws and leaves the “chaotic” scenes advocated by Cameron’s outrider Nick Boles (Winchester), a lot of people will rise to the challenge. But how one applies a model that might work in Woodstock to, say, Manchester’s Moss Side, is anyone’s guess.

Still, such problems will doubtless be smoothed over by an elite who govern with a very familiar mixture of elegance and sophistry. As ever, what is harsh andquitous is sold to the great unwashed as a matter of self-reliance and the cleansing of the soul, while the odd sop – such as the paltry pupil premium – creates the impression of bigger hearts than they actually possess. These are much the same tricks as those used by the English ruling class down the ages, though this lot at least have a few updates. Behold, for instance, a government busy throwing hundreds of thousands on the dole and increasing poverty, but then assuring us of their compassion via a plan for a “general wellbeing index“. You might like to think of it as Dickensian cant redressed in Boden casualwear.

This, as well as the chill spread by the cuts themselves, may be part of the reason why some people end the year in such an angry state. Note another scene worthy of the 19th century: in the midst of a biting winter, the mob so cruelly attacking the heir to the throne as his carriage crawled down Regent Street. Brief seasonal cheer may cut through the bitterness – but now, as then, all in the kingdom is far, far from well.

Posted in Guardian RSS | No Comments »

What are your news predictions for 2011?

Tuesday, December 21st, 2010

I reckon the next 12 months will be as grim as 1981 – let me know what you think, and I’ll pop back and discuss your views

There is a pop-cultural theory that great things happen in years ending in 7: 1967 (the so-called summer of love), 1977 (the high water mark of punk), 1987 (when acid house arrived), and 1997 (the fall of the Tories). What might apply when faced with the number one is unclear, but as we face 2011, it might be instructive to look back to 1981.

Then, as now, things were grim, and getting grimmer: Geoffrey Howe’s deflationary budget, skyrocketing unemployment, a newly split Labour party, the inauguration of Ronald Reagan, and by the end of the year, martial law declared in Poland. That June, as riots flared in Liverpool, Manchester, Brixton and Birmingham, the Specials famously reached number one with Ghost Town – as fretful and forlorn a chart-topper as anyone has ever managed.

The next 12 months, needless to say, threaten to be every bit as awful. After a period of phony political war, the cuts will bite, redundancies in the public sector will pile up – and contrary to the view that hacking down spending will leave sunlit uplands for private industry, it too will inevitably feel the pinch. VAT goes up to 20% in January, and recovery will be made harder by rising inflation.

Unemployment will rise beyond 2.5 million. On 26 March, the TUC will stage a national anti-cuts demonstration – which, what with the Unite leader Len McCluskey talking about a “broad strike movement” and students vowing to keep up the noise, will just be one of countless protests and face-offs. Last year, senior police officers were talking about a likely “summer of rage”; this time, it may actually happen.

Which brings us to the coalition, and the prospect of more pain for the Lib Dems. In terms of legislation, there will probably be nothing as seismic as the tuition fees debacle – though a looming review of anti-terrorism measures will jangle their nerves, and in the wake of recent uncertainty about child detention, the coalition’s reputation on civil liberties could be further eroded.

UK political heat

Their true season of nightmares, however, will be the early summer. May brings elections for 279 English councils, and both the Welsh assembly and Scottish parliament – as well as the most likely date for the referendum on electoral reform, whereby the archaic first post the post system could be replaced with the much fairer and sexier alternative vote.

Unless some miracle comes to pass, they will be blitzed in the former, and few people predict success in the latter. At that point, plenty of Lib Dems will surely wonder what on earth their leadership is up to, and all hell could break loose. Westminster insiders are already whispering about the idea of the more clued-up Chris Huhne replacing Nick Clegg, something that may be worth a bet.

Not that we should neglect tensions on the Tory side, either. The travails of the back end of the coalition horse have rather obscured how maddened the Conservative right is getting – on Europe, Ken Clarke’s liberal line on crime and punishment (which even Theresa May has been sounding off about), and Cameron’s general cosiness with Clegg et al. Already, Labour is putting out feelers to the Tory hardcore, with a view to maximising anti-government numbers in the Commons, and making life for Cameron as difficult as possible – which, in turn, will increase his ardour for his new Lib Dem friends.

Ed Miliband’s year begins with a speech at the Fabian Society’s annual conference, which will doubtless be cracked up as yet another “make or break” occasion. He – and his party – have no end of challenges: to finally come up with a pithy and credible line on the cuts, stiffen the spines of a shadow cabinet still wondering what happened last May, and come up with the clear political definition that has so far eluded them.

He will campaign for a “yes” vote on AV, though how he might escape the odour of defeat is a very interesting question. As with all Labour leaders in times of unrest and anger, he will also be faced with an obvious enough conundrum: as tempers fray on the streets, whither the parliamentary road to socialism?

Chilly world climate

Abroad, there are no end of anxious rumblings. Tensions between China and America will crackle on, and burst into the headlines anew when President Hu Jintao visits the US in January. Iran’s nuclear programme – and the nightmarish prospect of an Israeli strike – will refuse to go away. Things will probably be febrile in Cuba and North Korea. And we should nervously watch Sudan: 9 January sees a referendum on whether the southern half of the country should secede.

A former vice-president recently said this: “Next year Sudan is going to break apart. The question is will it divide peacefully like the Czech and Slovak republics or will it follow the example of Yugoslavia? Only time will tell.”

Just as worryingly, the same applies to Sarah Palin’s plans to run for president — a prospect that, should it come to pass, should be a boon for the private space travel industry.

Still, just to cheer the world up, Prince William and Kate Middleton will be getting hitched, Sweden will host the 22nd World Scout Jamboree, and Coldplay will return with their fifth album – presumably full of the usual assurances that we should hold on, and await a better day. They are rumoured to be headlining Glastonbury, possibly in the company of the equally irksome U2. Really, what joy.

My advice? Even if the snow stops, stock up on supplies and brick yourself in.

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Where is the protest music for 2010?

Tuesday, December 14th, 2010

Music and protest have always gone hand in hand. But, as Britain’s youth get militant, is anyone giving voice to their anger? John Harris meets the one man rising to the challenge

The last few months have proved one thing beyond doubt: that British teens and twentysomethings are far from apolitical. Some questions do, however, linger: as students go on the march and hostility to the cuts spreads, where are the musical voices channelling this new mood? If past generations of protestors were assisted by your Dylans, Strummers and Braggs, might they have any contemporary equivalents?

Early last month, I wrote a piece for the Guardian bemoaning the lack of musical protest, and appealing for clues about anyone who might fill the gap. Messages from possible candidates duly began arriving. Many were of a certain age, and had seemingly cut their teeth in the far-off days when every leftfield musician had to have a song about Margaret Thatcher – but one email stuck out. It drew my attention to a young band calling themselves the Agitator, fronted by 24-year-old Derek Meins.

Meins and his two compadres, who are both drummers and co-vocalists, make music that undoubtedly chimes with the moment: fantastically impassioned stuff, full of a scattershot kind of dissent. Back in May, they released an admirably prescient first single entitled Let’s Get Marching; it’s now been followed by a glimpse of life in hard times called Give Me All That You Got. By way of proof that they are on to something, they lately performed at a run of protests – most notably, doing what Meins thinks may be the best gig of the Agitator’s brief career, in front of the students involved in a recent occupation of University College, London.

Meins’s songs draw on soul, gospel, the early spirit of hip-hop, and the kind of work-songs captured in pre-war field recordings; and to his credit, by way of separating himself from the herd, he refuses to use guitars. His model is “three voices and two drummers”, and he has resolved to stick to it. As his press bumf puts it, the Agitator’s aim is simple enough: “A new kind of music, nothing more than banging, stamping, clapping and voices . . . something anyone could do anywhere – on a march, at a protest, on the barricades.”

I meet Meins, up for the day from Brighton, in an old-school pub in west London. He’s pristinely dressed, articulate, in possession of an admirably clear agenda – and an unlikely back story. Meins is a native of Berwick-upon-Tweed, from a working-class household (his dad is a farm labourer, his mum a nurse) where politics was not often discussed. At the age of 15, he became a full-time musician, leading an indie quartet called Eastern Lane, who signed with Rough Trade, and were audibly fond of the Fall. “We had no absolutely no idea what we were doing,” he says. They managed two albums before calling it quits, whereupon Meins dabbled in poetry, short stories and playwriting, releasing a barely noticed solo album, The Famous Poet Derek Meins.

His epiphany, he tells me, came courtesy of the financial crash, which caused his sudden immersion in stuff he had spent his life avoiding. “It was a coming of age thing, really,” he says. “Moving away from my family and actually fending for myself – it was maybe like what happens to people when they go to university. I was becoming more socially aware, reading newspapers with more interest, and reading different sorts of literature.” He mentions George Orwell, Noam Chomsky, and the Scottish writer and polemicist James Kelman. “The whole thing was almost an awakening for me: ‘Oh my God, I’ve just spent the last 20 years not really thinking about anything apart from my own little bubble.’”

At the same time, he immersed himself in music he had barely experienced before, and reached a pointed conclusion about what most of his contemporaries were doing. “It seemed like more and more music was focusing on escaping from things,” he says. Although he won’t name names, the problem apparently lies in both “everything on daytime Radio 1″ and “anything you’d hear if you went round venues in London”. By contrast, he heard a world of possibility in the work of such hip-hop pioneers as KRS-One and Public Enemy. His vision of what to do next began to cohere.

The “no guitars” rule is, he says, non-negotiable. “We live in such remarkable times at the minute. To go hand-in-hand with that, you need to make music that’s as radical as what you’re saying. If you’ve got four guys standing there with guitars, it just draws it back into this massive landfill of people, just changing tiny little bits of something that people have been doing for 50 years.”

Politically, Meins seems to be a work in progress. So far, his lyrics are a matter of exhortations and statements of intent (”It’s a good day for a change of pace/ Stare at your problems straight in the face,” goes a not untypical piece called Get Ready) rather than finger-pointing specifics. He says he knows he’s not on the right, but bristles slightly when I’m trying to divine his feelings about the left, explaining that both the record of the last government and the simplistic pieties of revolutionary sects rather put him off the label. That said, the fact that his artwork draws on old-school socialist poster art serves notice of roughly where he’s coming from, as do his broadbrush critiques of where the country is headed.

“We’re stuck in the middle of something that people are finally getting really het up about,” he says. “And that’s amazing. But the worst is still to come. As far I can see, everything’s been kind of subsidised over the last couple of years. Now there isn’t the money to do that, so the people at the bottom are going to suffer even more.”

Not the Christmas No 1

The critique may not be sophisticated, but it doesn’t have to be: in keeping with his primary-coloured aesthetic, the Agitator’s next single will simply be called No!. It will be accompanied by a campaign with the same theme; put simply, his underlying conviction is that, in times so brimming with urgency, the boldest messages are best.

Like any politically motivated musician who aims higher than busking, Meins is supported by a small-scale machine that, from a purist viewpoint, might threaten to endanger his integrity, and give off the odour of radical chic. The Agitator’s manager is David Balfe, the former co-chief of Food, Blur’s old record label; inevitably, their non-musical activities receive PR assistance.

Asked the same questions that have always dogged politically motivated musicians, Meins gives time-honoured answers. Doesn’t he worry that the record industry’s customary chicanery will cheapen his art? He answers in the same terms as Joe Strummer circa 1976: “It would cheapen it if this wasn’t something I believed in. I’d be making this music anyway, whether or not it was being marketed. But I can’t see anything bad that can come from it being on a bigger stage than, say, playing in front of 50 people in a pub.”

An Agitator album will appear in spring; in the meantime, Meins tells me he has spent the last couple of days emailing the organisers of student occupations: “We’re going to see if we can do a little tour of them.” So what’s the aim? To spark debate, yes – but what of commercial success? “I don’t think there’s any chance of me having a No 1,” he says. “I don’t even want it.” What he says next amounts to the most concise of mission statements. “I want to make music that has a valid point.”

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