Taking time out from hanging with Bono and advising Central Asian dictators on how best to spin repression and executions, His Blairness has condescended to return to British politics to tell us things. And there are two things on his mind: Brexit and the election result. To save you the trouble, I've read his essay so you don't have to. Boiling his argument down to its constituent parts, the first is the usual Brexit is bad and is a massive distraction from more pressing problems. Well, there's no disagreement here. Brexit is bad, and one cannot deny that third country status outside of the single market and the customs union is going to cause major problems. That said, we shouldn't just accept this situation. It's the job of political leaders to act as educators and set forth a number of Brexit options, which could include an invitation for the EU to reform as a price of keeping our membership. According to some unspecified chats he's had with the movers and the shakers, they want us to stay and are even willing to compromise on free movement. Oh really? Colour me sceptical. Some of us can remember the debacle of Dave's negotiations with the EU early in 2016. He was then told repeatedly the "four freedoms" of the EU - the frictionless movement of goods, services, capital and people - are indivisible, and there is no budging on this. Over a year on and the answer is still the same. Managerially it might make sense for the EU27 to fudge it, but politically it's an absolute no. Nothing would stir up far right populism more than Britain opting out of free movement of labour but retaining the benefits of everything else. So excuse my French when I say Blair is talking out his backside. The other problem is intractable nature of Brexit. Staying in the EU is not and cannot be on the table, regardless of whether it reforms or not unless there is a democratic vote to undo the referendum. Do we need reminding that setting aside a decision whose legitimacy is accepted by the vast majority is a really stupid and dangerous thing to do? As Blair notes, there is no political groundswell for revisiting the decision, and so we're stuck. Blair can rail against this along with the other nostalgics who refuse to accept the result, but that's what we've got to deal with. Again, while it makes economic sense to remain party to as many EU institutions and agreements as possible, in the end both the Tories and Labour have eyes on the politics. For the Tories, it's about protecting the interests they've always protected and trying not to plunge themselves further into ruination. That also means not leaving openings to their right again. Labour, as outside the negotiating process, also has a very difficult line to tread. According to YouGovcontra Blair, reacting against Brexit was not a self-reported reason for voting Labour (while guarding it was the main reason respondents gave for voting Tory), so the claims remainers are going to dump the party when they find out it is committed to seeing Brexit through is bunk. But it must be careful - being honest that Brexit is going to hurt and that only Labour can fix the messes and divisions the Tories have left is a start, but it much stretch every sinew to ensure the costs of Brexit are not borne by our people. An extremely difficult task in the best of times (you try managing a capitalist economy in the interests of the many), but one that is existential for Labour as it adjusts to the new class relationships of the 21st century. Get it wrong then Labour will get consigned to the history books. Hopeless on the politics of Brexit, I wasn't holding out much for his analysis of the election result. Naturally, there was no reflection on why he called it wrong, but that's par the course - two years on his remaining friends in the Labour Party still haven't asked the key questions about Corbynism, let alone arrived at any answers about why it brushed them aside and won millions of new votes. That in mind, Blair is forced to suppress the Corbyn factor and talk up the rubbish Tory campaign. Undeniably it played its part, but if negativity toward Theresa May was the driving factor that would not explain the dramatic uplift in Jeremy Corbyn's personal ratings. Indeed, according to the YouGov data above anti-Tory/anti-May sentiment combined fell well short of the main driver of Labour support, which was the manifesto. Jeremy as a positive reason to vote Labour wasn't far behind either. Compare this to Tory voters, in which anti-Labour and anti-Jez motivations (combined) are way out in front. This isn't surprising considering how the Tories are dependent on fear and loathing to cohere their vote. For Blair's project however, it must simply ignore the evidence, and in this case it means passing over the appeal of Corbynism and pretending it's nothing more than "unreconstructed hard left economics" that cannot "answer the call of the future". Au contraire, the chord it struck for millions of people across the occupational range just goes to show they were the most modern politics on offer. Those for whom Blair is "the master", he does offer some hope. "People will default to populism when a radical centre is not on offer; where it is, they will vote it in, as Macron has shown", he argues. Ah yes, Emmanuel Macron, the absurd "Jupiterian" (neo)liberal hero of France and his "complex thoughts". Like Blair's analysis of the British election, this observation requires overlooking a lot of things. Like the collapse of the Socialist Party for adopting the sort of politics Blair pursued in office (and Macron has promised more of), the collapse of the centre right that allowed him to get through by default to run off against Marine Le Pen, and the historically low turn out at last month's parliamentary elections (48% and 43% in rounds one and two, respectively). Blair might think Macron represents a return to the centre, but it's the last gasp of a knackered politics. One hopes a turn to the left might come as per Britain, but politics is unlikely to be straitjacketed by cosy liberalism for long. All that said, why bother paying attention to what Blair has to say? Believe me, I'd rather not have to but there are two very good reasons why we should. The first is because he gets wall-to-wall coverage in the media. It behoves us to take him seriously as an object of criticism just as so many of them take him seriously as an object of emulation. I recall his unhelpful intervention on Brexit during the Stoke-on-Trent Central by-election campaign and how much trouble it caused on the doorstep. The second point is he condenses the views of decaying liberalism. He acknowledges politics have changed, but he clings on to the same old same old. He offers up the centre ground as the source of solutions and, bizarrely, as the agent for change ("The space for the centre may seem smaller; but the need for it is ever bigger"). Such dogmatic insistence on a force that never existed is flatly delusional. Blair also talks of problems, but seems to think a bit of managerialism here and there's going to sort things out. From his point of view and according to his own words, it appears the more things change the more they stay the same. Imperious in his arrogance yet ignorant of his obsolescence, Blair's intervention epitomises the global establishment he represents. He may have been the future once, but increasingly socialism is the future now.
Here we go again. Theresa May's announcement of an inquiry into the abuse of parliamentary candidates came a day before racist toff Rhodri Colwyn Philipps got sent down for Facebook threats against Gina Miller. What with the proximity to the anniversary of Jo Cox's murder and the declaration of war by, I'm not making this up, the Daily Mail against "hard left bullies", we've reached another of these crescendos where comment on internet abuse is glutting the web. What does and doesn't constitute abuse? There is a fine line between abuse and rudeness, but it exists nevertheless. Straight up abuse looks like this. It's the crap that Diane Abbott has put up with for three decades, it's the rape threats, the death threats, the anti-semitism and racism. It is designed to denigrate, humiliate and, in some cases, put people in fear of their lives and mental well-being. It is an order different from the usual rudeness one finds in the cut and thrust of politics. Abuse is not losing your rag in a discussion, getting angry at a figure of authority, or bluntly and sarcastically stating the idiocies of an opponent's position. A simple "that's bullshit" is not abuse, it's rudeness and rudeness serves the politics, albeit occasionally counter-productively. Abuse however is antithetical to politics, it's linguistic violence for its own sake. You know that already. Nevertheless, while all abuse should be condemned and discouraged not all abuse is created equal. Or, rather, abuse comes from different directions and depending on its point of origin, reflect certain positions that exist in the great out there. The job of a left wing social media strategy is to understand and explain in order to think about effective means of tackling it. Only those carrying a pall of bad faith or a small imagination assimilate this to excusing abuse. Secondly, the targets of abuse matter. It's public figures who attract the lion share of vitriol and there are no prizes for noting women, ethnic minorities, and LGBT folks cop the heaviest loads of flak. That in itself says something. The basic distinction I want to make is between abuse from below and abuse from above. That doesn't imply the inchoate insults flung from the many at the few is progressive or some such nonsense, but it does have a distinctive character. Such abuse usually stems from a position of relative powerlessness. By this, we're talking the strange frustrations Western cultures weave about our social being. How we are made as individuals sees us flattered, talked up, seduced and, at least officially, empowered to make choices about our lives. Regardless of where you stand in the pecking order, that message is constantly reinforced by public institutions, work, and popular culture. To get on you have to adapt to these rules or you fail. And herein lies the problem. We are all set up to fail. A sense of lack, of something missing is fundamental to the conditions of life, and that's because while we are inculcated and hailed as authors of our own destinies we're very clearly not. The promises of individuality and freedom ring hollow in the age of anxiety, where the good life fills our minds from infancy and yet is put out of reach by limited opportunities, crap and insecure jobs, sliding living standards, a dearth of affordable housing, and the persistent, nagging sense everything is changing and you're having a hard time holding on. A sense of trying to take back control is sublimated into hundreds of different pursuits, including voting for Brexit, and for a small subset of people trolling and abusing public figures is one way of getting a purchase. Abuse offers a simulation, a simulacra of mattering, of being someone who counts - especially if the target responds or reacts. The unnoticed is suddenly noticed, even if they're hiding behind an anonymous handle and all they're doing is shitposting, success in getting a rise is still success. There are two further subdivisions that can be made here. The first stems from a nihilist narcissism, of finding exhilaration and affirmation in abuse, a catharsis in attacking public figures, particularly if they're women, black, or gay. For whatever reason, their anxieties associates with scapegoats and bigotry, and these terms are mobilised to harass and shut down particular personifications of trends they deem unacceptable. Don't like black people and think they have no place in public life? Attack Diane Abbott. Think gay people have too much visibility and shouldn't be accepted? Owen Jones is the journo to go for. Jealous/threatened by women? So many female MPs, journos, and celebs to choose from. The second comes from anger. Yes, the nihilists are angry, but the key difference here is the former are happy/fatalistic enough to carry on as they are. The latter group are moving, and they're moving towards politics and in the direction of active engagement. For this group, abuse is a crutch, an inarticulate substitute for the feelings they cannot put into language. A fusion of anger, resentment and frustration - for whatever reason, and for whatever politics - is pushing them along and for some a phase of abuse is just that, a moment on the way to developing a political consciousness of some description. The danger is that abuse never entirely goes away and they might feel it entirely reasonable (and justified) to conjure up such terms and tones later on, that abuse is a legitimate weapon. Though that poses more for left, which is a politics about building anew, versus the right, a politics set on preserving the old. From the bottom, the abuse flies in and swarms over their targets. Except for a rare few cases, it is almost entirely self-activating. There is no coordinating intelligence malevolently targeting certain people and unleashing the hounds, but frequencies of abuse go up and down depending on targets' media presence and, more generally, what's happening in the news. Again, should we be shocked David Lammy has received abuse and death threats for his Grenfell fire campaigning work? We should be, but we're not. Abuse on social media is almost banal. Then there is abuse from above, which is an entirely different kettle of fish. Again, we find ourselves looking at two different sorts that differ in form but accomplish the same thing, more or less. Our friends The Daily Mail and the tabloid press have done more than anyone to poison politics in this country. They demonise ethnicities, nationalities, they pruriently ogle semi-naked teenagers while attacking (liberal and left wing) women for defying their twisted conventions on what being a woman is supposed to be, and they properly monster fleeting or long-running hate figures. Even 17-year-olds are fair game. This abuse is read every day by millions of people and gives succour to the nihilists. Every time they attack Diane Abbott, that marks open season. Every feeble expose of "hard left" activists stirs up and mobilises its mob. The consequence of all this fear mongering and hate goes beyond providing an ideology bank loaning out bigotry for social media abuse, it helps cohere the base of the Conservative vote. It may be in long-term decline, but it cannot be dismissed. The other consequence, of course, is those receiving the orchestrated abuse have to waste time erecting defences and dealing with it. The second is the next rung down, that is the minions of established politics and the media. While mostly not as overtly foul as a Paul Dacre op-ed, politicians and pundits have used their platforms not just to harass and bully, but also direct abuse coming up from below as well. They may have public spats with other names fairly frequently, and that usually pulls a train of abusers behind them, but they are likely to assist the demonisation of whole groups of people and some times highlight an ordinary Twitter user for a going over. They effectively try and make use of asymmetry, of the media power they find expressed in their following, to drive normal people out and disrupt their opponents. As established figures they tend to lean toward the right and cynically manipulate their followers, and therefore abuse, to keep them going. This is especially important as professional commentary is in crisis, and not just because the general election completely confounded their expectations. It's because in a world where everyone can be a commentator, no one can be a commentator. Social media menaces them and their old media bosses with existential threat, and at an instinctive level they know it. These distinctions are analytical. One should not confuse the things of logic with the logic of things, and they dovetail and overlap. But they offer ways in to thinking about where abuse comes from, why people do it, and what ultimately can be done about it. Abuse therefore is a political question and demands a political, not a technical response.
Theresa May fails at politics. What some of us knew a few months ago is now common currency, thanks to the worst campaign in modern times and plunging the Tories into a hole so big they haven't even found the sides yet. And she carries on blundering along. Cosying up to the man you derided as useless and a terrorist sympathiser is a terrible look. With hope it will shake loose softer Tory voters, versus those clinging on because Labour's social democratic programme is a prelude to fully expropriated propertyless communism. Luckily for Theresa May, even the most desperate political position has some options. Though surely the one saying 'speedy, early retirement' must look more beguiling as the days pass. Still, there is an opportunity to take back some ground and, unwittingly, it's our friends Chuka Umunna and Yvette Cooper showing how this is possible. For Chuka, he's finally found a leadership role by palling with Anna Soubry and sundry others in their new All-Party Parliamentary Group on EU Relations. After his silly and pointless rebel amendment on single market membership, the latest ruse sees an attempted usurpation of Keir Stamer to position himself as Labour's leading voice on Brexit. On this, it's likely he can count on most of the Labour MPs who backed him previously, though the recent talk of deselection could temper some honourable members' enthusiasm for the single market. And then there's Yvette's speech at the Fabians at the weekend where, you may recall she called for more cross-party collaboration on Brexit. She didn't say much except that Labour input would be crucial if Britain is to get a good deal. As I have previously said, this is potentially catastrophic. Having Labour joining with the Tories in taking Britain out of the EU, and being complicit in the baleful economic consequences sure to follow is suicidal. That doesn't mean Labour should be aloof from the negotiations, but its job is to scrutinise the government and use Parliament to knock the sharp edges off their haphazard and shortsighted negotiating strategy. Labour has to be seen to stand up to protect the interests of our people, and in 2022 or whenever go to the country with a plan for clearing up after Brexit and reforging these islands anew. You can almost hear the "country first, not party!" crowd squealing, as if politics is just about grubbing for votes. Labour is undergoing a process of recomposition that has not only saved the party, but can change politics here for the better permanently and give impetus to movements of the new socialism elsewhere. The fate of this movement, this coming into political consciousness of millions of people is, quite frankly, more important than Brexit. Putting Labour at the negotiating table could risk an unraveling of this still-tentative and fragile process and undo everything that has been done. That is going to suit some, of course, but their inheritance would be a desiccated husk, a fate similar to the last two years of Scottish Labour but this time with no hope of coming back. Nevertheless, the willingness of our leading would-be leaders to work across the House on something more than an episodic basis offers the Tories an olive branch. Desperation has forced May to make an offer to Labour and the other parties, but just as jumping feet first into Brexit negotiations is not in our interest, sharing a stinking wallow adjacent to the Tories absolutely suits them. And, if things get tricky as the negotiations proceed, those around May in possession of sufficient low cunning know if a Brexit "crisis" plus a soft "unity" offer was made over Jeremy Corbyn's head to the Chukas, the Yvettes, and/or their supporters, they might find some willing takers, particularly among the anti-Corbyn die-hards who keep threatening retirement and by-elections. What would have been a preposterous suggestion immediately after the election is now a possible trick May's beleaguered team might think has legs, thanks mainly to two of the PLP's bestest and brightest.
We've talked about it a little bit recently and how immaterial labour is becoming increasingly important, but how should it be understood? In their Multitude, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri define two forms:
The first form refers to labour that is primarily intellectual or linguistic, such as problem solving, symbolic and analytical tasks, and linguistic expressions. This kind of immaterial labour produces ideas, symbols, codes, texts, linguistic figures, images and other such products. We call the other principle form of immaterial labour "affective labour". Unlike emotions, which are mental phenomena, affects refer equally to body and mind. In fact, affects, such as joy and sadness, reveal the present state of life in the entire organism, expressing a certain state of the body along with a certain mode of thinking. Affective labour, then, is labour that produces or manipulates affects such as a feeling of ease, well-being, satisfaction, excitement, or passion. One can recognise affective labour, for example, in the work of legal assistants, flight attendants, and fast food workers (service with a smile). One indication of the rising importance of affective labour, at least in the dominant countries, is the tendency for employers to highlight education, attitude, character and "prosocial" behaviour as the primary skills employees need.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri 2004 Multitude Penguin, p.108. Of course, there is no hard and fast separation between the two. As they argue, the drawing on the intellect in a creative process usually involves mobilising affect as well, and vice versa. We'll be returning to this in the future, so just parking up the quote for now.
That's a bit embarrassing. There you are, the personnel are appointed and your team is ready to go. And then the Labour leader spoils it by defying expectations, winning extra seats, throwing the Tories into their most wretched state for 20 years and surges ahead with poll leads last seen since before the Iraq War. What can you do? If you are Chuka Umunna, you can stir the pot to remind the world (and yourself) that you're still a player. Or you can proceed as if nothing happened and turn your campaign-that-never-was into a profile raising exercise. Entirely consistent with the long game the old Brownite right are playing, this is where Yvette Cooper is going: a Fabian speech here, a Pride photo opp there, and no doubt a good clutch of fringes in Brighton this September. About that Fabian speech, this got trailed in the week as Yvette's "alternative vision". Of what and in relation to whom wasn't entirely clear. Our party as a distinctive alternative to the Tories? Well, we already have that and folks are warming considerably to the new (small n) Labour. As something different to the policy agenda and vision Jeremy Corbyn is proposing? Or a different politics? Whatever that means. In the end, the speech was, well, underwhelming. There was the usual plea for nicer politics which, while well meaning, was hampered by the assumption underpinning it: that the abuse and violent language which see flitting across social media is a matter of bad manners and rude people. If only. We are where we are because politics is in flux and there are a lot of interests at stake. For example, let's remind ourselves of the hysterical and childish behaviour of certain Labour MPs since Jeremy assumed the leadership. I can understand why they felt threatened by a leader who doesn't share their views, has a record of wanting to see the party democratised and the PLP's privileges curbed, and turned the party into the largest in Western Europe on the basis of left wing politics. They turned to the weapons they had to hand - the platform afforded by public office, helpful friends in the media who would relay their attacks - to defend their position. Not excusable and, in some cases, downright scabby. But understandable. Naturally, such an empathetic understanding is absent from Yvette's Bill and Ted approach to political discourse. No thoughts on why people might state their politics in crude and abusive tones. No attempt to recognise they might have grievances, real or imagined, that have to be addressed. It was as apolitical as they come and would barely have made a ripple in the Sally Army's Young Soldier. What else was in there? She identified three things Labour needs to do:
• First the task of holding the new voters we inspired, whilst reaching out beyond them to others we lost – and staying a broad based party to do it • Second to chart a course for a progressive Brexit – the most important challenge facing our country over the next two years that will scar us for years to come if we let the Tories get it wrong • Third to overcome the new and growing divide in Britain between city and town
Looking at each in turn, the first is so obvious that its inclusion, unless you have something interesting to say on it, is just filler. Indeed, Yvette said nothing and offered nothing that may help accomplish this. We instead get some guff on standing together as a party and how wonderful it is when we do things collectively. On Brexit, she floated the view that we should try for a cross-party commission so the Tories don't screw it up and get ourselves a good deal. I don't personally think a de facto national coalition on Brexit is something worthwhile for the party nor the interests it represents. Because yes, getting in bed to deliver a Brexit that's going to impoverish our people will do wonders in keeping our electoral coalition (point one, remember) together. Being independent of the process but working with certain Tories who are not totally kamikaze to extract concessions from the government re: negotiating lines seems the most sensible course for Labour at this juncture. And lastly, Labour's got to get towns - the route to a majority goes on a circuitous journey through them. Yes, it is true, we do. If only Labour had a programme that was about rebuilding public services and using the state to stimulate industry so towns would benefit. Yvette's speech was less a vision and more a case of stating the obvious. Nevertheless, just as I thanked Chuka t'other day for reminding us about the merry band of irreconcilables latching onto Brexit, Yvette too has rendered a useful service. She has reminded us that her section of the party have no ideas, no clue, and no plan to respond to the situation we find ourselves in. A technocratic fix for Brexit that could sink the party? No thanks. A lecture on the importance of party unity? A missive best addressed to the people she sits with on the backbenches. And the belated remembrance of towns is a studied misreading, if not wilful ignorance, of the kind of policy package Labour is offering. Yes Yvette's was a flaccid and empty speech littered with banalities and self-evident points. If she really is the brightest mind of the PLP right, if this is the best they can do then they're in a far worse state than anyone suspected.
With contrived outrage howling about my ears, that can only mean one thing: someone has gone and suggested the Labour Party is in need of added democracy. Specifically, how the party selects and reselects its candidates at election time. As you have no doubt seen, the touchpaper was the election of a Corbyn-supporting majority to officer posts in Liverpool Wavetree, the constituency party of the Corbyn-critical Luciana Berger. As Luciana previously voted to bomb Syria and was seen as a participant in the attempted coup last Summer, without diplomatic niceties the new chair stated that she would be held to account for her actions. After all, that's what happens in a democracy, yes? Unfortunately, what's good for the goose isn't good for the gander. Conor Pope of the much-diminished Progress looked to his inner Leadsom and said Luciana took her baby campaigning with her, implying that being a young mum nullifies the need for basic accountability. Jess Phillips did a Jess Phillips and compared the new officers to perpetrators of domestic violence, and Labour Uncut doyen Rob Marchant was unseemly keen to suggest this was further evidence of anti-semitic behaviour. When the Labour right go for smears and utterly inappropriate comments, you know they haven't a political leg to stand on. Unfortunately, the party has learned they were happy to tug on any old rope if it meant strangling the leader. And despite the hard facts of hard votes, an increased number of MPs and now, according to YouGov, an eight-point lead in the polls, some refuse to reconcile themselves to the new realities of politics. I can understand why. Everything they know about politics has proven itself wrong, the policies they warned would bring calamity have furnished the party with success, Jeremy Corbyn turned out to be an asset, much to their chagrin, and the expectations they place on the membership - to deliver the leaflets, shut up and do as they're told - is not the station a huge number of recently politicised people are prepared to accept. Hence selection, reselection, deselection are touchy subjects that condense their anxieties. Building relationships with large numbers of people are difficult, especially when you've made your name rubbishing those of supposed colleagues. You have no idea of who's influential and who isn't, whether there are people organising against you or not. Also the job you have is one where you are accustomed to doing as you please with barely any comeback. Having to account for your actions is an alien concept for a number of MPs who think they're the shit when all they are is fortunate. And every now and then, there's no harm in reminding that they cannot use the office the party gifted them to carry on as they please. Everyone else has a job appraisal, and so should they. Ah, but doesn't the trigger ballot system work perfectly well - where party units decide by simple majority whether a CLP with a sitting MP should proceed with reselection? No, they don't. Branch Labour Parties and affiliated societies and unions can be bureaucratically manipulated. What might be decided by 30 members in one branch has as equal weighting as six or seven in the other, where unions and societies aren't asked but rather the choice is nodded through by an official. Nothing better illustrates this by the persistence of self-seeking and useless MPs. Do you think, for example, the unlamented Simon Danczuk got through reselection by virtue of personal popularity? But, goes the argument, if an open selection process takes place as a matter of course isn't that a recipe for division and civil war? Only if you regard democracy as inherently problematic. Part of the reason why the party lost its way and got hollowed out wasn't just because Blair undermined its constituency and, ironically, the traditional support for the Labour right in the party, but because MPs were insulated from the members and pressures from their constituents. A good MP would listen and pay heed anyway, but plenty do not. Open selections means they cannot do this any more. As the members under such a system are, rightly, sovereign, a lot of what they bring to the table, which is a political understanding informed by a life experience much closer to everyday life as lived by the majority of people than the reality filters around the Parliamentary estate, should be listened to and acted on. And, well, if the members don't like the cut of your jib an MP has the advantage of incumbency to organise and recruit. If a MP is doing a good job, they should have no problem convincing constituents to sign up. No system is perfect, no system can be perfect. Yet in politics, socialists can apply a simple test. From the point of view of the political development of party members, of encouraging people to join the party, and getting the wider electorate to see Labour as theirs, to feel a real connection and ownership of what the party could become, is bureaucratic manipulation as per the existing system appropriate? Or giving members the right to determine at every election who the members should be campaigning for? It's so simple that this is even in contention shows how much work the democratic remaking of Labour has to do.
Last week there was a minor kerfuffle in the press and social media about a photography book. This doesn't happen very often because, well, in the age of Instagram and selfies who needs someone else's photos to make your coffee table look sharp? Beats me, but a market there remains nonetheless. What I See is, well, a compilation of photos by Brooklyn Beckham of what he, um, sees. Photos of family, photos of dinner, photos of friends, photos of holidays, it's all entirely unremarkable and what you'd expect any budding 18 year old photographer to try their hand at. Then why the interest? In case you hadn't noticed nor paid attention, our Brooklyn is David and Victoria's lad, the heir to the empire and, as such, a product of Brand Beckham. Therefore whatever he decides to do can only but generate interest. Here, I'm not interested in that per se, rather what is interesting is the interest and, ultimately, what this says about the reproduction of the ruling class in the 21st century. Celebrity offspring can usually be found trying to cut singles of their own, getting into acting, or just providing the paps with Sidebar of Shame fodder, and so straight away Brooklyn has distinguished himself among his peers. However, as a person of interest decreed by his parentage, by dabbling with photography he is straight away positioned as an illegitimate outsider by the arbiters of art and taste in the field. After all, how many teenagers have a photography book to brag about? Therefore Brooklyn's celebrity capital has forced an entry into a field in which the requisite entry fee - years of work, networking, apprenticing, exhibiting - is entirely bypassed. For instance, arts editor for The I Alice Jones had a snarky look and Brooklyn's efforts that just about summed up the professional response to it. And yet there has proven no shortage of defenders, including no less a personage than the BBC's arts editor. It would be easy to agree with the esteemed Gompertz and others who would defend him. As his publicist puts it, "What I See is a book for teenagers, by a teenager, which gives Brooklyn's fans broader insight into his world seen through his unique and creative perspective." A case of misrecognition by the photography community, then? This is common enough. Remember when Fifty Shades of Grey was the big cultural event? Ridiculously, you had literary authors and critics weighing in to attack it for being a sloppily written dull slab of porn pulp instead of an exquisite work of literary erotica. As if it was ever conceived to be anything other than trashy sex with light BDSM and dodgy gender politics. A case of snobby gate-keeping here then? Perhaps not. In early 2016 Brooklyn was hired by Burberry to shoot its fragrance campaign. At the time, fashion photographer Chris Lloyd argued,
David and Victoria Beckham represent sheer willpower and graft. Especially her, she’s climbed that mountain all by herself. They represent hard work and then their 16-year-old year son comes along and it’s sheer nepotism. He hasn’t done it from hard work, which is counter-intuitive to what his parents represent.
Joe Gorrigan, another photographer said,
It infuriates me because I learned my trade and other photographers learn their trade but he’s not learning his trade. I can understand why they’re doing it, getting the younger generation interested in Burberry. It definitely annoys me. Names sell, don’t they?
They do indeed. Brooklyn represents a double threat. The first, of the traditional imposter muscling in on a field and flouting its conventions. Think the nouveaux riches getting marked down as vulgar upon their admittance into 19th century society, but could not be ignored because of the wealth they represented. The second, however, speaks of the anxiety gripping photography as a profession and as an art. The explosion of digital cameras and embedding them in smartphones threatens the field with devaluation, both in terms of status and the fees all but the most specialist photographers can command. Linked to this is the ubiquity of Photoshop and the filters that can be applied on Instagram. When everyone is a photographer, no one can be a photographer. Brooklyn therefore condenses the anxiety toward the outsider every field feels, and the fear of a deskilled future in which the techniques photographers take years to master are rendered obsolete. Who cares about lighting when the computer can sort it for you? There is something else these Beckham junior episodes sum up, and that's the visibility of ruling class reproduction. In 21st century capitalism, so much of what used to be hidden is now explicit. Most crucially of all, the hidden character of exploitation that was hidden behind the wage relation is coming into the open. To demonstrate, in most occupations the wage hides the real state of affairs. It appears to be a private contract between equals: in return for working x number of hours, you shall receive y amount of pay. As noted here recently,
Capital employs labour power to make commodities, be they material, like the laptop I'm writing this blog post on, or immaterial, like knowledge or a service. The worker, or proletarian, receives a wage or salary for their time doing whatever their employer asks of them - an experience, ultimately, not without serious consequences. However, from the point of view of the worker a great deal of time spent in the workplace is completely unnecessary. Say in a five day week, our worker produces £2,500 worth of commodities and receives £500/week in wages, the value of their labour power has been generated on day one. Effectively, for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday they're undertaking surplus labour. Labour, that is surplus to their requirements. When these commodities are sold, that extra value, surplus value, accrues to the employer. Some of it is advanced to cover the next round of wages. Other bits pay off loans, rent, etc. Some is put aside for reinvestment, and what is left is squirreled away as profit.
Basically put, workers in capitalist society are exploited because they are denied the full value of what they produce. They are compelled to sell their labour power or suffer the indignity of unemployment and the petty tyranny of the dole office. However, with the erosion of workers' rights, the weakness of the labour movement, and ongoing changes to class, we are seeing more gratuitous and overtly exploitative forms of wage labour become more common. Zero hours contracts renders naked the power differential between capital and (atomised) labour. Uber, Deliveroo, but bogus self-employment contractors like the poor sods who harass you on the high street can see the revenue their labour generates and how much of that is directly appropriated by the app/employer. And in both examples, their status renders them ineligible for most rights more "conventional" workers enjoy. As the exploitative relationships capital depend are starting to light up like Christmas trees, the coupon snipping class who live off it sees their reproduction strategies move into popular view. Like many celebrities, the Beckhams are simultaneously a concentration and accumulation of capital. Certainly not capitalists in the Scrooge (or Scrooge McDuck) mode, their business model is basically identical to that of the big sportswear multinationals Naomi Klein covered and critiqued in No Logo. She looked at how Nike, among others, divested themselves of the trappings of a clothing manufacturer and shrank itself down to a branding operation concentrating on product design, image, marketing, advertising. If you like the cognitive functions were retained and almost everything else was contracted out. Brand Beckham and other celebrities work entirely alike. Victoria designs a new range for her label, David lends his name to a new cologne. The messy business of production and distribution is taken care of while they reap the lion's share of the rewards. Therefore everything they and the A-list celebrity set do, each bit of publicity in traditional and social media enhances their celebrity capital which, in turn, supports their economic capital. And that, in turn, feeds their status to the point where they are intertwined and inseparable. To be a celebrity, to maintain one's capital means playing the celebrity game, and the cheapest, most convenient investment of keeping you visible is your Instagrams and your Twitters. The problem is that as you live your life out online, your relationships with the milieu in which you mix become transparent too. Usually what results are the preserve of the gossip sites and magazines, of who Calvin Harris is shacking up with, who Nicki Minaj is feuding with, you know it, you probably read it. Apart from this, however, you see how celebrities cross-promote one another and back each others' ventures through endorsements, or reach out to anoint someone else into their circle. This is pretty much what is happening with Brooklyn Beckham. He emerged into to world cradled by celebrity capital, and as part of the firm - whether consciously divined or not - it paved the way to his ambitions, whatever they may be. We know, everyone knows, not least Brooklyn himself, that he owes his position in the firmament entirely to this. The sorting of his Burberry job, the book, the celebs who drift in and out of his Instagram, the cognoscenti who defend his book, it's simply reinforcing the fact that talent plays second fiddle to who you know, and if you're part of a wealthy celebrity dynasty, people will want to know you. It has always been thus. Public schools, the traditional gentlemen's club, the salon, Society, these were the private spaces where the well heeled got together, gave out jobs for the boys, sorted marriages, went into business, and so on. Not everything among our heavily mediatised celebrity class is on display, but enough of it is. How they police their boundaries, how they relate to one another, how they reproduce themselves as members of the ruling class and induct new members into it is there for the world to see. And this presents a problem for them and their system, because this cannot be dissociated from the increasingly stark modes of exploitation capitalism increasingly depends on. When social mobility is locked, and when large numbers of young people are socialised into graduate jobs that simply do not exist in sufficient numbers, the spectacle of someone like a Brooklyn Beckham, effortlessly settling into an enviable line of work by virtue of who is is and not what he's capable of doing helps keep growing heap of frustration and grievance keep ticking over.
Relax, there isn't going to be a coalition or confidence and supply deal between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. That's if the LibDems have any sense. There has been some suggestion via The Times they may seek collaboration on an issue-by-issue basis, nothing else. Depending on the issue, in itself that is not an unprincipled stand to take. According to the article they might be interested in supporting Tory proposals over mental health funding and helping it achieve parity of esteem, for example. Depending what's on the table, so might Labour. As we have seen, setting Brexit aside, the forecast that May would try enacting the least controversial moments of her manifesto is proving correct. When you look into the abyss, they say the abyss looks into you, and that can wonderfully concentrate the mind. To avoid outright doom, May has the impossible task of re-detoxifying her party while swimming the radioactive waters of Brexit. Therefore avoiding the punitive, disastrous policies of which the Tories are fond are a priority. Or, at least, should be. The chancellor for one hasn't got the message from increasingly vocal ministers as he sticks by the public sector pay freeze, a bit of fiscal restraint not to have applied to him and other Honourable Members these last couple of years. And so, while May has traded in strong and stable for meek and mild, the Tories have public spats over a key plank of their policy platform rendering the one strategy capable of salvaging something redundant. Long may it continue. Returning to the matter to hand, there are two very good reasons why the LibDems are most unlikely to countenance anything other than episodic support: 1. The Membership. The promised revival did not materialise, but as a party and despite their below par election performance they're in good shape. At over 100,000 members it is not beyond the realm of possibility that they've knocked the Tories into fourth place, now coming behind Labour and the SNP. If an opportunity opens up, say a by-election in a LibDem/Tory marginal they have the bodies to throw at it. Richmond before Christmas shows this is possible. However, this growth in members was an outcome of remainia, the liberal version of stop-the-world-we-want-to-get-off. The party itself is committed to following through with Brexit, albeit with the caveat of an additional referendum on whatever deal is hammered out with the Commission. A formal lash up along 2010 coalition lines or a looser arrangement as per the DUP risks throwing away their Brexit dividend. 2. The voters. The LibDems are languishing in the polls, albeit back as the major of the minor parties. The question, their permanent question, is how to build up their strength again. Slippery opportunist he is, nevertheless Tim Farron, notwithstanding the 'I love gays, not just in a gay way' furore, is considered on the left of his party. He was able to ascend the lofty heights by sidestepping ministerial briefs in the coalition years and carving out a profile via the party presidency as the loyal internal opposition. Naturally, given the state the Labour Party was in from the period of Jeremy Corbyn winning the leadership to the eve of the general election campaign, he thought we were easy pickings. Unfortunately for them, they didn't even bother consulting the lessons of their 2015 massacre. Yes, plenty of LibDem voters switched to Labour but large numbers also went for the Tories too, particularly in their former redoubts in the South West. And again this time, Farron saw his majority almost completely wiped out by the Tories in Westmorland. Being, what, as @CatherineBuca calls them, Single Issue Brexit Bores (SIBBs) and making it the central plank of their election left them vulnerable vis a vis leave-minded Tory voters and naked with regard to social justice-minded Labour voters. Trying to copy Ruth Davidson's 'I want to be the effective opposition' schtick fell on stony ground because that swam against the anti-Tory stream. What they did was triangulate a bad result, despite picking up a net gain of four. A renewed deal would, therefore, lock them into this position of irrelevance. If they want to emerge from this they might want to start eyeing up soft Tory voters sticking with them because of Corbyn-is-a-Marxist nonsense, but it is only going to work if they keep the government at the end of a very long barge pole. The LibDems must also be careful about what issues they decide to support the Tories on. In recent days Uncle Vince has popped into the studios to defend tuition fees, though not as far as some idiots who think they're "progressive". I digress. If a coronation proceeds, which is looking likely, then who knows what foolishness he may inflict on the party. The LibDems lining up to defend tuition fees with the Tories would be a proper killer. Or for that matter seeking to defend anything regressive that Labour tries overturning through Opposition Days or Private Members' Bills. In all, the yellow party is in a pickle and cutting a deal with the Tories should surely keep them there. But backing them case-by-case is risky too, especially when they would do well to worry the government's flanks than act, for a second time, as their meat shield.
Turmoil begets turmoil. We in the Labour Party know a bit about that thanks to two years of factional bloodletting, but now the Tories are setting about demonstrating how it should be done. With the billion quid signed off to Northern Ireland for the DUP's grubby support, it seems every minister in earshot of a mic is letting it be known they're pressing for more cash for their departments. Pleasingly, where there is turmoil there is incompetence. Never in anything but bountiful supply among Tory politicians, it transpires that the Prime Minister was contriving a walk out of the Brexit negotiations this Autumn simply because it would play well at home. My tip to Theresa May is if she wants to affect the bulldog spirit, it's not a good idea to widely trail it beforehand. Yes, it's a ripe old mess alright and I'm loving every moment of it. If there's an opportunity to egg on and exacerbate divisions between Tories the Labour Party have to dive in with crowbars and clamps. However, the disaster area that is the government won't last forever, even if they're teetering atop a slippery slope. Paralysed at Westminster with nothing to do put pick over Brexit, gossip, and manoeuvre for eventual leadership bids, some are turning their eyes to the party's future - and so should we. One coming force was on the Andrew Marr sofa this morning talking about how the Tories have got to stop being the party of bad things, while she nodded away as Naomi Klein expounded her disaster capitalism thesis. Strange times. If you look over at Conservative Home there are a few ideas too. They range from the reasonable (The Tories have to get social media), the waffly (moar houses), the divisive (lift the public sector pay freeze for the poorest), and the batshit (unban smoking!). Damian Green, the PM's representative in the TV studios has other ideas. At a think tank talk yesterday, he argued the Tories needed to get down wiv da yoof, and his first stop was tuition fees. Darkly hinting that the government needs to ensure students are getting value for money, he noted that saddling 21 year olds with between £40K and £50K of debt probably isn't a good idea. It's a "huge issue", he conceded and floated the idea of reducing fees. And that was it. On top of flagging up house building plans and asking the assembled to have faith in the Tory industrial strategy to grow jobs for the young, that really was it. Green demonstrates that Green doesn't understand what's going on. He knows things have changed, but he doesn't know the hows and the whats. If he thinks raiding Labour's 2015 manifesto and making off with Ed Miliband's pledge to reduce fees by three grand a year will turn it around for the Tories, they are going to be left totally non-plussed. Obvious to all except Green it seems, fees don't affect most young people. Where they're concerned, seven years of government have abandoned most non-students to low waged jobs masquerading as apprenticeships and a social security system that actively discriminates against them on grounds they're too young to claim. For young people in general, student and non-student, they're increasingly fed up of a dog-eat-dog society in which they see reward and opportunity cluster around the already privileged, and they want it to change. Offering a wee discount and getting senior Tories to pose with Megaman from So Solid Crew is not going to get 18-24 year olds lining up for them. Is there anything they can do? Green also talks a little bit about entrepreneurialism and making the case for capitalism, but the problem is this "positive message" was backed by privatising essential infrastructure when Thatcher tried it, and by the grind of idiotic austerity when Dave and Osborne pushed their rebalancing agenda. Because of Tory short-sightedness and stupidity, it is entirely on them that capitalism has come to be associated in the popular imagination, especially among the young, with nepotism, inequality, injustice. Rather than put negatives next to them, they are celebrated by establishment figures. In so doing, they've done more to delegitimise the system they support than the sum total of the nation's sociology classes. Repackaging capitalism won't do seeing as class politics are changing. The only route they have to veer from the declinist road they're on is root and branch change. Rather than the sectional party of capital they have become, they must try and represent its interests-in-general. That's what their historic role is, after all. But that is not enough. To re-win popular consent, the Tories have to go from the decadent, dysfunctional bunch they are today and become a party merely interested in conserving. Instead of pitting people against one another, a new conservatism has to be about building, nurturing, developing, of being a steady pair of hands. Think the domestic record of Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats: unashamedly pro-capitalist but not reckless in terms of the interests of German capital and the politics of their country. It seems to me that in the shape of Heidi Allen and Ruth Davidson they have the politicians that could manage such a leadership, but the chance of the Tories finding their way to this destination is vanishingly tiny. And yet that is the hard road they must take to recovery. Until they do I hope you will join me in gleefully watching the chaos unfold.
