27th November 2021
Consider the following areas of policy: law and order, taking control of our borders, free trade, and so on.
All of them sensible, everyday areas of policy.
Now take each of those phrases, and do a little magic: capitalise them, and add speech marks and an exclamation mark.
You now have: ‘Law and Order!‘, ‘Taking Control of our Borders!’, ‘Free Trade!’, and so on.
This blog has previously averred at the distinction – indeed discrepancy – between law and order and ‘Law and Order!’: that those promoting the slogan do so at the expense of law and order in practice.
And this week this blog also set out why a strident and unilateral approach of ‘Taking Back Control’ is the opposite of a practical and effective border policy.
As for ‘Free Trade!’ the reality of Brexit is that it is perhaps the biggest single protectionist measure in modern British history, even though Breixters profess that they believe in free trade.
There is a fundamental dislocation of political language and policy substance.
But it is one thing to observe and note these tensions – contradictions – but it is another to know what to do about them.
And it is important that this dislocation is fixed, for it is difficult to see how we can have any sensible politics and policies when there is a basic dysfunction in our political discourse.
Maybe there is no solution.
Perhaps this fracture can never heal, and all the opponents of the current government can do is adopt a similarly cynical approach to language and policy.
If there is a solution then it no doubt has to be one which addresses the demand for (or at least tolerance of) meaningless politics by voters and the supply of meaningless politics by those in politics and the media.
One can hope that the next great reforming politician will be the one who reconnects political language and policy substance.
But there is no particular reason or evidence to think that we will get such a politician.
And so in the meantime, all we can do with this dislocation is (if you forgive the pun) brace ourselves.
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I read Dave Trott for comments on advertising and to you for law and policy. I try to to mix the two – both excellent by the way.
Try not to mix of course
I am sure the twisting of language is absolutely intentional and is born out of the impossible conflicts in most policy areas. Neither the areas you mention really works and government has no real way of making them work.
Re law and order. I ‘enjoy’ those cops n robbers car chase shows on the telly. Best of all is the sentencing – four months prison for car theft, drug dealing, smashing into and injuring ordinary citizens etc etc. The media full of such stuff. But what to do? Public disembowelment and helicopters with machine guns? Or perhaps some kind of social nirvana with leafy suburbs, gently educated kids passing into pleasant gentle jobs. Neither, so on we go.
Free Trade. Well, being in the EU was being in a nice warm protected trade bloc but some thought (or averred) we might do better outside. Making our fortune selling Cornish Pasties to the South Seas or opening up factories to make transgalactic transporters. As if we were ever stopped from doing those things.
The real problem is government is in a bind and up against reality. The only option is to lie and shout more loudly. We all know the problems are insoluble or at least insoluble to everyone’s liking. I suspect some would like the UK to be more like America. Stand on your own two feet and cut out the namby pamby social care cradle to grave stuff. Much cheaper that way. A bonus and consequence is we all get to carry guns.
In the end Boris will run out of time and money and we can repeat the whole show all over again. What fun.
A dog barking at a passing car does so instinctively, that’s his way to be in the world. Similarly, when politicians bark at their country’s liberal and democratic fundamentals they show their illiberal, fundamentalistic, nature.
“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”