6th November 2021
Here is a thought-experiment.
Imagine a policy position that a mainstream United Kingdom political party could adopt.
Imagine the prime minister supporting that speech in a public statement – in a speech, or a newspaper article, or a remark in an interview
And now imagine the prime minister saying just the opposite.
It is not only easy to imagine, but also to think of counter-examples of a mainstream policy position he would not take.
We have an infinitely flexible prime minister with no discernible consistency on any question of policy.
Of course, there is political – as opposed to policy – consistency: he will be motivated by advancing his own interests and those, where they coincide with his own, of his party.
But on any question of policy – as opposed to politics – there is no depth.
This is the politician who wrote two columns about Brexit.
This is also the politician who berated environmental policies before telling the United Nations that it was not easy being green.
(And anyone with the surname Green could have told him, that line often falls flat as a joke.)
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Perhaps these observations are, well, obvious – but that does not make it pointless to point them out.
And nor does familiarity with the prime minister’s lack of principle remove the need to work out the implications of this (lack of) approach.
One implication – which may be painful for some readers – is that it shows the failure of liberal and progressive forces..
For if a charlatan could have come to power on the back of liberalism and progressive politics, then the charlatan would have done so.
In this way the prime minister is not a cause but a consequence of a failure of liberalism and progressive politics.
The politics of this country since 2015 have been dominated not by Brexit victories but by two decisive Remain defeats – in 2016 and 2019.
There is no good reason why Remain lost the 2016 referendum.
Remain was the status quo, with economic benefits, and the policy of every mainstream party, and with the weight of government funding behind it.
But many supporters of membership were complacent.
The case for the European Union was never properly made by any senior politician, because there was no political interest in them doing so.
Parties and politicians thereby competed with each other to be sceptical of the European Union, with opt-outs and renegotiations and what-not.
And the prime minister only won the overall majority in the 2019 general election because opposition parties gifted him a general election on the issue of ‘Get Brexit Done’.
Before that general election, had opposition parties worked together in that hung parliament, it was plausible that there could have been a further referendum.
The prime minister did not create this Remain complacency and confusion, but he took full advantage of it.
Had the forces of Remain, and of liberalism and progressive politics, been less weak the prime ministers opportunism would not have been so successful.
Indeed: the charlatan would have switched sides, and switched columns.
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The rise of the current prime minister is the index of the failure of liberalism and progressive politics: a mirror-image, a shadow.
The more we complain about the prime minister’s principle-free approach to policy, the more we are really complaining about our failure to get the electorate to take a principle-based approach seriously.
As this blog has averred previously, there is no practical point in exposing lies, if the electorate does not mind being lied to.
And the same can be said of corruption: there is no practical point in exposing corruption, if the electorate does not mind the corruption.
The real task therefore for those opposed to the politics of the current prime minister is not just to expose and condemn the lies and corruption – for that is the easy bit – but to get sufficient electors to care about the lies and corruption.
For if that engagement cannot be achieved then we have the prospect of fundamental disconnect between policy and politics – for it would not matter the policy (or lack of policy) of the governing party, charlatans will be politically successful anyway.
And the starting point for those politically opposed to the prime minister is not to see his manifest faults as telling things about him, but also about the failures of those who opposed to him.
Johnson is not really the cause but the consequence of the defeats of 2016 and 2019, but the explanations for those defeats are harder for his opponents to consider.
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In responding to the case of the Shropshire North One, Labour put out online two attack ads (see my post https://jodatu.wordpress.com/2021/11/04/is-starmer-serious-about-winning-power-or-has-he-just-been-going-through-the-motions-during-the-case-of-the-shropshire-north-one/).
I am sure Team Starmer thought they were rising to the occasion with both of them.
In neither ad, did Labour say that Paterson had used his taxpayer funded job to make £110,000 a year on the side.
That almost sounds like someone scrounging off the taxpayer.
And the average voter and taxpayer does not like to think folk are getting something at his or her expense.
Something Jess Phillips pointed out back in April 2017:
“People who don’t pay their taxes are robbing from us all. The Camerons may well have forked out for education and health services, but it was my money that trained the doctors, nurses and teachers they used. Without the taxpayer the posh who jump the queue would just be sitting in a rather nicely decorated room without the staff to actually deliver the service. Every time Cameron Snr drove his car on a public highway, every time he could see on the street because of a streetlight, every day when there was a pavement outside his house and a regular bin collection, he took money from you, the nation’s honest taxpayers, without seeing fit to put his hand in his pocket. And while the Camerons had a bob or two I doubt very much they funded their own private police force and army. I mean the Eton set are a bit old fashioned but think the acts of livery and maintenance is a step to far even for them. So they got the security we all enjoy but it was you footing the bill, not daddy darling.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/jess-phillips/david-cameron-taxes_b_9622288.html
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/jess-phillips/david-cameron-offshore-tax_b_9640604.html?utm_hp_ref=uk&ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000067&ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000067
There was a Labour attack ad or two right there.
https://jodatu.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/still-time-corbyn-to-broadcast-jess-phillips-piece-as-labour-party-political-broadcast-labourdoorstep/
I come from the same class background as Phillips as it happens.
And Simon who campaigned for Leave and subsequently changed his mind provides much food for thought.
I screen grabbed his informative thread and posted it here:
https://jodatu.wordpress.com/2018/01/04/simon-says-on-brexit-fbpe-finalsay-stopbrexit-voteproremain-finalsayforall-stopbrexit2018/
Some of Starmer’s supporters have reached the stage where criticising him and his team for a lack of professionalism and application to the task is tantamount to mutiny.
“If it’s about them (the people), then winning is the top priority. That means a professional organisation, strategy, preparation, not deluding ourselves that belief in our own righteousness is enough.”
https://jodatu.wordpress.com/2021/11/04/whats-your-most-blairite-opinion-agreeing-with-tony-blair-that-the-labour-party-needs-to-work-with-other-parties-to-at-least-deny-the-conservatives-an-overall-majority-at-the-next-general-el/
Whilst it may be comforting for some to think Team Starmer are capable of running a slick, on message media operation, but choose not to do so for fear of being associated with Blair and Mandelson, I am afraid that it may actually be that they are just bloody useless at it and unwilling to learn from past successful Labour methods of campaigning.
Thank you for another excellent post. I have a really horrible and uncomfortable feeling you’re right.
What the hell do we do now?
This is really superb. You’re getting better with age, David.
Yes, always interesting takes on fundamental issues David. On my part, I think people either don’t care or are not interested – or they take the simple view that ‘Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose’.
The EU status quo was not defended by either of the major parties, nor by the EU itself, which had been told to hold off by David Cameron. The Brexiters ensured that the civil service was in Purdah and could not say anything. The leader of the Labour party was terrible and anti-EU, whatever the official stance of his party and the Libdems were crippled by their earlier coalition engagement. Most of business wanted Remain, but was scared to say so. On the other hand, the Brexit gang were full of rage and campaigning zeal, bolstered by lies, told without embarrassment and a brilliant slogan “take back control’ that could appear to be the solution to everyone’s individual problems. After the result, Parliament, which should have been able to take it as input to a policy process, was gaslit into believing that Brexit was the Will of the People. Now, with the blusterer and liar-in-chief in charge, we are seeing the lies play out more or less in the manner predicted by the Remain camp. Yet still it is too early for the forces of liberal and progressive politics to prevail against the nonsense, since sense is hard and nonsense is easy. However much the evidence of corruption and incompetence builds up, without credible leadership and organisation, – which could come from any Party -, appearing to challenge the current regime, we are set to sink further into the mire.
“In this way the prime minister is not a cause but a consequence of a failure of liberalism and progressive politics.”
That’s absolutely true. There is no better lack of void – or of vacuity (from the splendid latin “vacuitas”), as you once wrote – than ineffective and remissive progressive forces that make it possible for the illiberals to gain consent within an uncritical society.
A great shame for a great Nation.
Thank you for this. There is a lot more to be said about the impact of a political opportunist as Prime Minister but I would like to contribute to your comment that remain should have won the 2016 Referendum
As a member of a group which, by its members’ experience, was strongly motivated towards the Remain cause, I heard a leading think tank Director speak, in early 2016, on the forthcoming campaign. It would, he said, be largely modelled on the ‘successful’ Scottish campaign and focus strictly on economic issues – the financial hit everyone would suffer if Brexit (I don’t think the term was in current use then) happened.
When some of us protested that the EU was more than a profit and loss exercise he retorted that the above approach had been thoroughly tested in focus groups and the Prime Minister was particularly anxious not to stir up the inveterate anti-Europeans in his party by suggesting that he had any affection for foreigners. This also dictated his (already crumbling) disastrous ‘renegotiation’ exercise: he never (apparently) expected it to succeed but had to show that he was ‘Standing Up For Britain’.
We all know how well this approach succeeded: what was worse that having failed to make the economic case stick, in the minds of the electorate, the ‘EU’ side was BOTH labelled as Project Fear whenever trying to show the risks of reckless departure AND inhibited from ever mentioning the ‘softer’ reasons for remaining – the student and research interchanges, the collaborative aid initiatives, even the town twinning projects, any of which could, arguably, make more difference to at least some people’s lives than a contested 5% change in living standards.
I prefer to live where the Government tell you lies rather than one which tells you lies and implements gun boat diplomacy on their “friends”. How much British tax payer’s money has Macron fleeced from us on the pretext of stopping migrants crossing the channel?
Perhaps less than Johnson has taken from us and given to his chums?
You must know that the UK is no stranger to gunboat diplomacy. As for implementing it on their “friends”, I doubt very much that the French would be so hypocritical as to call them thus.
But the now-routine lying? You’re ok with that? Taxpayers being fleeced to fill the VIP Covid suppliers’ pockets?
I have seen the extended patrols of French coppers around the tunnel mouth as i shuttled back and forth over the years and the ever extending and ever higher fences. So the French did seem to me to be taking steps to exclude intruders. But i have no information on how or how much money was paid to them nor how it was spent. If that is what brought out your comment i would be grateful to see it. It should be talked about.
Not a great deal in the scheme of things, nor is it extortion. I would argue the money was freely given to offshore the problem. We can’t expect the French to stop people leaving France on our behalf without a contribution from us. The UK has been paying towards the cost of containing migrants in Calais for decades.
Re gunboat diplomacy, the fishing dispute is convenient for both Macron, with an election coming up, and Johnson, as part of his post Brexit anti EU campaign. Both sides are lying and using force.
One should not exonerate the UK’s failings by comparing them with other states’.
Even if the lies and corruption had no electoral impact, which surely they will have eventually, they should still be exposed, because the right things must be done if standards of public life aren’t to fall into irreversible decline.
True. Government direction is given by yesterday’s headlines (and so by the editors and owners of the press) because all and any steps are permitted to stay in power. The electorate shrug, because most have not known any other way, nor can they imagine one.
To prevent recurrences of historic accidents such as Brexit, do we not need to reconsider the current structure of government and in particular how leaders are chosen? The Tory party have only managed to find mediocre leaders, faut de mieux, for at least as far back as Thatcher. My wife remarked on hearing John Major yesterday that at least he’s a statesman. Hmmnn. A decent cove perhaps (transgressions not withstanding) but he did not seem a statesman at the time. In fact, the choice of leaders, by the Tory party (and at times Labour) has been dire and catastrophic for the country. Coming on them by chance you would steer clear of them in a pub. Does the system mean that leaders must prioritise personal ego over most or even all other issues? Or that you must be such a zealot that you miss the big picture? Why and how are experienced and capable persons dissuaded or weeded out early? Why would a statesman not surround herself with well-rounded advisors instead of one-shot wonders as Johnson and May did? Maybe they think that, this is my big moment and I better not blow it- rather like the rush to Brexit now and a hard Brexit at that- we don’t want the electorate rowing back from what we know is best. Does that not also indicate a problem with the system? Where are the sufficiently experienced individuals with the self-confidence to convince the group of the best way forward, who can then plan and direct how to get there?
We have been sliding away from a consultative cabinet for some time. The executive clearly regards its backbenchers as a nuisance and parliament as a hindrance to their own plans- instead of a source of ideas and initial testing by debate. The resource of Parliament is a luxury of democracy which should be a big advantage over other systems of government. Recent leaders have rejected that resource and made democracy look less efficient than authoritative regimes. The response must not be ever stronger prime ministers (or press).
Who or what comes after Johnson?
What really happened between a three line whip on Wednesday and a complete U turn and key resignation on Thursday?
A lot of British people have not accepted firstly they have left the EU, secondly there is no way back for decades and thirdly that having left the EU they cannot continue with the same supply chains for goods services money and people as before.
The way things are going next years Festival of Britain could become a very dangerous event.
Not much actually as the UK never pay their bills – they haven’t paid the promised £54m and don’t even get me started on Iran!!!
It was not just that Remain was complacent – Leave had a big advantage, which was that it covered many possibilities and different people could vote Leave, thinking themselves to want the same thing when in fact they wanted incompatible things. Hence the people who have found out that Brexit is not what they expected.
Apathy is the breeding ground of corruption.
The UK public all too often get what they deserve, by the (lackadaisical) observance of the above.
Seems that the NIMBY mentality prevails (and even when it is in the back-yard!)