Friday 16 April 2010

Stuck inside of Mora with the Malmö Blues Again: Trapped in Sweden by an Icelandic volcano while trying to follow the first election debate

3 comments Posted by SPIRE: School of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy at Keele University at 12:14

Written by Dr. Jonathan Parker

I am writing from Östersund, where I came to teach some seminars on research methods in political science at Mittuniversitetet (Mid Sweden University). Mid Sweden is a geographically accurate though misleading description of the location, since we are close to Trondheim, Norway, and at a similar latitude to the southern tip of Iceland. The warm British Easter seems far away when surrounded snow and looking down on a frozen lake. Cross country skiers go by the window at regular intervals.

I was supposed to be home yesterday, but I’m not sure when I can get out, now. There is no certainty about when flights will resume, and I am rebooking the flights every day with a shrinking sense of optimism. It’s amazing how vulnerable the whole air industry is to these things. Wrong kind of dust? It doesn’t really help that the most affected areas are the two places I want to fly out of and get to.

There are certainly worse fates in the world than being trapped in Sweden for awhile. I was upset that I would miss the first British election debate (a big event for political scientists). However, the Swedes have thoughtfully provided me with wireless broadband, and the BBC streamed it live. Hooray for the BBC! I grumble about license fees (as an American it seems very odd to pay a tv tax) but what a service! Live access even from abroad

The debate was very interesting. The three candidates had obviously decided upon their respective roles beforehand and stayed in character very carefully. Again, as an American these debates aren’t new to me, and I didn’t expect serious missteps or clear victories – the stakes are too high and the candidates too well prepped to allow things like that to happen.

Even having a ménage-a-trois debate wasn’t new – it reminded me of the 1992 Presidential debate between Republican George Bush (the elder – who looks better every year in comparison to…well, you know), Democrat Bill Clinton, and third party candidate Ross Perot. Perot made the whole event less predictable (which is a good description of his whole candidacy) and more interesting, though he largely attacked the incumbent Republican president rather than the Democratic challenger. There are loads of clips on youtube, but here is a good starting place (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ffbFvKlWqE).

The whole 1992 election is an interesting parallel to the current election. The country was coming out of a recession. The economy was improving, but the incumbent was seen as the tired remnant of 12 years of Republican rule in the White House. People didn’t feel like they were so well off (though the economic figures, which came out after the election was over, say things were improving nicely), and they punished the incumbent. The third party phenomenon set a record, with Perot capturing 20% of the vote nationally, which would bode well for Nick Clegg if this election follows that example.

Clegg, in fact, seemed the only clear winner of the debate last night. This isn’t particularly scientific, and is being repeated by most of the press, but he seemed to exceed expectations in a way that neither major party candidate managed. Brown came across as more passionate (an advantage of driving down expectations?), but didn’t deliver any knockout blows. Cameron clearly saw himself as the front runner and didn’t want to make any mistakes or come across as ‘mean’. That made for a competent but uninspiring performance.

The big question now is how seriously people may treat Clegg and whether any bounce in the polls will translate into votes in the booth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ffbFvKlWqE

 

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Friday 9 April 2010

Après Blair, le deluge’: General election, de-selection, detection, rejection, dejection ₪ Insurrection?

5 comments Posted by SPIRE: School of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy at Keele University at 12:51


Après Blair, le deluge’: General election, de-selection, detection, rejection, dejection ₪ Insurrection?


Written by Dr Steve Quilley

So it is election time once again.  This is clearly something that we folks in SPIRE should be interested in.  It is ‘politics’ after all, and that is surely what we do, isn’t it? And apparently it is shaping up to be one of those watershed moments, like 1979 or 1997. Maybe the Tories will come in from the cold… maybe. Perhaps Brown might scrape through for one last hurrah!  Here the conventions of punctuation are failing me. ‘ !’ ? I need a symbol that signifies the exact opposite of an exclamation mark… something that evokes a sagging arm chair, or a damp pair of jeans waiting by the washing machine.  How about ‘₪‘?  I am not sure what it means as a currency symbol, but in Extended Quirillic it means ‘you lost me’ or ‘gone fishing’, because, to be honest, I am finding it difficult to pay attention. Labour might win ₪ Cameron might end up as Prime Minister ₪ George Osborne might end up as Chancellor ₪ (although I have to admit a little ! on that one).  
            I grew up with a Quaker middle-class, public sector predilection for the Labour Party.  My parents turned out to vote rain or shine. We went on family outings with CND. I collected for the miners in Newcastle city centre. I joined the party in the 6th form and went on to knock on doors and help with the printing press at election time. At university I was Campaigns Officer for the student Labour club. If only I had understood that this was in fact a greasy pole and that there was only an internship and a great deal of disingenuous singing of the Red Flag standing between me and a safe seat – perhaps I too could have ended up as a Blair babe ₪.  I could have been a regular at the Groucho Club, discussing the merits of P.F.I.s and school Academies ₪ I could have feigned discomfort for the war in Iraq. And if I had played my cards right, I too could have been selling my services like a London cabbie. But back in the early 1990s I couldn’t see the greasy pole, let alone climb it.  All I could see was a rich, textured landscape of missed opportunities. It seemed to me that on all of the important issues of the day, the Party seemed to side with the staid, conservative instincts of the highly centralised British state.  And the more I learned about the history of the left, the more I understood that such conservatism was written into the DNA of the Party. In New Labour, novelty was neither the problem nor a realistic possibility. Same old ₪
            In the 1990s one issue in particular became metonymic for my disaffection with both New and old forms of Labourism. I had been a strong advocate of Citizens’ Income – a radical proposal to integrate the fiscal and welfare systems (http://www.citizensincome.org/).  The idea was (and still is – because this is a live debate) that by abolishing many if not most cash benefits, as well as the complex structure of tax breaks, we could afford to pay all citizens a universal basic income. Because it is unconditional, such a system would abolish the means test and so save the (8-9?) billions of pounds it costs to police the line and decide who qualifies and who does not, whose plight is genuine and whose is not, who is ‘genuinely seeking work’ and who is not, who is ‘respectably poor’ and who is not.  Armed with their (very small) basic incomes citizens would be free to enter the labour market as and when they choose, with the state taking a percentage of every pound earned in tax.
            The merits of such a system are clear to anyone who cares to look.  It would certainly be workable. It would eliminate most poverty traps. It would overcome the major problem associated with the welfare state which is that it creates dependency and punishes those who try to climb out of the welfare net. The obstacles to reform are political not economic.  Basically the Labour Party and the trade union movement have a deep historical commitment to the idea of work and the work ethic. They also share a commitment to top-down bureaucratic processes of monitoring and control.  The ‘rank and file’ are exactly that – occupants of the lowest rung of a working class movement construed as an army.  Solidarity is fine as long as you do what you are told.  The idea of ‘money for nothing’ was and is offensive to a socialist sensibility that has internalised completely and unconsciously Weber’s capitalist/protestant work ethic.
            In the early decades of the last century the radical social-liberal Ebenezer Howard put forward a vision for social reform that offered a very different basis for a welfare state.  The Garden Cities plan has long been misunderstood as simply a planning/architectural vision for urban development based on the reconciliation of urban and rural values and amenities – a vision only very partially realised in the post-war new towns and garden suburbs. But integral to Howard’s vision was a model for a left-libertarian welfare state. In each new urban development, whilst the land would be owned in perpetuity by the community, workers would be given the opportunity and responsibility for building and maintaining their own houses. Over time the ground rents paid into a local fund would provide the basis for a community-level welfare state.  
            Now it is possible to imagine a decentralised welfare state built upon hundreds of self-governing communities. Compare the sense of empowerment and confidence that would accrue to working class self-builders with the disabling dependency and low self-esteem that came to be synonymous with municipal council estates in the UK or project housing in America. The apocryphal story of council workers marching up to re-paint an uppity tenant’s brightly coloured front door in municipal grey provides a vivid sense of what municipal Labourism was about. Given that they were so unhappy with a departure from the corporate colour scheme, emancipation through self-building was never going to raise the roof at Blackpool or Brighton. Imagination and self-actualisation remained the preserve of anarchists like Colin Ward (http://squattercity.blogspot.com/2010/02/colin-wards-ideas.html) and now perhaps the Transition Town movement (http://www.transitiontowns.org/)
            The downside of a Garden City Welfare State is of course very obvious.  Localised responsibility and funding would entail different outcomes in different places – and such differences are deeply (and reasonably) offensive to the equalitarian left.  The Keynesian Welfare State constructed by Butler, Bevan and Atlee was from the start committed to universal standards and equality of outcomes.  This is why the idea of a ‘post-code lottery’ in relation to NHS provision is so offensive and politically sensitive. But however significant, the achievements of the welfare state since 1945 have come at the cost of entrenched patterns of individual dependency, the hollowing out of place-bound communities and habitual reliance on the central state to make decisions about how individuals, families and social groups should live. The same pattern has seen parents cede control and responsibility to schools. Citizens have given over the right and responsibility of self-regulation and the policing of anti-social behaviour to an increasingly bureaucratic police force and other ineffectual agencies of the state.  
            But whilst the self-organising functions of civil society (church, family, town, individual, club, hobby group) have buckled under the pressure of state regulation and monitoring, the institutions of the state prove themselves progressively more inadequate. And as a result despite the cross-party rhetoric of social innovation, community engagement and participation across all of its functional domains, the public sphere has become inhuman, bureaucratic and devoid of creativity. Innovation is delivered from the top down. Creativity and energy are stymied by a proliferating ‘algal bloom’ of quality assurance, health and safety, paper-trail accountability.  The prime directive in all spheres of public activity is ‘cover your bureaucratic bottom’ and ‘mind your back’. 
            ‘This is a pretty sweeping assertion’ I hear you say.  But the proof is to be heard in any canteen of any public sector organisation. The bottom line is that teachers, policemen and women, lecturers, nurses, doctors, firemen all share the same frustrations, curse the same check-box culture and bemoan the same bureaucratic sclerosis.  And the result seems to be the same in all cases.  The statistics tell a story:  things are getting better, can only get better; ‘we have never had it so good.’ Who said that?
            Consider the education system. Education to the power of three said Tony Blair.  Apparently standards have been rising and grades improving. More and more kids are going through university and a university education is gold-plated, benchmarked and of exactly the same value and standard whether delivered by Oxford University or Luton Poly (as was), last year or twenty years ago. Yes we really are living the dream.
            WAKEY-WAKEY ₪  Back on planet Earth… Here we are, at the dawn of the seventh general election that I can remember.  Another one to remember…another one in which I will play little or no part. In 1979 we had a mock election at school and I was on the winning side.  Down in the punk shop where we were tolerated and hung out, we celebrated by playing Astroids and jumping up and down to the Members’ ‘Sound of the Suburbs’. Meanwhile the real sound of the suburbs was vengeful and mean and the election delivered twenty years of Thatcherism and neo-liberalism. At the time what really impressed was the idea of meaningful choices…forks in the road… momentous decisions.  What stands out about this election is the absence of any choice at all.  It is not just that there is only a cigarette paper between the main parties.  Even on the ideological left and right there appears to be little conviction that things could really be any different let alone ‘can only get better’.  In a very real sense politics seems to be largely dead…deceased…moribund…not breathing.  But unlike the parrot sketch this is not funny. It is just awful.  We have moved from politics to a kind of somnolent process of auto-administration; self-guided boredom; the implementation of directives, procedures and quality-assured, best-practice. All we have to do is not to think.  This is worse then Marcuse’s ‘One Dimensional Man’ because even the intellectuals have run out of things to say.  There doesn’t appear to be much of an external vantage point.  Move over Adorno. We have had the ‘Tragedy of Enlightenment’ and now it is time for a permanent farce… which is why we were all so scandalized and ‘disappointed’ by the very British expenses scandal but ultimately unsurprised. Seeing Patricia Hewitt suspended from the Labour Party was fun, but not as much fun as watching Cheryl Cole’s marriage to Ashley Cole collapse.  Who needs the Fabian Society when we have Heat magazine. And anyway vomiting is never much fun.
            ‘Oh my gosh’ or ‘Gordon Bennett’ as my boys have been trained to explete (Who the hell was G.B. anyway?).  Perhaps Francis Fukyama was right (http://www.sais-jhu.edu/faculty/fukuyama/Biography.html)! Perhaps we do live at the end of history. No left and no right…just the inexorable unfolding of market-liberal development.  I was scornful at the time, but if ideology and ideas mean so little at a time of such cataclysmic crisis/opportunity, then just may be there is something in the ‘end of history’ idea. But I think not.  Where history fails, natural history is always ready to pick up the reins. In this post-historic century, it is environmental problems and the revenge of Gaia that will see the return of politics, ideology and stark choices. 
            Britain faces monumental environmental, geo-political and strategic problems which dwarf anything we experienced in the last century – including that little spat with Hitler. The fact that the country is broke and the cuts in public services will be savage and irreversible, which ever party forms the government – this is a rather minor annoyance compared to what is coming down the line. If James Lovelock and James Hansen are right – and their track record is pretty good – climate change threatens the continuing existence of civilisation (if not the species). Even the International Energy Agency now acknowledges the possibility of a profound energy shock within the next decade. Populous China is running up against resource constraints just as neighbouring resource rich Russia is experiencing a demographic implosion. The sources of concatenating insecurity are legion.  But here we are, poised on the brink of monumental indecision, like so many ostriches.
            Just possibly some real politics might seep through the cracks. But you can’t vote for a hung parliament. And of course for every Green that might get through, there are half a dozen atavistic throwbacks from UKIP and  the BNP to contend with. At the same time, any faith I had in a kind of regulated social-liberal capitalism has disappeared. Whether it is Henry George’s ‘Single Tax’, Citizens’ Income, self-build housing or Ebenezer Howard’s vision of a bottom-up welfare state, the social democratic tradition has always erred on the side of the state and top-down controls. Right now Ed Balls is promising to come back after the election and re-instate those awful, fascistic bits of the Children, Schools and Families Bill that would see over-bearing, patronizing and not very bright social-workers and state officials interfering in the right of parents to educate their own children. Given the failures of state-education, you would think the Labour Party might concentrate on putting their own house in order.  But they just can’t bear the thought of a small section of the community opting out of the system and doing it for them selves.  In Goethe’s Faust even Mephisto is shocked when Faust orders the killing of an old farmer and his wife whose little shack detracts from the totalising vision and order of ‘the plan’. For the left-libertarian in me, Ed Balls has more than a bit of the Faust about him and those homeschoolers will insist on departing from the script.
            And so it seems to me like the end of the road for this kind of social democracy because it now functions by default. It is no longer animated by belief, argument, vision and debate. Were Geoff Hoon or Patricia Hewitt ever ‘impassioned’?  The imperative for carbon neutrality, sustainability and eco-cyclical integrity would seem to create a space for renewed visions of progressive, participative, caring, sharing, self-actualising forms of social and economic life.  But our political class is oblivious.  They don’t acknowledge the problems and refuse to see the possibilities. The choice is between one lumbering, Jurassic quadruped and another. Now we just have to wait for an asteroid strike: ‘Après Blair, le deluge’… but don’t hold your breath. We won’t be calling on the services of Bruce Willis on May 6th or any time soon. Re-adjust your pillows… switch over to the ‘X-Factor’ or ‘Over the Rainbow’… help the nation find a Dorothy or a Toto. Make your vote count ₪ ₪ ₪ ₪ ₪ ₪ ₪₪ ₪

 

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