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6 years ago
Friday 9 April 2010
Après Blair, le deluge’: General election, de-selection, detection, rejection, dejection ₪ Insurrection?
Posted by SPIRE: School of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy at Keele University at 12:51
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 Iraq London
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 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
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
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
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.
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 ₪ ₪ ₪ ₪ ₪ ₪ ₪₪ ₪
Labels: General Election debate, Politics
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However, I take issue with a couple of points.
I hate to sound like an apparatchik, but this government has achieved some things which deserve plaudits alongside whateever critiques you have of its social democratic muddled thinking.
Things like the minimum wage and increased aid to developing nations.
For an example of the latter, see Chris Mullins diaries 'A View from the Foothills' which documents just how the Department of International Development has been radically changed.
Anyway, the point about energy/gaia/environment. I'm afraid I shall have to sarcastically thank you for kicking me into a chasm of hopelessness.
If things really are that bleak, why the heck am I student? Why on earth am I constantly anxious about returning an essay on the difficulties of reforming US healthcare when all i've got to look forward to is a massive disaster?
I think that is fair comment and you don't sound like an apparatchik. I am sure there are many areas where there have been improvements over the last ten years. To some extent I was playing devil's advocate and trying to provoke a response (so I should say thanks!). One problem I was alluding to is that our electoral system makes it difficult to get radical policy proposals into the mainstream debate (so for me...basic income, land taxation, steady state economics). To my mind this is a strong argument for electoral reform. Now more than ever we need to be able to think the unthinkable, which means we must first have the unthinkable put on the table. I was using the blog to point to a wider tradition of radical liberal/left/libertarian thought and political currents that would have been familiar to our political forbears but find little room in sound-bite politics. Follow the web links and see what you think.
But 'normal politics' is now framed by a much larger set of problems which have no precedent. James Lovelock argues that we are in a period comparable to the build up to world war in the late 1930s and I think he is right. I suppose one's overall assessment of the political situation depends, to a large degree, on your time horizons. If political success for a centre-left party is judged over 5 of 10 years and in terms of its ability to effect a significant but limited degree of redistribution whilst securing continuing economic growth - then I think New Labour can fairly be judged to have been moderately successful (and outside a world war, moderate success is all most governments can ever hope to achieve). My perspective might seem a little gloomy - possibly a mid-life crisis and/or the fact that I have a young family both of which tend to make you think about mortality, posterity and the kind of world your grandchildren might inherit. The Long Now Foundation established by Stewart Brand and Brian Eno (http://www.longnow.org/) is trying to build a 10,000 year clock with a view to getting people to start thinking about the future of civilisation in 'deep time'. That is ambitious - a couple of centuries is enough for me, but even thinking 50 years ahead is outside the range of conventional political debate. And at that point it becomes quite scary. The choices available through our parliamentary democracy simply cannot address these longer time horizons. The central problem for humanity is to find a way to make the upstart and brand new form of ecology that we call civilisation, compatible with the continuing integrity of the biosphere. Civilisation has not been honed over millions of years by natural selection. It has jumped-started itself into global ecological domination in the blink of an evolutionary eye. There is no reason to think that a stable accommodation with the biosphere upon which civilisation depends - MUST happen or even MUST be possible. It may be. I hope so. We can actively try to find such an accommodation...preferably sooner rather than later...but there are no guarantees. Global warming is only one symptom of a deeper set of problems. Our species has become the prime evolutionary mover on the planet - like a toddler flying a Boeing 747. I am sorry if that is a disempowering thought. It certainly doesn't make politics irrelevant. You are part of the first generation which has grown up with this knowledge. I am part of the last generation to have experienced a blissfully innocent childhood. How that plays sociologically is an interesting and open question. I hope your lot will find ways to force the pace of political change and attune the politics of the present with the ecological and geo-political imperatives of 'deep time'. For my money, the real politics of the 21st century will start when the political classes on both sides of the spectrum, are able to acknowledge a difficult (but obvious) truth: that there are 'limits to growth'. Since you are going to be making the hard choices you may as well get stuck into the battle of ideas. Best wishes Steve Quilley
I don't just mean with the Lib Dems in a position of leverage, surely just how disproportional our system is will be painfully obvious?
I'd quite like to know more about the Green Party in Germany, whether it is considered to have achieved much in its time in coalition power, enabled by PR.
I would hope that we can start to think more long term, perhaps this will be possible in the post materialist age? Or will the pain of the recent recession provoke a understandable but damaging appetite for economic growth.
I really sincerely hope so. There may well be short term problems with a hung parliament - not least with regard to how the markets react. But the bigger issue is what kind of political structures will engender the deep reflection and long time horizons that we so desperately need. I am sure Andy and Brian can give you chapter and verse on the achievements of the German greens. They are certainly limited...but on the other hand, it is possible that German society is more prepared for the radical thinking required for 21st century problems. Energy policy has been significantly more progressive and I think it is probably due to our partisan, short-termist politics that Britain has squandered north sea oil, lost the technological edge in renewables and as a result, has become so extremely vulnerable to energy insecurity. If you would like a measure of this insecurity and how quickly it might affect us then Google the Pentagon's Joint OPerating Report 2010 and look at energy ..and also the following blog which contains a very useful summary of the rapidly changing energy landscape (http://www.energybulletin.net/52509 although I don't necessarily subscribe to his gloss) . You might reflect on the fact that so far not one of the major parties has mentioned peak oil or the possible impact of any surge in demand. Meanwhile we become ever more dependent on oil and gas supplies from places like Russia. A less monopolist political system might have opened up a space for more public debate
One would have thought the recent/current air crisis would make people more aware of our vulnerabilities in this regard.
All best and in haste
steve