Beginning to See the Light: Appetite for Destruction

 

‘..Look at the hate we’re breeding,

Look at the fear we’re feeding,

Look at the lives we’re leading,

The way we’ve always done before..’

 

I wrote last week of the more conciliatory, more inclusive politics which, putting aside the failed austerity measures, made the Cameron led Tories more socially progressive – writes Philip Gilbert

 

By comparison Johnson and his mob are on a permanent war footing, seeking enemies and issues to keep the seemingly insatiable conservative, reactionary electoral base satiated. This is typical of the populist driven party that is the latest incarnation of conservatism.

As I wrote 2-weeks ago, in the article entitled ‘Five Years’, politically Brexit is almost nebulous, for many ‘leavers’ it wasn’t about trade, or economic prosperity, but about control, nationalism, about their perception of Britain’s place on the world stage.

One word that encapsulates this is nostalgia. Whether that’s a yearning for the ‘1850s, when Britain was a great, independent maritime trading nation, the 1950s, when we were united in ‘one great team’ before the permissive society ruined everything, or the summer of 1940, when Britain stood alone against a dangerous continental foe’ is unclear.

 

‘it wasn’t about trade, or economic prosperity, but about control, nationalism, about their perception of Britain’s place on the world stage’

 

Like Brexit their nostalgia is nebulous, no more than a dream of Britain as a great power able to set its own rules, rather than a medium-size European country whose influence depends on its alliances.

Brexit represents the very essence of populism, it is nebulous therefore its shape and form can be moulded as required, providing an almost limitless basis for conflict. Populism is, by its very nature, negative, thriving of people’s perception of what is wrong, therefore it needs to create constant conflict and enemies to preserve it popularity with the electorate.

In his article ‘The Rise of Populism: Case Studies, Determinants and Policy Implications’, Karl Aiginger wrote; ‘Populist parties often become part of democratically elected governments by forming coalitions with mainstream parties, in which they play the more active part and make further inroads until they dominate. If they finally take the lead, they clinch it by changing the rules, dismantling the division of power between government, parliament, and the courts. They invent a foreign enemy or a dangerous force to cement their power’.

The Johnson government has achieved this, willingly picking fights with everyone from liberals, lefties, lawyers, remainers, anti-racists, Scottish nationalists, the EU, Channel 4, the BBC, even the Oxford students who voted to take down a photo of the Queen.

Whereas Blair and Cameron sought to be ‘Inclusive’, or in Dave’s words, ‘We’re all in this together,’ post the Brexit referendum the Tories have embraced what could be called the politics of ‘exclusion’.

They have been able to win elections with the support of only a few large sections of the population, principally older white voters, and inhabitants of rural and small town England.

This policy of exclusion was not some much driven by Dominic Cummings, more by Munira Mirza, who is head of the Downing Street policy unit. Mirza, a former member of the surprisingly right-wing Revolutionary Communist party has, along with Johnson, created a simple, but effective strategy, of mobilising these groups of anxious and resentful voters by telling them that their country and values are being undermined by subversive forces.

 

‘every time there is another row about statues or Churchill or white privilege, another Labour seat becomes winnable’

 

As a government source recently told the website ‘Tortoise’: ‘Boris thinks that he and Munira are in the same place on this as the vast majority of the public, and that every time there is another row about statues or Churchill or white privilege, another Labour seat becomes winnable.’

A victory for the Tories in this week’s Batley and Spen byelection would further vindicate the beliefs in the culture wars and exacerbate the division between Red Wall and Blue Wall England.

The byelection in Batley symbolises much of what is wrong with the country post-the Brexit referendum. You may recollect that, days before the referendum, the incumbent MP, Jo Cox, was murdered by a far-right supporter. The current Labour candidate, Kim Leadbeater, is her sister.

The byelection campaign has become vicious and abusive, not helped by George Galloway, now leading his renamed Workers Party of Britain, divisively targeting the ‘Muslim’ vote, whose sole aim is to wreck this byelection to recapture Labour for ‘the left’, or whatever his current bizarre beliefs are. ‘I am eating Labour alive,’ he boasts to RT, the Russian TV channel.

Outsiders shout at Leadbeater, bellowing aggressive questions while accusing her of ‘LGBT indoctrination in schools’.

The West Yorkshire mayor, Tracy Brabin, who has just stood down as the constituency’s MP, reports Labour campaigners ‘being egged, pushed and forced to the ground and kicked in the head’. She went onto say ‘…I’m upset for the people here. What happens when this circus leaves town, these outsiders with their own agendas and egos moving on? We have to live here together afterwards.’

Ironically, Leadbeater has spent the past 5-years working with the Jo Cox Foundation for ‘a more civilised public discourse’. There is no such thing under populism, it’s just naked aggression.

Whilst this constant aggression seems to bewilder what remains of centrist Britain, e.g., those in the Blue Wall, it is manna from heaven for the media. It attracts audiences and supports the fights the right-wing press has been picking with liberals and lefties for decades, providing a coordinated line of attack supported by an increasingly aggressive government.

The need for, and the use of scapegoats, is one of the results of GFC, and has the added attraction of drawing attention away from the real causes of today’s deep environmental and economic crises: Conservative free-market capitalism and the consumer appetites of voters themselves.

Most, if not all populist policies are undeliverable, therefore once they are in government, they need to continue finding scapegoats to overcome what is their own shortcomings and lies.

Like the folk tale the ‘Emperors’ New Clothes’ at some point the electorate realise they have been duped, there are no simple answers, or at least, not the ones they were promised.

The unexpected byelection defeat to the Lib Dems in Chesham and Amersham is a clear sign that this aggression is becoming repellent. Voters preferred Sarah Green, a remainer, who emphasised her record of ‘helping individuals facing injustice’. After years of polarised, exhausting politics, it would not be a surprise if voters elsewhere also began to find less divisive figures appealing again, much as the consensual politics of the 90s and 00s was partly a reaction against the bloodiest Conservatism of Thatcher, with its constant hunger for ‘the enemy within’.

 

‘culture wars and nationalism may attract new voters, they are transient and will disappear just as quickly when this nationalism doesn’t deliver prosperity’

 

In trying to reduce politics to the electoral, Johnson may find that of the nirvana promised by Brexit, such as trade deals that don’t happen turns voters away. Whilst culture wars and nationalism may attract new voters, they are transient and will disappear just as quickly when this nationalism doesn’t deliver prosperity.

The Tory strategy of playing to the older voter has a shelf life, they will die. In their place will be today’s left-leaning millennials, unless the Tory’s drop their populist stance, they have little to offer them.

Then there is the battle within the party between its northern and southern voters, its free-spending ministers and fiscally cautious ones, its free-marketeers and economic interventionists, its reactionaries, and social liberals. In Chesham and Amersham where some of these tensions burst forth the Tory vote disintegrated.’

Whilst there is a momentum building, especially in the SE & London, the question is, is this sufficient to unseat this populist horde?

Unfortunately, there is nostalgia at play in the Labour party too. There are those who yearn for their lost golden age of post-war Britain before Thatcherism destroyed the authentic Labour world of pit villages, and community. Just as the right sees a liberal, pro-European elite sabotaging their traditional England, the left sees a neoliberal conspiracy destroying solidarity, altruism, and community life.

Labour is not the party it once was, as I have written before it is fighting yesterday’s issues with yesterday’s polices and fighting yesterday’s Conservative party. For this uprising to have teeth it needs to be centred around a progressive alliance (‘alliance’, ‘the alliance’).

As Neal Lawson, a Director of Compass, wrote; ‘We start with the ‘why’ of an alliance. The driving reason is political. The critical alliance is not one of parties or voters, but minds and then actions. The societal challenges we face – of climate, culture, care, technology, ageing and inequality – simply can no longer be met by any single party. If we want a red, green and liberal future we need to meld the politics of these essential strands into a coherent and consistent political project, with urgency because the march of national populism wants to strip democracy of its power to deliver the hope of this good society’.

One key issue is our electoral system which heavily favours the Tories. The right has created a ‘regressive alliance’ which has gifted UKIP/Brexit party support to the Tories. Whereas progressive parties compete for the same votes.

However, there is a past example of a progressive party collaboration. In 1997 Tony Blair, the Labour leader, and Paddy Ashdown, of the Liberal Democrats, struck-up a relationship signaling their ‘togetherness’; they ceased attacking each other and concentrated on the Tories. This, with the addition of the Greens, is the alliance we need today.

The Blair / Ashdown structure was top-down, deciding who campaigned in which seats. Today we are seeing a bottom-up approach, with agreements and deals negotiated between local parties, a movement for progressive change is being built, across counties and councils, as activists realise that this is the only way to win and how much they have in common with each other.

To succeed there needs to be a two-pronged approach; a ‘non-aggression pact’ at the top, and local trust and tactical campaigning at the grassroots. Virtually every poll shows there is a majority of non-Tory voters, and we have two-years to mobilise and unite them.

 

‘You can imagine what my views are. It’s a matter for the police’

 

This anti-government majority is highlighted by the shift in public opinion over the subject of overseas aid. When the government announced its £4bn cut last November, two-thirds of British people agreed with the cut.

More recent analysis by UCL and Birmingham University shows the combined number of people who believe that aid should increase or stay the same usually hovers between 40% and 45%. In January, it went up to 53%, an increase that was detectable across both left- and right-leaning respondents.

In addition, 45% of respondents said Britain had a moral obligation to help the world’s poorest people. The pandemic has forced governments to consider their global responsibilities not in financial terms but in human ones. Joe Biden, in June, established two important principles: ‘first, that it was politically plausible to put human suffering and the prevention thereof at the centre of national policy and international consensus. Second, that in the most concrete and demonstrable terms, none of are safe until we’re all safe.’

It wouldn’t be fair to end this weeks’ narrative without mention of Matt Hancock who, to paraphrase the Guardian, ‘got away with contributing to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths but had to quit for a knee-trembler. It’s like getting Al Capone for snogging.’

This is the man who went on TV when Prof Neil Ferguson was discovered to have broken lockdown rules in the conduct of a relationship and said: ‘You can imagine what my views are. It’s a matter for the police.’

Unfortunately for Johnson, who publicly supported Hancock over his lack of social distancing and had to turn a blind eye to his sexual dalliance given his own track record, he has lost one of his fall guys.

Lest we forget, Johnson said Hancock was both ‘hopeless’ and ‘fucking useless’, but he was a useful human shield.

Matt, this is for you…

 

‘Kiss the boot of shiny, shiny leather

Shiny leather in the dark

Tongue of thongs, the belt that does await you

Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart’

 

Philip continues with some familiar themes this week, and as Euro 2020 reaches a fever pitch for some of Engerland’s finest, considers the naked aggression that can be quite willfully whipped up by a populist regime.

His nightmare scenario following an England victory sees ‘boats in Dover and lines of geriatrics with longbows ready to board them and re-enact Agincourt. “Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’, will be bellowed as Cry ‘God for Harry Kane, Engerrrrrlaaaand, and Gareth Southgate!’

Creating conflict, sharing grievances and uniting behind the common solution are all there to be plucked from the populist quiver; if booing the German national anthem pushes the boundaries, tweets describing the poor, sobbing little mite in the stands as a ‘slut’ surely crosses every line.

And it’s not just in the febrile atmosphere of a sports stadium, as Batley and Spen goes to the polls, there has been some truly appalling behaviour – Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s headline in today’s i newspaper is ‘George Galloway has galvanised Muslim hoodlums in Batley and Spen to further erode our failing democracy’.

Philip says that ‘a victory for the Tories would further vindicate the beliefs in the culture wars and exacerbate the division between Red Wall and Blue Wall England’ but what would another thumping defeat mean for Kier Starmer, and how could a credible opposition be assembled to keep Boris in check.

As gaps appear on the shelves and hauliers, pubs and restaurants all find themselves with chronic staff shortages, the ‘Brexit-effect’ remains eclipsed by the large numbers of vaccinations that are quoted on our daily news bulletins; nobody has laid a glove on Boris, despite the fact that the arrival of the totally avoidable Delta variant was entirely down to him.

What kind of society do we have when Chris Whitty can’t go for a stroll in the park without being accosted by a beered-up Essex estate agent?

Well, probably the kind of society in which Business Secretary Kwasi Kwateng goes on radio to defend the decision to allow ‘high value’ businessmen or football officials to swan into the country unimpeded, whilst restrictions still apply to weddings and funerals. 

Or one where the leader of the opposition can relate the story of Ollie Bibby – ‘a cherished son who died in hospital of leukaemia without his family because they were obeying the rules on visits’ – yet still not nail Mr Johnson for not only failing to sack Matt Hancock, but actually trying to retrospectively claim some credit for his departure.

This is not just a Westminster bubble story, the former Health Secretary’s grubby, flacid little affair should be an affront to us all, but for now this administration still has wind in its sails; however, it may be that its stiffest challenge to date is about to unfold as enforcement notices are being sent to members of what will probably be the wealthiest generation ever, telling them they do indeed have to pay to watch TV. Disgusted.

Two tracks, just for fun – ‘appetite for Destruction’ was the title of Guns n Roses debut and Civil War has the perfect lyric. ‘Venus in Furs’ by the Velvet Underground was based on the short novel of the same name that recounts the masochistic relationship between Severin von Kusiemski and Wanda von Dunijew. It’s so apt, and an excuse to play a classic’. Enjoy.

 

 

 

Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.

Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s

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