Will Hutton wrote about the Daily Mail and democracy in the Observer yesterday, saying:
Democracy is a system of government — but it is made to work by a culture. It cannot function without adherence to protocols of debate and exchange. The presumption is that it is via the free exchange of ideas, propositions and hypotheses about the world that our representatives will deliberate, legislate and govern. The more exchange and deliberation, the better the decision.
That in turn presumes a readiness to hear what others say, to accept evidence and logic, and to modify a position if it becomes clear it is untenable. Democracy thus depends on a degree of mutual respect; a willingness to argue as hard as possible but to accept that although there will be ruthless cut and thrust your opposing interlocutors also want the best — for the economy, society and country. Sometimes they may even be right. When this democratic culture collapses, as it has in the US, the result is deaf debate and deadlocked government.
Hutton's right of course, but only in so far as he goes, and that is far enough. What he is refusing to countenance, and far too few refuse to consider, is what happens when the deafness is endemic and the deadlock in government is paralysing - as it is literally becoming in the USA. Hutton's article goes nowhere near that consequence of the culture failure. Nor does he realise that if a culture has failed there is not a void as a result, but another culture that might have taken its place.
He does say:
Over the last 25 years the bias has been compounded by the right's view that because every dimension of Thatcherism was obviously correct, non-rightwing views are self-evidently worthless, justifying an uncompromising brutality towards those who dare to disagree.
But he does not say that this intolerance is the route to totalitarianism. It's as if he cannot contemplate the fact that those right wingers he knows - and he must know them - would deliver something so evil.
But they would. And they are. Many may be doing so without thinking they're doing any more than 'the right thing'. But they're as guilty of blindness as Hutton is. Others are not so unaware of the consequences of their action. They know the path they are following is not just intolerant of debate; it is intolerant. It's time the middle and left of politics - whatever their party allegiance - woke up and realised this because it's playing out in front of their eyes in the US and could be soon anywhere. The Daily Mail is simply signposting the way down which powerful forces wish to travel.
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Richard, it does seem to me that what you are saying here, and what I was saying about the neo-feudal future are basically different versions – maybe different dialects of the same song, which is a future of total reversal of all the gains of the common people in the last two centuries.
That, however, is commonplace – what judges in their decisions would call “trite law”. What is NOT commonplace (at least, alas, not yet) is that Thatcher’s ideas, far from being “self-evidently right” were actually a whole load of self-justifying rubbish, and proven to be so at the bar of history.
For her “successes” have actually been for the few, at the cost of the suffering of the many (the opposite, that is, of FDR’s New Deal and Clem Atlee’s welfare state.
It is possible, then to see the whole Thatcher project as a massive Ponzi scheme, paid for not in money (or not always, though she did have the oil money – to the end of my life I will grieve the fact that it was not Jim Callaghan and his successors who got the chance to invest that bonanza, but Thatcher and her rip-off gang) but in human capital. Ask the still reeling coal and steel and big manufacturing communities outside London for their views on the last 35 years of “onwards and upwards improvement”, and you’ll be lucky not to get smacked in the mouth.
Without oil and the Falklands, people would have listened to the little boy crying out that the Emperor had no clothes, and Thatcher would have benn unmasked.
We’re still waiting for a politician courageous enough to tell the electorate that the whole direction of travel, at least since 1979, and probably since Healey’s flirting with monetarism in late 1976/77 has been a tragic mistake – a blind alley, leading to the enrichment of the few (alas, quite a substantial few – maybe as much as 30 to 40% – and that’s the problem) at the really grievous expense of the many.
Andrew
Agreed
Richard
Well put Andrew from a fellow ‘griever.’ Thatcher was a duplicitous character who parade a sentimentalised 19th Century ‘common man’s’ capitalism that flew in the face of the financialisation of Britain. Her homely notions of the ‘self-made’ man(sic) who is rewarded for hard work wasn’t even born out in her own life as she married an oil industry man who in turn had inherited his wealth. She was a walking lie which, some bright sunny day, will be revealed – alas, too late for those of us that have had our lives blighted by it!
“Without oil and the Falklands, people would have listened to the little boy crying out that the Emperor had no clothes, and Thatcher would have benn unmasked”. Some truth in that Andrew. Of course, if the non Conservative vote hadn’t been divided between Labour and the SDP, she would have been defeated pretty quickly too.
Andrew, this morning I read your excellent addition to Richard’s blog on neo-feudalism – a far more detailed and well argued piece than I could have put together. I was struck in particular by your bleak conclusion, drawing parallels with the dystopian misery for the many (as we might call it) portrayed in certain science fiction films. You should add Elysium – out at the moment – to that genre, an excellent portrayal of where we are likely heading, although the ending is both unlikely and corny. In any case, and sadly, I agree with your conclusion – neo-feudalism will triumph, and generations of ordinary citizens will suffer accordingly.
Similarly, your analysis of the Thatcher project and its legacy is spot on. But I’d go so far as to say that we’ll never, ever have a politician courageous enough to expose that Ponzi scheme. As you say, a substantially significant enough minority benefitted, with many of them sincerly believing its entirely as a result of Thatcher’s policies, to ensure that that myth cannot now be challenged.
Well put, Richard. The problem is that these forces work insidiously and subconsciously as they become the wallpaper of the mind. The education system never gave me the tools to elucidate this and continues to fail in this area. When 45% princeton students are seeking jobs in the financial sector we know the oligarchy has captured the soul of the young. I think the US situation IS playing out here. The idea that a man who cared about social justice could be vilified as hating the country whilst oligarchs bet and gamble on the wreck of the economy means we are living in a topsy-turvy world where ‘truth’ is turned on its head and a dozy population that cannot see further than their knee jerk response is sleepwalking into fascism.
Add in the Lobbying and Transparency “gagging” bill, the bill restricting judical reviews to affected persons, and the villification of the unemployed, and we are well on the way to a fascist state.
When I read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists” for the first time just a few years ago I could not imagine that we would be moving back to that era: not just the attitudes to the underdog (which has long been apparent) but the government pressing hard on the reverse pedal.
Hutton’s right of course, but only in so far as he goes, and that is far enough. What he is refusing to countenance, and far too few refuse to consider, is what happens when the deafness is endemic and the deadlock in government is paralysing — as it is literally becoming in the USA.
It’s visible a lot closer to home than that – 90 miles off the south coast of England in Jersey. Evidence doesn’t matter: if the establishment say the moon is made of green cheese, then it is.
So true
And they say worse than that!
I’ve always taken the view that Hutton’s blindness (like that of many of his ilk) – his unwillingness to follow the logic of his own argument to its obvious conclusion – stems from the fact that he is so much part of the London based political class. If he’s to continue to be an accepted member of that class, with all the benefits that conveys, and opportunities it produces, then he has to be careful how far and deep he casts his criticism.
But ultimately the anger that comes through in this blog is entirely justified. Despite what our politicians may tell us, and the majority of our media feed us, we are far further down the road to a form of corporate totalitarianism (or neo-feudalism, if you like) than the vast majority of the population appreciate. Each week we get small insights into the workings of that dark place: today it was Chris Huhne’s admission that neither the cabinet nor the security committee had ever been told anything about how far and fast GCHQ and the NSA had pushed the tentacles of the surveilance state. But taken together they signify that we are living in little more than a sham democracy.