I watched most of David Cameron's speech yesterday, the same as I watched some of Ed Miliband's the week before.
Ivan Horrocks has explained all that was wrong with Ed Miliband's speech, here. But Cameron's was worse. Miliband's may have been grounded in a park bench on Hampstead Heath but at least that was a real park bench. Cameron's seems to have been grounded on nothing at all.
Take for example, the promise that GP surgeries will be open seven days a week. This morning the Guardian has the headline:
Up to 600 GP surgeries could close over course of next year as doctors retire
I happen to know of some places where this risk is real. The Royal College of General Practitioners is not exaggerating. The challenge right now is to make sure people have GP services five days a week so tough has the job become. Thinking it can be extended to a seven day a week service is a fantasy exercise in that case. The people to deliver just do not exist.
And this seems typical of the whole foundation for what the Conservatives are saying. Everything is duplicitous.
So, supposedly tax cuts are to benefit the low paid when they very clearly do not.
And the budget will be balanced and the deficit eliminated when right now it is increasing and that's not all The Lib Dems fault.
And the Conservatives are apparently a trade union (the only advantage to that claim being it was very obviously transparent nonsense).
Now, I accept that all politicians sell a vision. And all in the process persuade themselves they have more power than is credible. This is not just a fault peculiar to the Conservative Party. But at a time when the credibility of politics is strained I find this misrepresentation of reality deeply worrying. The necessary implicit relationships of trust between politicians and the electorate are undermined by nonsense spoken that bears no relationship to reality. That relationship has always been based on cynicism, I know. But when cynicism is replaced by outright, and appropriate, disbelief something changes.
That's where I fear we are. And if the democratic relationships that underpin our country are threatened as a result I am very worried indeed.
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There seems to be an unwritten rule of politics.
When MacMillan resigned in the 60s, the Tories made Alec Douglas Home leader, his main qualification being that he was not Rab Butler. When Callaghan lost to Thatcher, Labour made Michael Foot leader, because he was not Dennis Healey. When Major lost to Blair, the Tories successively made Hague, Duncan Smith and Howard leader because they were not Kenneth Clark. Labour made Ed Milliband leader because he was not a significant part of the the previous government.
If the main criterion for choosing an opposition leader is what they are not, then it is hardly surprising if you become disappointed with what they are.
…And don’t forget the highly principled formation of the SDP to help things along in 1983, including political nomad Vincent Cable who eventually settled into the conservative coalition.
Seamas Milne in the Guardian is spot on talking about all this stuff: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/02/tory-tax-cuts-war-iraq-cameron-thatcher-blair
Although the media is obviously horrendously biased, I do blame the Labour party for failing to put up any sort of fight against most of these reactionary policies. OK so they’ve said they’ll repeal the bedroom tax, and that’s welcome, but what about the hundreds of other appalling things the ConDem govt has done? Even if Ed Miliband just went into the election on a platform of repealing every single piece of ConDem legislation (except for scrapping ID cards and introducing gay marriage) it would be a vast improvement on the so-called “programme” that Labour is offering.
I very much agree with everything you say here. Just a couple of thoughts on it.
Firstly, I think the structural role of the press is often overlooked with respect to this problem. It’s not so much that people like David Cameron unashamedly lie to the electorate as that they’re consistently allowed to get away with it by newspapers. On the odd occasion a broadsheet will call them out, it’s rarely on page one. I believe the effect of this is quite far-reaching in terms of making such deceptive speeches acceptable.
Secondly, often the language surrounding politicians’ deception is the language of mitigation. “Lie” is euphemised in countless ways. For example, I think the strongest word in your article is “duplicitous”, and there you go further than most. It’s a sanctionable offence to use the word “liar” of an MP in the House of Commons – possibly the most extreme form of what amounts to a sort of national self-censorship in public discourse. The same might be said, of course, about other words like “corrupt” and “criminal”.
I suspect the libel laws might play a part in this, but the effect is to create the impression that such plain talking does not form part of “proper” talk about politics, so that anyone using such plain terms is herself improper or saying something improper.
And so the British horror of impropriety becomes a bigger shield than ever Justice was to a liar like Jonathan Aitken. Since what is improper commands no belief, an ungrounded ‘faith’ in the probity of public figures is engendered, though this faith resolves into nothing more positive than cognitive dissonance when confronted with evidence of the uglier realities of politicians’ behaviour.
Therefore, I think an important part of any solution to the problem you raise will involve finding ways of reviving the accusatory language needed to speak accurately about our politicians. Clearly the press is not going to be of assistance in this, so it increasingly looks like the move from traditional to new media (where plain speaking is more in evidence!) is the only hope for British politics now.
I try
Imagine: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/By7kzxBIEAAsBfN.jpg !
“Now I accept that all politicians sell a vision”
Unusually I find I have to disagree with you. The big problem is that none of our politicians truly sell a vision. They have no vision which all the people can buy in to. And as Solomon said, without vision the people will perish.
I stand corrected
You’re right
Though I’ve heard there’s a guy in Cheltenham trying to do something about that…..
Most alarming to me, is the very deliberate crafting of Tory-speak. I recognise so many of the techniques of hypnotherapy/Darren Brown/stage spiritualists/advertising …
They are superb at evoking schemas/frames of reference which bear little relation to fact or reality. Doubtless, Labour tries to do something similar but are amateurs in comparison. This slick and cynical manipulation is the hallmark of this government and completely anti-democratic.
Agreed, entirely
Did anyone see the photo of the ghastly Grant Shapps with a chorus of blue shirted youths behind -said shirts emblazoned with Union Jacks. The effect was preposterously fascistic and stomach churning. Yet again when you think the lower depths have been reached, a trap door opens to reveal something lower. I can barely believe the state we are in – in my worst dreams I never thought it could get this bad -still, it’s a reminder we have to remain awake to the abuse of language and power and not sink into the feeling that fascism can’t happen again.
Less slick, but often as shameless.
The behaviour of labour during the independence referendum was numbingly depressing, as if doing the tories work for them wasn’t humiliating enough:
A scene from the battle for britain
Abject.
When I was young, advertising was seen as a sort of mildly distateful profession which had to be regulated in order to protect the public from any overreaching.
Its sterile, malignant twin; Public Relations, has never been regulated even as it has grown to 7.5 billion (2011) industry. We have an army (62000 employed (2011)) of unconstrained, amoral sophists who increasingly feed a dependent mainstream media.
The leader of the conservative coalition emerged from this reverse sewer. Someone whose voice can tremble with love for the people of scotland, wave his dead son in front of the television and declare that the ‘deficit’ is our greatest threat.
After all, words are just weapons, disposable blades for the task in hand.
As long as the Labour party refuses to provide anything but a pale shadow of this, you are forced to conclude they have embraced both the ends and the means, and conceded that the conservative coalition are the best choice to acheive them.
The temper and integrity with which the political fight is waged is more important for the health of a society than any particular policy
-Roland Niebuhr
-From the frontispeice of “Thunder on the right- The ‘new right’ and the politics of resentment” (1980)
Richard. This blog also illustrates one of the fundamental reasons why I argued in a comment to an earlier blog that an accommodation between the Tories and UKIP will be engineered shortly before the election which electorally benefits them both, and which may well deliver a Tory/UKIP coalition. Neither party has any scruples about making promises and/or “outlining” future policies that are patently undeliverable. Or, even if they are feasible, will likely cost far more than ever publicly discussed and result in impacts and consequences that are extremely costly in either human or monetary terms, or both.
The latter is already a hallmark of the ConDem policies implemented since 2010. Take the most recent example that hit thousands of unsuspecting “customers” this week – the withdrawal of the paper car tax disc and the transference of this transaction to an (allegedly) digital system. And lo! What do we get. A beta system (yes, not even fully tested) that crashes, with no adequate back up as the fallback phone system was/is also inadequate to the task.
Still, never mind, as with Duncan Smith’s IT based benefit rationalisation system, just tell more and more lies about its actual performance, rewrite the roll-out schedule, press reset and carry on.
Ultimately, what we are seeing across swathes of public policy is the emergence of what amounts to a fantasy land regarding implementation, outcomes and impact. This operates in parallel with reality, but always takes precedence. It is maintained through a combination of lack of appropriate oversight, transparency and evaluation; public servants who are cowed and/or ideologically compromised/politicised; politicians who are prepared to say anything to maintain the fantasy; a media that largely subscribes to the promotion and maintenance of this fantasy land; a PR industry that can be bought in to manipulate the facts and overall message whenever things get too tricky to handle; and corporate “citizens” that despite their oft heard statements to the contrary, don’t give a fig about public money being wasted just as long as it lands in their pockets.
Is this a threat to democracy? Of course. But as most of those concerned aren’t really that interested in such an old-fashion concept (it does, after all make “doing business” more costly and time consuming), don’t expect the direction of travel to change.
One could get depressed reading this blog right now
On car tax: you do realise that as of 1-Oct when you sell a car, any existing tax is revoked on recording the sale at dvla?
A refund of any whole months remaining is then generated.
The buyer then has to purchase tax immediately or risk vehicle impound (continuous taxation/insurance)
Cheer up!
It has been like this more often than not.
I think ‘the ragged trousered philanthropists’ on the national curriculum would be a help.
I must re-read
Years since I did
I read it again earlier in the year, shortly after re-reading Robert Roberts’ The Classic Slum. I’m assuming that members of the Labour shadow cabinet have read both. A re-read would be in order now, as it might put some fire in their bellies, and passion in their hearts and galvanise some radical thinking that’ll result in performance and policies that save us from the impending Tory/UKIP government. The chapter on ‘Governors, Pastors and Masters’ is particularly relevant to the current day Tory party. Take the following, which describes an attitude much in evidence when Tories talk about ‘welfare’:
‘… when workhouses had been established, it had been emphasized in a Bill which Parliament welcomed with enthusiasm that the conditions of living in the “unions” must deliberately be made “less eligible” – that is, more wretched than those suffered by the lowest-paid worker outside. As conscious policy, any entrant to the workhouse had to be openly humiliated, and this was done with such thorough, cold-hearted effect that it cowed the undermass for the better part of a century. The workhouse system meant, said one of its inspirers,
having all relief through the workhouse, making the workhouse an uninviting place of wholesome restraint, preventing any of its inmates from going out, or receiving visitors without a written note to that effect from one of the overseers, disallowing beer and tobacco and finding them work according to their ability; thus making the parish fund the last resource of a pauper, and rendering the person who administers teh relief the hardest taskmaster and the worst paymaster that the idle and dissolute can apply to.
This enthusiast overlooked, of course, the unnumberable honest, hard-working men and women driven to destitution through lack of work; he forgot the old, the sick, the dependent children. Poverty, he felt, was a crime that should be sternly punished. For the rest of the nineteenth century and beyond, society left it “idle paupers” in the hands of the overseers…’
(Roberts, 1971: 64-65).
And now they are back, in the form of Osborne, Cameron, IDS and all those others baying for the poor to be punished.
Yes, they are back
Is that piece copyright? Could is be reproduced in a blog?
Richard
I used to teach the workhouse to secondary pupils. The system was abolished in 1929 -just in time for the Great Depression-and so building remained in use until after the war as there was ‘no money.’ By that time it was often administrated with some humanity, or as much as the system would allow.
On of my wife’s family recalled her grandmother in the 1960s was suffering from early dementia and would go missing. When they found her, she would beg not to be sent to the workhouse. It cast a long shadow and in my opinion, is a major reason for why poor people often feel embarrassed at being poor. I can remember the feeling from my own youth despite the efforts of my mother to provide.
There was a poem Christmas day in the workhouse, which was often quoted in jest in the days of black and white TV but it still contained a truth. However, in the poem when it was Christmas day the Guardians ( the people who had responsibility for it) would come to see the paupers eat -and be grateful.
Ivan I don’t expect the present generation of IDS etc would even do that.
I remember all too clearly mu mother’s tales of poverty in the thirties
Maybe none of the cabinet had parents with such tales to tell
I also recall the struggle my parents had in the 60s to get my grandmother into a house with a bath as her arthritis advanced and she could no longer use a tin one – which I can remember as well
Again, I suspect that is also not a tale many in the cabinet might share
Memories are important
I find the management of memory pretty fascinating. A young person watching the colour television would be forgiven for thinking that the sun never shone in the 60’s and 70’s, that the ‘winter of discontent’ was the defining moment (no one mentions the 3 day week) in post war history.
Ivan -the two year freeze on benefits combined with Duncan Smith’s ‘Smart’ card is the contemporary analogue to your quote. Apparently when Kenneth Clarke was asked about the £2-£4 loss to those on Job Seekers allowance over the two years he merely said: ‘that will be annoying.’ This is clearly a complete lack of the imaginative faculty when it comes to the reality of others.
The systemic vilification of the poor, ill ,vulnerable is being extended to keep the struggling middle happy without revealing the true causes of their struggle. When lies are pedalled so ostentatiously the situation is very dangerous for our society. This must be fought with great determination.
“The Royal College of General Practitioners is not exaggerating. The challenge right now is to make sure people have GP services five days a week so tough has the job become. Thinking it can be extended to a seven day a week service is a fantasy exercise in that case. The people to deliver just do not exist.”
Do you expect the RCGP or the BMA to argue for a meaningful increase in the number of GPs then?
Yes
Because those doing the job know they cannot now meet demand
Disclosure: my wife is a GP but has not worked for 18 months due to ill health
I’m sorry to here about your wife Richard. Some time ago I met a GP who felt she had to go part time due to stress -I know they are paid well but this does not excuse them being pushed to their limits and beyond, especially in inner-city practices.
Thanks Simon
Actually, the illness was physical with many complications, some from the treatment
But she should be back at work – part time I hope – soon if all goes well
I’m afraid Google comes into it (wash out mouth), but Ragged Trouser Philanthropists is in Project Gutenberg, so presumably out of copyright.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3608
It is free on Amazon, I discovered
Worse!
Richard I am not sure whether the use of a couple of strong expletives will prevent you from posting this link; but if you haven’t seen it, I recommend this sharp satirical take on Cameron and the Conservatives by Cassetteboy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YBumQHPAeU
Well, I was amused
Thanks