I have already noted the rotten culture at the heart of Jersey's economy and society this morning, but before anyone get's too smug it's important to note that there is no room for complacency elsewhere. As Gideon Rachman notes in the FT this morning:
I have a nightmare vision for the year 2017: President Trump, President Le Pen, President Putin. Like most nightmares, this one probably won't come true. But the very fact that Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen are running strongly for the American and French presidencies says something disturbing about the health of liberal democracy in the west. In confusing and scary times, voters seem tempted to turn to “strong” nationalistic leaders – western versions of Russia's Vladimir Putin.
And as Nick Pearce, formerly of IPPR and now at Bath University notes in the same paper:
Mr Corbyn has drawn new leftwing activists into the Labour fold. That is the limit of his reach.
Most Conservatives, their party governing alone for the first time in 18 years, look on in glee at Labour's self-immolation. The more thoughtful discern the vulnerabilities of their own party's ageing, shrivelled membership. The scandal of alleged bullying and abuse in its youth wing, following the suicide of a young activist, has claimed the scalp of a minister, and others may follow. Hedge-fund donors can pay for digital targeting of voters, but they cannot equip you with willing foot soldiers.
You can argue that these analyses are wrong, but at the same time I note that, like Jersey, the UK has a very obvious education problem. The Guardian reports this morning that:
England is a divided nation educationally, with children in the north and Midlands much less likely to attend a good or outstanding secondary school than their peers in the south, according to the chief inspector of schools.
Launching Ofsted's annual report on the state of the nation's schools on Tuesday, Sir Michael Wilshaw will describe the divide as “deeply troubling”. More than 400,000 pupils in northern England and the Midlands are being taught in a secondary school that falls below Ofsted's “good” rating.
Like Jersey people, those of the UK (and France and the US come to that) live in superficially wealthy countries where the narrative portrayed by much of the media is one of success and yet scratch only just below the surface, and on something as basic as education, and all is not well. And we know it is not just education. It is health, benefits, social care, justice and so much more as well.
And it so happens that I think that the overall story is remarkably similar to that in Jersey. We have, as Jersey does, a power elite that has been able to command the power of the state and the media to tell a story that we really do not believe. Just as Jersey does not believe in its financial sector, nor do we. We do not trust its promise of wealth. We do not see the evidence that it is delivering. We do note the privilege it demands.
Increasingly we see ourselves as the victims of this situation. That is hardly surprising. In the UK, as in France and the US, there are politicians willing to play a divide and rule card. In France at least that comes from an extreme party. But here and in the US it is coming from the mainstream political right. Trump is appalling, but is Osborne much better? Has it really in any way been even vaguely appropriate for him to have played the political game of designating the 'outsider', who he directs people to hate, to be those claiming benefits? What else was the 'shirker' narrative all about? Is that much better than the vile output Trump has to offer?
Deep down I think people are rightly repulsed by this. We know they are. They have low regard for politicians. They do not want to be associated with political parties. Many, even those who do not agree with Labour, seem to dislike the way the media is treating a man who is at least trying to do things a bit differently. And they can see that this programme of derision of Jeremy Corbyn is, like all the other narratives, really about maintaining the status quo that is very definitely not working.
Geoff Cook in Jersey says that the finance industry still has a lot of selling to do to the people of that island when it has dominated their economy for about 35 years now. He won't succeed. But nor will the politicians of the UK succeed in selling their false vision.
We may be a wealthy nation, but we do not benefit. We are a divided nation.
We are not all in this together. Many are deeply picked upon in behaviour that can at best be described as economic bullying.
Finance is not the answer to our problems: releasing the potential of people up and down this country is.
Not all answers are to be found in the private sector: we only have to see the stunning success of so many state services to realise that wealth is also created by carers, teaching assistants and so many others who are paid little more than minimum wage.
And the story that we cannot afford things is not believed: if we know we can always find money for bombs we know that there is, after all, a magic money tree however much the power elite deny it. And the truth is that it's not magic, and it's not a tree, but there is money if we want it. The fact that we have almost always run deficits, and grown because of and not despite them, is obvious proof of that.
So why are conventional political parties failing? Largely because right now many - and especially those closest to power - have really not been telling the truth.
And why are extremes attractive? I doubt they are. But they seem to be the only way to kick the supposedly moderate peddlers of profound misinformation and (in some cases) bigotry out of office.
And that's what's really sad about this. Because of the hegemony of middle ground thinking, that says the market is good, the state is bad, only the banks can create money and only they know how to use it and we must all suffer the consequences if they get it wrong, then we end up with extremism.
Why, oh why, can't the middle ground celebrate the mixed economy?
And the ability of human endeavour to be creative whoever owns the enterprise it works for?
Why too can't it say that all people are valuable?
And that maybe, just maybe, it might be appropriate to have bankers (including the Bank of England) under democratic control rather than subject to a rule all of their own?
Is it too much to ask that middle ground politics might base economics on the facts of money creation and tax, and not myth?
And why must that middle ground politics vilify people and in the process deny the obvious truth that unless we have really lost all elements of our humanity we are going to provide for the people of this country, come what may, and pretending we cannot afford to do so is only preparing the ground for solutions that are way beyond the human pale?
Where, in essence, is the moderation needed to be credible in the eyes of populace?
I wish I knew.
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Perhaps one of the key problems here is that what is referred to as the “middle” ground is no longer (and has not been for some time) the middle. This mythical middle has been moving to an extreme at a rapid rate for some time.
So much so that many of the positions and policies of someone like Corbyn, which would once have seemed middle of the road commonsense in the 60 ‘ s and 70’s, are now seriously portrayed as beyond the pale. Tariq Ali pursues this theme in his short tract “The Extreme Centre.”
A further problem is that the divide is not confined to elite circles or Westminster/media bubbles. There are a great many ordinary people who buy into this extreme narrative that is presented as the sensible, moderate, middle ground etc. It can be witnessed in the pub, on the bus/tube, in the letters columns of local newspapers, social media, and below the line comments on internet discussion sites (although many of the latter two will doubtless be officially sponsored trolls trying to create an impression of a false consensus, what Chomsky refers to as manufactured consent).
You, Andrew and I appear to be on a wavelength
Maybe you need to be of a certain age to be so
May I join you; I too am of a certain age.
You are very welcome
You need some gender balance. Me too.
Agreed
You ask
“Where, in essence, is the moderation needed to be credible in the eyes of populace?”
To which I pose the question: How is it that the allegedly “hard left extremist”, Jeremy Corbyn, appears to be the only major politician speaking quiet and thoughtful reason – moderation, in other words?
Alas, the famous “Overton window” hasn’t only shifted far to the right, so that the truly centrist Social Democratic views of Jeremy Corbyn can be presented as “hard Left extremism”, but that ” window” has also shifted far along the spectrum from veracity to mendacity.
In consequence, the Orwellian “1984” circumstance obtains, in which “Peace is War, War Peace”, and black is white, night day, and in which reasoned debate – “come, let us reason together” – is characterised as weakness, and we have the preposterous circumstance that Corbyn’s striving for a peaceful democratic solution is derided as weak extremism, while those who want to bomb the hell out of a far away land are termed “moderates”!!!
We are in the grip of linguistic mania, leading to a corruption of thought, and will one day have to seek out writers and thinkers like Orwell, or Gunter Grass in Germany, who can purge our corrupted discourse, to liberate rational thought from the chains wrought by sloppy, and mendacious language.
I have a lot of sympathy with that
Entirely agree, Andrew. The crucial thing here is that the constant distortion and corruption of language and terminology is leading to a corruption of thought. But whether or not it will be possible to purge that discourse now it’s become so embedded – and, more importantly, since the elite that rule us now see its value as a tool of control and oppression, I’m not at all sure. The sheer scale and depth of this corrupted discourse is staggering (as I realise every time I pick up The Sun or The Mail when I go to have my hair cut).
Don’t have your hair cut too often is my suggestion
Also avoid most coffee shops, I suggest
More seriously, we have no choice but change that discourse
I will be blogging again, in other words
Until stopped
Which possibility I never entirely rule out
Whilst waiting for the tea to cook last night I caught about 20 minutes or so of the Parliamentary debate about Britain’s role in the Middle East on the Parliament channel.
Now, granted, it was only a small part of a debate which for all I know may have been going on for hours and may well have gone on for a further number of hours. What struck me was a sudden deeper understanding of why it is referred to as The Westminster Bubble.
I caught the tail end of a contribution from the SNP MP for Glasgow South;Crispin Blunt; some Conservative MP for I think it was the IOW; a DUP MP and the start of someone else whose details never made it into the cache memory but who, now I think about it was a Conservative who was a member of some UK/Arab friendship body.
Not a single one of the contributions, apart from (obliqly) the SNP chap, acknowledged in any way whatsoever that the long involvement of the UK IN the Middle East had ever produced any negative outcome whatsoever. The whole tone and approach was one of smug, self satisfied benign taking on the white man’s burden.
The most bizzarre, of a number of bizzarre contributions, was from the DUP MP who waxed lyrical about the need to expand the West (read superior Western values, whatever they are) and NATO into the Eastern Mediterranean, Ukraine, Georgia, the Asian Stans bordering Russia etc. You could have been watching Parliament from the 1860’s because here we are in 2015 and our establishment are still trying to play the Great Game as though nothing has changed in human perception.
My point is that it is not just language we are dealing with here it is about a system of thinking which reproduces itself within and throughout the body politic. I was reminded of the sort of self assured innocence displayed in a school playground by a group of adolescents claiming that the kid they had just beaten up should be grateful for their attention. Sociopathic just does not cover what was on display in this ‘debate.’
It’s not just a better narrative which is required it is a clearing out of the institutions and those within them who are clearly psycologically, intellectually are did emotionally incapable of escaping their programing.
Dave, totally agree with you about the need to clear out the “Augean stables” that constitutes the “Westminster bubble”, where corruption is so endemic – not “cash” corruption, but the corruption of those who do not even recognise they are corrupt and deformed psychologically.
And that was my whole point about corrupted language and distorted values and perceptions. For contrary to the usual idea, it is not “thought that produces expression”, but “expression/language that produces thought, and moulds consciousness”. Capture the language, and you control the thought AND the consciousness, which is the whole thinking behind the Government’s iniquitous “nudge unit”, otherwise known as the Behavioural Insights Team (see http://www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk/)
If you want to see a far more critical account than this “official” PR puff, try Sue Kitty Jones’ take, at:
https://kittysjones.wordpress.com/2014/12/17/camerons-nudge-that-knocked-democracy-down-a-summary/
“establishment are still trying to play the Great Game as though nothing has changed in human perception. ”
As far as the establishment goes nothing has changed in perception-the interaction of unstated agendas in Syria is Gordian in entanglement.
Andrew-I didn’t now about ‘BIT’-I just glanced at the website and it made my flesh creep! I felt the shades of Bernays and Lippman hovering over my shoulder-sickening.
Richard-on Wednesday I will be attending a meeting at my son’s school ( a state Grammar school highly thought of) where the head and Chair of Governors will discuss a financial crisis affecting the school which could result in cuts in courses offered and extra-curricular activities. This is the ‘debt’ that future generations will be paying for not deficits/National Debt.
The results of austerity will be increased extremism and nationalism/xenophobia as we have the unseemly behaviour of Cameron playing faux Churchill and Hollande Napoleon. Not to mention one Hillary Benn whose intellect seems microscopically small in relation to his father.
The educational inequality you refer to is very visible in my part of the world (Cotswolds) . My son’s school facing income flow problems while a nearby Private school displays a banner declaring £3 million for a new performing arts centre. Said school relies on money from wealthy families from Russia/China/ Malaysia as well as local wealthy, families. Come to where I live and you’ll see the divide in its starkest form.
Simon
I am all too aware of it
And it is sickening that these costs are placed on the young
Richard
Richard
A thought provoking blog but at the same time very depressing. Nonetheless I agree with you entirely. Maybe the meeting of Weston-Super-Mare CLP later this week will cheer me up!
There is one advantage to an increasing polarisation of views in that more people no longer accept the status quo and start to question what is really going on.
It may well be that a balanced mixed economy is the most beneficial for human happiness, but I think that ultimately depends on the perspective of the beholder. Ask that question of a care nurse, factory worker, middle manager, banker or shareholder and the answers will of course be very different. Is the middle class, middle ground viewpoint the right perspective to consider this question?
As a younger man society seemed logical (despite growing up through the Thatcher years). I had the benefit of a moderately good education and the opportunity to “strive” to do well. But with hindsight after a lot of striving, a fairly happy life but no financial success to relax in old age it now strikes me that we all are biased by our own experiences along the way.
I now think how dare I have been so naive and arrogant as to have accepted the “look after number one” attitude that was so pervasive at the time. The narrative is changing since 2008 and it is good that our political and economic system is being seriously questioned, but it is still not yet clear which way the UK will swing. If there is one good thing about democracy it is that it allows the debate and can change without violence (even if the mental and verbal fight will be a hard one)
Thanks for your honest comments Keith- it can take many years to dig through the ideology and language that becomes our ‘mental wallpaper.’ We’ve experienced incredible social and cultural impoverishment over the last 40 years and some are now waking up to the fact that we have a cultural/spiritual wasteland on our hands.
WE know a new economics is needed and as Bill Mitchell put it in today’s blog:
“Governments can always maintain full employment if they choose and should do so given the highly damaging effects that recessions have on individuals, which span many generations as a consequence of the inheritance of disadvantage by children in jobless households.”
Hopefully there will be a slow dawning of realisation that we’ve lived through 40 years of scam, myths, rip-off, piss-take and grift on a huge scale. It won’t be pleasant when the light bulb goes on, let’s hope it’s gradual rather than tipping point.
And they get them young, Academy schools funded by business or faith. I feel concerned about the future of education for our young.
Will future teachers have a B Ed or just ‘ life skills’. Yes there is a shift in the narrative but a lot are adrift. We have to keep pushing that boulder up the hill. That many will have to work until nearly 70 to retire is alarming, some may wish to, depends on the job I guess.
It should be job share after 60 or so. Wonderfully thought provoking as usual Richard, you have courage. Long may you blog.
Reading Robert Caro’s four volume biography of Lyndon Johnson reveals very clearly that corruption is endemic to human nature and the only way it can be controlled is for a majority of human beings to recognise, as the anthropologist Christopher Boehm tells us in his book “Hierarchy in the Forest,” that our fundamental dual nature is one of loving to dominate but hating being dominated. This clearly necessitates that we improve the “institutionalised mechanisms” to control exploitation and whilst we can decentralise these “mechanisms” (and would be better off to do so as far as possible) we have to control the state in the first instance to further the process of “institutionalisation.” There is no other alternative.
“corruption is endemic to human nature”
I think we have to be careful about generic statements about human nature. What appears ‘innate’ is often the result of years of cultural forces rather than the ‘way we are.’
We tend to get corruption proportional to power bids-but in my view (and experience) most people are not corrupt and want to live decently -those in power find the want to create antagonistic economic forces that hinder that end.
‘I wish I knew’
Well, try reading ‘The Precariat’ by Guy Standing – I’ve delayed reading The Joy of Tax (and others) for this one. And I’m assuming you haven’t read it yet.
Standing really does nail the problem in my opinion and has even gone on to suggest ways to deal with it with additional publications. And the prose is very readable.
It’s all about the inequality of opportunity basically around security/insecurity about a society obsessed with being in work but doing little to provide well paid satisfying jobs (or even any jobs at all). I’d once again commend it to readers here most ardently.
Feeling that there is a problem is one thing; seeing that problem clearly is another and this book will help.
Richard’s analysis is correct, but those of us with experience of broadcasting know that the media in the current neo-liberal society will not give a platform to such views. We need to fundamentally reform the system. I hope this is an area that Jeremy Corbyn acts on as Prime Minister. In my view Seamus Milne would be an ideal candidate to head up the BBC under a Corbyn government, to ensure it communicates the real issues rather than pure propaganda on behalf of a capitalistic feudal system.
The reason why neo-lib rhetoric goes down well – and also that of UKIP – is because more and more people are becoming economically insecure so they respond more readily to being manipulated in this way. They are scared – it is all about fear.
Basically such people – and it could be any of us – are unhappy because of this lack of security and lack of real help to get them into a better situation.
This is why they tend to cheer on as more and more workers see their wages and conditions decline – just has happened to them previously.
It really is a vicious cycle – ordinary people being made envious of other ordinary people.
If you enjoy Richard’s heterodox approach to economic thinking, you’ll appreciate Guy Standings heterodox approach to the world of work.
Read it.
Sounds like a society where Schadenfreude has gone viral. Still there’s now the bombing to take people’s minds off it for a bit (Tony Benn’s Bone’s must be spinning at high velocity after the crass garbage emitted by his son today).
And I can think of a suitable Economics Editor!
Richard, what a powerful and brilliant cry. Full of passion and intelligence: possibly strange bedfellows most of the time.
Would love your permission to republish much, if not all, of this over on Learning from Dogs? For in your cry I hear the fundamental need to learn integrity from our dogs.
Republishing if not for profit is always permitted
Thank you very much.
A few months ago I watched a video clip of disabled people trying to enter the parliamentary chamber during PMQ’s to protest at the welfare cuts and their disproportionate affect on the poorest and sick in society. At the time I thought both angry and sad at how low the UK has stooped that it has come to people in wheelchairs and crutches having to protest to try to protect themselves from their own government.
Today, my son received a letter advising that he was no longer entitled to Disability Living Allowance (which he has received for 15 years since he was 2 years old for an incurable illness affecting millions of people in the UK) and his application for Personal Independence Payment has been rejected as he is not sufficiently disabled to qualify for it.
No discussion about the consequences, no consideration of what impact this may have, no explanation of why he should incur any of the cost of the financial crisis caused by no fault of his own.
I now feel disgusted at having to try to explain to him and my wife in what way this can be fair or good. I can’t, it isn’t and this government and the last one should be ashamed of itself for the choices that they made.
Shame on all MP’s who voted for these cruel and unfair welfare reforms.
Keith
I am so sorry for you, your son and wife
I don’t share your pain directly but I can share your anger
Richard
I believe the rationale is to make the existing system of social security useless to force everyone to take out private insurance, preferably, one imagines, with the giant American insurance company Unum who have been acting as consultants on the so-called welfare reforms since the early 90s. Both Smith and Cameron have recently publicly voiced their approval of the idea. If one does take out such insurance, I feel sure that applications for payouts, no matter how genuine the need, will be denied by using the same processes of testing as are used now to deny benefits, they’re having been developed in the USA for the specific purpose of denying health insurance claims. Keith, you can and should fight this decision, there are Facebook groups for the purpose and there’s the CAB too to give advice. This is one such group https://www.facebook.com/groups/ESAsurvivalguide/
Also one you probably wouldn’t find yourself, https://www.facebook.com/FightBack4Justice/?fref=nf They’re very good.
Keith, my sympathies are with you, your son and wife as earlier this year my son’s partner experienced a similar thing and consequently as well as loosing her allowance she also lost her motability car – which was her/their only means of getting her out of their home.
They appealed, but it took 18 weeks for that to be heard, over which time my son’s partner’s mental health declined significantly, such that she is much worse today than she was before this event. I can also notice a considerable change in my son’s outlook and demeanor too – which is quite upsetting to see.
But anyway, like many cases such as yours and theirs, they were successful at overturning the original judgement at appeal, so they do at least have the means to get about again. So, I’m sure you will be doing this, but you must appeal the decision.
As I see it moving the Overton Window is much more difficult than endeavouring to smash it.
The bigger questions need to be posed when the economy is mentioned. Like what is the economy for?
Everyone seems to assume it was mentioned in Genesis or arrived with the Big Bang, yet it is, after all, a human construct.
But is it a means or an end? Today’s media narrative treats it as an end in itself as in “upset” the economy or a “collapsed” economy and so on. Yet, for me at least, it is not an end but a means to an end. Neoliberals are happy to look after the bankers, and the jobless are the collateral damage. Why shouldn’t it be the other way round?
It is comparable with the French Revolution when Reason became a Goddess. Nowadays the Economy is that Goddess.
I feel there is much more likely to be a radical response to the answer what is the economy for? than tracts on how it works or how it should or might work, when in fact you need first to outline the basic objective.
As an aside I notice that on Radio 4 today programme this morning The Deputy Gov of the BoE was interviewed and it was pointed out to him that personal borrowing both secured and unsecured was increasing and he was allowed to get away with something like “we’ll keep a watching brief”, yet as Richard has pointed out, the OBR thinks that Osborne’s ‘recovery’ is based on this very fact – increasing precipitously. So The Deputy Gov should have been trained with well prepared solutions.
Or perhaps he doesn’t read the OBR reports….