Will Hutton suggested in The Observer today, when discussing the treatment of Emily Maitlis by the BBC:
Trust can only be earned in public health policy by testing answers. Evidence bending in order to justify a political position is not going to work. One of the reasons Keir Starmer's approval rating is rising is that he is in step with the times. The period of British politics in which style and storytelling triumphed over fact and evidence is ending. The tragedy is that it has taken a first-order health crisis to remind the British of the tradition that Francis Bacon pioneered — and once again to live by it.
But is he right? Is that change really happening?
I would like to agree with Will on this one. But simply by asking the question it is clear that I have doubts.
Thoughts?
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Would seem more like a Pied Piper tale made as an adult horror movie in which the big question is will the feeble minded citizens ever wake up from their trance and avert the disasters from a ramped-up coronavirus and a No-Deal Brexit! Not looking good at the moment after voting persistently for ten years of austerity policy – grip your seat harder!
Like you I don’t really know. (Which means it’s an interesting question).
On one hand these hypernormalisation strategies are getting technically better, they’ll be based on bigger datasets which could make them more effective and the modern way of consuming news in online communities self-selecting for mutual approval all seem to suggest that they will get better and better at manipulating opinion. It’s become very clear that money buys power and the technical advances may cement that trait.
On the other hand a change in public mood can be a very powerful enduring effect. The war weariness and desire for a better world generated by the Great Depression and WW2 created a societal order that is only just now ending. The voting behaviour of young people in the UK seems overwhelmingly in favour of progressive parties. The aristocratic behaviour of people like Cummings is hard to tolerate at a time of national sacrifice.
It could go either way. A lot will depend on the message. The Corbyn project had a lot to like but there was much about it that put voters off, much of it self-inflicted damage. Can Starmer’s aura of professional technocratic competence extend to implementing the kind of radical systemic change that is needed, a Green New Deal and tax justice? It can feel sometimes that the people competent enough to do it don’t want to do it and the people who burn to remodel society can’t organise a party in a brewery.
I guess we will have to wait and see and, I hope, in our own small ways to attempt to influence the outcome.
I think you hit my concerns well there
I suspect that the British self regard for its faith in, and espousal of individual liberty, over the community interest is often a disguise of a British preference for latent personal indulgence of what is, in essence, anarchy; provided only, nobody notices that a special exception is made. It does not look like anarchy only because it is exclusive, personal and usually well hidden.
In most cases the circumstances are rarely extreme enough for the liminal test to be required, save in the case of a governing elite.
The pandemic is testing the principle to destruction.
Perhaps, but you missed out that they expect their property rights to be enforced. Not many anarchists are in favour of private land ownership. If you are going to use the term anarchism here, then you probably mean anarcho-capitalism.
I suppose we see some elements of that from our elite, but they clearly use the state to enrich themselves too. They preach for a small state, but clearly not so small that they can’t mooch off it for a free meal.
If you’ve met American libertarians they often actually care about innovation and the productive capacity of workers. The British lot seem much closer to rentier capitalists, whilst simultaneously pretending to be something more exciting. It the same age old privilege, just rebranded for an individualistic society.
Yes, I was using the word ‘anarchism’ tentatively. I am searching for the character of this predisposition. ‘Anarcho-capitalism’? Too glib. I appreciate your response, nevertheless because I think we need to understand this, and am glad it was noticed and thought worthy of comment.
The Government was reluctant to attempt a lockdown, in part at least because they didn’t think the British people would conform to the rules. I consider this in itself quite revealing, of the nature of both government and public. The Government was probably more astonished by the positive response of the public to the idea of a lockdown than anyone (so much for Cummings), and promptly followed the public lead; such is Conservative leadership. The Cummings tendency in the government is, however never far away, and seems to me to have been playing on the problematic nature of exiting a lockdown in order to exploit the tendency in the British public to manipulate or ignore the rules in personally convenient ways according to their own views of liberty; the very characteristic that made the Government apprehensive of applying the lockdown in the first place. This manipulation is working to the degree that it is accelerating the exit, with the Government parasitically following the public’s casual libertarian exploitation of the limits of the rules, if not actually encouraging it with at best confused messaging; while the scientists are beginning to express concerns.
To return to anarcho-capitalism; it doesn’t work because capitalism is protean, so protean in nature that it adds nothing illuminating by applying it to another concept. It tells us nothing. Allow me to provide a simple comparison.
The most successful and prominent proponent of capitalism over the last one hundred years is the United States. At the same time the most successful and prominent proponent of capitalism over the last twenty years is the People’s Republic of China; a Communist state.
We have always lived by stories and always will. Effective stories always contain a mythology about what is a legitimate argument and what is not. We may be moving the bounds of argument legitimacy towards ones rooted in the mythologies of expertise and evidence. Which would be much more comfortable and, I think history shows, more effective. But it would be a mistake to think that this is anything other than another story.
Will partially recognises that in his article
And I agree with you
But what he is looking for are stories with verifiable elements within them
On that I share his desire
I think we’re going to have to wait a bit longer for that one Richard. The larger public don’t pay that much attention to politics in general, and largely vote emotionally. The only people who seem to care much about Keir Starmer at the moment are the Westminster bubble.
I imagine huge unemployment post-corona, and then supply chain disruption caused by Brexit might be enough to cause people to start questioning for a few days, but who knows if they will blame the government or not? Could just as easily double down on blaming the EU for our woes.
No doubt If it when that happens, they will try to reignite the culture war one more time. I don’t post-truth politics is over just yet.
Labour is increasing rapidly in the polls for a reason
I think the public have noticed
Yes but on what basis? Because there is no one else? Poor reason for choice.
Cue policy vacuum and kiss good bye to the courageous State! Cue luke-warm Tory ideas from blue Labour most of whom don’t get MMT (this is the party of the great Liam ‘There is no Money’ Byrne after all).
So, we just lurch from one bunch of ignorant politicians to another ! I do hope that Labour can really go for it if they get the chance but fear they will not.
Great!
I live in hope…
I am wary of seeing the public response to the way Covid is being dealt with as one that is more universal. I don’t always hear a lot of criticism about this Government from the people I work with. I hear more moans about there being no football.
And there is still time for the Tories to tell more porkies or district our attention as well as use the tactics that got us BREXIT.
The worst case scenario is that which Jonathan Freedland suggests – that people will lose their faith in the State and democracy and turn off.
This is one of the reasons why I support MMT/DMF – because Government needs to prove why it is important in people’s lives and how it can make a positive impact. The State must show its faith in the British people by investing in them.
Replacing poor Government alone will not change anything unless those replacing it are offering some thing to restore trust, something truly courageous shall we say, that restores some semblance of respect or reciprocity between the State and its people.
I think that you are right to be sceptical, lets put it that way.
But trust I think can only be restored by a new deal of sorts, the rebuilding of much that has been handed over to the markets and their reorientation towards support and not simply profit making – more social beneficial metrics need to be developed. A courageous state could lead the way on that sort of thinking. A State wanting to provide for its people with prosperity and happiness I suppose instead of the defeatist limited crap from Rishi Sunak saying that he can’t help everyone – which is bollocks BTW or a Prime Minister who says that our Health Care System is getting too expensive.
We undoubtedly need a Courageous State
Courageous state? Nah I prefer individuality, freedom and liberty..
Abuse then?
Courageous state? A stronger alternative to neoliberal looting? A better narrative that more people follow? How short your memories are ..
You had that just now and decided to help scupper it alongside the Tory press; a genuinely social movement, social policy distilled from decades of opposition, a grassroots-fuelled movement which attracted hundreds of thousands of followers and committed doorstep workers, a genuine expression of hope for working people across the board, oppressed people, union workers and minorities. But you chose to kill it because …. what? Corbyn was not a perma-tanned, smooth, oily, white-teethed smiler? You didn’t ‘believe he was a leader’?
These opportunities come along only once a generation and you blew ours. Quit bleating and live in the world you made.
I have met Corbyn
He was hopeless at leadership
Whether he had other merits is beside the point
He was never, ever, going to deliver anything
Now please deal with it and stop wasting time talking about it here
I was a Corbyn fan and voted for him as party leader originally. I agreed with many of his politics and policies, especially moving away from neo-liberal economics. The trouble is, that’s not what makes a good leader.
He turned out to be a poor leader that was unable to bring the party together to fight on the same side. It doesn’t matter how good your policies are if your troops go whichever direction they feel like, and spend most of the time fighting. I spent time defending him to friends and family, and wonder now why I did.
Luckily, ideas don’t cease to exist, and party leader is a job, not a calling. I’m cautiously optimistic about Keir Starmer so far. He knows which battles are worth fighting, whilst Corbyn tried to fight all of them simultaneously. He also knows if you don’t make waves for no reason, and stay solid and responsible, you can earn respect gradually and keep it. Both things Corbyn never learnt. It’s no use being a perpetual opposition, since you can never get policies enacted.
Corbyn was certainly treated badly by the media, but that is to be expected, given their ownership. The best the media have come up with on Starmer so far is that he didn’t sack enough MPs for lock down breaches, and he bought a field to use a donkey sanctuary (which I am still unsure why is significant in any way).
He might be boring, but boring looks good when the current government are reckless ideologues.
I agree re the ideas
In some areas Corbyn was pronmot9ing really good ideas
And Labour has to avoid being Tory lite
But Jeremy could not deliver the ideas – and that’s what matters
I’ve yet to be convinced that a Starmer led Labour party issuing to be the solution, though they certainly couldn’t be worse than this lot. Really really wish they would be. But as very depressingly pointed out elsewhere:
Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds this morning avoided three times saying that Labour opposes Boris Johnson’s reckless haste to ease lock-down measures, during an interview with the BBC’s Andrew Marr.
As Marr attempted to get a straight answer, Dodds dodged – saying almost anything rather than a simple ‘Yes, we oppose it’:
Not one of Labour’s supposed tests for lifting the lock-down have been met yet – and Marr listed them. Dodds said it was risky – but wouldn’t say Labour was against it.
I still hope they’re playing a game of letting the Tories sink themselves
I can hope…
Never interrupt your enemy while they are making a mistake. Or a whole bucket load of them.
A proven Labour tactic that worked so well with Brexit… oh, hang on a minute
The issue of story telling is still central to all of this though. It is that that has to be challenged somehow (and your work on explaining money will help, but also faces the same challenges).
In the film The Four Horseman, FT Editor Gillian Tett talks about society’s ‘cognitive maps’ and how these are used to explain how we got to be where we are today.
I suppose part of the neo-lib cognitive map is based on how the welfarism created problems in society and became unsustainable, how states and their institutions self justified and sought to expand their monopoly and indispensability but could also become authoritarian; that tax was a form of theft even.
But what emerges is a counter cognitive map: that the Gold Standard was abandoned effectively letting markets – not elected Governments – control the value of sovereign money which has made the global money system less stable; that those nations that were defeated in the last war began to catch up after rebuilding to out perform the economies of the victor nations (a lesson if ever there was in complacency) and that the West backed the country without the oil in the Middle East so that the Muslim oil producing nations decided to forget about the cheap oil Roosevelt had negotiated after WWII and thus contributed to inflation, the 3 day week and public sector strikes.
You will see many of the those causal elements in the above paragraph pushed to the periphery of historic accounts of how we ended up with Thatcher and Reagan.
So the question is, how do we set the record straight? How to begin? It’s tough one , it really is.
Agreed!
Too late to address tonight
‘Too late to address tonight’.
Good to see you concentrating on rest Richard!
Jayne County does not realise, or choses to ignore the reality that her beloved “individuality, freedom, and liberty” are only meaningful and properly realisable concepts if they apply to everybody, and can only thus be realised in a courageous state.
It is not up to Labour to say whether it agrees with easing of lockdown or not. It is for the Government to decide. Any opposition should avoid agreeing with any Government position because that simply allows for a government to play a “you agreed with us so you can’t complain” card if the decision is wrong. If you categorically disagree in a 50:50 choice then you are in the marketing equivalent of a taste test. Labour would have to be absolutely sure that the easing of lockdown will have a negative effect otherwise it hands ammunition to the government that the opposition cannot make decisions to the benefit of the electorate if it turns out the Government position is correct. Why should Labour risk doing that? To give an answer puts you in a position of risk you need not take. Her position should be “we are not in government so it doesn’t matter what our position is we cannot influence the policy position at the moment. Marr knows this. Dodds knows this too and should have known the question was coming and had a well worked out response. She was right in taking up a position of saying it is a risk.
As billions of people world-wide follow their religious beliefs without a shred of evidence – of course story-telling will always win; humans can’t help themselves!
Mood lightener for very dark times…
Anyone aware that Francis Bacon was the first scientist killed by a frozen chicken (experiment in snow…cold…death from flu/pneumonia…)
Story telling is useful and the best story tellers are able to weave solid provable concepts into the stories to make them accessible to all.
For things like MMT and GND to take hold of public imagination, great stories need to be told.
Perhaps you’d care to ask this same question once Scotland is an Independent nation..?