In this morning's short video, I suggest that any politician who says ‘let's take the politics out of this' actually means ‘let's bring the market in because we don't want to address this problem'. In that case, tell them that all of life is politics and if they don't agree they should get another job.
The transcript is as follows.
All of life is politics.
It annoys me intensely when politicians say “let's take the politics out of this”, whether that's the health service, or education, or social care, or whatever else.
Social care is particularly relevant at present because Wes Streeting saying we should take the politics out of that.
What they actually mean is “let's put the market into this and let's take the politicians out of it”.
No.
No to anybody else who says such things.
All of life is politics because politics is about power relationships. And if social care isn't about power relationships, what the heck is it about?
Let's make life more political, not less.
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“Taking the politics out of it” suggests there is a single possible answer and implies that other positions are merely political. There is no alternative.
Similar to when one politician accuses another politician of “playing politics” as a political debating tactic. Ad hominem rather than addressing the substance of the argument.
Clean rivers & seas are a societal desirable: let’s take the politics out of this.
OK
the privatise & regulate approach (taking the politics out) has failed………over 34 years. Labour candidates – visit a river near you for confirmation of this REALITY.
So what is left? Regulate approach failed (over 34 year years), which leaves nationalisation – which means politics.
Ditto health – a far more complex area – which allows political imbeciles like Streeting to “twiddle”
Streeting is unfit to be a lollipop man and you would hear more sense talked on the Magic Roundabout than from him, it is a reflection on the UK and the body politsick that he is standing as a candidate.
PS: electricity – politics out of it? Ok. Result: profit maximising private entities that are not regulated in any meaningful way, regulator a know-nothing token.
But.. regulate for three decades but then cut the funding of the Environment Agency by 80% in barely ten years. That is corrupt politics.
Then somehow the rules don’t apply to water companies – impunity being an issue covered elsewhere today.
ALL environmental issues are intensely political.
How many birds you might see in your back garden is a political issue.
SUVs at 2x the average weight of personal vehicles are a political issue.
It is capitalism and unpaid ‘externalities’ that have mostly facilitated this mess.
Only political economy can resolve these crises, and certainly not the risible invisible hand.
It isn’t simply the fact that English water companies are in private ownership that is the immediate and urgent problem, but that purity standards are so poor, and breach regulatory standards so often, with impunity.
Why ? Lack of investment, poor management, no punishment for breaching standards. and that is tacit government approval.
Is that because these water companies fund a particular political party ?
All of that is very complicated politics, layer upon layer.
What a miserable way to look at life. Politics is depressingly necessary because so is government depressingly necessary. A happy life and society occurs when both are at their irreducible minimum. Politics and politicians are hated by the vast majority of the public. We don’t trust them and you shouldn’t trust those whose purpose in life is the pursuit of power and influence.
Government is at already below the irreducable minimum we need
That is why it is becoming shoreter, nastier and more miserable
And as for those who seek power and influence – I agree, we should not trust the multinational corporations who seek to that by exercising undue influence
I think you have confused government actions with politics. Limiting government actions is a form of politics. And politics is necessary to limit government. Nature has no natural mechanism to limit government. There must be an external entity which regulates the government. The Greeks called such a thing a polity. And thinking what is best for a polity is called politics.
@ Brendon
I agree entirely that the power issue is the largest pachyderm here, and government is continuously weakened by its abuse.
So-called democracies are as troubled by this as dictatorships.
It has long been known that Plato was pretty perceptive with his aphorism :-
“Only those who do not seek power are qualified to hold it.”
and that power tends to corrupt.
Machiavelli was very aware of the human propensity for corruption, being involved in the exercise of power in Italy at the time of the Medici, some 600 years ago.
His arguments start from the axiom that ‘in every republic there are two opposed factions, that of ‘the people and that of the rich’ , so he identifies these as perpetually opposed protagonists, centuries before Marx.
He’s had a bad press from his advocacy of amorality in “The Prince” , but Machiavelli’s genuine commitment was to the ideal of a well-ordered republic that is kept in check by the rule of law.
He saw corruption emerging as a result of ‘absolute power’ and distorted wealth distribution, and he was motivated by preventing corruption in the exercise of power.
Machiavelli’s suggestions to prevent abuses of power that might lead to tyranny, including oligarchy, include -.
a) control the rich;
b) balance the power of the differing and competing interest groups within society;
c) place time limits on office holding for those in power; as power corrupts progressively
d) constrain the exercise of power by office holders as the corruption of power tends to ‘weaken the government’
e) destroy harmful institutions to limit future corruption.
Controlling the rich was very high up in Machiavelli’s priorities, and by whatever means necessary. It includes corporates as well as individuals.
d) neatly summarises the effects of the corruption emerging after 14 yr of Conservative government.
I have equated his recommending “killing the sons of Brutus” – which he did mean literally given routine assassination by the Medici – with “destroying harmful institutions to limit future corruption”.
This means neutering special interest groups, of which plutocratic elites and corporates are the most prominent.
In the UK I’d argue that hegemony exists in ALL the embedded financial institutions.
These are first represented by the Bank of England, and act, first and foremost, on behalf of wealth interests, so not the wider public.
They need very heavy regulation to serve the wider public purpose and not their own clique.
The failure to reduce interest rates by the MPC is a classic demonstration of sectional interest domination.
Facilitating the autonomy of monetary policy by an unelected institution is a total failure of democracy.
There are very rigid checks and balances needed, as the formal political class seem to respond to a hierarchy of interests, in order ..
Personal interest,
Factional interest,
Party interest,
Government interests,
Public interest.
Unless the public interest can rise up through the rankings, by clear control of evolving corruption driven by the self interest of individual politicians, then government will always fail.
However, we structure our governing institutions on the basis that they will be operated by an honest political class driven by the motivation of public service.
I think this assumption needs reversing, and we need to accept that power and self interest will frequently emerge as individual priorities that override wider public interests, and this is more likely over time.
Putin’s repeated revisions of the rules to perpetuate his personal dominance is an almost ubiquitous pattern of leader behaviour in pyramidal power hierarchies.
The perpetual problem is that the revision of the rules comes within the power remit of those most likely to want to enable personal abuses of power.. which neatly brings us back to Plato..
Mr Ingle, I burst out laughing at this point: “A happy life and society occurs when both are at their irreducible minimum.”
Was that your intention?
You are repeating neo-liberal tropes: gov & politics @ minimum & we move to utopia – which have been demonstrated to be utter & complete nonsense. They are a catgeory error (Judt). I can recommend “Late Soviet Britain” by Innes. This will help your understanding.
Ain’t necessarily so.
There is a huge difference between right wing US based libertarianism, often mistakenly labelled as anarcho-capiltalism, which is a contradiction in terms, and the European version which is libertarian socialism – and that is self government, that can include highly devolved federalism and syndicalism and that is anarchism, which has a long and independent political history.
I would term government at its “irreducible minimum” as anarchism.
Neoliberalism is anything but ‘small government’.
I am not sure I would agree…..
If by politics they are referring to “mean-spiritied, narcissistic, ego-driven people” then by all means.
If they mean “elected government”, no.
In politics (more accurately in and out) since 1970, I have met very few trustworthy people aspiring to political power. To whit, one Conservative (who got dumped by Thatcherites), a couple of Labour people and a few Green/eco types. Other than those, the ability to dump or dump on people for expediency or status gain seems a prerequisite for a politician. My other observation is that the public surface is almost never the truth – I think many on here subscribe to the notion that by their actions ye shall know them.
@Brendon Ingle…. ? Not THE Brendon Ingle surely?….. the late Irish boxer.
“A happy life and society occurs when both are at their irreducible minimum.”
Oh! for heaven’s sake! What naive and idealistic nonsense is this? Is this what we can expect in the afterlife? It’s certainly not the way the World works.
.