Trump, Badenoch, and even Starmer and Reeves, are all making me ask the same question this morning. That is, what is politics for?
All of them give me, albeit in slightly differing ways, one answer. That is that politics is an exercise in manipulating people to provide support for the agenda that the politician wants for the sake of that politician's advancement at cost to society at large.
With Trump and Badenoch it is apparent that there is no real desire for the culture wars to which they are so obviously wedded as the mechanism to divide society to advance their own cause.
In the case of Starmer and Reeves the interests of the electorate are very obviously subordinate, most especially after the recent budget, to the interests of the City and big business.
Neither pairing is in politics to serve. They are there to take advantage.
The alternative view of politics is that it might be about service and advancing the interests of communities as a whole, to which the politician should be dedicated. There might, of course, be different views as to how to achieve this, but a number of characteristics should stand out.
First, the aim will be to find common ground despite differences. Whilst accepting that no policy will ever be universally acceptable, the aim will be to win acceptance from as many people as possible for the chosen policy because it obviously advances their well-being.
Secondly, that means no policy will be chosen because of its ability to divide and so create dissent.
Thirdly, politicians should see themselves as tellers of the truth. In other words, what they should seek to present are realistic choices within the constraints that currently exist whilst also explaining how and why, if necessary, those constraints might be changed by chosen political action. Realism about the present is, therefore, mixed with realistic debate about the future that seeks to educate, inform and persuade. This contrasts with the current situation that seeks to impose a view without ever explaining the influences behind that imposition.
I think we have had politics of the second sort I describe in my lifetime. Far too many politicians, most especially at the national level, are now of the first sort. And that, I suggest, is why we face almost continual political crises. When politics seeks to use the people of a jurisdiction to advance their own interests we inevitably end up with a conflict between politicians and the people. The result is that politicians then use this situation to incite conflict between people when their job should be to create unity.
No wonder we are in trouble.
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PR induces more co-operative, less divisive politics. Why? Because aspiring representatives seek preference votes.
Badenoch is yet another British exceptionalist (is it something in the water?). As Home Secretary she blocked a cultural grant to the Belfast rap group Kneecap “because they were anti-British” (ie, in favour of Irish reunification). Shortly afterwards she wrote an article in the Telegraph complaining that her half-Nigerian children weren’t being treated as fully British.
Who knows what British politicians see in the mirror.
Do you know what I haven’t seen?
I haven’t seen any politician in government address their nation, setting out clearly that we are facing an unprecedented emergency in climate-ecological breakdown, that we must all mobilise, change our lifestyles and economies, much as we did in the last World War – and only by doing this might we, or our children, come through together into a better world.
Agreed
Me neither
Politics should be about enabling democracy and giving everybody the best opportunity in life. Today it is about wealth creation for the well-off, and hiding that aim for the population.
Read: The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& How It Came to Control Your Life) (2024) George Monbiot & Peter Hutchison
https://amzn.eu/d/6jLSNoB
When they are not “advanc[ing] their own interests… [or] incit[ing] conflict between people” they are pursuing the dogma of political certitudes. I heard this morning that Starmer is going to increase the funding of the Border Force to tackle people smugglers. This is, as has been pointed out many times on here, utter stupidity. They are not going to defeat the people smugglers just as they are not going to win the “war on drugs”. As you and others have said, provide safe, legal routes and a ferry ticket and the people smugglers business model will collapse.
It’s another feature of our politicians, they cannot countenance common sense solutions to intractable problems which they think will mean “caving in” to evil people, so they keep pursuing the same failed policies over and over again and expect a different result. Madness and stupidity of the highest order. Why are we cursed with such morons?
As the Guardian reports it today, this is because it is a “national security” issue apparently.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/03/keir-starmer-to-create-team-to-tackle-national-security-threat-of-people-smugglers
Obviously, if you are a hostile state wanting to adversely impact UK, the way to do it is to send your agents over in small boats, hope they don’t drown on the way, so they
can be intercepted by Border Force, biometrically surveilled, caught up in the Home Office hostile environment and get firebombed by the far right…
Good grief!
It will be interesting to see whose bank accounts get arbitrarily closed down. I send money to good people in a Middle Eastern country, to finance humanitarian work amongst refugees that actually reduces the risk of terrorism, but it’s an uphill battle, as neither my HBOS group bank accounts nor my HBOS Mastercard would process the payments and refused to discuss the matter. It took 12 months to work out a compromise.
What I see in this “security threat” are yet more opportunities for state control & surveillance of those with politically inconvenient voices. It’s not about national security, it’s not about dog-whistle racism, it’s about authoritarian surveillance and control with the catchall no-argument EXCUSE of “national security”.
You can tell how far Starmer is down the Westminster rabbit hole because this week we’re having our attention diverted to the small boats again – a major life threatening crisis for the passengers for sure, but not a hugely wealthy nation like the UK.
Our own crises are home-grown. They are in our hospitals, schools, local authorities, the huge amounts of British people made sick because of god awful government policy, crumbling infrastructure and continued use of fossil fuels despite the clear emergency staring us in the face. UK government policy and corrupted rightwing dogma has caused these problems, not foreigners.
I agree with you post and I copy here part of a paragraph from the Crown Prosecution Service website simply asking the question – “have politicians crossed the line that makes prosecution a possibility?”
“Misconduct in public office (“MiPO”) is a common law offence that can be tried only on indictment. It carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. The offence concerns serious wilful abuse or neglect of the power or responsibilities of the public office held. There must be a direct link between the misconduct and an abuse of those powers or responsibilities.”
❌Undue influence from accepting political “donations”
❌Defunding public services (austerity), resulting in loss of life
❌Neglecting social responsibilities resulting in ill health
❌Misinformation for government departments and the BBC
Guilty as charged
Richard says the recent budget in ‘favour of the City and Big Business’.
On BBC it is already the conventional wisdom that this was a huge tax raising budget – mainly from ‘business’ -sort of ‘Old Labour’ ‘tax and spend’ and ‘big State’.
They also have had Matthew Goodwin – who you mention in another post this morning, given a half hour platform – and someone on another panel from the Cato Institute.
And every morning BBC usually have a ‘business’ contributor who reinforces the ‘pouring’ or ‘throwing’ money at the NHS meme. Its only ‘investing’ in pie in the sky CCS – but ‘throwing’ or ‘pouring’ in the NHS.
So the media are reinforcing the ‘invisible doctrine’ embedding it within the very languae within which the politicians work out how to best advance their own interests.
We may be in even worse trouble than you think Richard.
Yes well the BBC has fallen into thinking that the government line is the right one and that finance economists are the people who know. And for all the commentary they ask Paul Johnson of the IFS as if that’s the only game in town. Its all part of metagovernance – setting the scene for a continuation of the wrong policies.
What is politics for? In Britain our politics is a phoney argument; a cheap children’s entertainment, between Punch and Judy (two bald Parties fighting over a toothless comb), designed to hold the publics’ attention, in case they dwell on the catastrophe to which Britain has been led to face; by the wholesale destruction Brexit is wreaking across the British economy.
The penny is very slowly dropping, even the Press that has compliantly led the Punch and Judy advertising for both Parties are now struggling not to see the blatantly obvious. ‘The Independent’ this morning has realised that the Budget’s desperation and long term ineffectiveness is a function of Brexit, that has completely undermined the health and substance of the British economy; permanently. The current political class in Britain, across the board – are a complete, unforgivable disgrace for participating in this absurd lie.
The problem is the British people think they can have absolute “freedom” in Britain from the rest of the world; and at the same time can have a successful free trade, thriving, fast growing independent economy in the modern world. This is cognitive dissonance in action. One belief pre-determines the collapse of the other. The cost of “freedom” is higher that the British people begin to understand, or are capable of handling the consequences. Britain is grossly overdependent on imports, on trade deals determined by the Big Battalions (US, EU, China, India or developing ‘spheres of interest’, including Russia); to a degree that pre-determines the actual functioning of the economy; all operating under ‘Raison d’état’ principles. This is the price of Neoliberalism. In addition Britain’s peculiar financial and monetary history has led it to have a more insecure, volatile relationship than comparable States with the ‘money markets’; on currency or interest rates, all with increasingly adverse effects.
Brexit has destroyed Britain. The British public do not recognise the scale of the problem they have created; and the Two Party system have effectively agreed that they can’t afford to tell the public the truth; the Single Transferable Party refuse even to discuss the problem, or even recognise the scale of the problem it has created. But the contradiction destroyed consecutive Conservative Governments; it is now destroying the Labour government. The Punch and Judy show between Starmer and Badenoch is designed by the Single Transferable Party to ensure the British public remain completely deluded about the nature of the problem.
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.
Noam Chomsky
Would be good to boil this down into a much pithier quote.
Much to agree with there
If we need a pithy opening onto something more demanding and uncomfortable to make the point – pointedly?
“Get Brexit Undone”.
It isn’t going to happen. Nothing is going to happen. Nobody is prepared to face it; least of all the public. There is not even a tipping point. We simply slept through it. Britain is not even an accident waiting to happen. The accident happened, and nobody even wants to mention it. Therefore, it didn’t happen.
This blog is not immune to what Chomsky was saying, for instance, the outer limit of discussion about changes to how the UK is governed is PR, beyond that, for instance direct democracy, governance by assemblies, rather than elected people, is off limits. Even though much of what is said on this blog directly relates to the failures of electing people to vast power (the root cause) and the consequential disempowerment of virtually everyone else, the self-imposed, unspoken limit is to try and solve the insoluble: PR, getting the right people elected, voting for the right party (even though it doesn’t exist), educating voters and so on (symptom relief). Also, Chomsky is an anarcho-syndicalist, and said that all forms of authority should be dismantled unless they can justify their necessity (for human wellbeing), the burden of proof being on the authority itself. I’d say that elected govts (including those elected by PR) the world over have amply demonstrated that they are a threat to human wellbeing. They’re the direct cause of poverty, since states institute money and set the terms of its distribution, which leaves many struggling in life-shortening conditions. Elected govts refuse to let people be, even when they have clearly stated their intention to secede and run their own affairs, as is the case with the Zapatista. The arrogance of govt is quite breathtaking. Elected govts routinely lie (there is no black hole), accept bribes (free gear Keir), are corrupt by design (PPE scandal), wage war, fail to implement their manifestoes, and do things for which they were not elected (read my lips, no new taxes). Despite the historic and ongoing failure of elected govt to represent and to instead act against the wishes of, in some cases, the overwhelming majority, as well as to enact a passive social murder policy, it bewilders me that so many cling to the idea that somehow electing people can be made to work, yet without any notion of how to actually get any of the ideas actually implemented, since, it would be the government itself that would have to implement them, an obvious Catch-22 that makes centralising power such a foolish and dangerous thing to do in the first place. The only way out of this mess is a foundational change to how we govern ourselves, unfortunately, that would depend on Westminster voluntarily shutting up shop, and I have no more idea how to get govt to implement its own demise as anyone else has of getting, say, LINO or the Tories to nationalise water. Limiting the scope of the discussion to PR, or some other minor change, is seriously limiting the possibilities for a different and better world. I would argue that elected govt is an existential threat to life on earth, requiring an urgent and major change, that another general election is never going to achieve.
You’re right. I don’t tolerate those who oppose democracy, wherever they come from.
If you don’t want communal services, don’t want common care, don’t want education fur all, don’t want justice, but do want the power of violence and you do in practice want fascism, by all means promote anarchy, as you seem to be doing.
You have one chance to defend your position. I am not tolerant of those who would undermine the right of states to govern themselves.
And don’t argue we don’t need states. That will be an automatic ban.
We’ve had an object lesson in how politics “works” over the last 5 years. Its clearest with Labour, whereas with the Tories it’s been continual chaos.
The process of getting Starmer firstly installed as LOTO, then as PM has been v instructive.
1. Destroy social democratic Corbyn using weaponised antisemitism smears.
2. Present Starmer to party electorate as progressive Corbyn continuity candidate – tactical dishonesty/deceit (success). As LOTO, Starmer then WASTES the next 4 years by failing to develop and communicate a progressive plan for sustainably rebuilding the country based on economic reality rather than monetary myths. He only thinks about electoral strategy.
3. Present Starmer to general electorate as responsible patriotic right of centre candidate, but mainly, as not Johnson, not Truss. Policy is ignored, as any clear policies will alienate some voters. Less successful as he gets fewer votes than Corbyn’s social democracy did in 2017 but the Tories tank, so he gets into Downing St. as an UNpopular PM and we haven’t a clue what he stands for although his Chancellor seems keen on austerity.
4. The difficult bit. Government. Events. Rest of world. This is where the Starmer project really fails, because Starmer doesn’t understand politics, Reeves doesn’t understand economics, Streeting doesn’t understand health etc etc etc and none of them understand government nor do they have any ideological underpinning. The lack of preparation for, or ability to govern, becomes obvious. Their key advisors are the people who succeeded in phase 1, but they are the wrong people for phase 4 – government.
Your post tells me that there doesn’t seem to be anyone with the integrity, the ideology, and the strategy to govern for the good of the people, anywhere in sight. It would be easy to give up, but we mustn’t!
I agree, we must not
[…] What is politics for? Richard Murphy, Funding the Future […]
What a question.
Lots of excellent responses.
I think that politics was about the curtailing freedom – putting a limit on things for everyone – in everyone’s best interests.
I do not think that form of politics exists anymore.
All we have is this weird, deformed view of freedom. Which has given birth to the new politics of individualism. Individualism without limits.
Politics is about competing interest groups and exists at societal and personal levels. Obviously at present we have at national level a shift of the Overton window to the right and clear winners are the more well off in society. The politicians who represent them are more likely to get elected to positions of power.
The political influence of the less well off needs a reboot to compete.
I think readers of this blog will fnid this post interesting:
https://www.theissue.io/civilization-democracy-america-and-the-future/?ref=the-issue-newsletter
Britain is now one of those zombie democracies.
We so nearly weren’t. But in 2017 all the ‘right thinkers’ and ‘good people’ were conned into rejecting the nearest thing we’ve had for a while to the “anyone with the integrity, the ideology, and the strategy to govern for the good of the people”.
Not perfect, by any means, one heck of a lot better than what we have now. And with the ambition of (and a history of) implementing truly participatory democracy.
David Byrne remarks;
Why waste time and energy discussing politics, when the real issue is money.
The problems that beset the country are not attributable to politics, but organised crime perpetrated by a bunch of self-seeking chancers.
They get away with it because the media, city and the wealthy are all pigging out from the same trough.
The collapsing economy is of no interest to these chancers, because when the 13 trillion assets have been extracted they will move on.
Let Funding the Future focus more on greed, lies, private equity partnerships, hedge funds and the propaganda machine that supports this destruction.
By focusing on politics, we are being distracted and laughed at by these ruthless, uncaring thieves.
A related question is why are there so many MP’s. Why not just have cabinet level ministers? The Whip ensures that backbenchers can’t (usually) even vote on key issues as they or their constituents would like them to, so what purpose do they serve? Salespeople during an election, then off to a cushy number that serves them well personally as they board the gravy train and start looking for a revolving door that leads to the private sector. Most MP’s are just an unnecessary overhead. The House of Lords is equally ‘overstaffed’.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, please do not ask such stupid questions.
On a day when democracy is under threat you want to be rid of it?
Why?
By that logic why not double or treble the number of MP’s. Then we’d have an even better democracy?
You really are not trying to contribute to debate here.