Cassandra Voices

Author: frankarmstrong

  • Coronavirus – a Poem

    My life’s ambition is to write a poem
    For you to quiver in ecstasy,
    Transcending the storms that have become
    For us a weakly reminder
    That all is not as it should be
    For a generation to come
    All out of shape without
    Any need for eugenics,
    Or medical scapegoats,
    As my face takes on a comical twist,
    And the log fires send out particles,
    And governments negotiate continued support measures,
    While the weathermen occlude
    The longer stretch in the evenings,
    But I won’t cough,
    Lest it gives away the position,
    And we enter the sublime
    Reverence for irrelevance.
    It’s word play OK?
    Designed in their own way.
    I can’t wait for the pattern,
    Or the pull of Saturn.
    Enough, enough, enough,
    Your voice is increasingly rough,
    Hand us over a last puff.

  • Rugby: the Four Irish Provinces take to the Field

    I yearn for Six Nations matches at this time of year. Despite my worthier self, I cannot take my eyes off a psychological drama and physical spectacle offering respite from interminable winter.

    The violence is terrible, but it seems life-affirming that these specimens can, for the most part, withstand the battering. At its best, it conveys life-in-action, a primal dance and irrepressible human spirit.

    One man who never played in the Six Nations is the Australian of Zimbabwean-descent, David Pocock, and to my mind he has been the bravest player of this era. It is unsurprising that his political convictions are similarly resolute. Fittingly, he was once arrested after chaining himself to mining equipment in a protest against a new coal mine in New South Wales.

    Thankfully he seems to have emerged relatively unscathed from his many bouts on the field, bowing out at last from international rugby at the end of the recent Word Cup, unfortunately on a losing note against Engalnd.

    Embed from Getty Images

    Make no mistake, there are injuries which occur as a matter of probability in rugby that make the endurance of the current rules almost unforgivable. Driving straight into the back of a player, with staggering force, who is grappling with his hands on the ground is surely unsustainable, but at least the high tackle is being clamped down on by referees. This makes the current game a more enjoyable spectacle as a player can offload more easily out of the tackle, and the quagmire of rucks and mauls become less frequent.

    ‘Drico’ v O’Connell

    For this Irish rugby fan of over thirty years duration the recurring debate is whether Brian O’Driscoll or Paul O’Connell was the greater Irish player of the era. Both were giants of the sport that transcended the structures from which they emerged, subtly altering players that emerged in their wakes. Thus the sublime Garry Ringrose is the heir to O’Driscoll and the all-action James Ryan the pretender to O’Connell’s throne, an unenviable posture locking the Irish scrum.

    The provincial origin of each of these totemic player must be taken into account. Munster from which O’Connell hails is the beating heart of Irish rugby where many of its origin myths lie. Of course much of this is late magic, compared to the rarefied surrounds of Trinity College in Dublin, which is said to have the oldest pitch still in use in the world. But Munster is where a distinctive mark was placed on the sport of rugby itself in the latter decades of the twentieth century.

    Essentially Munster played above the collective athletic attributes of the team with an unprecedented unity of purpose that laid low the greatest international team of its time. Of course the All Blacks had been beaten before and since on tours, but this was generally where teams were composed of stellar internationals playing for clubs, or perhaps if the All Black team was at a low physical ebb on a long tour. In 1978 the Munster team in unison with the crowd performed a mythological feat no less: Alone it Stands indeed.

    Embed from Getty Images

    Archetypal Munster rugby players, such as the late Moss Keane, were certainly not small or necessarily unathletic, but are rarely the biggest or fastest in their positions. It was when they combine with one another, as a band of brothers, that they overhaul and outwit – with a capricious gale blowing behind them in the second half – any opponent who dares enter their Thomond Park redoubt.

    This group togetherness – comparable to what the medieval Arabic writer Ibn Kaldun termed asabiyyah in describing the warlike Bedouin tribes of North Africa – allied with tactical awareness and sheer bravery yielded two European Cups in the early years of professionalism (2006 and 2008), at a time when French and English teams could not easily pluck talent from the outer regions of the Southern Hemisphere, as occurs today.

    That is not to say that Munster was closed to foreign influence; the team embraced the new wave of professionalism, recruited wisely, and established a brand that had a halo effect on Irish rugby as a whole, before the limitations of a small population made it impossible to sustain the conveyor belt of talent required for success.

    As a player Paul O’Connell possessed what is commonly referred to as Munster ‘dog’ in spades, but he allied this with often quite outrageous feats of skill in the air. He was not, however, for all his capacity to take a game by the scruff of the neck and play it his way – fast rucking and relentless pick and drives – the complete player. His handling in the loose at times let him down, and he never developed the dexterity commonly seen in Southern hemisphere players of his ilk.

    Embed from Getty Images

    This was perhaps the product of an upbringing where rugby was explicitly training rather than a form of self-expression, as where kids ‘play’ with a ball in a game such as ‘tag’ on a sun-baked field or beach. One could point the finger at the wet climate of the south-west of Ireland which required outdoor activities to be more structured.

    Perhaps this background in hard graft and adversity accounts for what seems to have been a tendency on O’Connell’s part to see the ball as means to an end: putting points on the board. As a leader, he seemed untroubled to amaze a crowd in the process of scoring points, calculating that a try from a rolling maul counted for as much as the giddiest of wing play.

    O’Driscoll, on the other hand, was a trickster, who played with a smile on his face, and burst on the global scene as a superstar when scoring a bravura hat trick of tries in Paris in 2000, before in 2001 seducing British and Irish Lions fans in Australia, who waltzed to his tune.

    A brash, cosmopolitan boy from the capital city of an increasingly prosperous country and class, ‘Drico’ ended his career to great fanfare, winning a second Six Nations Championship medal in 2014. He was the swashbuckling hero who performed feats on a rugby pitch that amazed a crowd, but he was as physically brave as any Munster contemporary. His capacity to recover from serious injury, especially the cruel assault on him as captain of the Lions in 2005 against the fearsome All Blacks, was also nothing short of remarkable.

    It is, however, as a team captain that one might prefer O’Connell. One senses that other, lesser, players reveled in O’Driscoll’s star turns on the pitch, but perhaps relied overly on his individual brilliance.

    O’Connell on the other hand appeared to exercise the force of a demagogue over his companions. Under his guidance, players offered the same relentless hunger for confrontation, and group togetherness in the Munster tradition, as opposed to the elusive capacity for individual brilliance that O’Driscoll imparted.

    Leinster Schools Rugby

    I grew up in the province of Leinster and my formation as a rugby fan arrived in the school’s game where we viewed the likes of Dennis Hickey when he was a young buck. It is now one of the world’s great breeding grounds for new braves, as the remarkable recent consistency of Leinster in European competition demonstrates, with four European Cup wins to date: 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2018.

    I have heard it said that the relatively flat lands, and slightly drier conditions, of the east of Ireland produce a different, swifter, physical specimen, meaning the archetype of the Leinster player is generally a purer athlete than the Munster equivalent – players such as Jordan Lamour and Andrew Porter conforming to this type, in contrast to grizzled Munster legends such as ‘the Claw’, Peter Clohessy or ‘Gaillimh’ Mick Galway.

    Embed from Getty Images
    ‘the Claw’, Peter Clohessy or ‘Gaillimh’ Mick Galway in action for Ireland.

    The all-round excellence of O’Driscoll remains the high water mark, but the number of players of great ability breaking through is quite astonishing to behold. I admit to a vain pride in a step cousin Caelan Doris – a wunderkind number 8 – who is now a regular part of the international squad.

    If only I had a few of young Caelan’s genes my rugby career might have got beyond the muddy far pitches of Gonzaga College. Although admittedly a reluctance to allow my head to be left in close proximity to rapidly moving legs, and little appetite for the punch-ups that marred many encounters in the 1990s, made even a moderately successful career unlikely.

    A Nation Once Again?

    A polite argument broke out among a few friends recently on the subject of nationalism, and whether it is a destructive force in the world. That led me to consider what motivated the appreciation I have for a sport that is often quite dull as a spectacle, with constant repetitions of drills and risk aversion all too often evident. Indeed, to the uninitiated the game of rugby, with its puzzling array of rules, is not the most accessible.

    Competition between national groups reminds me of the psychodrama of a contest between competing forces, which take on the simplistic roles of good and evil to the viewer. Thus, even if an opponent displays skill or impressive composure I cannot enjoy it, and positively shrink from the sight of his success. Meanwhile even if my own side are playing in a stolid fashion I can still appreciate the effect, and even look beyond any skullduggery, especially if it is part of a wider strategic plan, weakening the opponent before striking in an unexpected way.

    Likewise, it seems to me, nationalism can be an ugly, zero-sum game of winning and losing, whether it is the aspiration for a united Ireland – albeit there are distinct practical and civic advantages – or having one language dominant over another under the law. Similarly, we are generally inclined to disregard whether nationalistic aspirations are achieved by fair means or foul, ignoring the cruelty of earlier conquests, just as the Americans laid claim to virgin territory, glorifying the first settlers and ignoring those who once populated the land in relative harmony.

    There is, however, a more edifying side to nationalism, where we achieve a form of greatness not in terms of others, i.e. winning as the be-all-and-end-all, but simply in the way we exist, and play. Lest we forget, few states of the Old World appear to be content where different ethno-linguistic groups co-habit – even the prosperous Belgians of different languages only grudgingly co-exist.

    It is in the songs we sing, in the food we prepare, and in the nature we adore and protect that the best expression of group solidarity is found, and in sport at times too. This is the nationalism of an O’Driscoll, where magic happens, but where the processes derived from tradition, which we might associate with an O’Connell figure, are upheld.

    Maybe conflict is in the nature of humanity, and in that respect sport serves a purpose that George Orwell overlooked when he peremptorily described it as ‘an unfailing cause of ill-will.’ But perhaps it really just channels or acts as a conduit for ill-will, and is not the cause itself. Of course the contrary argument that discord is actually magnified by these latter-day gladiatorial contests might, paradoxically, also hold true. It seems as if the meaning of sport is as varied as any other field of human endeavour, and forms of it are always likely to excite us.

    The Four Proud Provinces

    In Irish sport the code of rugby is almost unique in generating genuine all-Ireland national fervour,crossing political and sectarian boundaries. Notably, ‘big’ Davy Tweed, a former Unionist councillor and alas a convicted paedophile, played on a number of occasions for the Irish team, and with great energy it should be said. It was Tweed who demanded an alternative to Amhrán na bhFiann, the anthem of the Irish State, which bequeathed us Phil Coulter’s ‘Ireland’s Call’, a rather primitive song. But for all its harmonic deficiencies it has nonetheless proved a popular, and unifying dirge that is belted out with great emotion by crowd and players alike.

    It has snobbishly been said that rugby is a game for thugs played by gentlemen, while soccer is the reverse. Clearly there is a class basis to each of these sports across Britain and Ireland. The food calories alone that an elite rugby player requires every day must be quite an investment throughout early adulthood. But it is perhaps more accurate to say that rugby is an institutional sport, requiring the availability of pitches and training facilities all too often absent in working class districts, and more likely to be found in a rural setting. Yet the example of the Southern Hemisphere demonstrates that even working class kids can develop into professional players.

    During the amateur era Ulster were the most successful of the Irish province, and fittingly the Ulstermen were the first to win a European Cup in 1999, using a group of players drawn overwhelmingly from the region. But the province has latterly struggled to compete with the number of new players available to Leinster every year, and the great spirit that Munster players still derive from playing in the red jersey.

    Moreover, the recent displays of toxic masculinity in Ulster rugby shocked the entire country, and brought an existential crisis to the game. This is a stain that has not been fully removed, at least publicly, from the public – as was the case in New Zealand where less worrying incidents led to the development of a respect and responsibility programme for players.

    Yet all but the most curmudgeonly of Irish rugby fans rejoice when Ulster performs on the European stage, unlike the more divisive Leinster-Munster rivalry, and the success of Ulster players in the Irish shirt provides a bewitching fellowship recalling the United Irishmen of Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter.

    Like the Leinstermen of lore, Ulster’s greatest warriors tend to be fleet-footed athletes but with a Nordic edge of physical brutality epitomised by the incomparably tough Stephen Ferris. The new Ulster hero is the powerful Jacob Stockdale, who has made scoring tries at the highest level look easy.

    The Western Province

    One can only admire the durability of the men of Connacht, withstanding probably the wildest weather in the rugby world in their Galway citadel. Against the odds, they have created a spirit unique to themselves that culminated in victory against Leinster in the Celtic League in 2016. My father comes from Sligo on the Western seaboard, so I have a particular sympathy for their plight as underdogs in the Irish game.

    As an immigrant for a time in London I did my own impersonation of one of the province’s greats, the rampaging number 8 Noel Mannion who, it should be said, was not the most fleet-footed.

    Living in Bloomsbury in the heart of the capital, I went out for a stroll one night that took me to the back of the British Museum, a tranquil spot amidst the maelstrom of the capital. I proceeded down the road, lost in reverie. Luckily, however, just in time it dawned on me that a small crowd of youths, who didn’t seem like a welcoming committee, were about to surround me. There were no other pedestrians, or cars, in sight. Then, as I recall, one of them requested a cigarette.

    I responded that that I could not provide him with one, which seemed to perturb him, so without pause I turned heels and began to walk back up the street. At that point another one enquired as to why I had taken that course of action. I replied that I was being surrounded. Then I took off at a gallop as fast as my ruddy thighs could carry me.

    It was then that I summoned the spirit of Noel Mannion in 1989 at the Cardiff Arms Park when, after he charged down a kick he found it in his possession with a clear run to the try line, almost the length of the pitch away. Like Noel before me, I pinned back my ears, and hoped the chasing pack wouldn’t catch me. But by this stage one of the youths was abreast. He tried to trip me up, but I strode on with a power and pace hitherto unknown.

    At last I heard the youth scream in despair before I reached the well-lit sanctuary of Gower Street, and in my mind I heard the away supporters in the Cardiff Arms Park roar their approval.

    Although he hails from a land far down under, Bundee Aki now carries the flame of Connaught resistance in the Irish team and one must admire a guy who brings his family to an ethereal place such as the City of the Tribes, and gateway to the Never Never Land of Connemara. Romantically, I expect the next great hero of Irish rugby, in the mould of an O’Driscoll, O’Connell or Ferris, but of a distinctly Far Western character, to emerge as the heir to Bundee.

    Twickenham Awaits

    So let us gather Irish people, new and old, to enjoy the spectacle this weekend. I for one am avoiding any sense of guilt at enjoying this crucible of unabashed manliness. All sports should of course be open to both genders, but the failure of educational institutions to provide adequately for women over the course of our history should not inhibit the simple pleasures we derive. After all it’s not a zero sum game between the respective sports of the two sexes.

    Win or lose, let us hope the Irish team carries itself with pride on the pitch. If they do lose, and we cannot expect the team to win every game, away from home, against a rugby union with a far greater playing pool than our own, let them hold their heads high in the knowledge they played with pride in the traditions laid down by those who once played their parts, and with the individual brilliance which each has been endowed.

    For the men of Leinster, Munster, Ulster and Connaught must play with a unity of purpose and great skill to overcome the English team, summoning the spirits O’Driscoll, O’Connell, Ferris and even Noel Mannion.

  • The Long View on the Irish General Election 2020

    Out of Ireland have we come.
    Great hatred, little room,
    Maimed us at the start.
    I carry from my mother’s womb
    A fanatic heart.
    W.B. Yeats, ‘Remorse for Intemperate Speech’ (1931)

    With proportional representation in multi-seat constituencies, Irish elections tend to be colourful affairs. Debate rarely rises above the clamour of claim and counter-claim as candidates seemingly festoon every available lamppost the length and breadth of the country with posters. In rural constituencies especially, local causes tend to trump national concerns, while questions of global import rarely register.

    But times are changing as cosmopolitan younger voters gravitate towards parties from beyond the political establishment. Until the 1990s Fianna Fáil (‘soldiers of destiny’), Fine Gael (‘family of the Irish’), and Labour – which historically assumed the role of minor coalition partner to Fine Gael – enjoyed near total domination of Dáil Éireann, the national parliament. Today no single party expects to command an overall majority, and coalitions are the norm.

    The ruling Fine Gael party, having spent four years in an unprecedented ‘confidence and supply’ agreement with its old foe Fianna Fáil, called a snap election on January 14th, seemingly hoping to be rewarded for its competent handling of Brexit negotiations, and to avoid losing a no confidence motion over the performance of the Minister for Health Simon Harris.[i]

    Unexpectedly, however, a political earthquake is on the cards as an array of left-leaning parties, especially the increasingly popular Sinn Féin (‘ourselves’), the Green Party, Labour, People Before Profit, the Social Democrats, and even an unheralded socially conservative newcomer Aontú (‘consent’), have made social justice the central issue of the campaign.

    For the moment opposition to the centre-right mainstream of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil is coming from the left, responding in particular to an ongoing Housing Crisis. But Ireland is not immune from the wave of identity politics sweeping far-right Populists into power elsewhere.

    Another recession might easily trigger far-right Populism within the existing framework, bringing together an unholy trinity, seen elsewhere, of xenophobia – including opposition to E.U. membership – climate change denial and opposition to abortion services.

    Who me?

    Identities are hotly contested on the island of Ireland. Thus the Fine Gael-led government’s recent proposal to rehabilitate the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) – the British Crown’s police force prior to independence in 1921 – brought a veritable Twitter storm of anger and bewilderment.

    In its wake, the rousing Wolf Tone 1972 rebel song ‘Come out ye Black and Tans’ topped the iTunes charts in Ireland, and the U.K.,[ii] before being ripped off by Kerry independent candidate Michael Healy-Rae for his election campaign song.

    The bizarre decision perhaps explains Fine Gael’s steep decline in support, as revealed in recent opinion polls. Although a wave of violent crime, including the horrifying murder of a Drogheda teenager,[iii] and the story of a homeless man receiving ‘life-changing’ injuries after a tent, with him inside, was forcibly removed by heavy machinery from the side of one of Dublin’s canals,[iv] contributed to widespread unease with the orientation of Irish society under the current administration.

    Identity politics vary from country to country, and from epoch to epoch. In the U.S. race has long been a divisive issue. In the U.K. incipient (so-called ‘Little-Englander’) nationalism is the new clarion call, with the shattering of transnational working class identity emphasised by the implosion of the Labour Party in Scotland.

    Historic cleavages in Ireland have tended to be religious rather than ethno-linguistic or racial, pitting Catholics against Protestants and Dissenters (or Presbyterians), at least since the failure of the United Irishman project in the 1790s; although, in the South at least, divisions have also recently emerged along familiar liberal versus conservative lines – especially over reproductive rights and marriage equality.

    Identity politics tend to shred solidarities based on economic status both within countries and internationally, often involving deference to aristocracy or accumulated wealth. Developing a political movement based on social class, however, can also be problematic, as for example where a person’s ‘bourgeois’ speech or mannerism is stigmatised. The great diversity within any class formation is also easily overlooked.

    The success of the Populist far-right in both the U.S. and U.K. has been achieved by combining working class disaffection – including resentment towards the kind of educated middle-class ‘elites’ generally at the helm of socialist parties – with ‘primordial’ racial or national identification.

    As with the racism exhibited by poor Irish-Americans against former African-American slaves who migrated North after the U.S. Civil War (1860-65), the lowest income strata is often most resistant to new arrivals, who may be seen, and are often depicted in the media, as competitors for jobs, housing and other government services.

    Brexit Effect

    Whether, and for how long, Irish politics avoids the gravitational pull of far-right Populism is unclear. Certainly Brexit stoked identity politics in Ireland by amplifying latent anti-English prejudices.

    Notably, over the course of protracted negotiations, the Irish media lampooned English nostalgia – emanating from ‘swivel-eyed loons’ – for a bygone, imperial age. The Irish Times leading columnist Fintan O’Toole even boasted that for the first time in history Ireland, with a population of under five million, was now a more powerful State than the U.K.,[v] which has a population of almost seventy million.

    Also, in the run-up to the U.K.’s last general election Irish Times columnists poured scorn on the ‘extremism’ of both Boris Johnson’s Conservatives and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour.[vi] Implicit was the idea that Ireland’s centre-right consensus was eminently preferable, but an unintended consequence may have been to bolster support for a Sinn Féin party pledging a border poll (to bring about a united Ireland) within five years.[vii]

    At least Irish nationalism tends to oppose unsavoury outlooks identified with English nationalism, including a xenophobia previously directed against Irish living there. Sinn Féin has also tempered historic anti-E.U. sentiment in the wake of Brexit, perhaps on the basis that ‘my enemies enemy is my friend.’

    Moreover, Ireland’s openness to foreign investment, and low corporation taxation, means Steve Bannon – and presumably Donald Trump who owns a golf course and hotel in Doonbeg, County Clare – see little reason to interfere in Irish politics, with U.S. armed service personel permitted to use Shannon Airport as a stopover. But this might change if the rise of the left, especially Sinn Féin, continues unabated.

    Radical Redistribution

    The absence of a legacy of heavy industry in the shape of rust-belt towns denies far-right Populists in Ireland the ‘blue-collar’ support base relied on by Trump, and Tory Brexiteers. On mainland Europe too, far-right Populists have successfully appealed to these working class former supporters of social democratic parties.

    Most of what passes for a working class in Ireland, historically, are really petit-bourgeois pastoralists, many of whose sons became publicans, auctioneers and shopkeepers, selling commodities on the international market, and in recent times relying on grant aid from the European Union. These farmers have tended to vote overwhelmingly for one or other of the centre-right parties. But Irish society, and politics, is in a period of significant flux.

    The two main centre-right parties are now struggling to retain the support of an aging, and shrinking, livestock farming cohort. That sector is in crisis owing to a slump in beef prices and existential fears around climate chaos and Brexit. Over the course of the past year, supermarkets and processing plants have been blockaded, as a schism grows between better-off dairy farmers and beef farmers, overwhelmingly reliant on subsidies.

    Meanwhile, with a population approaching two million that dwarfs the other main urban centres of Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Galway that barely register half a million between them, the capital Dublin is the economic engine of the country. But chronic under-investment in transport infrastructure and social housing has brought spiralling rents[viii] in the capital, affecting the young disproportionately. Therefore, calls for a radical redistribution of wealth, along with action on climate change, are growing louder.

    Across the country, the rising cost of living, from property to health and childcare, since recovery from the Economic Crash of 2008 and subsequent EU/IMF bailout is disrupting the centre-right consensus, dominant since the state’s foundation.

    Riding high in the polls, Sinn Féin only emerged after the end of the Northern Ireland Troubles in 1999 as a serious force in the South. It has successfully twinned the objective of achieving Irish unity with radical (at least for Ireland) redistribution, pledging to enshrine the right to a home in the Irish Constitution. Its manifesto also promises to pay back €1,500 to renters, a three-year rent freeze, and the largest public housing funding scheme the state has ever seen.[ix]

    Sinn Féin MPs, MLAs & TDs gather ahead of the Dáil100 event.

    On the centre-right Fianna Fáil appears to be regaining pre-eminence, after riding pillion passenger with the minority Fine Gael administration. A formal coalition of these two is the most likely outcome of the election. Nevertheless, for their combined share of the vote to drop significantly below 50% is unprecedented.

    As in the last U.K. election, there is a huge divergence between the voting intentions of the young and the old, with the former despairing at the failure of successive administrations to deliver affordable housing, public transport, address the climate and biodiversity emergency or further the cause of Irish unity. Similarly to the U.K. too, the left in Ireland suffers from a factionalism that makes a grand coalition unlikely.

    PD Nation

    Over the course of Irish history neither of the two dominant centre-right parties have been over-burdened by ideology, although Fine Gael’s ‘Just Society’-wing endeavoured to forge a social democratic party in the late 1960s.[x] Today, predictably, Fianna Fáil lays claim to more centrist policies with campaign literature proclaiming ‘an Ireland for all.’

    Extended periods in opposition have tended to witness greater emphasis on left-wing causes by both parties. Once a government is formed, however, the ‘realities’ of power, often enunciated by a stubborn legion of Sir Humphreys in the civil service, brings business as usual.

    Famously, in 1987 after hounding Fine Gael for its attempts to curb government expenditure in order to reduce the national debt, Fianna Fáil under Charlie Haughey introduced a series of its own swingeing cut backs.

    In Ireland, substantive reforms arrive pitifully slowly as manifold Quangos, persistent Nimbyism and entrenched property interests inhibit infrastructural schemes, with the notable exception of motorways in a car-centric country. Tellingly, Dublin is the third worst city in the world for traffic congestion[xi] due to long term failures in delivering public transport, and historic corruption in land rezoning that brought a judicial tribunal lasting for fifteen years due to constant legal challenges.

    On the other hand, the Irish economy has grown exponentially since the mid-1990s – reversing long-term emigration trends and attracting signification immigration for the first time – notwithstanding the catastrophic EU/IMF Bailout of 2010.

    The Progressive Democrats (popularly referred to as the PDs), a breakaway party from Fianna Fáil that first enjoyed success in the 1987 election, played an important role in laying the foundations for the sustained economic growth and high employment that ensued from the mid-1990s.

    Under the leadership of Desmond O’Malley, Mary Harney and Michael McDowell, the party sought to modernise the country, preferring the private sector to assume the role of an often inefficient (and corrupt) State. Despite its Fianna Fáil origins, the PD’s economically liberal agenda appealed to business-minded Fine Gael supporters, despairing at that party’s handling of the economy.

    Although the party reached a high water mark in the 1987 election and steadily declined thereafter, before disappearing entirely in 2009, it left an indelible mark on successive governments. This helped created the so-called Celtic Tiger, with Ireland moving ‘closer to Boston than Berlin’, in the words of Mary Harney in 2000.[xii]

    The PDs were coalition partner to Fianna Fáil over the course of four administrations (1989-92, 1997-2002, 2002-2007, and 2007-2009), securing Ireland’s position as a low tax haven for foreign multinationals. But the delivery of social and affordable housing was left in the hands of the private sector, which yielded insufficient units throughout the boom years. Moreover, the State, including local authorities, lost its capacity to construct social housing, from which it has been slow to recover.

    Not only did PD ideology influence Fianna Fáil – with Minister for Finance (1997-2004) Charlie McCreevy once flirting with membership – but also Fine Gael. Thus, the former leader and Minister for Health (2004-11) Mary Harney is recorded as a confidant of Taoiseach Varadkar, who rose to prominence as a staunch critic of his own party’s social democratic tendencies.[xiii]

    Under neo-liberal policies, in particular the low corporation tax regime of 12.5%, Ireland attracted significant foreign direct investment, with global technology giants such as Google, Facebook and Apple establishing European headquarters, along with pharmaceutical firms like Pfizer.

    Google HQ, Dublin, Ireland

    Low interest rates after joining the euro also contributed to runaway inflation in house prices until the bubble burst after 2008, leading to negative equity that ruined hundreds of thousands. Many workers, especially in the construction sector, were forced to leave Ireland for good. But consistent tax returns from the employees of multinationals in particular, allowed the exchequer finances to recover more rapidly than expected.

    The EU/IMF Bailout stabilised property values, and the low taxation regime continued to attract investment into the Irish market, resulting in a bonanza for the surviving indigenous landlords. But the restoration is now working to the detriment of much of the indigenous population, with salaries failing to keep pace with rental costs.[xiv]

    New Ireland

    Away from the economy, over the course of the last decade, a new species of identity politics took centre stage, dividing upholders of ‘traditional’ Catholic values and ‘modern’ liberals, mainly of a younger vintage. Battles lines were drawn over marriage equality and reproductive rights, with liberal values emerging triumphant in two referendums.

    Dublin Castle after 8th Referendum results declared.

    Similar to ‘One Nation’ Tories led by David Cameron, Fine Gael under first Enda Kenny and then Leo Varadkar embraced a liberal social agenda, with the gay half-Indian Varadkar’s accession to power a symbol of widespread tolerance, and acceptance of diversity.

    Indeed, although the country has experienced an unprecedented surge in immigration since the turn of the millennium, with the number of non-national inhabitants now almost 13% of the total,[xv] there is little sing of a far-right Populist insurgency.

    Brexit also provided the Irish government with an opportunity to play a card generally monopolised by more nationalistic political rivals – with Varadkar speculating on the possibility of a united Ireland in his lifetime[xvi] – although the bizarre decision to commemorate the RIC seems to have used up that political capital.

    The other side of Fine Gael’s liberal coin has been a conservative reluctance to interfere in the economy, particularly where provision of social housing has been concerned. In part at least, this stems from Leo Varadkar’s apparent aversion to anything hinting at socialism. Thus he complained in a 2018 speech about those who wanted ‘to divide our society into people who live in different areas, with some people paying for everything.’[xvii]

    Real Estate Investment Trusts

    The scale of an unfolding Housing Crisis, however, of unaffordable rents, homelessness and under-supply is now even attracting criticism from former PD leader, Michael McDowell, who recently wrote:

    There is an ideological problem here. The private sector cannot solve the issue. The State must intervene to boost housing supply – social and owner-occupied. Even the term “private sector” is mutating before our eyes. When Reits [real estate investment trusts] buy entire developments to let at high rents – a new phenomenon – that has become the new meaning of the “private sector”.

    The difficulty is that the extraordinary scale of public debt – now standing at over €200 billion, and growing – demands consistent economic growth seemingly for evermore as the interest compounds. This has led to deference towards multinationals, including preserving a low, or non-existent, corporation tax regime.[xviii]

    In the mean time, indigenous SMEs are struggling,[xix] to compete with the economies of scales of large corporations such as Ikea, which opened a massive 30,000 square foot outlet outside Dublin in 2007.[xx] Around the country out-of-town shopping centres denude cities and towns of independent retailers.

    Ikea, Ballymun, Dublin.

    Allegiance to the centre-right has previously been secured by an expectation among property owners that mortgages will ultimately yield capital appreciation. This requires consistent economic growth, which without adequate rent control measures has brought the rental inflation driving younger voters into the arms of Sinn Féin, and other left-wing parties.

    Younger buyers are still assisted by inter-generational transfers, but this is a single step on a steep ladder. Decades of mortgage repayments await, alongside spiralling childcare and healthcare costs. Although Leo Varadkar claims to represent early rising workers, in fact his government’s laissez faire policies are to the advantage of substantial rentier property owners.

    Moreover, the Fine Gael government’s promise to bring an end to boom and bust economic cycles[xxi] through fiscal probity is pie in the sky, given the susceptibility of an open Irish economy to international currents, in particular an historically volatile U.S. economy.[xxii]

    As the 2008 Crash proved, a fairy tale of Irish economic growth-without-end cannot endure – quite aside from ecological constraints – given the inherent volatility of the capitalist system itself. As David Graeber explains: ‘Capitalism is a system that enshrines the gambler as an essential part of its operation, in a way that no other ever has, yet at the same time, capitalism seems to be uniquely incapable of conceiving of its own eternity.’[xxiii]

    With steady U.S. economic growth the Irish economy is likely to continue to grow in tandem, as has been the case since the 1990s, but another U.S. recession could see a Populist far-right emerge from out of the long grass in Ireland.

    Direct Provision

    September’s well-organised protests in the small town of Oughterard in County Galway,[xxiv] along with demonstrations against other proposed Direct Provision accommodation centres for refugee and asylum seekers, indicates a new anti-immigrant mood in rural Ireland. But unless, or until, one of the three main nationalists parties embraces such an outlook it is likely to remain marginal.

    The Irish ‘Blueshirts’

    With origins in the ‘Blueshirt’ fascist movement of the 1930s, Fine Gael has occasionally accommodated far-right views throughout its history. One prominent anti-Semite of the 1940s was Oliver J. Flanagan, ironically the late father of the current Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan, who has promised to introduce anti-hate crime legislation; much to the chagrin of far-right vloggers, such as the journalist-turned-far-right-politician Gemma O’Doherty.

    Leo Varadkar has also issued the occasional anti-immigrant dog whistle himself, describing the latter-day Poorhouse of Direct Provision centres as ‘necessary to avoid having asylum seekers using tents,’[xxv] and then identifying particular nationalities with driving a rise in asylum applications.[xxvi]

    Varadkar appears to assume that a half-Indian background insulates him from accusations of racism. Thus, in response to People Before Profit’s Bríd Smith’s criticism in the Dáil of Fine Gael’s recent by-election candidate Verona Murphy – who had claimed asylum seekers as young as three years-of-age could be influenced by ISIS – he claimed to know ‘a little more about experiencing racism than perhaps you do.’[xxvii]

    Fine Gael has since de-selected the Wexford woman, who is standing as an independent in the forthcoming election. Yet even Danny Healy-Rae (the brother of the aforementioned Michael) was able to expose the hypocrisy of Varadkar’s criticism of Noel Grealish’s inflammatory (and erroneous) Dáil speech on Nigerians sending home remittances.[xxviii]

    Fine Gael’s overriding focus, however, is to deliver the elixir of economic growth, rising rents, and well-remunerated jobs, through foreign direct investment, while embracing further integration with the European Union. Anti-immigration rhetoric jeopardises that political and economic formula.

    Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil and Aontú

    Given a nationalist background in Northern Irish politics, and historic advocacy of protectionist economic policies outside the E.U., Sinn Féin might seem a likely candidate for adopting a nativist agenda. But the Party has remained faithful to its anti-colonial principles and avoids Populist anti-immigrant messaging. Moreover, many of Sinn Féin’s new cohort of young supporters would be alienated by such an approach.

    Under the steadying hand of Micheál Martin, Fianna Fáil stands on the brink of power, either in coalition with Fine Gael or perhaps a combination of other parties. Under his guidance the party is highly unlikely to embrace any form of far-right Populism. But another recession, and a further leftward surge, could tear up that playbook, with a different outlook emerging under new leadership.

    Although Martin advocated for a ‘Yes’ vote in the abortion referendum, a majority within the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party opposed repeal of the Eighth Amendment.[xxix] Notwithstanding its crushing defeat in the 2018 referendum, there exists in Ireland a substantial and well-organised anti-abortion movement, prompted by journalists and vloggers,[xxx] which might easily fall in behind a large party such as Fianna Fáil, as occurred with the Brexiter takeover of the Tories in the U.K..

    Opposition to abortion services does not necessarily connote adherence to a broad spectrum of far-right ideas, but nor is it a stand-alone issue. Far-right ideologues around the world, including in Ireland, speak of a Great Replacement conspiracy theory wherein the native population is replaced by immigrants. Abortion is considered a means of diminishing the indigenous population.

    https://twitter.com/Matelot1325/status/1223753132481576960

    Undeniably, Peader Tóibín, the leader of the newcomer Aontú represents the views of many in ‘middle’ or ‘forgotten’ Ireland. It will be intriguing to see how this conservative party performs in the forthcoming election.

    After splitting from Sinn Féin to launch the party in 2019 Tóibín said:

    There is no doubt there is a growing unease and concern among many people in Ireland around the issue of immigration. Our view is very simple, there needs to be sustainable levels of immigration in this country, it needs to be managed. There needs to be some link between the capacity of the country and the numbers of people coming in if there’s not there’s going to be hardship for indigenous and newcomers alike.[xxxi]

    Should Aontú achieve electoral success on the issue of immigration in a future election, it would not require a great leap of imagination to envision ‘soul-searching’ in Fianna Fáil that leads to a ‘harder line’ being taken on immigration, and perhaps the embrace of other far-right platforms. Aontú may not survive long, but like PDs they could leave an indelible imprint on Irish politics.

    Climate change denial would also appeal to farmers under pressure to reduce emissions from a sector contributing 34% of the national total; as well as a motor car-lobby resistant to carbon taxes and public transport.

    Cognitive Dissonance

    Thankfully, it requires a degree of cognitive dissonance for the far-right in Ireland to adopt the anti-immigrant rhetoric employed in the U.S. and U.K..

    First and foremost, Irish people have emigrated in extraordinary numbers over the course of the past two centuries. Secondly, it can hardly be argued that the country lacks space given the population density was greater in the 1840s than today. Indeed, stemming a decline in rural Ireland’s population is an ongoing challenge.

    The furore over Direct Provision is better assessed in terms of a housing crisis in the greater Dublin region. This led to the State securing cheap properties elsewhere; perhaps in an attempt to avoid the accusation that it looks after refugees, while failing to provide accommodation for homeless in the capital.

    Finally, anyone appraised of Irish history will be aware that the Irish ‘nation’ is a composite of many waves of migration and conquests. The medieval Book of Invasion (Lebor Gabála Érenn) tells of the land being taken over six times by six different peoples. Thus James Joyce argued: ‘What race or language … can nowadays claim to be pure? No race has less right to make such a boast than the one presently inhabiting Ireland.’[xxxii]

    James Joyce: ‘What race or language … can nowadays claim to be pure?’

    With the institutions of the Irish state ill-equipped for a significant influx, however, friction with an indigenous population confronting a housing and homelessness crisis, if unchecked, seems inevitable.

    Island Nation

    Operating as an offshore member of the European Union, located between the two most populous (and powerful!) English-speaking nations brings significant advantages to an Irish State that struggled to hold its people for the first eighty years of independence. The Industrial Development Authority, established in the late 1940s, has played a crucial role in attracting some of the largest companies in the world, providing secure employment for indigenous and foreign workers under a low corporation taxation regime that infuriates many of Ireland’s E.U. partners.

    The EU/IMF Bailout, however – through which the State consented to take on the debts owing to unsecured bond holders – is a Faustian Pact mandating economic-growth-without-end to prevent another debt crisis. It has restored the price of property, and rents, to levels seen during the Celtic Tiger era.

    A low corporation taxation regime and lack of significant property taxes attracted the interest real estate investment trusts (Reits) that have brought the boom back with a vengeance. This works to the benefit of an ever-shrinking proportion of the population, with the young in particular struggling to live in a capital ill-served by public transport.

    Long term, to address the extraordinary wealth tied-up in property meaningful land taxes ought to be introduced. Here, unfortunately, Sinn Féin has evinced reluctance to introduce what might prove unpopular measures in the short term; proposing instead to phase out unpopular local property taxes, and only to tax the earnings of Reits.[xxxiii]

    But land taxes[xxxiv] could bring more land into productive use by penalising land-hording, permitting young people to buy homes at more affordable prices from empty-nesting elders, who should be accommodated in smaller, climate-friendly units. A reduction in the cost of agricultural would also encourage the development of alternative, climate-friendly, agriculture.

    In the wake of Brexit, Ireland may re-assess its relationship with an E.U. (including the euro) struggling to contain atavistic forces in many countries. In the event of another global recession, the Stability and Growth Pact, requiring deficits to stay within 3%, should not impede the State from responding with Keynesian measures. Otherwise austerity policies could lead to a Populist far-right gaining traction.

    The Irish general election of 2020 may prove a watershed, with the duopoly of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael being knocked off their seemingly unassailable perch, and a more conventional left-right division developing. But the politics of identity may derail ambitious social programmes, with the question of the border unresolved.

    A ongoing challenge for the left, and Irish progressives more broadly, is to develop a fair distribution of resources, and sustainability, in a State still bearing the wounds of colonisation.

    Featured Image (c) Daniele Idini.

    [i] Fiachra Ó Cionnaith, ‘TD calling for no-confidence vote in Simon Harris’, RTÉ, January 9th, 2020, https://www.rte.ie/news/politics/2020/0109/1105248-politics-no-confidence-motion/

    [ii] Michael Staines, ‘Come Out Ye Black and Tans tops Charts in the UK and Ireland after RIC controversy’, Newstalk, January 9th, 2020, https://www.newstalk.com/news/wolfe-tones-come-out-black-and-tans-947680

    [iii] Paul Reynolds, ‘Drogheda feud reaches new level of barbarity with teenager’s murder’, RTÉ, 18th of January, 2020, https://www.rte.ie/news/crime/2020/0117/1108136-mulready-woods-drogheda/

    [iv] Conrad Duncan, ‘‘Absolutely disgusting’: Homeless man suffers ‘life-changing’ injuries after tent cleared away by Dublin city council’, Independent, January 15th, 2020, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/homeless-man-life-changing-injuries-dublin-city-council-ireland-varadkar-a9284936.html

    [v] Fintan O’Toole, ‘Fintan O’Toole: For the first time since 1171, Ireland is more powerful than Britain’, September 14th, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-for-the-first-time-since-1171-ireland-is-more-powerful-than-britain-1.4014922?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Ffintan-o-toole-for-the-first-time-since-1171-ireland-is-more-powerful-than-britain-1.4014922

    [vi] Finn McRedmond, ‘Finn McRedmond: Like Tories, Corbyn has failed Ireland’, August 24th, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/finn-mcredmond-like-tories-corbyn-has-failed-ireland-1.3995334

    [vii] Press Association, ‘Sinn Féin pledges to secure border poll within five years’, Breaking News¸ January 28th, 2020, https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/sinn-fein-pledges-to-secure-border-poll-within-five-years-978299.html

    [viii] Sorcha Pollak, ‘Dublin rents to rise 17% by 2021 due to lack of supply, report finds’, Irish Times April 8th, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/dublin-rents-to-rise-17-by-2021-due-to-lack-of-supply-report-finds-1.3853074?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Feconomy%2Fdublin-rents-to-rise-17-by-2021-due-to-lack-of-supply-report-finds-1.3853074

    [ix] Roisin Agnew, ‘Can Sinn Féin’s young voters finally pull Ireland to the left?’ The Guardian, January 31st, 2020,  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/31/sinn-fein-ireland-left-election-ira

    [x] Rhona McCord, ‘Book Review, ‘A Just Society for Ireland?’’ The Irish Story, December 16th, 2013, https://www.theirishstory.com/2013/12/16/book-review-a-just-society-for-ireland/#.Xjg8giPLdPY

    [xi] Fergal O’Brien, Dublin third worst city for time spent sitting in traffic – survey, RTÉ, February `13th, 2019, https://www.rte.ie/news/dublin/2019/0213/1029375-dublin-traffic-survey/.

    [xii] Dan White, ‘Dan White: Harney was right — we are closer to Boston than Berlin’, Herald.ie, May 24th, 2011, https://www.herald.ie/opinion/columnists/dan-white/dan-white-harney-was-right-we-are-closer-to-boston-than-berlin-27980646.html

    [xiii] Frank Armstrong, ‘Leo-Liberal’, Cassandra Voices, October 5th, 2019, https://cassandravoices.com/current-affairs/politics/leo-liberal/

    [xiv] Sean Murray, ‘Dublin now in top 5 most expensive places to rent in Europe, research finds’, The Journal,  March 13th, 2019, https://www.thejournal.ie/dublin-rent-europe-4538856-Mar2019/

    [xv] Kevin O’Neill, ‘Irish Population rises by 64,500 bringing it to almost 5m’, Irish Examiner, August 28th, 2019, https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/irish-population-rises-by-64500-bringing-it-to-almost-5m-946672.html

    [xvi] Untitled, ‘Varadkar says he would like to see a united Ireland in his lifetime’, Irish Times, October 25th, 2018, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/varadkar-says-he-would-like-to-see-a-united-ireland-in-his-lifetime-1.4062543

    [xvii] https://www.thejournal.ie/social-housing-private-housing-4255285-Sep2018/

    [xviii] Untitled, ‘The Irish Times view on property investment funds: Doing the Reit thing’, October 10th, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/editorial/the-irish-times-view-on-property-investment-funds-doing-the-reit-thing-1.4045602?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Feditorial%2Fthe-irish-times-view-on-property-investment-funds-doing-the-reit-thing-1.4045602

    [xix] Untitled, ‘Bibby: Irish SMEs struggling with rising costs’, Shelf Life, October 15th, 2019, https://www.shelflife.ie/bibby-irish-smes-struggling-with-rising-costs/

    [xx] Untitled, ‘Massive IKEA store approved for Dublin’, BreakingNews.ie, June 13th, 2007, https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/massive-ikea-store-approved-for-dublin-314846.html

    [xxi] Brian Mahon ‘Show Vendors, ‘Election 2020: Fine Gael promises end to ‘boom and bust’’, The Times, January 17th, 2020, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/election-2020-fine-gael-promises-end-to-boom-and-bust-9dk70kjdj

    [xxii] Dan Mitchell, ‘These Were the 6 Major American Economic Crises of the Last Century’, Time Magazine, July 16, 2015, https://time.com/3957499/american-economic-crises-history/

    [xxiii] David Graeber, Debt: The First Five Thousand Years, Melville, London, 2011, p.357

    [xxiv] Eileen Magnier, ‘Protest in Oughterard over possible direct provision centre’, RTÉ, September 28th, 2019, https://www.rte.ie/news/connacht/2019/0928/1078800-oughterard-direct-provision/

    [xxv] Kevin Doyle, ‘Taoiseach says direct provision ‘better than using tents’’ Irish Independent, October 31st, 2019, https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/taoiseach-says-direct-provision-better-than-using-tents-38647784.html

    [xxvi] Untitled, ‘Leo Varadkar says Georgia and Albania driving rise in asylum-seeker numbers’, BreakingNews.ie, November 3rd, 2019, https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/leo-varadkar-says-georgia-and-albania-driving-rise-in-asylum-seeker-numbers-961488.html

    [xxvii] Pat Leahy, ‘Taoiseach stands by Verona Murphy despite further controversial remarks’, November 19th, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/taoiseach-stands-by-verona-murphy-despite-further-controversial-remarks-1.4088124?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fpolitics%2Ftaoiseach-stands-by-verona-murphy-despite-further-controversial-remarks-1.4088124

    [xxviii] Vivienne Clarke, ‘Danny Healy-Rae defends Noel Grealish for comments about Nigeria’, Irish Examiner, November 13th, 2019, https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/danny-healy-rae-defends-noel-grealish-for-comments-about-nigeria-963665.html

    [xxix] Philip Ryan, ‘More than half of Fianna Fáil parliamentary party backing ‘no’ vote in referendum’, Irish Independent, May 3rd, 2018, https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/abortion-referendum/more-than-half-of-fianna-fail-parliamentary-party-backing-no-vote-in-referendum-36870462.html

    [xxx] For example: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT9D87j5W7PtE7NHOR5DUOQ

    [xxxi] Fiach Kelly, ‘Peadar Tóibín’s immigration remarks spark heavy criticism’, Irish Times, April 8th, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/peadar-t%C3%B3ib%C3%ADn-s-immigration-remarks-spark-heavy-criticism-1.3853813

    [xxxii] James Joyce, ‘Ireland: Island of Saints and Sages’, Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing, Oxford University Press, Oxford, p.118.

    [xxxiii] Pat Leahy, ‘Sinn Féin unveils plans for dramatic increase in public spending’, Irish Times, January 29th, 2020, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/sinn-f%C3%A9in-unveils-plans-for-dramatic-increase-in-public-spending-1.4154513?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fpolitics%2Fsinn-f%25C3%25A9in-unveils-plans-for-dramatic-increase-in-public-spending-1.4154513

    [xxxiv] Dr Frank Crowley, ‘How a land value tax could solve many economic headaches’, RTÉ Brainstorm, October 18th, 2017, https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2017/1017/912913-how-a-land-value-tax-could-solve-many-economic-headaches/.

  • Democracy in Decay: Steve Bannon & Jordan Peterson

    ‘The interesting thing is that they’re protesting against themselves. There’s no enemy out there. They know they are the enemy.’
    J.G Ballard, Millenium[i]

    The 2019 Reuters Institute Digital News Report points to increasing de-politicisation across the Western world. This accompanies a seemingly inexorable rising tide of ‘identitarian’ Populism, globally led by Steve Bannon. The movement channels latent anger into cynicism towards central governments and supra-national institutions such as the E.U.; just when we require solidarity to address climate chaos.

    Symptomatic were Conservative Party tactics during U.K Election 2019 – under the influence of Bannon – promising nothing beyond ‘getting Brexit done’; in other words a negation of the country’s institutional ties with other states – rather than a vision for improvement. This recalls Donald Trump’s ongoing pledge to ‘DRAIN THE SWAMP’ of Washington politics.

    In a climate of suspicion, roguish buffoons like Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro and Boris Johnson have lied and cheated their way to high office. The moral landscape has altered to a point where the truth doesn’t seem to count for much anymore; in contrast to a cosy relationship with Big Data, and plenty of campaign dosh, which is more vital than ever.

    Delving deeper, these political trends are tremors from a seismic Internet Revolution radically re-shaping our societies and very brains. This new medium has proved a fruitful ground for the advancement, and enrichment, of varied corporate entities and human beings. Those benefitting include Canadian psychology Professor Jordan Peterson, arguably the first public intellectual of the Digital Age – with many of his lengthy YouTube lectures hitting numbers associated with music videos.

    It is instructive that Steve Bannon targeted Peterson’s online devotees before the last Presidential election. Peterson came to prominence especially through the so-called culture wars, contributing to a ‘woke’ caricature, which really should be attributed to the liberal centre, given the emphasis leading lights such as Tony Blair, Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton placed on political correctness and multiculturalism.

    Peterson’s cult status brings adulation of a type associated with Pop stars, drawing huge audiences to venues across the English-speaking world. A predominantly male audience has been impressed by a refusal to pay the usual fealties to political correctness, and offered the kind of sound, fatherly advice that many seem to lack, but Peterson abuses his power by peddling climate change denial, while demeaning collective institutions, and governments.

    Politicide

    In 2003 Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling published a book called Politicide, which charted the destruction of the Palestinian nation as a political entity. He claimed the state of Israel was transforming Palestinians into a leaderless community struggling for an identity – as had previously been the case.[ii] Thus in 1969, then Prime Minister Golda Meir questioned the existence of a distinctive Palestinian people, an inquiry that might soon be aired again.

    Israel’s erosion of Palestinian identity has been achieved through collective impoverishment, targeted assassination of key leaders and the age-old technique of divide and conquer. Now the Palestinian voice on the international stage has been reduced to a barely audible whimper.

    A similar, though less overtly violent, campaign of Politicide is being waged by Steve Bannon, Dominic Cummings and other unelected political advisors across the Western world. Democracy is being corroded by sophisticated technology, including from the notorious Cambridge Analytica, mining data from social media and other online interactions to develop advertising specific to targeted groups in key marginals.

    The old left that forged bonds both within countries and internationally, especially through working class solidarity is the immediate target of attack ads that are having an effect. In this respect, Margaret Thatcher’s 1980 comment ‘And you know, there is no society’ recalls Golda Meir’s aspersion of Palestinian identity. Lacking sufficient resources for social media campaigns, and pilloried by journalists increasingly beholden to conservative billionaires such as the Koch brothers, socialism is on the decline across Europe and beyond.

    Drawing support away from the old left, so-called Populists – who really have little in common with the agrarian-radical originals of the late nineteenth century led by William Jennings Bryan – are incubating acceptance of a global corporate order, directing oppositional energies against what they characterise as a corrupt state – which of course is being hollowed out by those same corporations, through lobbying and regulatory capture.

    An important component of Politicide is for growing numbers to be turned off news content altogether. Thus the Reuters Digital News Report for 2019 found an average of 32% across a large number of countries actively avoid it, up from 29% the previous year. In the U.K. that figure reached 35% in the election years of 2019, a striking 11% increase on the previous poll. Such shifts do not occur by accident. Turning people off trusted news sources increases susceptibility to fake news arriving via political ads.

    Last September Mathew D’Ancona outlined the ongoing involvement of Steve Bannon in Conservative Party tactics. In the last election, according to Adam Ramsay war was waged ‘on the political process, on trust, and on truth;’ a Hobbesian project ensuring ‘the whole experience is miserable, bewildering and stressful;’ all that remains is to ‘ask voters to make it go away.’

    The success of the Bannon formula is not measured purely in terms of increasing vote share, but also in opponents losing support through apathy and despair. The most important social media platform remains Facebook, still the dominant player by quite a margin, especially for older people. There we find the kind of attack ads long a feature of U.S. political culture targeted precisely at voters in marginal or swing constituencies or states.

    What was novel for the U.K. in 2019 was widespread indifference to the truth, with 88% of Conservative Facebook ads containing lies. This may have been what Dominic Cummings was referring to in his last blog post when he mused on how: ‘the ecosystem evolves rapidly while political journalists are still behind the 2016 tech.’[iii]

    Both Steve Bannon and Dominic Cummings are clever political operators, they are not, however, geniuses. But the project of politicide, working distinctly to the advantage of large corporations, is the product of broader cultural currents. The first wave of the Internet Revolution is fraying old systems of thought, and recasting political discourse. The Jordan Peterson phenomenon is instructive.

    The rise of the ‘Petersonites’

    Notably, Steve Bannon mined the data of the followers of Jordan Peterson before the 2016 U.S. Presidential election as ‘they were looking for a father figure to tell them what to do,’ according to a Cambridge Analytica whistleblower.[iv] Apparently they possessed ‘the big five traits’ of easily manipulatable men: frustrated economic opportunities; an estranged father; enjoyment of word salad; not showering on a regular basis; and ranking in the top quartile for the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

    Perhaps unsurprisingly given his fanbase, in the wake of Brexit Peterson compared the E.U. to the Tower of Babel: ‘a homogenous totalitarian structure that usurps the transcendent.’ This follows insinuation that transgender activists were equivalent to Maoists.

    Jordan Peterson is not, however, a political extremist – by North American standards at least. Nonetheless, his generally compelling talks – with ideas distilled in particular from the archetypes of C.S. Jung and Aristotle’s virtues – have been adopted, and glossed, by a legion of far-right digital warriors. He also represents a successful formula for the entrepreneurial pursuit of an online personality in this neo-liberal zeitgeist that has been copied more broadly.

    Peterson’s fame, or notoriety, derives mainly from impressive public speaking performances and televised debates rather than through books. Indeed, his literary output is a relatively modest two publications[v] – the most recent a self-help bestseller.

    Like Donald Trump, Peterson is a master of the new digital medium. While the U.S. President specialises in cutting brevity – ‘show me someone who has no ego and he is a loser’[vi] – Jordan Peterson represents the opposite pole, opting for grandiloquent expression; dazzling audiences with a flurry of references; fluently recalled using streams of synonyms ‘maxing out’ any SAT Writing and Language test. He reaches a crescendo of self-righteousness when laying waste to scruffy woke opponents.

    The Digital Age

    We are in the early stages of a communications revolution reconfiguring human societies, and perhaps rewiring our brains.[vii] This Digital Age is characterised by a ‘secondary orality’ conveyed through video, podcast and memes that still depends on an inheritance of books.[viii] As the pace of change accelerated with the arrival of affordable smartphones from 2010, the quality of political journalism declined in tandem.

    The great U.S. reporter Seymour Hersh recently offered a withering assessment of contemporary media to the effect that ‘We are sodden with fake news, hyped-up and incomplete information, and false assertions delivered non-stop by our daily newspapers, our televisions, our online news agencies, our social media, and our President.’[ix]

    Seymour, ‘Si’, Hersh, photographed in 2004.

    Crucially, leisure-reading of books[x] is giving way to multimedia engagement via smartphones, disseminated, mediated and curated through unregulated social media platforms; the most widely accessed of which, Facebook, refuses to vet political ads for their veracity, selling our data to the highest bidders.

    It is perhaps unsurprising that abandonment of books in favour of digital ephemera should herald a cultural decline. On social media the image is king, and language, as Richard Seymour argues in the Twittering Machine, is increasingly reduced to its effects, like all manipulative communication, from marketing to military propaganda.[xi]

    These developments are unravelling a profound cultural inheritance. Walter Ong contends that ‘More than any other single invention, writing has transformed human consciousness.’[xii] ‘By separating the knower from the known’, he says, ‘writing makes possible increasingly articulate introspectivity, opening the psyche as never before not only to the objective world quite distinct form itself but also to the interior self against whom the objective world is set.’[xiii]

    It is through textual records, passed down and renewed by each generation of scholars, that the wide-ranging dialectics required for scientific research and philosophical enquiry occur. The development of writing allowed us to determine and convey facts.

    The increasing dominance of a ‘secondary orality’ of video and podcast is shifting political debate away from philosophic “articulate intropsectivity”, and also bringing celebrity veneration, as “the knower” (or quickfire know-all such as Jordan Peterson) merges with what is “known.”

    Moreover, unlike public intellectuals of the recent past, who conveyed facts and ideas in books, the output of a digital-era leading light arrives in a stream of video, more challenging to parse, or counter, than the venerable medium in print form. Thus, previously agreed upon facts are more easily dismissed as we enter an era of post-truth.

    ‘An explosion in identity talk’

    Alongside devotion to vacuous celebrity, Richard Seymour observes that over the course of the last decade, as the numbers regularly accessing Twitter and Facebook grew into billions, there has been ‘an explosion in identity talk.’[xiv]

    Jordan Peterson is perhaps the intellectual apotheosis of this trend. Thus, in 2016 after igniting controversy for refusing to adopt gender-neutral pronouns, he released a series of videos justifying his positions.[xv] Soon he had emerged as a global conservative champion in the culture war, ‘destroying’ interlocutors with well-rehearsed, and often, it must be said, reasonable arguments.

    Peterson railed against a woke-ish political correctness that many on the left already acknowledged had lurched into absurdity, to the exclusion of more pressing discussions of climate change, ecological collapse, spiralling inequality and unaccountable digital platforms.

    Amy Chua identifies acute problems with identity politics ‘on both sides of the political spectrum,’ which she says, ‘leaves the United States in a perilous new situation: almost no one is standing up for an America without identity politics, for an American identity that transcends and unites all the country’s many subgroups.’[xvi]

    Peterson has amassed a reasonable fortune in the process of emerging as both hero and villain in the febrile culture war. Knowingly or otherwise, he has served the interests of Bannon and his ilk.

    Narrowing Debate

    Jordan Peterson is broadly correct that the parameters of debate in Anglophone so-called liberal – or ‘woke-ish’ to use the term de jour – media such as The Guardian and The New York Times have narrowed. The phenomenon of no-platforming outspoken thinkers such as Germain Greer for questioning whether a transgender individual should be considered a woman is disturbing. The media’s obsession with celebrity sex scandals often amounts to little more than clickbait.

    Moreover in America, and elsewhere, a range of media from Fox News to Breitbart have picked up the slack, accommodating so-called conservative, increasingly far-right, standpoints.

    Similarly, right-wing views are well represented in U.K. media by established players such as The Telegraph, Daily Mail and Daily Express as well as newcomers like Spiked, whose founders’ journey from Marxism to the alt-right is symptomatic. The traditional viewpoint that Peterson purports to represent is far from being marginal across the Anglophone world.

    A shift towards identity politics can be traced to the fissuring of the political order at the end of the Cold War, as mainstream centre-left parties in the U.S. and U.K. pivoted to the centre-right.

    Thus in the U.S., Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and then Barack Obama essentially ignored spiralling inequalities attending the rise of the digital behemoths, assuaging discontents by endeavouring to roll out state-funded medical care that has done little to break the dominance of Big Pharma and an epidemic of legal drug addiction. With identity politics centre-stage, Obama’s victory – that ‘Audacity of Hope’ –  was mistakenly viewed as the harbinger of a tolerant and inclusive society.

    Then stories such as the ‘birther’ controversy – an unfounded rumour that Obama had not been born in the United States which, if true, would have debarred him from the presidency – generated endless columns in the liberal media,[xvii] to the exclusion of reporting on social and environmental issues highlighting the despoliation of the Earth by large corporations.

    Focus on identity politics, from race to feminism and same-sex marriage, not to mention abortion, diverted attention from the long-standing exclusion of the poor of all ‘races’, with real wages stagnating for decades,[xviii] while extraordinary wealth and privilege has been concentrated in increasingly few hands.

    Donald Trump tapped into economic insecurities – offering up poor Latino immigrants as a scapegoat to blue collar workers – to win the Presidency of 2016. Hilary Clinton and her handlers persevered with identity politics, emphasising the importance of a female candidacy, and focusing on her opponent’s philandering, rather than addressing entrenched poverty and social exclusion, let alone the excesses of the military industrial complex, and lost.

    In the U.K., the Labour Party also settled in the centre, or even centre-right, under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown (1997-2010). New Labour essentially accepted Margaret Thatcher’s (1979-90) market deregulations and privatisations to the satisfaction of the newspaper barons that tend to decide elections. ‘It’s The Sun Wot Won It’ read Rupert Murdoch’s Sun after John Major’s come-from-behind victory in 1992 – a cheeky headline masking a sinister political reality.

    The Sun newspaper, April 11th, 1992.

    As Mark Fisher memorably put it: ‘Blairism has consolidated and outstripped the ideological gains of Thatcherism by ensuring the apparently total victory of PR over punk, of politeness over antagonism, of middle class utility over proletarian art.’[xix]

    Later David Cameron and his fellow ‘modernisers’, or ‘One Nation’ Tories, rebranded the Conservative Party in the dress code of New Labour, embracing non-economic issues such as marriage equality and increasing the visibility of female and ethnic minority representatives, while pursuing Thatcherite, austerity policies in the background.

    This approach yielded electoral success in 2010 and 2015, before Brexit derailed the formula. Similar to Trump’s victory over Hilary, Brexit bubbled up, dialectically, inside the cauldron of identity politics first stirred by the centre-right.

    It is disingenuous therefore for Jordan Peterson to bemoan the excesses of identity politics given it was the centre-right he claims to support that has promoted ‘woke-ish’ causes. Grandstanding on controversies over transgender identity simply gives oxygen to debates that are of little consequence, at least by comparison with fundamental issues of human welfare and climate chaos.

    Logos

    As a psychologist with extensive clinical experience Jordan Peterson is acutely attuned to what makes a primarily male target audience tick. Skillful rhetoric taps into the concerns of essentially Anglophone or Nordic males, perturbed by suggestions they should be ashamed of privileged upbringings, another unhelpful idea that entered debates around identity politics.

    Importantly, Peterson also gave intellectual credibility to belief in God after decades of sustained attacks from evangelical atheists such as Richard Dawkins, and, following Jung, identifies the role of spirituality in recovery from mental illness. His appeal to mythology also presented novel insights to an audience jaded by a dominant discourse of scientific materialism.

    More problematically, however, Peterson also styles himself a philosopher and scientist. But as James Hamblin pointed out in The Atlantic what Peterson is really selling is a sense of order and control. Thus, while science is about settling questions and determining facts, self-help is concerned with supplying immediate answers to the question of how to live in the world. Hence, a recurring idea in Jordan Peterson’s book is that humans need rules as ‘an antidote to chaos.’[xx]

    A crucial concept that Peterson has pronounced on is ‘logos’, which the Aristotelian philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre in Whose Justice Which Rationality describes as follows:

    To engage in intellectual enquiry is then not simply to advance theses and to give one’s rational allegiance to those theses which so far withstand rational refutation; it is to understand the movement form thesis to thesis as a movement towards a kind of logos which will disclose how things are, not relative to some point of view, but as such.

    Essentially, logos, in contrast to moral relativism, permits us to pronounce on moral ‘truths.’ In the wrong hands, however, it leads to moral absolutism, and is a sinister recipe for totalitarianism of a sort the Catholic Church institutionalised through the idea of a Pope speaking ex cathedra.

    In our time, where celebrity veneration increasingly equates the knower with the known, real danger lurks in vesting any individual with a singular authority. We should instead assess the merit of their ideas on a case-by-case basis.

    Jordan Peterson makes compelling arguments regarding the excesses of political correctness, and even in assessing virtues necessary for a good life, but he should certainly not be considered omniscient, or even competent, in fields beyond his ken.

    The ‘Lion Diet’

    Notably, Peterson has revealed himself as a climate change denier having argued before the Cambridge Union that views on climate change are inseparable from political orientations,[xxi] an assumption no doubt resting easily with a conservative fanbase, or market. It would certainly have pleased Steve Bannon.

    Here we can see the contradiction that lies at the heart of Peterson between the scientist and the charmer, with the latter winning out. One may speculate as to why he holds these views that are at variance with scientific orthodoxy. Perhaps adherence to a ‘carnivore diet’ led to the distortion and departure from science, and logos.[xxii]

    The edifice of Peterson’s ideas starts to crumble when we examine the ‘Lion Diet’ he has adopted on the advice of his daughter Michaela. James Hamblin recalls how:

    On the comedian Joe Rogan’s podcast, Jordan Peterson explained how Mikhaila’s experience had convinced him to eliminate everything but meat and leafy greens from his diet, and that in the last two months he had gone full meat and eliminated vegetables. Since he changed his diet, his laundry list of maladies has disappeared, he told Rogan. His lifelong depression, anxiety, gastric reflux (and associated snoring), inability to wake up in the mornings, psoriasis, gingivitis, floaters in his right eye, numbness on the sides of his legs, problems with mood regulation—all of it is gone, and he attributes it to the diet.

    Bannon

    Trump’s victory and the Brexit Referendum are products of a profound, and arguably justifiable, disillusionment with the political status quo. Washington and Brussels are both seen as corrupt centres of power. Many of the arguments against these institutions are valid, but ignore the essential functions federal and supranational institutions still perform, with the baby being thrown out with the bathwater in the case of Brexit.

    Of more importance to Populist success, however, has been the growing sense of ‘them’ and ‘us’, derived from identity politics. Mistakenly characterised as ethnic pride, it diminishes solidarity between human beings. Thus we enter the third decade of the millennium increasingly lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive and dependent, to quote Erich Fromm.

    The Internet Revolution has brought opportunities for a few, particularly the first corporations to optimise social media, and aggressively pursue audience share through acquisition of kindred platforms in Facebook’s case. It has also allowed human beings of varied intelligences to thrive, from Donald Trump to Jordan Peterson, and more encouragingly, Greta Thunberg.

    Peterson is the reigning conservative intellectual champion, who has used an undeniable talent to deflect attention from the real challenges confronted by humanity. His strawman of the left is really a creation of the liberal centre. Peterson may prove to be a dangerous guru whose eccentric tastes have brought climate denial.

    The intellectual decay associated with Peterson provides the soil wherein Bannon’s seedlings germinate. Peterson informs his legions of fans to stand up straight and ‘own’ their prejudices (whether against transgender individuals or supranational institutions), while Bannon’s software prowls online preferences for signs of alienation.

    We are only slowly coming to terms with a Digital Age reshaping our reality. The rise of a “secondary orality” is fraying our allegiance to the older print medium of books that acted as a conduit for facts. Video and podcast are easily accessed but content is not easily parsed. Moreover, as we retreat into a solitary cyberspace the view of the world is often jaundiced, and Bannon wins.

    Feature Image by Gage Skidmore/wikicommons: Jordan Peterson speaking with attendees at the 2018 Young Women’s Leadership Summit hosted by Turning Point USA at the Hyatt Regency DFW Hotel in Dallas, Texas.

    [i] J. G. Ballard, Millennium People, Fourth Estate, London, 2003, p.109.

    [ii] Deaglán de Bréadún, ‘Contemplating Politicide’, Irish Times, August 9th, 2003, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/contemplating-politicide-1.369096

    [iii] Dominic Cummings, ‘‘Two hands are a lot’ — we’re hiring data scientists, project managers, policy experts, assorted weirdos…’ Blog Post, January 2nd, 2020, https://dominiccummings.com/2020/01/02/two-hands-are-a-lot-were-hiring-data-scientists-project-managers-policy-experts-assorted-weirdos/

    [iv] Andrew Hall, ‘Steve Bannon Targeted Jordan Peterson’s Followers Because They Were ‘Easy To Manipulate’’, Laughing in Disbelief, November 4th, 2019, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/laughingindisbelief/2019/11/steve-bannon-targeted-jordan-petersons-followers-because-they-were-easy-to-manipulate/

    [v] Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, Routledge, Abingdon, 1999 and 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Penguin Random House, New York, 2018. Peterson has also authored or co-authored more than a hundred academic papers.

    [vi] https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/225949765324636160?lang=en

    [vii] Hilary Bruek, ‘This is what your smartphone is doing to your brain — and it isn’t good’, March 1st, 2019, Business Insider, https://www.businessinsider.com/what-your-smartphone-is-doing-to-your-brain-and-it-isnt-good-2018-3?r=US&IR=T

    [viii] Walter Ong, ‘Orality and Literacy – The Technologisation of the Word METHVE and co. London, 10982 p.2

    [ix] Seymour M. Hersh, Reporter: A Memoir, New York, Random House, 2018, p.3.

    [x] Untitled, ‘Leisure Reading in the U.S. is at an all time low’, Washington Post, June 29th, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/29/leisure-reading-in-the-u-s-is-at-an-all-time-low/

    [xi] Richard Seymour, The Twittering Machine, Indigo, London, 2019, p.118

    [xii] Ong p. 78

    [xiii] Ibid, p.105

    [xiv] Seymour, 2019, p.100

    [xv] Jessica Murphy, ‘Toronto professor Jordan Peterson takes on gender-neutral pronouns’, BBC News, November 4th, 2016, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37875695

    [xvi] Amy Chua, ‘How America’s identity politics went from inclusion to division’, The Guardian, March 1st, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/01/how-americas-identity-politics-went-from-inclusion-to-division

    [xvii] Michael Calderone, ‘Fox News Gives Donald Trump A Pass On Birther Crusade It Helped Fuel’, Huffington Post, August 23rd, 2016. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fox-news-donald-trump-birtherism_n_57e54a06e4b08d73b830d54e

    [xviii] Drew Desilver, ‘For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades’, Pew Research Centre, August 7th, 2018, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

    [xix] Mark Fisher, K-Punk – The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004 -2016), Shepperton, London, 2018, p.61

    [xx] James Hamblin, ‘The Jordan Peterson All-Meat Diet, The Atlantic, August 28th, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/08/the-peterson-family-meat-cleanse/567613/

    [xxi] Jordan Peterson at the Cambridge Union: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBbvehbomrY

    [xxii] Adam Gabbatt, ‘My carnivore diet: what I learned from eating only beef, salt and water’, The Guardian, September 11th, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/food/2018/sep/10/my-carnivore-diet-jordan-peterson-beef

  • The Late Risers’ Manifesto 2020

    Today it is shameful to be unemployed and regarded as an achievement to sell oneself into part-time slavery, meekly accepting as natural that one is not free for half one’s waking hours.
    Theodore Zeldin, The Hidden Pleasures of Life – A New Way of Remembering the Past and Imagining the Future (2015).

    With an Irish general election looming, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has again appealed to early risers.[i] Thus the early bird, rubbing sleep from his swollen eyes, is promised an array of tax cuts. This is compensation, we assume, for the long commute and attendant sleep deprivation involved in living in a ‘starter home’ in a peripheral zone, all to the ultimate benefit of a minority in an increasingly unequal society.[ii]

    Considering the impending obsolescence of so many forms of work, however, politicians should be daring to dream of another kind of life; one where human flourishing is given priority; and what Greta Thunberg described as the ‘fairy tale’ of economic growth-without-end is abandoned.

    As David Graeber put it: ‘The real question is how to ratchet down a bit more toward a society where people can live more by working less.’ He further opines that the non-working poor may be ‘pioneers of a new economic order that would not share our current one’s penchant for self-annihilation.’[iii]

    The Tedium of Work

    Neo-liberalism is predicated on a shaky assumption that success, measured in money, sex or fame, derives from a single-minded focus on hard work, and paying off one’s debts. It has led to Leo’s misplaced veneration for the alarm clock, and political scapegoating of ‘welfare cheats,’ and others among the ‘undeserving’ poor.

    It is a grand delusion that early rising and hard work make dreams a reality, at its extreme recalling the banner greeting Concentration Camp inmates: arbeit met frei ,‘work will set you free’. A devotion to labour for its own sake is misplaced. In fact, an excess can dull the mind.

    Detail of the main gate at Dachau concentration camp in Germany.

    Adam Smith, the father of Classical Economics, argued that the tedium of monotonous industrial tasks would render anyone ‘stupid and narrow-minded.’ He maintained that the torpor of repetitive labour renders an individual incapable ‘of relishing or bearing a part in rational conversation’, or ‘conceiving generous, noble or tender sentiment;’[iv] asserting this would come in the way of  ‘any just judgment concerning even the ordinary duties of private life.’

    Over the course of the last century especially, workers, including those engaged in monotonous ‘unskilled’ work, joined forces to win a series of improvements to their conditions. These included a five-day week and eight-hour working day, along with a living wage. It brought scope for many, if not most, among what has been pointedly referred to as ‘the working class’ to enjoy a reasonable standard of living across the Western world.

    Steadily rising standards of living in Post-War U.S and Europe brought a profusion of recreational activities including sports, and unprecedented access to the arts, especially film – the defining cultural form of the twentieth century – along with access to higher education for the children of the poor.

    La Dolce Vita

    With a decent life available to most of the population, the decades after World War II are known as Les Trente Glorieuses in France and Il Miracolo Economico in Italy, as salaries kept pace with labour productivity. In large part down to the political clout of the left, including Communist parties.

    But these developments have given way to a sustained global period of widening inequality,[v] associated especially with Ronald Reagan in the U.S. and Margaret Thatcher in the U.K.. Henceforth according to David Graeber, ‘we were all to think of ourselves as tiny corporations.’[vi] This has worked to the detriment of the bulk of the population ill-equipped to understand the complexities – or just uninterested – in financial transactions. Above all it has brought a veneration of property ownership, with speculation encouraged by unscrupulous banks, leading to the property inflation that culminated in the Financial Crash of 2008, when the bubble burst in Ireland and elsewhere.

    Far from bringing wealth to the many, since the 1970s real wages have stagnated, while private, and public debts spiraled, with the wealth of a few expanding grotesquely, especially in recent times.

    U.S. Productivity v Real Wages (source https://thecurrentmoment.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/productivity-inequality-poverty/)

    Tellingly, whereas in the 1950s the CEO of General Motors, then the model of a successful US business, was paid 135 times more than assembly-line workers, fifty years later the CEO of Walmart earned 1,500 times as much as an ordinary employee.[vii] In recent times, the efficiencies enabled by new technologies, often protected by exclusionary patents, are enriching those at the apex of corporations.

    Unions, which were vital for bringing workers’ rights, are now in retreat. Those that remain often only represent employees in privileged positions. A chasm below an unemployment cliff looms in front of us, with little opposition to the new world order.

    Automation

    These developments are a feature of a technological revolution, especially in communications with the advent of the Internet, shattering an apparent post-Cold War consensus, and now shifting the political substrate. The world wide web has rendered words, video and music virtually uncommodifiable, wreaking havoc upon the livelihoods of independent-minded writers, musicians and others artists, who struggle to share their revitalising visions for life.

    Automation now beckons in a host of industries which will further enhance ‘labour productivity’, at the expense of labour, and to the benefit of capital.

    Our present disorder is comparable to the expansion of the Roman Republic in the first century BCE, when territories to the east and west fell to generals such as Caesar, Pompey and Crassus. These charismatic consuls pillaged unprecedented loot, generating an early form of welfare populism and eventually an oligarchic triumvirate. This gave way to the Roman Empire in 49BCE, under the first Emperor Julius Caesar.

    The First Triumvirate of the Roman Empire: Caesar, Pompey and Crassus.

    Today, we have our own benign despots within Big Data, whose loot would make an emperor blush. Their algorithms convey us from purchase to purchase, intruding ever more into our inner-most thoughts. Most worryingly, the independence of voting intentions are being severely tested by sophisticated (anti-) social media platforms.

    At the outset of a dizzying technological revolution a small number of individuals wield unaccountable power, and as time passes the freedom of the Internet recedes. Just as the Celtic tribes of Gaul cowered before the ingenuity of Roman legions, structures of democratic government – states and transnational bodies – melt before the tortoise formations of the corporations, and their often solipsistic commanders.

    As in another age where the value of men was assigned in battle, a capacity to appeal to a wide public with a new Internet tool, whether useful or not, has brought mind-boggling fortunes to the founders and shareholders of Google, Facebook, Instagram and the rest. There is little to prevent villainous characters developing unassailable political power through vast fortunes. The descent of the Roman Empire into corruption and excess should serve as a warning.

    Moreover, just as Johannes Gutenberg was buried in an unmarked grave while others profited from his invention of the printing press, opportunism rather than ingenuity tends to be rewarded; as with the phenomenon of the real estate speculator Donald Trump, who recalls the fiddling Emperor Nero himself. This acknowledged master of the soundbite is the product of inherited wealth, and the redoubtable political nous of Steve Bannon, who preyed on the insecurities of the American worker.

    Johannes Gutenberg buried in an unmarked grave.

    Yet it took an outlier such as Bannon, back in 2017, to lay down a challenge to our New Age consuls: ‘They’re too powerful. I want to make sure their data is a public trust. The stocks would drop two-thirds in value.’[viii] Where were mainstream liberals in this debate we might ask?

    One such liberal centurion, Leo Varadkar, offers no opposition to the current economic order. Indeed, he unashamedly promotes dominant corporations in Ireland, through a low, or non-existent, corporation tax regime, long justified simply from the perspective of national self-interest. We had an ‘Ireland First’ doctrine here long before Trump invented America’s.

    The Irish state has been reduced to the role of croupier at a casino table where the super-rich trouser their winnings without being required to even tip the attendants. So obsequious has the Irish government become that the award of an enormous windfall to the exchequer of the Apple tax bill is resisted: ‘Would sir like to cash his chips in now or later?’

    Fuller Flourishing

    The impending obsolescence of much unskilled work may provide an opportunity for a fuller flourishing of homo sapiens. Liberation from tedious tasks, such as driving and manufacturing, should provide scope for the development of the “generous, noble and tender” sentiments referred to by Adam Smith. This wealth ought to be shared with the Global South too that was ravaged by the imposition of unfair loans during the 1970s and 1980s.

    A powerful remedy to our present difficulties could be for a wealthy country such as Ireland to provide a legal guarantee of a basic standard of living for all citizens. This could offer an opportunity for individual fulfillment in various domains, to the ultimate benefit of society at large. It requires additional funding to educational and cultural facilities, and depends on the state regulating the housing market.

    An often parasitic financial services industry should be regulated and taxed effectively, while life’s essentials: especially a roof over one’s head, nutritious food, and public transport, must all become affordable; if not the cheap air travel to which we have grown accustomed. This may seem a Communist ideal, but greater distribution of wealth can work to the benefit of the small-time entrepreneur and lead to a thriving local market.

    The Financial Crisis from 2008 originated in failings within the banking system, unconnected to what were, in fact, increasing efficiencies simultaneously occurring in the real economy. Rethinking economics in its wake involves questioning theoretical limitations on fiscal stimuli. The value we attribute to money is a product of the human imagination, and governments possess a singular capacity to generate more of it through expenditure, as exponents of Modern Monetary Theory demonstrate.

    Magical money.

    Thus George W. Bush’s administration spent its way out of recession without generating inflation. On the other hand, the austerity measures characterising the response of E.U. member states brought prolonged recession, which disproportionately affected the poorest.

    This was not only unnecessary, but economically counter-productive as those on low incomes tend to spend money on day-to-day goods, generally patronising local businesses. Whatever else one may say in favour of the E.U., the Growth and Stability Pact, enshrined in Treaty, represents an obstacle to any member state’s capacity to adopt a fiscal stimulus in periods of recession, and needs to be done away with.

    Aligning policy to the basic needs of the population should be the role of democratic government, but this is often derailed by special interests. Socio-economic rights could ultimately be enshrined in European treaties so as to avoid a repeat of the disgraceful impoverishment of ordinary Greeks and Irish after the 2008 Crash. But generous government expenditure must avoid the bureaucratisation and careerism often found in the state sector, where many seem to stay in jobs through fear of the alternative.

    Intoxication

    Objections to ideas such as basic income and other socio-economic rights, often stem from a pessimistic assessment that if not spurred by the need to work, most of us will indulge our vices, especially excessive consumption of drugs and alcohol. Yet it is apparent that the oblivion of intoxication is associated with the end of the working week in jobs that do not inspire. It is also clear that feelings of worthlessness generate excessive, and often self-destructive appetites.

    A legal right to economic security would take much of the fear, and even boredom, out of life, while affording the possibility for many of us to follow our dreams, and engage in the kind of blue-sky thinking from which innovations arrive. The pursuit of money as an end in itself, is a lust for power held in common with the warlords of yore. Billionaire moguls are a rare breed requiring containment (who in their right mind would have the motivation to earn more than a billion?), and perhaps even compassion.

    Naturally, many of us enjoy the regularity and community of daily work. There is nothing wrong with that and numerous roles will survive the technological onslaught, preserving the satisfaction many derive from a regular schedule.

    Home-makers, farmers, carers, and teachers of all kinds will always be required. The satisfaction of craftsmanship and independent enterprise should be enhanced, so as to generate greater pride and commitment in a chosen field. Goods produced in an ethical and sustainable manner could be encouraged through education, and targeted subsidisation aimed at a diminished carbon impact and reduced waste.

    Technology professionals are particularly prized in our economy, and their continued usefulness is assured. Many wish to devote their talents towards altruistic goals, however, rather than work for vampire corporations, which exploit people and the Earth. The model of the open source Linux operating system – such as I avail of in this software – shows how a spirit of cooperation endures to make technology a collective resource.

    Open-source Linux operating system.

    Company Law

    We might also contemplate a radical shift in company law. The inherent danger of profit-seeking corporations was once widely recognised. Thus, between 1720 and 1825 it was a criminal offence to start a company in England, during a period of rapid economic expansion.

    In the United States until the nineteenth century there were two competing ideas regarding the purpose of companies: the first involved those with charters restricted to the pursuit of objectives in the public interest, such as canal building; the other regime issued charters of a general character, allowing companies to engage in whatever business proved profitable.[ix]

    The latter category emerged triumphant, divorced from responsibility to fellow citizens; an unaccountable abstraction with separate legal personality established in the landmark 1897 case of Salomon v. Salomon. By altering the nature of the company under law we may continue to harness the thrusting energy of entrepreneurship, but for positive ends.

    Acquisition of wealth is not the be-all and end-all for most of us, especially if basic needs are met: we may still have a real dedication to what we do and the drive to achieve it without the promise of untold riches. Changes in company law requiring any enterprise to have a public interest purpose contained in articles and memoranda of association could prove hugely beneficial to society at large.

    Human creativity is manifest in a wide variety of fields. We may discover different vocations throughout our lives, some economically productive, others seemingly desultory, but perhaps crucial to individual development, and sanity, at particular junctures in life. How many criminals – a huge financial burden on any society – are the product of unhappy careers?

    The technologies we have developed should allow many of us to indulge our passions, which can ultimately be to the benefit of all.

    For some of us, the orthodox structure of the working day is unsatisfactory, and diligence occurs in pursuit of self-ordained objectives, rather than via external imposition This may seem like the privilege of an avant-garde, who tend to have enjoyed educational privileges, but many are increasingly imperiled by current economic structures, and wish to stand apart from what amounts to a conspiracy promoting the purchase of property.

    We might draw wisdom from the lifestyle of the early modern craftsman, who was not beholden to a dictatorial clock, which has cast its shadow over the working day since the Industrial Revolution. Households would retire for a few hours after dusk, waking some time later for an hour or two, before taking what was referred to as a second sleep until morning.

    During this interlude, people would relax, ponder their dreams, or perhaps make love. Others would engage in activities like sewing, chopping wood, or reading, relying on the light of the moon, or newly invented oil lamps.

    Nor was the working week set in stone, and the seasons would dictate the extent of one’s labour. Naturally, the number of burghers who dragged themselves out of a generalised misery at that time was limited, but those managing to do so could operate in tune with their own bodies and the rhythms of nature, rather than the demands of the omnipotent factory owner who emerged ascendant after the Industrial Revolution.

    The Factory Clock.

    Winners and Losers

    The level of poverty we permit in our superficially developed societies is, simply, unconscionable. Insecurity and fear afflict far more than those living in destitution, and are the silent forces that drive addiction and insanity. We have our winners and losers, but the number in the former category has declined considerably in recent decades, as the technological race stretches out the field.

    Just as the Roman Empire grew out of economic imbalances resulting from conquest, our own societies confront unassailable capital, which feeds a delusion that chosen people can be saved from barbarian hordes.

    The possibilities for homo sapiens are boundless. But we require basic safeguards to flourish. Companies can operate for the benefit of society as a whole, harnessing the dynamism of the entrepreneur, and working cooperatively as the craftsman once did. Let us avoid the fate of the Roman Republic, and prosper together.

    An earlier version of this article appeared in February, 2018.

    Follow Frank Armstrong on Twitter.

    [i] Fintan O’Toole, Varadkar’s vacuous slogan reveals a mean streak,’ Irish Times, December 31st, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-varadkar-s-vacuous-slogan-reveals-mean-streak-1.4127418?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Ffintan-o-toole-varadkar-s-vacuous-slogan-reveals-mean-streak-1.4127418

    [ii] Elaine Edwards, ‘Irish inequality blamed on ‘unusually high’ levels of low pay and weak protections’, Irish Times, February 19th, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/irish-inequality-blamed-on-unusually-high-levels-of-low-pay-and-weak-protections-1.3798081

    [iii] David Graeber, Debt – The First 5,000 Years, Melville, London, 2011, p.390

    [iv] Theodore Zeldin, The Hidden Pleasures of Life – A New Way of Remembering the Past and Imagining the Future, Maclehose Press, London, 2015 p.77

    [v] Ted Knutson, ‘Income Inequality Up In Every State Since The 1970s, Says New Report From Liberal Think Tank’, Forbes, July 21st, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/tedknutson/2018/07/21/income-inequality-up-in-every-state-since-the-1970s-says-new-report-from-liberal-think-thank/#3f0e83a023e9

    [vi] Greaber (2011), p.377

    [vii] Zeldin (2015), p.220

    [viii] Gabriel Sherman, ‘“I Have Power”: Is Steve Bannon Running for President?’ Vanity Fair, December 21st, 2017, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/12/bannon-for-president-trump-kushner-ivanka

    [ix] Zeldin (2015), p.232

  • The Doomsday Machines

    Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film ‘Dr Strangelove’ dramatizes the still not-altogether-remote scenario of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). It begins with a deranged U.S. Airforce General, Jack D. Ripper, overriding Executive Command and ordering a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. The Russians, unbeknownst to the Americans, have developed a deterrent – the Doomsday Machine – that automatically detonates, with devastating global effect, if a nuclear device explodes in Soviet territory.

    Kubrick masterfully conveys the absurd conformism of a military organisation obeying orders to a point of self-annihilation. In the end, Major T. J. ‘King’ Kong, the B-52 commander delivering its payload, straddles the bomb, whooping as he descends to his own, and humanity’s, demise. Despite its apocalyptic message, the film remains enduringly hilarious, reflecting its alternative title: ‘How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.’

    A recent viewing in Dublin’s Lighthouse Cinema left me wondering, though, whether Kubrick derives too much comedy from an appalling vista we still confront. Laughter remains a safety valve, permitting an audience to carry on with business-as-usual, while the ultimate stupidity of nuclear war remains a real possibility. Are we, unconsciously, making light of President Donald Trump’s recent euphemistic warning of an ‘official end’ to Iran?[i] As Friedrich Nietzsche puts it: ‘in laughter all evil is compacted, but pronounced holy and free by its own blissfulness.’[ii] Regular doses of humour are one of life’s balms, but sometimes we laugh along to the exclusion of more serious engagement. Fittingly perhaps, the serious work of producing Cassandra Voices generally occurs in a studio above a crowded comedy club in the heart of Dublin, from where laughter often wafts upstairs!

    Millenarian doomsday scenarios have haunted humanity since time immemorial. A ‘Great Survey’ of England and Wales in 1086, used to ascertain the proportion of the national wealth owing to King William ‘the Conqueror’ (also less flatteringly known as ‘the Bastard’), was subsequently labelled the ‘Book of Domesday’ (Middle English for ‘Doomsday’). This accumulation of data in the hands of a monarchy had terrifying connotations at a time when many perceived the end of the world, and its Final Judgment, to be nigh.

    Today humanity confronts varied doomsday scenarios – generally gleaned from scientific analysis rather than metaphysical speculation – with anthropogenic climate chaos, mass extinctions and the still unresolved danger of a nuclear Armageddon topping the list. We remain in many respects, in Carl Jung’s phrase, technological savages[iii], operating machinery with capacities far exceeding our wisdom as operators. It just takes one fat finger to push the button, or an unimpeded algorithm.

    But perhaps it is not nuclear warheads, or even coal-powered stations, that represent the Doomsday Machines of our time. After all, humanity could quite easily seize control of its fate, elect reasonable leaders, bring about a Green New Deal and decommission nuclear weapons. So what is holding us back from taking the action required for the benefit of the great mass of our species, and the rest of the natural world? Another mechanism, operated by most adults in developed countries, is, I believe, befuddling our wits and deterring a collective shift in consciousness.

    Developed simultaneously in the early 2000s by a number of manufacturers, the smart phone is replicating the Book of Domesday by tracking our movements and online preferences to the benefit of vested commercial interests, and shadowy state emanations.

    Of greater concern, perhaps, than the hollowing out of our privacy is the addiction the vast majority of us have to the narcissistic, solipsistic and often pugilistic ‘social’ media of Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Snapchat and Twitter, conveyed through apps on our smartphones. Staring into the void of communication-without-end from dawn-to-dusk, successive ‘hits’ are delivered, revealing who messages us, ‘likes’ our image or words, or offends us. Notably, Donald Trump is the acknowledged master of the soundbite Twitter update (maximum length two-hundred-and-eighty-characters), heralding the short-attention-span-politics evident in most countries.

    Social media is the thief of time and an agent of homogenisation. Writing in the early twentieth century, the

    Fernando Pessoa 1888-1935

    Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa seemed to anticipate the contemporary malaise. ‘Given the metallic, barbarous age we live in,’ he wrote, ‘only by methodically, obsessively cultivating our abilities to dream, analyse and attract can we prevent our personality from dissolving into nothing or identical to all the others.’[iv]

    The smartphone provides a simulacrum of varied technologies, such as an automated camera providing the semblance of a real one, but where the necessary application to understand the apparatus is no longer needed. The capacity to share easily what we have created has overtaken the creative process. The necessary isolation of the artist has been abandoned in favour of the instant hit of validation from our peers.

    Likewise, through digital attenuation, music is debased and choice diminished when we succumb to the algorithms of Spotify and YouTube that are carried with us everywhere we go on our Doomsday Machines.

    Of particular concern is a generation of teenagers who know of no other life other than that mediated by the Doomsday Machines. What is missing from their lives is the crucial ingredient of tedium, which again according to Pessoa is ‘that profound sense of the emptiness of things, out of which frustrated aspirations struggle free, a sense of thwarted longing arises and in the soul is sown the seed from which is born the mystic or the saint.’[v] Being bored can have its advantages.

    I would like to say I had the willpower to renounce my own device, but as is so often the case in life, the end of the affair occurred by accident. Fiddling with its AMAZING properties, for the umpteenth time that day, as I double-jobbed playing with my young nephew, the Machine slipped from my grasp and hit a hard stone floor. The glass did not shatter exactly, except in one corner which felt the full impact, and from which a few glittery shards crumbled away. But, faintly detectable, three deathly cracks ran up from where it had landed, strangely mirroring the lifelines on my hand. When I tried to switch it on, all I found was a faint blinking light, which soon lapsed. Still looking sleek and powerful, though now veiled in a black hood of inoperativeness, it appeared to me like the corpse of a young soldier, handsome features intact, save for a bullet wound to the neck.

    I felt deflated, angry and increasingly tetchy. How was I going to survive without it after a decade-long reliance? Like any addict, I felt pangs for the addled communication, information-gathering and idle scrolling that had become my early morning ritual, as I lay prostrate in bed.

    As it transpired there was still some life in the Machine — I had simply smashed the screen, which I replaced at a reasonable price in a shop on Capel Street. But the liberation of a few days had changed my perspective. I had an unmistakable feeling of a great weight being lifted off me. In the meantime, I had purchased a ‘brick’ phone for next to nothing and now alternate between the two,  only using the Doomsday Machine, now shorn of most, though not all, social media apps, when strictly necessary. I am a work in progress.

    I know many people, more sensible than I, who have deleted all social media apps from their smartphones save for WhatsApp. This is, however, the Gateway Drug that maintains the addiction, leaving the impression that you cannot live without the Doomsday Machine. In a sinister twist, WhatsApp cannot be used on  a laptop, for example, without already being connected to a Doomsday Machine.

    Facebook has become the lightning rod for much of the bad press around social media – those pesky Russians again – and its distorted algorithm is a distinct nuisance if one is attempting to share meaningful content, as the cutesy image will always win out. Used strategically, however, it has its advantages, especially as a means of staying in contact with a large number of people, and for the purpose of events. It only really becomes problematic as an app on a smartphone that sends out regular notifications, prompting idly scrolling. I can live with it on my laptop, although I have given up on the hope of using it as a conduit for radical journalism.

    As regards the confessional nature of posting our thoughts, I was struck by further prescient words from Pessoa: ‘What could anyone confess that would be worth anything or serve any useful purpose? What has happened to us has either happened to everyone or to us alone; if the former, it has no novelty value and if the latter it will be incomprehensible.’[vi] I am coming to recognise that most of the online outbursts I am prone to are perhaps better left unsaid.

    Instagram offers a good medium for photographers to display their work, but is overwhelmingly narcissistic, not only through that ultimate expression of Doomsday Machines, the selfie, but also via the look-at-my-beautiful-life imagery that abounds. Planet Instagram is full of beautiful people who overcome life challenges, reveal plenty of tanned flesh and speak in a patois of hashtags.

    Selfie by name.

    Pessoa would take an uncompromising view:

    Man should not be able to see his own face. Nothing is more terrible that that. Nature gave him the gift of being unable either to see his face or to look into his own eyes … he could only see his face in the waters of rivers and lakes. Even the posture he had to adopt to do so was symbolic. He had to bend down, to lower himself, in order to commit the ignominy of his seeing his own face … the creator of the mirror poisoned the human race.[vii]

    There are times when access to the Internet while on the move is of great value. Google Maps makes travel immeasurably easier. But are we comfortable with all our movements being tracked? Smart-phone maps also reduce the sum total of our interactions with fellow human beings, and makes us less observant of the world around us.

    A good rule of thumb is that, unless we are sitting upright, communication is unsatisfactory. The same applies to reading news sites – I had become all-too-prone to only partially reading articles. Indeed, the ‘most read’ articles on most sites tends to be prurient ‘click-bait.’

    I suggest you forget about the hurried message and make time for real expression in communication. There is no point attempting to stay in touch with everyone, because it is impossible. Leave more time for reading books, making music, being present to friends and family, and allow space for the tedium that brings daydreaming.

    The Internet can open new horizons of knowledge, bringing to fruition Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s (d. 1716) dream of a bibliotheca universalis, a ‘universal library’, where expert insight is available to all, everywhere. It could lead us into thinking more globally. But this beast needs considerable taming. Its great potential may be more easily realised by abandoning Doomsday Machines altogether. The wider consequences of a less mediated society could be profound. If enough of us can escape the clutches of the Machines, perhaps we can eventually develop the focus required for collective action.

    Follow Frank Armstrong on Twitter

    [i] Seung Min Kim, ‘Threats would mean ‘official end’ of Iran, Trump warns in tweet’, May 19th, 2019, Washington Post.

    [ii] Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated from the German by Graham Parkes, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007, p.202.

    [iii] See Laurens van der Post, Jung and the story of our time, Vintage, London, 1976, p.200

    [iv] Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa, The Serpent’s Tail, London, 2017, p.107

    [v] Ibid, p.363

    [vi] Ibid, p.197

    [vii] Ibid, p.91

  • U.K. Election 2019 – Optimism, Despair and the Fingerprints of Steve Bannon

    1. Long Term Patterns: the U.K. Prefers Oxford University-Educated Conservative Prime Ministers.

    Only Winston Churchill, and John Major among election-winning Prime Ministers since World War II did not pass through ‘the city of the dreaming spires’ during their formative educational years (neither University of Edinburgh-educated Gordon Brown nor Jim Callaghan, who could not afford a university education, won an election to become Prime Minister).

    A former President of the Oxford Union, Boris Johnson (Baliol College, 1987), joins a list that includes Theresa May (St Hugh’s, 1974), David Cameron (Brasenose College, 1988) Anthony Eden (Christchurch College, 1922), Harold MacMillan (Balliol College, 1914) Edward Heath (Balliol College, 1939), and Margaret Thatcher (Somerville College, 1947), as well as Labour PMs Tony Blair (St John’s, 1974), Harold Wilson (Jesus College, 1937) and Clement Atlee (University College, 1904).

    Apart from political points of difference, the well documented hostility exhibited towards Jeremy Corbyn, across the media spectrum, since he was first elected party leader[i] may be attributed to bias (unconscious or otherwise) against an individual perhaps deemed to lack the necessary polish – or debating skills – conferred by the elite institution.

    Moreover, it is clear that Conservatism, an admittedly amorphous and pragmatic body of ideas, fluctuating historically between pro- and anti-European Community positions, represents the mainstream of British politics, with the Party holding power for forty-four of the seventy-four years since the end World War II (or 60% of that time); rising to twenty-seven out of the last forty years (or 68% of the time since 1979).

    Shares of the vote in general elections since 1832 received by Conservatives (blue), Liberals/Liberal Democrats (orange) and others (grey).

    The Conservative formula has been based inter alia on a partisan press, Atlanticist foreign policy involving periodic military commitment, increasing Euroscepticism since Margaret Thatcher, free trade, low taxation, privatisation of government services, and emphasis on financial services in the south-east of the country as opposed to manufacturing industry in the north and west (apart from an arms industry that earned £14 billion in export revenues in 2018[ii]). Moreover, particularly under Tony Blair, New Labour (1997-2010) broadly embraced Conservative policies.

    Jeremy Corbyn’s socialist politics thus represented an usual anomaly in U.K. politics – a genuine threat to the Conservative consensus on how to govern Britain, through a grassroots movement, albeit focused in the south of the country. The scale of the threat is demonstrated by Corbyn’s ability to attract almost as many votes to the Labour Party in the General Election of 2017 (c. 12.9 million) as Tony Blair did in his 1997 landslide victory (c. 13.5m).

    The disturbing character of the campaign to defeat the Labour Party under Corbyn in 2019 has exposed the limits of democracy in the United Kingdom, and bears the fingerprints of Steve Bannon’s tactic of unsettling opponents by ‘deliberately crossing the line, defying normal courtesies, disrupting debate by scorning its conventions.’

    1. The Labour Party Bucks European Social Democratic Decline (to an extent).

    Much has been made of the commonalities between Trump’s election and the Brexit referendum, but as the Polish writer Stefan Bielik observed ‘With its lurch to the right, Britain is no longer special in Europe.’[iii]

    The relative decline in the fortunes in the British Labour Party can be placed in a broader European context, wherein a traditional ‘working class’ no longer support mainstream social democratic parties. In many cases this ‘blue collar’ constituency has shifted to Populist nationalist (or Nativist) parties, including Rassemblement National (formerly Front National) in France, Lega in Italy, and Alternative für Deutschland in Germany – although in many cases these parties adopt causes traditionally associated with the left.

    Similarly, during the Brexit Referendum the Leave side made increased funding for the NHS a central plank of its campaign. The crucial distinction with socialism is that government services are envisioned as being restricted to the native population.

    Brexit Bus Pledge, 2016.

    Johnson’s proposal to build a bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland also fits with the Populist, Bannonite formula. Post-Truth politics permit imaginative policies that barely consider logistical challenges or advantages, such as a wall the length of the U.S.-Mexican border, and as with Trump’s main policy proposal going into the last Presidential election, someone else would pay for it, in that case the Mexican government; whereas the EU is set to foot the bill for the bridge.

    In the U.K. election of 2019, the Labour Party secured a 32% share of the electorate (or 10.2 million votes), which represented a significant decline on the 40% (12.9 million) received in 2017. That proportion, however, compares favourably with the fortunes of other mainstream European left-wing parties, especially when the success of Scottish and other national or regional parties is taken into account.

    Among other large European countries, only in Spain did left-wing parties (Socialist Party and Podemos) secure a greater combined share of the vote than Labour in the U.K.. The steep decline of the German Social Democrats from 40% of the national share in 1998 to just 20% in 2017 might serve as a warning to those complacent enough to assume that Labour cannot sink any further.

    U.K. figures are skewed by a first-past-the-post electoral system that leads to tactical voting, and seriously diminishes opportunities for smaller parties. Nevertheless, at least by comparison with other European socialist parties, the U.K. Labour Party has emerged from Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure in relative good health, crucially, having retained its position as the second major party, it lives to fight another day.

    The U.K. election in 2019 witnessed another poor performance from the Labour Party in Scotland. This decline stems from the 2015 election under Ed Milliband’s leadership, when the Party lost all but one of its seats. This election emphasises that Scotland is a political entity increasingly at odds with the rest of the United Kingdom, in which the Scottish Nationalist Party (S.N.P.) won forty-eight out of fifty-nine seats (with 45% of the vote); as in Northern Ireland, constitutional questions, including membership of the European Union and the United Kingdom are now deciding factors for the electorate.

    In contrast, in Blair’s landslide victory, the Labour Party won fifty-six out of seventy-two seats there. Thus, the bald statement that this was Labour’s worst result since 1935 fails to take the altered politics of Scotland into account.

    Vitally, Labour under Corbyn fought off the Liberal Democrat attempt to assume the mantle of challenger to the Conservative Pary, and potential extinction in an unforgiving first-past-post-system. An early surge in Lib-Dem support saw them surpass Labour (23% v. 21%) in at least one poll prior to the election at the end of September.[iv] The party had become a refuge for both disaffected Labour politicians (including Chuka Umunna and Alastair Campbell), and claimed support from Conservative grandees such as John Major and Michael Heseltine.

    In the election itself, however, Liberal-Democrat support fell away to just under 12% of the total – an improvement on 2017 when the party won just 8% of the total – but a massive disappointment nonetheless considering their high hopes of becoming the main party of opposition, especially through favourable coverage in the pro-Remain The Guardian.

    It might have been expected that in an election in which the Conservative Party put Brexit front and central that the only U.K.-wide party fully committed to remaining in the European Union would emerge as the main challenger. But this re-running of the referendum did not materialise.

    Again bearing in mind the unrepresentative, and arguably anti-democratic, nature of the first-past-the-post system, a socialist message, articulated by Jeremy Corbyn, appears to remain a vote winner – at least among those opposed to the Conservative Party – by comparison to the centrist liberal platform; with many voters also aware that the Liberal-Democrats had entered into a coalition government with the Conservatives between 2010 and 2015 that implemented austerity economic policies.

    Thus, reasserting a centrist, Blairite approach, including a swift return to the European Union, does not seem a likely formula for a Labour Party revival unless its policies cleave closely to the Conservative consensus to a point where the electorate is indifferent to the outcome: as under New Labour when voter turnout dipped below 60% in 2001, compared to 68% in 2017 and 66.5% in 2019.

    1. Unequivocal Brexit Policy Proved Crucial to Conservative Victory.

    It is widely assumed – with the former BBC Newsnight journalist Paul Mason a prominent advocate of this view[v] – that Jeremy Corbyn’s unwillingness to make a firm commitment to remaining within the European Union was the Labour Party’s undoing. The argument runs that had Corbyn campaigned with a defiant promise for a yes vote, perhaps in alliance with the Liberal-Democrats, he would have carried the day. But this flies in the face of the reality.

    After years of bickering inside Parliament, leading to the infamous proroguing, and courtroom battles, it would appear that serious Brexit fatigue had set in among the electorate. The Conservative pledge ‘To Get Brexit Done’, repeated at every possible juncture throughout the campaign with admirable unity of purpose, proved an unbeatable platform – helped of course by an overwhelmingly supportive media, increasingly hysterical in its opposition to Corbyn.

    https://twitter.com/OliverMilne/status/1204415746052198403

    Even Remain-voting Conservatives seem to have been attracted by the simplicity of the message, albeit the claim that a vote for the Liberal-Democrats could bring Corbyn to power may also have proved effective. More importantly, the Conservatives exploited an enduring grievance that the democratic will of the people, as expressed in the Referendum of 2016, was being ignored by a political elite – an argument that resonated strongly in Brexit-voting parts of the country: Labour’s so-called ‘red wall.’

    The vast majority of Labour’s losses to the Conservatives came in those Brexit-voting constituencies of the North, Midlands and Wales,[vi] many of which elected Conservative MPs for the first time in decades.

    Constituencies lost by Labour to Conservatives: Blyth Valley; Workington; Wrexham; Leigh; West Bromwich West; West Bromwich East; Bishop Auckland; Don Valley; Wakefield; Rother Valley; Kensington; Newcastle-under-Lyme; Bolsover; Bolton North East; Bury North; Bury South; Heywood & Middleton; Sedgefield; Warrington South; High Peak; Penistone & Stocksbridge; Scunthorpe; Great Grimsby; Redcar; Burnley; Bassetlaw; Stoke-on-Trent North; Stoke-on-Trent Central; Wolverhampton North East; Wolverhampton South West; Blackpool South; Hyndburn; Vale of Clwyd; Clwyd South; Delyn; Peterborough; Durham North West; Birmingham Northfield; Barrow and Furness; Darlingon; Keighley; Colne Valley; Dewsbury; Ashfield; Lincoln; Gedling; Derby North; Dudley North; Ipswich; Stroud; Crewe & Nantwich; Bridgend; Ynys Mon; Stockton South.

    All of these constituencies, bar Stroud in Gloucestershire, Kensington in London and Ipswich in Norfolk, are in the North of England or Wales – Labour’s traditional industrial heartland.

    This emphasises the extent to which Brexit dictated the electoral outcome, especially given Labour retained seats in those same constituencies in 2017 with a manifesto promising to respect the result of the referendum.

    Thus, while opinion polls register distaste for the Labour leadership among the electorate, after a sustained campaign of vilification in the press, this cannot be separated from the substance of policies (particularly indecisiveness over Brexit), as the opinion questionnaire purports to.

    Thus, both David Broder[viii] and Owen Jones[ix] have persuasively argued that Labour’s failure to replicate its Brexit policy from the 2017 election was its undoing. Labour certainly lost votes and even seats to the Lib-Dems and S.N.P. in 2019, but these parties would probably have supported a minority Labour government which promised to re-run the referendum.

    Jeremy Corbyn can certainly be faulted for adopting what appears to have been a principled neutrality on the question of Brexit, but perhaps it was the decision of his leading lieutenant John McDonnell to advocate for another referendum and a Remain vote – contrary to the Bennite anti-EU tradition within the Labour Party to which he belonged – that was the real problem; indeed, revealingly, McDonnell has ‘owned’ the electoral disaster.[x]

    It may plausibly be argued that the stubborn refusal of many within Britain – and without – to accept the clear verdict of the British people on membership of the European Union, however sinister the tactics of the Leave side, permitted the political gambler and serial liar that is Boris Johnson to win the U.K General Election of 2019, by a handsome margin.

    1. ‘Make Hodge-Podge of Everything’
    Source: Matthew D’Ancona, ‘Bannon’s Britain’ The Tortoise, September 28th, 2019, https://members.tortoisemedia.com/2019/09/28/bannons-britain/content.html?sig=H8jSG1aWM202Udsw0YK9FImq6JLIDJ0W8yroue9l5hc

    According to Matthew D’Ancona there ‘really is no way to understand how radically’ Boris Johson is ‘trying to remould the Conservative Party, and the very specific way in which he is framing contemporary political debate, without reference to the self-appointed father figure of the worldwide right-wing nationalist movement.’

    2019 marked a new low in British democracy, as fake and misleading information became central to the Conservative Party’s campaign of undermining its opponents, in particular Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour Party for the most part, fought a clean fight, essentially winning the campaign on the relatively free medium of Twitter,[xi] where organic sharing is rewarded above political advertisements.

    Conservative Party distortion began in earnest during the first leaders’ debate, when its press office temporarily changed the name on its official Twitter handle to ‘FactCheckUK’, implying it was an independent fact-checking source. That the Party was prepared to do so given the near certainty of discovery is indicative of the cynicism of Post-Truth contemporary political campaigning. Under the guidance of Steve Bannon, who masterminded Donald Trump’s victory, Populists bend reality and impugn the motives of all politicians.

    Thus, Adam Ramsay describes the Conservative strategy as being to: ‘wage war on the political process, on trust, and on truth.’ The Hobbesian project ensures ‘the whole experience is miserable, bewildering and stressful.’ All that remains is to ‘ask voters to make it go away.’[xii]

    https://twitter.com/PeteMcCats/status/1207972111182118912

    Although those with an interest in politics tend to gravitate towards Twitter, Facebook actually has three times as many daily visits in the U.K.,[xiii] and as the Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed, users of the platform are susceptible to sophisticated propaganda, and political ads are not verified.

    Independent analysis found an extraordinary 88% of Conservative ads on Facebook contained misleading information; by comparison 0% of Labour’s ads had fake news.[xiv] The influence of such propaganda on individuals who do not ordinarily take an interest in politics cannot be underestimated.

    Moreover, the Conservative Party raised more than three times as much as Labour in large donations (over £7,500) over the course of the campaign (£18 million compared to £5 million), providing them with ample resources for online campaigns targeting key marginal constituencies.

    Added to this, the Conservative Party retained partisan support from most of the widest circulating newspapers in the country, including The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Express, The Daily Mail, The Times and The Sun. Only The Daily Mirror was demonstrably supportive of Labour.

    Left-leaning or liberal broadsheets, The Guardian and The Independent were generally opposed to the Conservatives, but tended to be at least as supportive of the Liberal Democrats as Labour, and ran stories damaging to the latter, including unsubstantiated allegations of antisemitism against Jeremy Corbyn.[xv]

    Thus, The Guardian carried a letter, signed by the novelist John le Carré and others, in which the authors claimed antisemitism concerns around Corbyn would prevent them from voting Labour.[xvi]

    The Guardian also ran a damaging opinion piece by the historian Simon Sebag Montefiore in which he amplified these claims. He made great play on Corbyn’s unsatisfactory responses to aggressive questioning by Andrew Neil (whose formidable inquisitorial skills Boris Johnson refused to be subjected to) in which the interviewer demanded that Corbyn condemn the proposition that Rothschild Zionists were controlling world governments. Montefiore also referred to the Labour leader’s 2012 support of a grafitti artist’s work apparently featuring antisemitic tropes, in what was an article strikingly thin on substantive evidence for a damaging allegation.[xvii]

    In a Facebook post in 2012, Corbyn offered his backing to Los Angeles-based street artist Mear One, before subsequently conceding he was wrong to support the graffiti artist.

    Alongside criticisms of Corbyn by leading cultural figures in the liberal media, in an unprecedented move, the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis wrote an article for The Times[xviii] arguing Corbyn was unfit to be Prime Minister.

    Notably, antisemitism charges were hardly leveled against Corbyn prior to the 2017 election. The extent of the campaign running up to the 2019 elections suggests a coordinated, prolonged strategy, designed to impugn the reputation of a long-term anti-racist campaigner in Jeremy Corbyn, just as Arthur Scargill’s reputation was smeared at the height of the miners’ strike.

    This represented another feature of the Bannonite undermining of the political process, whereby all politicians are depicted as being racist or immoral. Indeed, Boris Johnson could hardly escape such censure given his descriptions of picaninnies with water melon smiles, women in burkhas looking like letterboxes, and homosexuals being tank-topped bum-boys.[xix]

    The episode recalls Fyodor Dostoyevksy’s 1872 Devils, towards the end of which the conspirators Lyamshin is put on trial and asked, ‘Why so many murders, scandals and outrages committed?’ to which he responds that it was to promote:

    the systematic destruction of society and all its principles; to demoralise everyone and make hodge-podge of everything, and then, when society was on the point of collapse – sick, depressed, cynical and sceptical, but still with a perpetual desire for some kind of guiding principle and for self-preservation – suddenly to gain control of it.[xx]

    1. The BBC is no longer a guardian of British democracy (if it ever was).

    Considering the distinct disadvantages that the Labour Party laboured under during this election, with traditional media and fake Facebook ads ranged against it, British democracy was reliant on the BBC to provide a measure of balance. Alas, the public service broadcaster not only failed to vindicate its public service mandate, but actively participated in the fake news campaign in support of the Conservative Party. It was left to Channel 4 to provide meaningful criticism of the Conservatives on the television.

    The BBC’s subtle falsification of news content began early in the campaign with the use of archive footage from 2016 of a dignified Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary laying a wreath outside the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday – in place of actual footage of a dishevelled Boris Johnson making a mess of placing a wreath at the ceremony in 2019.

    There followed the doctoring of a video in which laughter greets Boris Johnson’s claim that he always told the truth, which was used in subsequent news bulletins.

    These were blatant examples of bias. Much of the content was not overtly opposed to Labour, however, but subtly reinforced key Conservative messages, especially through reports from Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg.[xxi] Characteristically, far greater prominence was given to the obscure Labour MP Ian Austin’s endorsement of the Conservatives compared to the ‘Big Beast’ Ken Clarke’s defection.[xxii]

    As Peter Oborne pointed out in a stinging critique, the BBC tends to be biased in favour of any sitting governments, but the level of duplicity of 2019 is unprecedented in recent history. The broadcaster reverted to depicting a general lowering in political standards, encompassing the Labour Party and presumably itself. Thus on the night before the election Radio 4 broadcast a montage of moments seemingly aimed to make the point that all the protagonists were misleading voters.[xxiii]

    The conduct of the national broadcaster reflects the radical challenge posed by Corbyn and his team to the ruling Conservative consensus.

    Jeremy Corbyn took the U.K. establishment by surprise during the 2017 Election campaign, coming within a whisker of victory. This would have had serious ramifications for the domestic economy, but perhaps more importantly also U.K. foreign policy, and the arms’ industry, both in the U.K. and the wider military industrial complex in the U.S., in particular.

    It is unsurprising, therefore, then that a sophisticated and well organised campaign involving elements within both the BBC and other liberal media should have been deployed to undermine Corbyn and his politics.

    Finally, conspiracy theories are just that, but it is perhaps notable that the London Bridge stabbings was the only so-called ‘terrorist’ attack that has occurred on U.K. soil since, again suspiciously, the spate of attacks preceding the 2017 election.

    We have no evidence of provocateurs in action – as during a CND protest that occurs in Chris Mullin’s 1982 novel A Very British Coup – but the febrile atmosphere generated by hysterical media in the wake of any terrorist attack is certainly advantageous to a Conservative Party long associated with law and order – especially when confronted by a Labour leader, who previously welcomed former terrorists into the political fold.

    Notably, within hours of the attack a screenshot of a fake tweet, depicting the Labour leader as unsupportive of the police response, easily shared via WhatsApp, emerged.

    Fake Jeremy Corbyn Tweet that appeared soon after the attack.
    1. ‘Corbynism’ has shifted the mainstream of British Politics to the left, but socialism still needs a makeover.

    Jeremy Corbyn is now a lame duck Labour leader, while the Party considers a replacement. His generation of Bennites, who remained true to socialist and pacifist principles throughout the long period of New Labour centrism under Tony Blair, have, almost miraculously, seized the opportunity to define the philosophy of the Party for the forthcoming decades. This maintains the threat to the ruling Conservative consensus operating since World War II, notwithstanding Boris Johnson’s ‘thumping’ majority.

    The ranks of the Labour Party swelled to over half million under Corbyn, having stood at barely two hundred thousand while Ed Milliband was at the helm.[xxiv] Exceeding Conservative Party membership by three hundred thousand, it is among the most formidable, and youthful, left-wing parties in the developed world, and the largest of its kind in Europe.

    Moreover, running parallel to the Party is the campaigning Momentum movement, with forty thousand members. Any prospective Labour leader must now appeal to this young radical constituency. An immediate reversion to a centrist Blairite leader is an impossibility, and moreover is unlikely to be well received by an electorate in the grip of Bannonite Populism.

    ‘Corbynism,’ such as it is, is often derided as a middle class and metropolitan phenomenon. This is considered a structural weakness of most social democratic parties around the world. It ignores, however, the shifting dynamics of altered economies, as those once considered middle class are squeezed increasingly by high property prices and diminishing opportunities in careers such as education and the arts.

    It should also be born in mind that crippling poverty, afflicting a majority of the population, generated socialism at the end of the nineteenth century. Even for much of the twentieth century, a considerable proportion of the population was actually malnourished, whereas today the poor are more likely to be obese. Notwithstanding the food banks that emerged during the Cameron era of austerity, the extreme poverty that engendered socialism has largely been eliminated.

    Ironically, the tangible gains socialism brought to Britain and other European societies in providing for cheap food, accommodation, education and healthcare now actually work to the benefit of Populists that prey on consumer and entrepreneurial aspirations, while incubating a fear of an imminent immigrant ‘other’ destined to appropriate indigenous welfare, educational and healthcare entitlements.

    Unlike their older peers, young people across the U.K. were, however, disproportionately attracted to a Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn,[xxv] including principled opposition to militarism, a Green New Deal and effective redistribution of wealth, including inter-generational transfer. This reveals a growing awareness that high capitalism has brought unprecedented inequality and rampant corporate control, requiring decisive state intervention. This should provide the impetus for a reconceived socialism that merges an aspiration to raise human welfare with the environmental and anti-war movements.

    Source: YouGov: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/12/17/how-britain-voted-2019-general-election

    It should also be conceded that the Labour campaign’s robust defence of the NHS against privatisation, and outside interference, has probably ensured the Conservatives will maintain public health services, at least to British citizens, for the time being. Thus, in defeating Corbynism the Conservative Party has been forced to adopt policies that many among its ranks do not support.

    The Conservatives now have unanimity on Brexit, but it remains to be seen how long a Party prone to factionalism will hold together, especially after absorbing Populist Brexiters. This will provide opportunities for Labour to chip away at the Conservative consensus.

    A priority for the Labour Party will be to develop policies to defeat the Conservative Party in the North of England and Wales. With Brexit ‘done’ the Conservative hold over the ‘red wall’ seems fragile, especially with younger people preferring Labour, and Conservative supporters dying out. Ongoing wrangling with the E.U. could cause serious economic damage, including to manufacturing industries in the North, which the Conservatives will surely be held responsible for.

    Hearteningly, the idealism of the Corbyn years has provided a learning ground for a generation of activists, now attuned to the difficulty of challenging the Conservative consensus. There are genuine grounds for optimism that a new generation of tech savvy activists can ultimately defeat Bannonite Populism, and lay the political and economic foundations for a carbon neutral New Jerusalem. But the dominant Conservative faction will, as ever, be difficult to shift, especially in the current atmosphere of Post-Truth, and attendant disillusionment with the political process.

    To lay the foundations for a New Jerusalem it is incumbent upon the Labour Party to redefine the socialist project, accommodate entrepreneurial innovation – with the mantra that ‘small is beautiful’ –  and avoid the bureaucratisation that was a hallmark of New Labour under Blair and Brown.

    Labour can, and should, offer principled opposition to the enormous corporations, including Facebook, whose interests the Conservative Party has long served, and which New Labour in its giddy appreciation of business leaders also embraced.

    A moral obligation to address the poverty and inequality, still strikingly evident throughout the U.K., should be accompanied by an appeal to small business people. The message that eradicating poverty and reducing inequality serves entrepreneurship should be made loud and clear: an impoverished population cannot sustain new ventures. Thus, the Labour Party may appeal to a nation of shopkeepers, selling new and environmentally friendly innovations, and no longer reliant on dark satanic mills that loom across post-Industrial Britain, fueling a Populist right.

    Follow Frank Armstrong on Twitter: @frankarmstrong2

    [i]  Dr Bart Cammaerts, Brooks DeCillia, João Carlos Magalhães, Dr Cesar Jimenez Martinez, ‘Journalistic Representations of Jeremy Corbyn in the British Press’, LSE, 2016, http://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/research/research-projects/representations-of-jeremy-corbyn

    [ii] Dan Sabbagh, ‘UK reclaims place as world’s second largest arms exporter’, The Guardian, July 30th , 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/30/uk-reclaims-place-as-worlds-second-largest-arms-exporter

    [iii] Stefan Bielik ‘With its lurch to the right, Britain is no longer special in Europe’, The Guardian, December 24th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/24/lurch-right-britain-special-europe-authoritarian

    [iv] Gus Carter, ‘Lib Dems overtake Labour in latest poll’ Metro, September 19th, 2019,

    Lib Dems overtake Labour in latest poll

    [v] Paul Mason, ‘AFTER CORBYNISMWHERE NEXT FOR LABOUR’, paulmason.org, December 16th, 2019, https://www.paulmason.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/After-Corbynism-v1.4.pdf

    [vi] Paula Surridge, ‘Labour lost its leavers while Tory remainers stayed loyal’, The Guardian, December 13th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/13/conservatives-bridge-brexit-divide-tory-landslide

    [viii] David Broder, ‘Labour’s Brexit Stance Defeated Corbynism Months Ago’, December 16th, 2019, The Jacobin, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/12/labour-party-uk-brexit-jeremy-corbyn-general-election

    [ix] Owen Jones, ‘Brexit and self-inflicted errors buried Labour in this election’, The Guardian, December 19th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/18/brexit-labour-election-corbyn-left

    [x] Rowen Mason, ‘’I own this disaster’: John McDonnell tries to shield Corbyn’, December 15th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/15/i-own-this-disaster-john-mcdonnell-tries-to-shield-corbyn-rebecca-long-bailey.

    [xi] Annabelle Timsit, ‘The UK election result shows why Twitter does not speak for most voters’, Quartz, December 13th, 2019, https://qz.com/1767195/uk-election-result-shows-twitter-doesnt-speak-for-most-voters/.

    [xii] Adam Ramsay, ‘Boris Johnson made politics awful, then asked people to vote it away’, Open Democracy,  22nd of December, 2019, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/boris-johnson-made-politics-awful-then-asked-people-vote-it-away/.

    [xiii] S. O’Dea, ‘Leading social networks by share of website visits* in the United Kingdom (UK) as of June 2019’, Statista, September 3rd, 2019, https://www.statista.com/statistics/280295/market-share-held-by-the-leading-social-networks-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/.

    [xiv] Rupert Evelyn, ‘88% of Conservative ads on Facebook ‘misleading’’, ITV News, December 6th, 2019, https://www.itv.com/news/2019-12-06/88-of-conservative-ads-on-facebook-misleading/.

    [xv] Letter: ‘Jeremy Corbyn’s refusal to apologise for antisemitism proves he is unfit to be prime minister’ Independent, November 27th, 2019, https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/letters/jeremy-corbyn-antisemitism-labour-andrew-neil-interview-chief-rabbi-election-a9220576.html.

    [xvi] Letters, ‘Concerns about antisemitism mean we cannot vote Labour’, The Guardian, November 14th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/14/concerns-about-antisemitism-mean-we-cannot-vote-labour.

    [xvii] Simon Sebag Montefiore, ‘This antisemitism poisons any good Labour might do’, The Guardian, November 30th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/30/antisemitism-poisons-any-good-labour-doing-simon-sebag-montefiore.

    [xviii] Ephraim Mirvis, ‘Ephraim Mirvis: What will become of Jews in Britain if Labour forms the next government?’ The Times, November 25th, 2019, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/ephraim-mirvis-what-will-become-of-jews-in-britain-if-labour-forms-the-next-government-ghpsdbljk.

    [xix] Adam Bienkov, ‘Boris Johnson called gay men ‘tank-topped bumboys’ and black people ‘piccaninnies’ with ‘watermelon smiles’’, Business Insider, November 22nd, 2019, https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-record-sexist-homophobic-and-racist-comments-bumboys-piccaninnies-2019-6?r=US&IR=T.

    [xx] Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Devils, (translated by Michael R. Katz), Oxford, 1999, p.748.

    [xxi] Untitled, ‘BBC caught in the crossfire: why the UK’s public broadcaster is becoming a big election story’, The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/bbc-caught-in-the-crossfire-why-the-uks-public-broadcaster-is-becoming-a-big-election-story-128639.

    [xxii] Peter Oborne, ‘In its election coverage, the BBC has let down the people who believe in it’, The Guardian, December 3rd, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/03/election-coverage-bbc-tories.

    [xxiii] Ramsay, 22nd of December, 2019, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/boris-johnson-made-politics-awful-then-asked-people-vote-it-away/.

    [xxiv] Rowena Mason, ‘Labour membership falls slightly but remains above 500,000’, The Guardian, August 8th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/08/labour-membership-falls-slightly-but-remains-about-500000.

    [xxv] Adam McDowell and Chris Curtis, ‘How Britain voted in the 2019 general election’, YouGov, December 17th, 2019, https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/12/17/how-britain-voted-2019-general-election.

  • Jeremy Corbyn, Percy Shelley and Ireland

    The Irish media generally looks askance at Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘radical socialist manifesto.’[i] An historically warm relationship with Sinn Féin, Brexit neutrality, and lifelong commitment to the redistribution of wealth receive a cool reception in reports and commentary, while grossly inflated charges of Antisemitism within the Labour Party are threaded through articles.[ii]

    Yet the Labour leader belongs to a tradition of English radicals with an abiding sympathy for Ireland. His anti-colonial, republican and Chartist outlook has also brought commitment to the downtrodden Palestinian people, and opposition to the machinations of the arms industry in Britain – which is the second largest exporter in the world, including to dictatorships such as that ruling Saudi Arabia.[iii] Corbyn’s enduring idealism is reminiscent of the poet and radical Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822).

    In fact Corbyn drew the slogan ‘we the many, they the few’ that resonated so powerfully during the 2017 General Election, from the Romantic poet, who drowned tragically off Lerici in Italy at the age of just twenty-nine.

    These lines from Shelley’s poem ‘The Masque of Anarchy’, were written in the wake of the Peterloo massacre of 1819, when cavalry charged into a crowd of over sixty thousand unarmed civilians, killing eighteen, who had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation. The atrocity actually led to the foundation of The Guardian newspaper, and was the subject of a Mike Leigh film in 2018.

    Shelley calls on the downtrodden people:

    Rise like Lions after slumber
    In unvanquishable number,
    Shake your chains to earth like dew
    Which in sleep had fallen on you —
    Ye are many — they are few.

    The poet’s links to Ireland extend beyond his second wife Mary Shelley’s maternal grandmother’s Ballyshannon origins; or the Irish painter Emilia Curran’s 1819 iconic portrait. Having been expelled from Oxford in 1811, after authorities discovered him to be the author of a pamphlet entitled ‘The Necessity of Atheism’ – the first such argument printed in England – he went on to display an abiding interest in ‘John Bull’s Other island’.

    At the end of the Napoleonic War Ireland’s plight remained a vital cause for English radicals, at a time when the Irish population – in the midst of a Malthusian demographic crisis after colonisation and the introduction of the potato at the start of the seventeenth century – was almost half that of England’s. Soon after expulsion from Oxford, Shelley travelled to Dublin in 1812, along with his first wife Harriet, with whom he had just eloped.

    The young poet was greatly perturbed by the poverty and inequality greeting him in a city whose wealth and status had been greatly diminished by the Act of Union of 1801, which meant Irish M.P.s took their seats in Westminster not Dublin. He wrote: ‘I had no conception of the depth of human misery until now. The poor of Dublin are assuredly the meanest and most miserable of all.’[iv]

    His experience of Ireland appears to figure in what he described as his ‘poetic education,’ in the preface to the long poem ‘Laon and Cythna’ (1818): ‘I have seen the theatre of the more visible ravages of tyranny and war … the naked inhabitants sitting famished upon their desolated thresholds.’[v]

    The precocious nineteen-year-old addressed the Catholic Committee, containing the dying embers of the United Irishman movement, in what is now Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin. Asserting a pacifism that is also prominent throughout the current Labour leader’s career, he urged: ‘In no case employ violence, the way to liberty and happiness is never to transgress the rules of virtue and justice. Liberty and happiness are founded upon virtue and justice. If you destroy the one you destroy the other.’

    The future leader of Catholic Emancipation, Daniel O’Connell, is believed to have been at the meeting, although he may not have been present for Shelley’s speech itself. O’Connell shared a distaste for armed conflict, a view which prevailed as the mainstream approach in Irish nationalism until World War I.

    Shelley’s sympathies lay with the historically oppressed Catholic community in Ireland, just as Corbyn’s lay with Northern Irish Catholics during the Troubles. There is little doubt that Shelley would share Corbyn’s principled opposition to Trident, Britain’s thirty-billion-pound nuclear weapons programme.

    Another link between Shelley and Ireland is that he completed what is considered his most revolutionary poem ‘Queen Mab’ while holidaying on Ross Island on Killarney Lake. This strident work, which he later partly disavowed, became a standard text for English socialists, including an approving Karl Marx. In this we discover a condemnation of commerce: ‘beneath whose poison-breathing shade / No solitary virtue dares to spring.’

    Corbyn’s antipathy to big business has long antecedents, therefore, in British culture, albeit the trenchant views on the subject of Shelley’s near contemporary ‘the Father of Economics’ Adam Smith (d. 1790) are generally overlooked: ‘People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.’ A suspicion of commercial self-interest in politics is well founded.

    Shelley has been an inspiration to a host of Irish writers including W.B. Yeats who claimed Shelley shaped his life,[vi] as well as Sean O’Casey who described himself as a Shelleyan Communist. Another devotee George Bernard Shaw described Shelley approvingly as: ‘a republican, a leveller, a radical of the most extreme sort.’

    Shelley was an inspiration for another of Shaw’s lifelong causes: vegetarianism,[vii] which the former laid out in an 1813 book: A Vindication of Natural Diet, although the term itself only came into being in the 1840s. Until that point anyone renouncing flesh was referred to as being a ‘Pythagorean’, after the Greek philosopher and mathematician of Antiquity, Pythagoras.

    Similarly, Jeremy Corbyn has been a vegetarian for almost fifty years. Considering the influence of the Irish livestock lobby on mainstream Irish media, this may have aroused further suspicion. Corbyn has, however, tended to play down that feature of his politics, perhaps forewarned by George Orwell’s condemnation of sandal-wearing vegetarians ‘burbling about dialectical materialism’ in The Road to Wigan Pier.[viii]

    Nonetheless, socialists such as Corbyn are stigmatised as forming part of a ‘north London, metropolitan, liberal elite’ by right-wing Populists such as the Home Secretary Priti Patel,[ix] who herself previously suggested using the possibility of food shortages in Ireland to force the E.U.’s hand over Brexit.[x] Corybn’s lifetime commitment to the redistribution of wealth, including resistance to austerity, may be the fruition of Shelleyian idealism: ‘a consciousness of good, which neither gold / Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly bliss / Can purchase.’[xi]

    Corbyn, like Shelley before him, might have appeared naïve at times, including in his approach to Ireland. But he could yet emerge as the first British Prime Minister to feel genuine remorse for the damage wrought by British colonialism on Ireland. Moreover, notwithstanding the ongoing instability of the European project in the wake of Brexit, the genuine warmth he feels towards Ireland may harmonise relations between the peoples of these islands – the vast majority of whom have suffered under the yoke of tyrannical government over the course of a shared history.

    I for one dearly hope the British people “Rise like Lions after slumber / In unvanquishable number.” and vote Labour in the General Election on December 12th.

    [i] Simon Carswell, ‘It’s a means to an end – I want Brexit’, Irish Times, December 6th, 2019. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/uk-election-it-s-a-means-to-an-end-i-want-brexit-done-1.4105840

    [ii] See, Finn McRedmond, ‘ The Labour leader seems temperamentally incapable of apologising for the anti-Semitism that has wracked his party,’ – ‘Political rot has spread from US to UK,’ Irish Times, December 6th, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/political-rot-has-spread-from-us-to-uk-1.4105894:

    [iii] Dan Sabbagh, ‘UK reclaims place as world’s second largest arms exporter’, The Guardian, July 30th, 2019,  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/30/uk-reclaims-place-as-worlds-second-largest-arms-exporter

    [iv] Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘An Address to the Irish People’, 1812, https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/p-b-shelleys-address-to-the-irish-people,

    [v] Author’s own recording: https://soundcloud.com/frank-armstrong-649911741/shelleys-preface-to-laon-and

    [vi] W.B. Yeats ‘The Philosophy of Shelley’s Poetry’, 1900, http://www.yeatsvision.com/Shelley.html.

    [vii] Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘A Vindication of Natural Diet’, 1813, http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-c/shelley01.htm

    [viii] George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, Part 2, 13, http://www.telelib.com/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/prose/RoadToWiganPier/wiganpierpart_13.html

    [ix] Daniel Sugarman, ‘Why I don’t think Priti Patel’s reference to “north London” was an anti-Semitic dog whistle’, October 3rd, 2019, New Statesman, https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/10/why-i-don-t-think-priti-patel-s-reference-north-london-was-anti-semitic-dog

    [x] Gráinne Ní Aodha, ‘Tory MP suggests using possible ‘no-deal’ food shortages to force Ireland to drop the backstop’, December 7th, 2018, https://www.thejournal.ie/brexit-threat-food-shortages-ireland-4381228-Dec2018/

    [xi] ‘P. B. Shelley, ‘Queen Mab,’ Book V

  • Irish Times’s Columnist Finn McRedmond

    For anyone to become an opinion writer for the ‘paper of record’, the Irish Times, requires considerable ability. But does a particular viewpoint give an aspiring columnist a distinct advantage?

    It is said that if you’re not a socialist in your twenties you have no heart, and if you’re not a conservative in your forties, you have no brain. Given the increasing centre-right consensus across Irish media, including the Irish Times, anyone aspiring to be a journalist there might do well to accelerate that learning curve. There are, of course, true conservative believers from the outset.

    Once such appears to be the precocious Finn McRedmond, who in recent months has become a fixture op-ed writer for the Irish Times. The daughter of David McRedmond, former chief executive of independent commercial television station, TV3, and currently chief executive of semi-state An Post, Finn McRedmond attended Rathdown Secondary School, and completed a Classics degree in Cambridge University, graduating c.2015.

    In a series of waspish recent articles for the Irish Times, she has attacked the Brexit movement,[i] lauded the statesmanship of Leo Varadkar,[ii] while heaping scorn on both Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn.[iii] These contributions situate her politics on the centre-right – liberal-conservative and Remainer – an ideological slant very much ascendant in the Irish Times.

    This outlook has been evident in the paper’s coverage of the forthcoming U.K. election. Along with condemnation of Populists, especially Nigel Farage, the U.K. Labour leader is a recurring bête noire,[iv] albeit full-time U.K. correspondent Denis Staunton has generally remained impartial.

    The cartoon drawn by Martin Turner on December 3rd provides a good example. It features Corbyn alongside Boris Johnson with a list of some of the calumnies we have seen during the election. The point seems to be: these are two extremists – one as bad as the other.

    Martin Turner, December 3rd, 2019.

    Even apparently centre-left Fintan O’Toole was moved to describe Corbyn before the 2017 election as: ‘a highly problematic leader, not least in his inability to think about how to create a majority in England for this radical social democratic vision.’[v] Curiously, O’Toole has not expressed views in any articles on the Orwellian campaign of online distortion characterising U.K. election 2019.[vi]

    In her latest opinion piece, McRedmond laments the loss of Ken Clarke, Nicholas Soames, Nick Boles and Philip Hammond from Conservative ranks, and reventilates paper-thin allegations of anti-Semitism[vii] orchestrated to discredit Corbyn, concluding: ‘there is no good choice, and no obvious way through this election.’[viii]

    While still a student, McRedmond revealed she gave her vote (presumably enjoying that right as an Irish citizen) to in the 2015 General Election to David Cameron’s Conservatives, who won an overall majority for the first time in nearly two decades. Published in the The Cambridge Tab just after the election – with austerity in full swing as over a million people relied on food banks[ix]  – the headline read: ‘Being a Tory does not make you a bad person.’

    McRedmond supported David Cameron over the then moderate Labour leader Ed Milliband. Perhaps in response to university peers whose “hearts” may have ruled their “heads,” she protested:

    I’m not a bad person because I voted Conservative. I voted to decrease the deficit. I voted to raise the basic state pension by 2.5% a year. I voted to increase the health budget by £8bn by 2020.

    I didn’t vote for closing the NHS, I didn’t vote for free champagne for all FTSE 100 CEO’s, I didn’t vote to “literally kill vulnerable people”. I didn’t actually vote for Satan. I voted for the party that I think this country needs.

    …

    I didn’t vote Conservative for low taxes so I can keep my mansion while everyone else can live in a slum. I don’t even have a mansion. It’s a townhouse.

    No party is perfect. No party will be the indisputable moral saviour of Britain. The bedroom tax is odious. Cutting benefits is sad and maybe not the best way forward. The country isn’t going to be absolved of all moral transgressions with Labour or LibDem or Greens in power. In the same way that Conservatives aren’t going to do that either. But I am sick of people occupying the moral high ground because for some convoluted and laboured reason they see their party ridding Britain of all immorality and filling it with biscuits. God Ed Miliband loves biscuits.[x]

    It is noteworthy that McRedmond attended Peterhouse College while at Cambridge, among the oldest and most traditional institutions in the University. In the 1980s it became association with Conservative, Thatcherite politics, counting Michael Portillo and Michael Howard as alumni.

    Since graduating McRedmond has been writing – alongside Irish Times work – for British commentary and news magazine Reaction. Its editor-in-chief Iain Martin was previously head of comment for the Telegraph group, while Chairman of the board, Lord Salisbury, was once Conservative Leader in the House of Lords, opposing the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985, and offering freelance services to the mujahedin in Afghanistan in the 1980s.[xi]

    Its advisory panel includes luminaries such as Lord Hill, a former European Commissioner and advisor to John Major, as well as Adam Boulton, Editor at Large for Sky News.

    McRedmond’s association with the publication perhaps came about through Deputy Editor Alastair Benn, whose Linkedin profile reveals he too graduated from Cambridge in 2015, also with a Classics degree, and with whom McRedmond has collaborated on a number of podcasts.[xii]

    Finn McRedmond clearly has no taste for the Populism that has overtaken the Conservative Party, and being Irish, no truck with English nationalism or Brexit either. But anti-left bias might be detected in a recent somewhat snide Irish Times article she wrote entitled: ‘Are Sally Rooney’s heroines too skinny?’

    McRedmond opines: ‘Rooney speaks the language of the so-called Woke Left. She is interested in political activism. And she has made her career writing about young people sensitively.’ But, she warns: ‘Her frequent references to thinness feels unconscious. A writer who is so careful and precise in her descriptions of people and their relationships has, like us, a culturally produced blind spot.’

    ‘This recurrent theme,’ McRedmond warns, ‘that women who are thin are more interesting than those who are not, and that women who are thin are the only ones worth writing about – is potentially dangerous.’ She counsels that ‘we should be sceptical of novels that propagate ideas most harmful to those supposed to find them most relatable.’

    McRedmond is certainly a capable writer, and displayed refreshing candour in revealing her political choice. There is no reason to believe she is a bad person, but given the current orientation of media, her rapid progression to become a regular opinion columnist for the Irish Times – the national paper of record – while still in her twenties, is surely connected to the political ‘maturity’ she has displayed.

    [i] Finn McRedmond: ‘Getting Brexit done is last thing Farage wants,’ Irish Times, November 9th, 2019. https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/finn-mcredmond-getting-brexit-done-is-last-thing-farage-wants-1.4076850?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Ffinn-mcredmond-getting-brexit-done-is-last-thing-farage-wants-1.4076850

    [ii] Finn McRedmond, ‘Neither rogue nor wily fixer, Varadkar confounds British’, Irish Times, August 17th, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/neither-rogue-nor-wily-fixer-varadkar-confounds-british-1.3988483?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Fneither-rogue-nor-wily-fixer-varadkar-confounds-british-1.3988483

    [iii] Finn McRedmond, ‘ British voters trapped between Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson’, Irish Times, November 28th, 2019,

    https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/neither-rogue-nor-wily-fixer-varadkar-confounds-british-1.3988483?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Fneither-rogue-nor-wily-fixer-varadkar-confounds-british-1.3988483

    [iv] For example: Chris Johns: Who would I vote for in the UK? Anyone who would defeat the Tory candidate, Irish Times, December 2nd, 2019. https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/chris-johns-who-would-i-vote-for-in-the-uk-anyone-who-would-defeat-the-tory-candidate-1.4100958?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Feconomy%2Fchris-johns-who-would-i-vote-for-in-the-uk-anyone-who-would-defeat-the-tory-candidate-1.4100958

    [v] Fintan O’Toole, ‘Fintan O’Toole: Corbyn’s nostalgia less of a fantasy than May’s’, Irish Times, June 6th, 2017,  https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-corbyn-s-nostalgia-less-of-a-fantasy-than-may-s-1.3108284?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Ffintan-o-toole-corbyn-s-nostalgia-less-of-a-fantasy-than-may-s-1.3108284

    [vi] Frances Perrauden, ‘Twitter accuses Tories of misleading public with ‘factcheck’ foray’, The Guardian,  November 20th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/20/twitter-accuses-tories-of-misleading-public-in-factcheck-row

    [vii] Jamie Stern-Weiner and Alan Maddison, ‘Smoke Without Fire: The Myth of a ‘Labour Antisemitism Crisis’’, Jewish Voice for Labour, November 26th, 2019, https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/smoke-without-fire-the-myth-of-a-labour-antisemitism-crisis/

    [viii] Finn McRedmond, ‘ British voters trapped between Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson’, Irish Times, November 28th, 2019,  https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/british-voters-trapped-between-jeremy-corbyn-and-boris-johnson-1.4097084?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Fbritish-voters-trapped-between-jeremy-corbyn-and-boris-johnson-1.4097084

    [ix] Patrick Butler, ‘Food bank use tops million mark over the past year’, The Guardian, 22nd April, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/22/food-bank-users-uk-low-paid-workers-poverty

    [x] Finn McRedmond, ‘Being a Tory does not make you a bad person,’ The Cambridge Tab, (more than five years ago), https://thetab.com/uk/cambridge/2015/05/11/tory-not-make-bad-person-52498

    [xi] Anthony Seldon, ‘The Saturday Profile Viscount Cranborne, Conservative Peer: The last true blue blood,’ The Independent, November 21st, 1998, https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/the-saturday-profile-viscount-cranborne-conservative-peer-the-last-true-blue-blood-1186204.html

    [xii] Alastair Benn and Finn McRedmond, ‘Deconstructing “I’m literally a communist, you idiot”’, Reaction, July 25th, 2018, https://reaction.life/deconstructing-im-literally-a-communist-you-idiot/

  • David Cameron and the Origins of Brexit

     

    In 2015 comic Frankie Boyle penned a darkly titled article ‘What if David Cameron is an evil genius?’ Only slightly tongue-in-cheek, Boyle – citing plans to erase the Human Rights Act from U.K. law – wondered whether Cameron was, ‘A shrewd and malevolent psychopath who thinks two moves deeper into the game than any of his opponents?’

    Having secured an overall Conservative majority in the general election earlier that year, Boyle marvelled at how the Prime Minister had ‘managed to set England against Scotland, Scotland against Labour. He had given his enemies the referendums [Alternative Vote 2011, and Scottish Independence 2015] they asked for, and won’, leaving erstwhile coalition partner Nick Clegg ‘looking like one of those terrified mouse faces that you find in an owl pellet.’

    A year on, in 2016, however, aged just forty-nine, David Cameron’s career was effectively over as his boldest gamble failed when the U.K. electorate voted, by a narrow majority, to leave the E.U.. Right-wing Populism had upset a carefully laid plan to rid the Conservative ‘brand’ of visceral Euroscepticism, and maintain a two-track Union to the benefit of trade and commerce. As Cameron admits, the centre-right could not hold.

    Actually Boyle’s closing assessment of Cameron as a ‘sort of bored viceroy engaged in the handover of power from government to corporations’ seems closer to the mark. Really David Cameron seems to be neither a genius nor a psychopath, but instead a recognisable product of a privileged upbringing and an archaic political system – with a skewed democracy running under a first-past-the-post voting system maintaining a ruling centre right consensus, and an ‘unwritten’ constitution bringing uncertainties in an era of regular referendums.

    The personality that emerges in a recently published autobiography For the Record is of a savvy and hard-working insider, lacking in profound insight or deep learning, and beholden to a mercantile outlook as the son of a stockbroker. In another era he might have had a fine career in the East India Company before taking a seat in Parliament to plot imperial escapades.

    This autobiography dangles morsels of gossip from ‘blue on blue’ Conservative feuding – especially with one-time friends, including current Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Michael Gove – but incessant retrospective justification, often with cherrypicked data, makes for a generally tedious, and long, read. Regrets are in terms of tactical choices: anyone expecting that a fall from power would bring profound questioning of the nature of conservatism in the twenty-first century will be disappointed.

    The closing paragraph, in which he spells out advice he will proffer to future prime ministers conveys an essential banality, oddly reminiscent of the adventure books of Captain W. E. Johns, with Cameron assuming the role of Biggles, and George Osborne as Chancellor of the Exchequer his loyal sidekick Algie:

    Whoever they are, I will tell them this. That Britain is the greatest country on earth. Our greatness is derived not from our size, but from our people – their decency, their talent, and that special British spirit. There is no need for new ideology or systems, we have the best one here: democracy. We are lucky that this political system enables politicians to act upon what I think motivates most of them: the national interest and public service. And if you listen hard, beyond the sound and the fury, you will hear that this quiet patriotism and belief in democracy is what unites people too. Remember that as you pick up the baton and lead. I will be willing you on as you do.

    Cameron’s apparently simplistic patriotism – born of faith in the enduring greatness of the British ‘spirit’ – coincided with an avowed ‘little ‘e’ and little ‘s’ ‘euroscepticism.’ This prevarication over Britain’s relationship with Europe played a crucial role in producing a career-defining Brexit. The attempt, and essential failure, to renegotiate a deal with the EU prior to the referendum left an unmistakable impression that EU membership was a relationship of convenience to be borne stoically, involving competing nation-states, rather than one of interdependence and mutual benefit.

    Schooldays and Oxford

    Cameron presents a picture of growing up among a happy, bibulous family including two sisters and one brother, featuring an especially affectionate father-son relationship. This did not, however, prevent him from being packed off to boarding school at the tender age of seven.

    There he recalls: ‘At bath time we had to line up naked in front of a row of Victorian metal baths and wait for the headmaster, James Edwards, to blow a whistle before we got in.’ Punishment he says was, ‘old-fashioned. They included frequent beatings with the smooth side of an ebony clothes brush.’

    Such childhood experiences have long forged ‘the stiff upper lip’ characteristic of the upper strata of British society, with medieval origins in the fostering of noble sons as page boys to aristocratic peers. Over centuries, hardened by emotional suppression in childhood, many among this ruling class have been inured to the suffering of racial and social ‘inferiors’, assuming a combination of hard work and punishment for wrongdoing to be a panacea for societal ills.

    Yet Cameron is clearly no dinosaur of a bygone age in the apparent mould of his fellow Conservative Jacob Rees Mogg, and he includes tender reminiscences of a severely disabled son Ivan, who passed away before he took office in 2009, and an apparently loving relationship with Samantha his wife, to whom the book is dedicated.

    Nonetheless, a residual harshness is evident in his attitude towards crime – with an emphasis on deterrence – and poverty, with frequent allusion to the ‘medicine’ of fiscal measures required to restore the U.K.’s economic fortunes after the Crash of 2007-2008. Work would set the poor free, conveniently to the benefit of a wealthy elite.

    After prep school came Eton College, like his ‘father, grandfather, mother’s father and his father’, where the teenage Cameron had a brush with authority – having been caught smoking pot – before knuckling down sufficiently to gain entry to Brasenose College, Oxford, and later earn a first class degree in oft-derided – by Boris Johnson not least[i] – PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics); incidentally he dismisses the account of what he did with a pig’s head while a member of the Bullingdon Club as ‘false and ludicrous.’

    During his time at Eton Cameron first encountered the economic ideas that have informed his political outlook since the 1990s, when he worked under the right-wing Chancellor Norman Lemont. From the start he says, ‘it was the radical monetarists and free marketeers who seemed to have the new and exciting ideas.’

    This indicates approval for what Naomi Klein describes as the ‘Shock Doctrine’[ii] espoused by Milton Friedman – the idea of using a political crisis to bring budgetary austerity in order to generate conditions favourable to rapid economic growth. Any recovery generally enriches an economic elite, with the consolation of high employment for the wider society, however precarious and poorly paid.

    ‘Compassionate’ Conservatism

    Cameron styles himself a ‘Thatcherist rather than a Thatcherite,’ a distinction appearing to be a branding exercise as opposed to any substantial divergence from the outlook of his predecessor, whose uncompromising policies established a predominantly post-industrial and unequal society reliant on a London-based financial services industry, over the course of eleven seismic years in power between 1979 and 1990.

    He reveals: ‘I wasn’t always convinced by her approach, and thought some of the rough edges needed to come off. But on the big things – trade union reform, rejecting unilateral nuclear disarmament, our alliance with Ronal Reagan’s America, privatization, Europe – she was absolutely right.’ Essentially, Cameron recognized that ironing out “rough edges” would be necessary to make the Conservative Party electable after Tony Blair had shifted New Labour to the political centre ground.

    He even hails the architect of New Labour: ‘Tony Blair was the post-Thatcher leader the British people wanted’ he says, combining, ‘pro-enterprise economics with a more compassionate approach to social policy and public services.’

    Cameron recognised that taking the Thatcherite (or Thatcherist) project any further had become electorally impossible, at least in the short term. In fairness to him, levels of inequality, while remaining significantly higher than other advanced northern European economies,[iii] stabilized rather than widened during his tenure, and universal healthcare through the NHS was maintained.

    Cameron spells out the changes in emphasis he believed were required to make his party electable: ‘Instead of tax cuts, crime and Europe, we needed to shift our focus onto the issues the Conservative Party had ignored: health, education, and tackling entrenched poverty … women and ethnic minorities.’ As Conservative leader from 2005 and Prime Minister from 2010, Cameron embraced non-economic causes such as marriage equality, and made sure to be pictured alongside women and members of ethnic minorities. To some of extent the exercise of ironing out “the rough edges” was assisted further by going into coalition with the Lib-Dems under the ineffectual Nick Clegg in 2010.

    Over the course of his tenure, in close collaboration with his friend George Osborne as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Cameron rewarded wealth acquisition by reducing the highest rate of income tax from 50 to 40 per cent and slashing corporation tax went from 28 to 17 per cent. He quotes approvingly J.M. Keynes description of the ‘animal spirits’ motivating enterprise, disregarding the altruism often underpinning innovation.

    As with Thatcher’s idea of an ‘Ownership Society’, his government fed aspirations for house ownership through a 2013 ‘Help to Buy’ scheme for council houses, which only seems to have inflated property values while the market was under supplied. An increase in the rate of VAT from 17.5 to 20%, alongside reductions in the welfare budget no doubt impelled many into taking up employment, but much of this was low paid and precarious – with zero hours contracts increasingly the norm. This job insecurity and low pay may account for what is described as the ‘productivity puzzle’ in the U.K. whereby, as of 2018, labour productivity was 18.3% below its pre-downturn trend.[iv]

    Damningly, as of 2018 – two years after he had left office – almost a million-and-a-half were reliant on food banks.[v] Yet his (scary) ‘assessment now is that we didn’t cut enough. We could have done more, even more quickly, as smaller countries like Ireland had done successfully.’

    On Europe, he and his fellow Modernisers that included Boris Johnson ‘were all convinced that the Conservative Party had become, and should remain, a Eurosceptic party’, but that ‘banging on about Europe’ … was damaging.’ Thus, crucially, he refused to tackle the issue head on, and as Prime Minister postured among his European colleagues, insisting on British exceptionalism to the public gallery.

    Environment and the ‘Big Society’

    The rebranding of Conservatism also embraced environmentalism, memorably conveyed through a much-derided photograph of Cameron astride a sledge pulled by huskies inside the Arctic circle, which was intended to convey his acceptance of the reality of Climate Change.

    During his period in power significant progress was certainly made in terms of wind energy generation in the U.K., although it is unclear whether government policies facilitated this as opposed to technological advances, and the country’s favourable weather conditions. Cameron’s government certainly did not embark on any serious divestment from fossil fuels.

    He also displays little concern for biodiversity, bemoaning how the Environmental Agency ‘seemed to worry more these days about newts and butterflies than homes and livelihoods,’ and reveals support for badger culling as a means of combating bovine T.B..

    As Prime Minister he acknowledges an overriding consideration to maintain rising GDP, which is given almost aphrodisiacal qualities:

    When your GDP is on the up, your power rises with it. Your global stature increases, public confidence grows, your party’s fortunes rise, and your economy’s success sparks the interests of investors. Growth begets growth … But when GDP is stagnating or shrinking (or at least when you are told it is – the provisional figures don’t always turn out to be true), you’re in a permanent state of precariousness.

    Absent is any discussion of whether a politics predicated on economic-growth-without-end, involving intermittent recessions, is capable of generating any kind of environmental equilibrium for human beings living on planet Earth.

    Another aspect of Cameron’s Compassionate Conservative formula was the so-called ‘Big Society’, which called for a revival of volunteering. It is an idea not without merit – a non-remunerative space of interaction between private enterprise and the state – however easy it may be to satirise as a patrician fantasy world of village fetes and pumpkin-growing-competitions.

    An absence of engagement, however – in this book at least – with theories of social capital indicate, like much else about Compassionate Conservatism, that it is a veneer masking an overwhelming dedication to free market economics. This approach diverged from other northern European states, where living standards were generally maintained after the Crash.

    Referendum

    After becoming leader of the opposition in 2005, Cameron used his first PMQ, in which he was pitted against Tony Blair, to raise the failure of the Labour government to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Although he did not make a career of deriding the European project, his public utterances revealed suspicion throughout. Ultimately, pursuing a “small ‘e’ and small ‘s’ euroscepticism” agenda would make arguments in favour of the European project ring hollow.

    Nonetheless, having emerged with a successful result from the Scottish independence referendum of 2014, in part thanks to the intervention of his one-time sparring partner Gordon Brown, and the Alternative Vote in 2011, Cameron chose to take on the major challenge of an ‘in-out’ European referendum. He wished to settle the argument once and for all within the Conservative party, as the emergence of UKIP under the ‘charismatic’ Nigel Farage was threatening its right flank.

    In hindsight Cameron recognizes that he ‘had allowed expectations about what could be achieved through a renegotiation to become too high.’ But failure to control close lieutenants within Conservative ranks would be his ultimate undoing.

    Both Old Etonians and Oxford graduates, Johnson and Cameron were seen as fellow ‘Modernisers’ within Conservative ranks: ‘I liked Boris and he made me laugh.’ Cameron tells us, ‘But I didn’t always trust him.’ He provides an amusing picture of an occasional tennis partner: ‘Boris’s style on the court is like the rest of his life: aggressive, wildly unorthodox (he often uses an ancient wooden racquet) and extremely competitive.’

    This aggression appeared to border on lunacy at times, as when, on one Johnson family visit to the Prime Minister’s country residence at Chequers, in a highly competitive game of football on the front lawn, Boris slide-tackled one of his own children, ‘so vigorously they had to retire hurt.’

    As Mayor of London Cameron says, ‘Boris was the one who was full of jealousies and paranoias.’ At one time he informed Cameron that after the end of his second spell as Mayor he would finish with public life altogether: ‘I’m leaving public life after this. People say I want to be an MP. I don’t. I’m not going to do that.’

    In the event Johnson resumed his parliamentary career, and when it came to the referendum he initially dithered – by his own admission ‘veering all over the place like a broken shopping trolley’ – before deciding to give the Leave campaign his wholehearted backing.

    We gain insights into what appears to be almost a domestic drama as Cameron reveals how prior to this decision Boris’s wife Marina, ‘rather effectively shouted him down, saying ‘Dave’s thought it through. I’m not sure you have. Why don’t you let the prime minister get on with it?’ – or words to that effect.’ Apparently fixated on the issue of the supremacy of EU law, Johnson consoled himself that ‘Brexit would be crushed like the toad beneath the harrow.’

    In a rare moment of insight Cameron intuits his opponents’ motivations: ‘Whichever senior Tory politician took the lead on the Brexit side – so loaded with images of patriotism, independence and romance – would become the darling of the party. He didn’t want to risk someone else with a high profile – Michael Gove in particular – to win that crown.’

    foam-flecked Faragist

    Ironically, Cameron himself persuaded the Sunday Times journalist, and fellow Oxford graduate, Michael Gove to seek a parliamentary seat. Gove went on to serve as a reform-minded Education Secretary during Cameron’s first administration, and turned out to be a star turn at Cabinet meetings: ‘He’d link together two stories of the day, something from popular culture, something from the other side of the world, and then deliver it with Carry On campness.’

    What Cameron regards, however, as the poisonous influence of his advisor Dominic Cummings brought disputes with the teaching profession, and in a reshuffle Gove was demoted to Chief Whip, with a diminished income. This rankled with Gove’s wife the journalist Sarah Vine at least, who ominously described a ‘shabby day’s work which Cameron will live to regret.’

    Although in Cameron’s estimation Gove, unlike Johnson, was a true Brexit believer, he had counselled against holding a referendum, and indicated he would only play a minimal role in the campaign. So the ‘ferocity and mendacity’ of his (and Johnson’s) tactics arrived as a shock. Dismissal of experts along with false claims about expenditure on the NHS came with anti-immigrant invective: ‘Michael Gove, the liberal-minded, carefully considered Conservative intellectual, had become a foam-flecked Faragist warning that the entire Turkish population was about to come and live in Britain.’

    Cameron reveals wounds of betrayal when he says that both Gove and Johnson, ‘behaved appallingly, attacking their own government, turning a blind eye on their side’s unpleasant actions and becoming ambassadors for the expert-trashing, truth-twisting age of populism.’

    End of days

    The referendum result left Cameron with little choice but to resign, plunging the country into an enduring constitutional crisis. The crocodile-tear-stained-text he received from Johnson is worth recalling: ‘Dave, I am sorry to have been out of touch but couldn’t think what to say and now I am absolutely miserable about your decision. You have been a superb PM and leader and the country owes you eternally.’

    One conclusion is that Cameron was a political lightweight who simply merged New Labour’s techniques in political spin with old school monetarist Thatcherite (or ‘Thatcherist’) economic policies. This may have been conducive to economic growth, with the U.K. emerging as an employment powerhouse in the wake of the Crash, attracting hundreds of thousands of workers from more sluggish European economies that generally afforded greater labour protection. But the uncertainties of boom and bust seem to have demanded scapegoats in the shape of immigrants, leaving the country vulnerable to a populist surge.

    The poverty of Cameron’s ideas is revealed in a paradoxical attitude towards monarchy:

    I have always been a passionate monarchist, but never able to explain precisely why. A person’s future should be determined by their talent and hard work, not by the accident of their birth – my whole political life has been dedicated to that meritocratic ideal.

    Also, reliance on the spectacle of the London Olympics to relieve social tensions is oddly reminiscent of Ancient Rome: ‘They seemed to be an antidote to so much that was wrong in our country. To the social breakdown we’d seen in the riots, proof that young people were a positive force.’

    And yet, despite his obvious deficiencies, foreign misadventures (including Libya) and shameful disregard for poverty, one cannot help feeling a certain nostalgia for his period in office. Then at least the Rule of Law seemed assured and the “rough edges” of conservatism were considered problematic.

    For the Record by David Cameron, William Collins, London, 2019.

    [i] Sonia Purnell, ‘Boris Johnson and David Cameron: How a rivalry that began at Eton spilled out on to the main stage of British politics’, February 23rd, 2016, The Independent, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-and-david-cameron-how-a-rivalry-that-began-at-eton-spilled-out-on-to-the-main-stage-of-a6891856.html

    [ii] Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, Knopf Canada, Toronto, 2007.

    [iii] Eurostat, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/EDN-20180426-1

    [iv] Untitled, ‘UK productivity continues lost decade’, April 5th, 2019, BBC, https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47826195

    [v] May Bulman, ‘Food bank use in UK reaches highest rate on record as benefits fail to cover basic costs’, 24th of April, 2018, The Independent, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/food-bank-uk-benefits-trussell-trust-cost-of-living-highest-rate-a8317001.html