Category: Life

Understanding the ‘ethical split’

I am increasingly captivated by accessible bits of writing about social psychology, perhaps because I think it is key to rebooting the political strategy Labour has really lacked since 2010. It can be the bridge between pretentious articles such as this one, and the pub-type situation that I always end up on relying on to symbolise non-metropolitan England. It’s about what people care about and how we talk to them. Forget about policies for a minute – I think these are actually the big things that Labour is missing.

At present the left arrives in ever more consensus based positions on areas of economic policy and the like, but I think that we are living with the legacy of a very big gap where political strategy is supposed to go. Successive Labour leaders since Tony Blair have engaged with the concept of political strategy less and less, despite knowing that most of the people in the country are actually quite different to us and don’t support us. It seems moves to the left for some reason come with more emphasis on policy rights and wrongs and less on politically getting there. I’m increasingly persuaded by the view that this is to do with what people from the top to the bottom of the Labour Party, ‘pioneers’, value.

valueshere

I have some sympathy with Charlie Mansell’s argument that this is basically where the new split in politics resides – between people who value ethical certainty and people who value ethical complexity. I certainly think this is true within the organised left, which is dominated by ‘pioneer’ personality types – people who are concerned with change and ethics.

There seem to be two types of ethically driven people:

The ethically certain tend to be looking for ways that they can express themselves and act in accordance with ethical values that they are sure of. This ‘sureness’ is something they actively seek, defining against threats and risks they also see as clear, and since they have often achieved the sureness, what is left is to express. Certainty and expression are valued as part of defining the self and one’s place in the world, and as a clear defence against the ethical challenges it presents. This is perceived by some as a pessimistic emotional approach. People with this disposition are often at a loss as to why others don’t take positions which are clear, stand up for themselves, or ‘say what they mean’. They can seem overly sure of themselves, dismissive, or overbearing.

The ethically complex tend to lean more towards how ethics are used, what they are applied to, what results. They are invested in the power of ethics to change and improve situations. They feel that to be used to full effect, ethical frameworks must be designed with the full complexity of their environment to mind, firstly because this makes best use of opportunities, secondly because if ethics are well designed then they cope better with risks. It’s optimistic and about getting the most out of one’s ethics. Complexity and producing better results are valued, and being able to admit that you don’t know everything or are unsure is simply seen as more honest and useful – optimism is found amidst relative chaos. People with this disposition are often at a loss to understand why complexity, nuance or qualification in ideas often meets such strong rejection from many others. They can seem detached, aloof, and sometimes indecisive.

This is not to say that:
1) one of these positions is more ‘right’ than the other
2) the two cannot be allies of each other or complementary.

However it is a clear divergence of outlook – and in my view one which increasingly characterises the rift in the left. And in the internet age, both types seem to have decreasing tolerance for one another.

The basis for all of this is in Maslow’s categorisation of social-psychological needs, by the way, potentially with some borrowing from Carl Jung I think.

 

Posted on by Tom Miller 1

Dear political hacks: please be more normal

Maybe it’s because it’s election time, but politics really annoys me these days where it used to inspire me.

It seems to have such a humanity deficit, and often as a starting point, as an accepted norm. There is so little respect for others or behaviour which reflects it. And maybe I’m not cut out for this.

I get so sick of people lacking fundamental human respect for each other, seeing just allies or opponents, looking to use, dismiss or discredit all the time.

There are people stuck entirely in their own bubble, happy not to genuinely engage with anyone else, to deal with the realities of others, to give them the benefit of the doubt, treat them respectfully, or generally credit them with some value.

At senior levels on the left there are terrible employers, and people who other far worse than would be accepted in most of the private sector. This is not to mention the bullying and the sexual harassment.

I know that’s what it’s like. But that’s a shame. Why not do your bit to make it better? Go to the pub. Have friends, political and non. Have other interests. Refer to the real world when you make decisions, and when you’re dealing with other people.

People active in politics should have at least the compassion and decency of those outside hackdom in the ‘real world’ – and they shouldn’t be divorced from it in the first place. This is not to say that my own personality or behaviour are awesome, but basically there is a lot that could be lots better, very easily.

Posted on by Tom Miller

Planning objection to plans to close the Queensury pub

I and my Labour colleagues campaigning in Willesden Green ward, Bernard Collier and Cllr Lesley Jones, are strongly opposing the demolition of a local pub, the Queensbury. You can find out more about the campaign to save it here.

Let’s face it folks. If I’m objecting to the demolition of a Conservative Club, I must have a good reason!

My formal objection to the proposals is below.

I oppose the demolition of the current building and plans to replace it for the following reasons:

1) This is an Asset of Community Value which warrants protection. The pub is used by local community organisations that have no alternative venue.

2) It currently houses one of the safest and most welcoming pubs in the area and is a positive draw. It raises the socio-economic profile of the area. There is a continuing risk that the developer will downgrade from A4 to A3 use and we end up with yet another coffee shop, knocking out the local balance in the area.

3) The building that stands is a local landmark, and a positive one.

4) The current building is in fitting with surrounding styles, whereas that proposed is not, and is furthermore out of fitting with the adjacent Mapesbury Conservation Area.

5) The car parking area behind the present building provides plenty of room for housing – us of the whole site is not necessary either commercially or socially.

6) In my view, there is not sufficient social or affordable housing within the proposed development. This makes arguments around provision of housing need far less valid, as does the refusal to build in the car park but allow the pub to stand.

7) The development is too high for the local area.

8) The Willesden area including both the High Road and Walm Lane are undergoing some degree of private sector led regeneration. But constructing flats over the site of a key local pull factor for young professionals actually represents a backward move from this  trend rather than a forward one.

I believe that the loss of local amenity will actually impede efforts to diversify the tenancy profile in the area and create a more mixed profile. This will mean the denial of economic benefits in the area in terms of both new tenants and also to the surrounding food establishments and shops, and as a whole will have a negative economic impact for the area, whereas the main positive impact will be to the developers.

The development is a backwards step and is actively anti-social, in this respect.

8) There is a general negative trend of the removal of social spaces in our society. The closure of pubs nationwide is part of this negative trend, of which these plans are an example. Councillors should pay attention to the social as well as purely economic impacts when deciding to allow demolition of institutions such as these.

The decision to replace a rare local example of a well kept pub with the plans considered means a development that is out of place for our area, has a negative impact in both a social and economic sense, damages local identity, counters regeneration by making it unbalanced, and removes a vital asset from the local community.

This is my objection in full, thank you for taking the time to read it.

Posted on by Tom Miller

What is Islamophobia, and why should it be taken seriously?

This was a question I felt was raised by a post from a respected Facebook friend ( know, get new subjects…) who seemed to be in agreement with the attitude taken by some liberals that ‘Islamophobia’ is a term used unfairly for those with a problem with Islamic religious beliefs.

It isn’t, and that’s why it’s controversial. My friend used the argument that:

‘Islamphobia’ is a dangerous concept – not a valid one.

So I asked him:

1) How can a concept possibly be dangerous? 2) What do you even understand the concept to be? I understand it to be discrimination against people who are Muslims, rather than criticism of Islam.

He responded:

“The idea that criticising or challenging a belief – or even the possibility of circumscribing the activities of people who believe something for perfectly sensible reasons – is an ‘ophobia – that is a very illiberal position.”

A lot of liberals would disagree with that statement on the basis that it ignores discriminatory prejudice. Most socialists would too, because it ignores the concrete scenario, which includes physical attacks against Muslims and the like, as part of the main ‘prejudice narrative’ of the modern right.

He continues:

I detest the idea that women are urged to dress in all-covering tarpaulins. I think that people who urge women to dress in this way are stupid vicious thugs. I think people who make the argument that its a cultural choice need to go away and consider just how wrong they are. Does that make me an ‘Islamophobe’?

I don’t understand it to be discrimination against people who are Muslims any more,than I’d claim to be a victim of Socialistophobia (even though It explains very clearly why I’m not in charge of the CBI). What you’re referring to, I understand as ‘discrimination’. This is a summary of what the article says.

So I thought it was right to challenge my friend.

“It’s not the challenging of belief that’s Islamophobic though, you’re ignoring my point. It’s discrimination against those who hold it, in both hard and soft forms.

Hard example, ‘fuck off Muslims, go back home‘, or using it as a proxy for brown-ness (since when was ‘brown’ a ‘race’ anyway, it’s simply a common appearance aspect between a number of minorities – not unlike faith). Would you honestly not have a problem with the statement above?

In softer forms, disproportionately targeting Muslims but not other faiths, generalising with the intent of demonising a group of people ‘they’re all terrorists‘, or even more common, ‘Islam is a backward faith‘ (as if faith doesn’t include individuals with different viewpoints).

What about deliberate offence? Is it anti-Semitic to deliberately feed a Muslim (or a Jew) bacon, or is it ‘legitimate criticism’?

It’s evident to anyone that the attitudes above are prejudiced ones, and ones that either deliberately attack or discriminate either because of faith, or using faith as a proxy for race or barbarism.

“I don’t understand it to be discrimination against people who are Muslims any more,than I’d claim to be a victim of Socialistophobia”

Get a lot of people spitting at you or ripping your clothes off in the street do you?

This is a serious problem which in my view therefore merits being taken seriously. The narrative that ‘Islamaphobia=simply criticising religion‘ is a massive red herring thrown by bigots to get liberals running the other way – away from confronting said bigots.”

That’s all I really have to say about that.

I won’t bother with the tarpaulins point.

People get to decide what to wear in this society, and they also get the legal right to speak about it one way or the other, including their view on the appearance of others. Whilst we’re defending liberalism, let’s remember these things, eh…

Posted on by Tom Miller 1

How I feel about Iraq

A journalistic acquaintance, Rowenna Davis, is writing something about how people feel about the war on Iraq and subsequent long occupation. For me this is a generationally defining issue, and separated people my age, broadly Blair cynics, from the earlier optimistic Britpop generation.

How do I feel?

It made me a lot more critical of the Labour Party, despite being a member. It made me feel that rather than just going through a phase, its values and existence in the long term were under a dark and permanent threat.

In terms of the rest of it, it was like seeing a Vietnam in my generation, but without the same level of permeation in society. At least in Vietnam they were allowed independent photographers – in Iraq the press relentlessly censored itself and continued to take the line from the people behind it until it was far too late.

This helped to add to the preexisting sense that we were already being deceived about the reasoning behind the whole thing – though of course the non-discovery of non-existent WMD, and the sudden changes of story from the Government hardly helped.

Most of all, the feeling is one of ongoing torture. Robin Cook and those who were more bold in their criticisms were right all along, and given the lead up, you had to be a pretty gullible person not to get that way before it happened.

The initial deaths, the shock and awe, Fallujah, and the countless loss of families to the insurgent battles… the torture and the cover-ups. The partly resulting rampant Islamophobia that still infects our national politics. They were all preventable, and the left said so from the start.

The feeling of having called it right hasn’t changed day since, but has become more and more frustrating to carry given that it has meant people dying.

Whatever he did about school repairs and the minimum wage, in my mind Blair’s treachery on this issue is one that will never leave the way that I think about politics. It is something that has shaped me and my understanding. For those actually affected, living and dead, rest their souls.

Posted on by Tom Miller

A not so quick thought on deals in politics

Anything to avoid using that picture with Bono…

This is a bit of an abstract thought process about being practical, but hear me out.

You get some interesting perspectives in the Socialist movement. I suspect that some of these go back a hundred years or more. Should social democrats join a bourgeois government, for example?

The automatic response of most people who accept the terminology tends to be ‘no’. While this is also my emotional inclination (and there is no way I would ever let myself get mugged off like Ramsay MacDonald), I am nevertheless opposed to automatic responses. Bad way of thinking. Or to rephrase, of not thinking.

I don’t agree with doing deals with Tories unless it stops Fascists or organised bigots of some kind. I don’t agree with doing deals with Nazis full stop. But apart from that, I pretty much feel that people in the labour movement should give others open consideration.

Deal, you say?

The biggest, toughest deal in politics has to be the Good Friday Agreement.

Consider how far ‘physical force’ Republicans in particular have some since the Easter Rising. A century of bitter conflict, most of which has been very local and community based to the North. But who seriously denies that in their weakened state and with the potential for a long-term strategic upswing, they should have avoided dialogue with unionist and the British Government, or that after this they should not have signed up to Good Friday? Should the IRA really still be bombing pubs?

In politics anyone at some point has to consider offers they are made by opponents.

I think this should be done in a way that weighs up the actual material case for and against, rather than simply relying on old slogans and the desire to fly a flag.

Often, having the maturity and emotional discipline to do this ends up being key to advancing their cause, or protecting those they seek to represent.

This stuff applies just as well to more banal decisions.

Do we trade slate places for an internal election? It’s amazing how differently people can feel over doing this just as a one off! Should Labour consider a coalition with, say, the Lib Dems, if we are eventually forced to? I think this would probably create an even more annoying split.

In my view, what your slogan or image is has some importance, but it’s normally a very bad idea to leave posturing and gesture as your sole or most important justifications for pretty much anything you do. Anyone can revert to type. Gaining by avoiding it is much more tricky, but much more rewarding.

What the circumstances are and how you can deal with them is usually a far more important question to consider on its own merit than by making it all about whether you have had a decent play to your gallery.

The simplicity of this truth means that your decision always has an arguable justification: whatever image you want to cultivate, in politics, good deals are worth taking, bad deals are not. Sometimes a deal can be good or bad for everyone involved.

This should all be fairly self evident.

In the most common deals (such as red-green coalitions in Nordic politics) there is a clear overlap of interest that mutual working can solve. Great.

Some deals (like the Good Friday agreement) can be good for multiple parties even if they are resolutely opposed, for example Good Friday. This is much rarer, but still possible when the outside circumstances are right.

In this example, both parties needed to end violence. Republicans, whose armed struggle had failed and were at a moment of historic weakness, gasping for breath. Unionists also had a big interest. They had come out better politically before Good Friday was agreed, but had also suffered greatly in the real world, particularly the working class elements of their national-political community.

This party to the agreement needed a period of consolidation for their community and freedom from the terror tactics which sucked their own young men into paramilitary organisations, and killed hundreds of civilians.

Nationalists and Republicans, on the other hand, wanted guaranteed human rights, and end to state oppression, and the long term possibility to realise their shared goal of a united Ireland democratically. They too suffered heavily from paramilitarism, sometimes in collusion with or carried out by the state (side point, but I would argue that the policies of the British state were ultimately responsible for beginning the process, and for exacerbating it on multiple occasions).

For many years within the armed groups on both sides, it was difficult to even steer through a tactical ceasefire, even if it was of clear benefit.

By the time of the deal the conflict itself had created conditions where a deal worked best for both sides.

That has subsequently been allowed to be tested and proven in practice, because both parties were open-minded and mature enough (most of the time) to actually work on the project in good faith. I think both parties were very brave. Being able to do this is an enormously important personal and political skill. It has also been pretty important for people who don’t want to live in a society where waking minutes are ruled by the gun.

Good Friday works. The only losers in that situation are dogmatists and posture politicians – people who don’t have a problem with using their own allies and constituents, regardless of the exigencies of their situation. Unfortunately, this is nothing special.

So, do you deal or not?

Surely it just depends.

MacDonald was a fool. Mitterand was noble but eventually unable. Gerry Adams, on the other hand, was both brave and successful. Same for Ian Paisley. None of these are even the temporary deals that often spring up, but at best semi-permanent ones.

I’m betting the gents in the Irish example felt pretty horrible doing it, on all sides. It was still right.

If you turned up to look like a person with great integrity, letting the appearance aspect (I’M SUCH A FIGHTER’) undermine a real opportunity for your politics is probably something that should be reconsidered. That’s the only way you know if you are doing a bad deal or not.

Political principle is not just about how you look, but about what you do, and even more, what the actual outcome is.

Sometimes, this means saying ‘yes’.

Posted on by Tom Miller 2

Tired of London

This is a post because it’s too long, ranty and self-indulgent to go on Facebook.

I am about to leave my current flat due to my flatmate wanting the space for her boyfriend and her to move into.

I went to do a second view at a place in Harlesden tonight. Nice enough, but outside in front of me two men ‘secretly’ (brazenly) exchanged drugs and masked their actions by having a loud conversation about how they hate ‘all these fucking Asian people’. Both were from an ethnic minority background themselves.

People walked the streets in a clear state of mental illness related alarm and anxiety. Smashed windows. No police.

It was basically like a bad lyric from a Rancid album.

I was asked for money three times, presumably because I have a posh coat and stupid hair. But I never really got why people in deprivation hotspots beg for money in the first place. I’m not saying it’s jobs central, but what’s the point in begging hundreds of people who also have no money for cash?

It all screams at the need for solutions far bigger than futile compassion for cases of individual poverty – for example decent support systems backed by the wider community (including the state), and policies which encourage both employment and decent pay.

Both of those are the opposite of what we have right now, and I have absolutely no qualms about saying that the situation in Harlesden is set to get even worse. It’s hard to believe that Sarah Teather is the MP for a place like this, being someone dedicated to the cause of taking it apart piece by piece.

It all makes Harlesden a difficult place to live, and I’m definitely not sure about it.

This is not some old bastion of working class solidarity. People here target each other rather than supporting each other. There is little respect for surroundings or the diversity that everyone here is so accustomed too. Thatcherism sent the working class up a blind alley of resentment, division and indifference, but most of it still walks in the same direction regardless. In the old days, the paternalist communitarians of the international labour movement would march against alcohol and gambling. I wonder how they would have felt about the payday loan sharks, ‘amusements’ arcades, ‘saunas’ (i.e. brothels), Chicken Cottage, or rather more obviously, crack and crystal meth.

There are of course some great people living there and working to improve Harlesden. I’ve met a few of them myself, through various stuff to do with both Labour and anti-cuts campaigns. But their work is undone day by day, and many of them see themselves as ‘non-political’ voluntary sector people, despite politics largely being to blame for the fragmentation here. And the less I say about the failure of ‘centrist’ ‘new Labour’ politics to offer any kind of salvation, the better off readers will be.

The room itself is tiny, though slightly bigger than one I viewed recently in Dollis Hill, near my place in Willesden Green. But the rent is at £450, which is £50 higher than my current rent for a decent sized room. This also does not include bills. This is rock bottom pricing for London – my salary won’t cope with anything higher.

So to add to the general social crisis which is so heavily interlinked with low pay and unemployment, the symbiotic twin demons of our time – at a personal level, I can also feel the dead hand of an enormous crisis of housing and landlord extortionism at a very personal level in my life.

I wonder if I will ever find a position where I feel financially comfortable, or stable in terms of my housing situation. The age of precarity is grinding me down, and the worst thing of all is that it kind of makes me wonder why I bothered going through the education system.

For the first time in a good couple of years, tonight I felt tired of London. They are hardly a nirvana, but still – I miss the suburbs, and I wonder if my whole life will look as difficult as my twenties.

London can be such a great place, but right now, it weighs my soul.

Posted on by Tom Miller 2

What is ‘one nation’ politics?

“Well, society may be in its infancy,” said Egremont slightly smiling; “but, say what you like, our Queen reigns over the greatest nation that ever existed.”

“Which nation?” asked the younger stranger, “for she reigns over two.”

The stranger paused; Egremont was silent, but looked inquiringly.

“Yes,” resumed the younger stranger after a moment’s interval. “Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws.”

“You speak of–” said Egremont, hesitatingly.

“THE RICH AND THE POOR.”

At this moment a sudden flush of rosy light, suffusing the grey ruins, indicated that the sun had just fallen; and through a vacant arch that overlooked them, alone in the resplendent sky, glittered the twilight star.

-Sybil, or the Two Nations (Disraeli, 1845)

History pleases me, especially given the dire content of the present. And one of the lovely things about history is there where we cannot agree much about the future, the past is something in which we can all take any stake we choose.

Ed Miliband’s conference speech marked an ascendency of trust from both party and press, though I have some scepticism as to how much conference speeches influence a sceptical public these days. In any event, it’s certainly sparked some thinking among people whose views I appreciate. I have had some interesting thoughts triggered since by two people whose views I respect, despite the wild divergence of their politics. One is conservative, Ashton Cull, who chaired Conservative Future locally when I was at uni in Manchester. Another is Liam McNulty, who it would be fair to describe in the broadest terms as a Marxist.

I’ve been prompted twice to ask myself what is really meant by ‘One Nation’. On one level, the adaption of Tory rhetoric, expecially class collaborationist Tory rhetoric, marks a reactionary step for the leader of a Labour Party. At the same time, the founding ideas of the philosphy of One Nation Toryism find themselves significantly left of Blairism, which accepted the ceaseless march of a society moving apart from itself – the poorest satisfying themselves with the workfare crumbs of those who got ‘filthy rich’ and (sometimes) paid their taxes, the middle bought into wrestless neutrality with tax credits.

Consider this:

“If a society that has been created by labour suddenly becomes independent of it, that society is bound to maintain the race whose only property is labour, from the proceeds of that property, which has not ceased to be productive.”

– Disraeli

This is no Marxism. But the mutual obligation implied can have ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ obligations, and is just as rightly the property of social democratic reformists as it is moderate Tories. So for that reason, whatever the merits of reformist social democrats, it is far from charlatanism for them to take up the slogan. And further, it may well be a way of blocking together part of the professional so-called ‘middle class’ workers with the lower paid parts of the working class who are currently being hit with the freight train of austerity – making this part of the ‘middle class’ a progressive one. As a front in totality, if theis is a majority, ‘One Nation’ can be a broad project which is also some distance left of the common sernse, and also potentially hegemonic, if done right. Anyway, this is basically my response to those (such as Liam) who might believe that the notion is wholly useless to the left. It’s not revolutionary, but it can just as much be consciousness raising and majoritarian as it can be damaging. It depends on the substance.

The seeds, by the way, of the left undoing that, are treating supplicant, weaker groups and individuals as part of a different nation – one where food banks or immigration detention centres are acceptible human situations, while a land accross the social waters knocks back a Friday night Sauvingnon or two.

No doubt pressure for this kind of ‘two-nationism’, of making positionally weaker humans into ‘others’, will surely form the substance of the Tory response to this speech – alongside subsequent a Blairite call to triangulate it (or as I prefer, ‘submit’). Labour, after all, isn’t learning – right?

But moving back, I was moved to a deeper thought about what social democracy in the first place means to me by Ashton (whose opinion I value and await).

He asks:

…This has been niggling me for a couple of days. How do you feel about the One Nation rhetoric?

Very much in favour. For me my social democracy can basically be summed up as ‘settled consensus that we have obligations to each other, that bodies must carry them out in a way which is widely democratically accountable, and that fulfilling them helps to make us each more free’ [*].

I don’t think that society and the state are the same thing, but I also think it is artificial to seperate them when the goal of the state is to serve society, when much of society benefits from the state, much of society works for it, and pretty much all of society to some degree or another pays for it.

What I’m saying is that I think the heritage of One Nation stretches beyond individual philanthropy, though Disraeli himself probably would not have approved. I think it stretches from one nation Toryism, deep into social democracy. Economic liberalism is not totally alien to it either, but I think that there is still a mad dash for economic liberalism which is massively socially divisive, and is as contrary to One Nation philosophy as exiling the rich.

Anyway, I think it’s a bold move, and whether Tory or Social Democratic, the driving feature is basically human compassion – something that I think is the main thing our society is forgetting, lamentably. I don’t want someone ruining my mortgage or cutting my wages – nor am I happy to see people spit in the face of bus drivers.

Common manners and respect need a big return, in society and in the economy.

Anyway, here’s my family secret. A political one too.

When I was very young, indeed before I can remember, my father was awarded custody of me. I have lived with him and my Stepmother since when he met her (I was three). My biological mother has been estranged to me for what I make twelve years, for various reasons, though I am considering getting in touch with her now.

Anyway, turns out that one of Ashton’s predecessors as the Tory Chair at Manchester Uni was her father**. Uber One-Nation MP. I never met the bloke, and having politicised into the left at a young age, and with a class background of skilled manual labour via my father and his family, it rather shocked me. His wife was descended from Charles II! Mad.

Oh well. There is plenty of determism aside from the genetic.

The fact is, as happy as I am to accept the rhetoric of One Nation, if I was a Tory, I would be a Thatcherite. I respect ideological leadership, sticking to guns, and having guns to stick to in the first place.

I think if there is to be one nation, that’s all well and good. And if the term helps gain support for it, that’s just as well.

But Disraeli’s mistake was that he thought a society that encouraged freedom and was at ease with itself was the rightful gift of the honourable rich.

But wealth is not gained for honour. Nor is it spent in the pursuit of obligation.

Wealth under neoliberalism is precisely and literally the privilege of being in a different nation. If the poor don’t like tax, they buy less food. If the rich don’t like tax, they move. The same logic applies to pay rises in the two nations.

We need One Nation. ‘Middle class’ workers are essential to engendering this. But it’s not the disadvantaged who split the nation in the first place. If the nation is to be brought towards a tolerant, pluralist and relatively equal place – ‘One Nation’ – then democratic and civic power over divisive market dogma must be massively increased, and on terms which are inclusive of the disadvantaged – our subaltern ‘second nation’. It’s simply not One Nation if they are forced into a cramped island with no way out. And make no mistake, that’s where they are headed, and have been headed for decades.

This inclusion is not something achieved through centrist vaccilation. Particularly in this climate of divisive attacks, and the intended resentment culture that now sits in place of solidarity. In situations where forces are jockeying beneath the surface for position, it’s achieved by creating a social coalition which is broad, yes, but also genuinely progressive, and has reason to be. Good luck getting that from establishment wets! It’s a path we have tried for years.

There are very, very few ‘progressive’ Tories. Show me a Tory as left wing as Disraeli these days, and I’ll show you a Compass member. Leadership towards a more cohesive society isn’t just something the broad left has a claim to.

When it comes to questions of motivation and material ability, they are the only forces in the country capable of taking the claim up, and the labour movement in particular the only one with the withdrawable surplus and power in numbers for the battle ahead.

The die is cast. The struggle of note will therefore be that to achieve leadership within the paradigm itself.

My next post will be about the virtues of populism. It will be shorter.

–

* Note – perhaps I should have added in ‘that economic class as related to ownership is a major obstacle to this’?
** In the interests of my own credibility, not that proper lefts judge us on lineage, I should point out that I am also descended from a Communist militant immigrant bus driver from the T & G who sacrificed his life to fight Franco. I think that means I genetically average out somewhere near Roy Hattersley.

Posted on by Tom Miller