Philosophers and zombies

As usual, in true Iranian fashion, I begin by whipping myself for not having blogged much of late.  For once I’ve had a decent excuse – I’ve been finishing writing my debut novel, The Donkey in Winter, a black tragicomedy set in a dystopian near-future Britain.  The action follows the dying days of a despotic buffoon in a failed state in the north-east of England as he tries to ward off the radical-conservative theocracy that has swept the rest of the country, and the fate of two ordinary lads who get caught up in the violence that follows.  It’s fair to say it builds on a few of the themes I’ve explored in this blog.  Let me know if you’d like a copy.

So to the election.  Here, then, are my thoughts on the various parties on offer…

Labour – I must be fair to them (for once) and try to put their record in the context of what Britain was like in 1997.  It wasn’t all bad, at first – the minimum wage, freedom of information, a more tolerant view of gay folk, a more peaceful Northern Ireland and even the Scottish Parliament turned out to be better policies than many people thought (less so the Millennium Dome).  The good people of Sierra Leone will be eternally grateful for Blair’s intervention there – but the bombs we dropped so liberally on Serbia were a dark presage of things to come.  In the second half of Blair’s decade, hugely increased public spending (much of it still not paid for, because of hazy PFI deals) plus very little in return equalled a bloated state; and mass immigration plus multiculturalism plus the war on Iraq equalled 7/7 – the day that, for me, will always define New Labour’s term in office.  Typically, Teflon Tony escaped just in time to let Gordon handle the credit crunch.  It’s easy to say the Tories would have done the same – perhaps, but the tripartite failure that was the Bank of England / Treasury / FSA was Brown’s doing, and the whole system was set up to ignore both the level of debt in the economy and the house price bubble that drove real inflation.  We will live with the consequences of Brown’s idiocy for a long time to come, and he’s not the man to get us out of the mess he made.

As you know, Brown’s only notable appearance in this election has been during the hilarious Bigotgate (hilarious at his expense, naturally).  The instant reaction on Twitter falls into three types: the ‘how dare he’ sort, the ‘we should stick up for immigrants’ sort, and the ‘but she IS a bigot’ sort.  The last of these shows that there is still a remarkably widespread kneejerk response that equates criticism of immigration with racism – particularly when it comes in an unsophisticated form from an uneducated pensioner, which ought to be precisely the criticism we should tolerate most.  Smearing those who disagree with you is bad enough; doing it to someone who fits that description is particularly shoddy: and the mindset is not encouraging for those of us who want to see a healthier, more cohesive society, to say the least.  The same mindset insults anyone raising fears about crime by suggesting that, if only they didn’t read the Daily Mail, they would realise crime is falling.

Peter Hitchens is fond of quoting Peter Mandelson on his blog: “round about the time you’re utterly sick of saying something is when you’re beginning to get your message across”.  So I will say again: above a certain level, racism will go up as immigration goes up.  When the woman on the Rochdale omnibus thinks immigration is unsustainably high, we’re faced with two solutions: deal with the issue, or deal with the woman.  Brown has shown which he prefers, though his hotheaded behaviour’s more excusable than that of his supporters, coolly trying to justify it.  When did it become so fashionable to sneer at the poor and uneducated, and what is tolerant or liberal about belittling someone who expresses an opinion you might dislike, in words you might not yourself have chosen?  The Labour Party stopped doing this (in public) a couple of years ago, belatedly grasping that excluding dissenting voices on immigration only helped the far right – but, as we’ve seen, many of their supporters still feel this way.  Those of us who worry about racism, and the possibility of its getting worse, should be troubled by that.  But perhaps this will be the election when the Gillian Duffies realise that the more they vote Labour, the less Labour care about them.

One misguided explanation for the rise of the BNP is that Labour haven’t done enough to explain the benefits of immigration to their traditional supporters (as is the conclusion of this otherwise very reasonable article).  But this presupposes that immigration has benefited them – it clearly hasn’t.  Not only has it undercut the wages of those at the bottom (and it’s easy to say ‘you can’t undercut the minimum wage’, but how many of the 1m+ illegal immigrants in Britain are on the minimum wage?), but, by giving them a permanent source of very cheap labour, it’s allowed the upper middle classes to sweep our 5m+ indigenous, permanently unemployed underclass under the carpet and keep them there.

So if, like me, you come from a middle class, liberal family, work in the public sector and have benefited from mass immigration, globalisation and neoliberalism, by all means vote for them – they’ll protect as many of our vested interests as they can get away with.  If you’re actually working class – forget it.  They clearly despise you.

Conservatives – for all that, I don’t blame anyone for being troubled by the idea of another Tory government: their past conduct always acts as a heavy warning against getting overexcited by Cameron’s One Nation talk.  Having said that, I still think he has the potential (backed by some first-rate One Nation thinkers like Michael Gove and David Willetts) to be a decent PM, in spite of colossal stupidity over Ashcroftgate – but this is not the best election to win.  None of the parties are being honest about the scale of the cuts to come – and I don’t blame them, because if any of them break the silence their popularity will plummet (as Clegg discovered when he spoke, in a flash of honesty, of “savage cuts”, and as Osborne did when he mentioned the “austerity” to come).  Voters this year claim to want to be told the truth – but, in truth, we can’t handle the truth.  For this reason, the figleaf of a deal with the Lib Dems would probably be the best result – for them and us.

Lib Dems – the surprise package of the election.  Nick Clegg – memorably dismissed by a fellow commentator before the debates as “making Wendy Alexander look like Cicero” – has managed to speak the fiery old Labour language of fairness, before it all got perverted by bureaucracy and statism.  Using ideas like localism for progressive ends – Brown’s aims through Cameron’s methods, if we’re being charitable – is an appealing thesis.  We need a decent, honest, social democratic centre left in Britain, but for 13 years have had a vicious, corrupt gang who, among many other things, lied us into an illegal war that debased our democracy and cost a million lives, bought every one of the City’s self-serving lies, and whose last act has reduced us to within an inch of national bankruptcy.  If you believe in liberal or social democratic politics you should want the party that has in times gone by been its main vehicle either to fail completely, or to devise a wiser philosophy in opposition.  Either way, you should vote Lib Dem instead of Labour.

There are still plenty of contradictions in the Lib Dem platform, and plenty to belie their line that they are not of “the old politics”.  For all their inspiring talk of local democracy, and giving power away from Whitehall, they’ve shown their own fear of democracy.  Their last manifesto promised a referendum on the European Constitution, which became a shameful abstention on a referendum on the almost identical Lisbon Treaty.  They reneged on this on the grounds that they would support a in/out referendum on our membership of the whole thing – then, when this was proposed in the House of Lords by a UKIP peer, quietly voted against it.  So, beware of their claims to be so different from the other two.

I mentioned immigration and its effect on our underclass, which I think are both the symptom and the cause of many of modern Britain’s problems.  The Lib Dem policy of taking everyone on up to £10k out of tax altogether is the best policy in the whole election, and by far the best way of incentivising work for those currently at the bottom of the heap.  Whether or not the effect would be cancelled out by an amnesty for illegal immigrants, as they also seem to want, is hard to say.

SNP – I actually think they’re doing a reasonable job of running Scotland (which, largely thanks to Annabel Goldie, who rather undermines her boss’s scaremongering, has become a good advert for hung parliaments), particularly on education, but find it hard not to be put off by Salmond’s Caesarian egomania.  His target of 20 seats seems as hyperbolic as ever.  If the Tories win, expect our canny FM to drive multiple wedges between us and them.  Whether or not you approve of this ultimately comes down to whether or not you want to break up the UK, but any argument in favour of unionism is massively outweighed by all the arguments against Labour.

UKIP – some appealing populist policies, and not just on the EU, but unfortunately they’ve thrown their lot in with the climate change denial lobby – and by that I don’t just mean a few dissenting engineers and geologists, but genuine headcases like Christopher Monckton.  Their yeomen base might not be too happy to discover the libertarian small print about drugs, the BBC and the NHS either.  Nigel Farage – who, ironically, is precisely how I picture a low-grade bank clerk if and when I think of one – could provide some of the best drama of the night if he beats the Brownnosing Speaker, but I wouldn’t want more than one MP dragging a Cameron government off to the unworkable right.

Greens – likeable people, uncorrupt and more intellectually coherent (though still socialist) than they used to be, and very good locally.  I still think they’re wrong about nuclear power, but I must apologise for smearing them in the past when I suggested they were on the EU gravy train – it seems that, like some of the more noble Lib Dems and unlike Labour, they have an idealistic view of Europe which doesn’t allow them to accept the institution as it currently stands.  It wouldn’t be a bad thing if one or two of them get in – especially as it might make more Labour support go in their direction in future.

BNP – see above.  If they do well, it won’t be Gillian Duffy’s fault – it’ll be Gordon Brown’s.

Assorted Communists, Trotskyites, Gallowayists, etc – a bit like the BNP, but with anti-Semitism instead of white racism.

In conclusion, my advice would be: anyone but Labour, except their offshoot party the BNP.  My constituency (Glasgow North) is Labour held, but 33rd on the Lib Dems’ target list, requiring a swing of 6%.  Albeit with the reservations listed above, they’ll be getting my tactical vote on Thursday.

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It little profits that an idle king

I haven’t read this yet (it’s next on my list) but The Classical World, or at least its latter stages, doesn’t seem so different from our own: they wrestled with deforestation and climate change, globalisation, celebrity, mass migration, huge extremes of wealth and poverty, clashes of civilisations and religious backlashes, and imperial expansion, hubris, overstretch and retreat, as we do.  Rome had its own war on terror.  We too can see democratic participation and group identity weaken as the polis expands: “the more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws,” as Tacitus wrote, perfectly describes both New Labour and the European Union.  And in some cases, their shadily appointed leaders sound horribly familiar…

The first heir was the elderly Tiberius, a tall, austere figure of man, already in his mid-fifties… he was already a proven general who was known as a severe disciplinarian.  Yet he was very much a last resort, the man Augustus had had to choose.  Public generosity, the popular touch and a wholehearted sense of style were not parts of his haughty nature; revealingly, he gave few public shows and showed little interest in those he attended…  The recurrent lesson from Tiberius and subsequent emperors is not only that ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’: it is that emperors were only as good or bad as they had been before becoming emperor.  They ran true to form and never improved with the job.  Each of them began his reign with a modest, judicious statement of intent, but matters soon deteriorated, partly through their own characters and weak spots, and then through complex manoeuvring for a potential successor… In Tiberius, the Romans had someone who was cunning and inscrutable but temperamentally unsuited to populist gestures or to giving senators a clear lead.  After nine years he was talking vainly of ‘restoring the Republic’ and giving up his job: the death of his own son disenchanted him and was followed by other bereavements…  In his late sixties he looked repulsive, too, bald and gaunt with blotches on his face, only partly concealed by plasters… In March 37 his death was joyfully received by the common people.  The senators conspicuously refused to honour him posthumously as a god.

Remind us of anyone yet?  Yes, for all the very amusing comparisons with Richard Nixon, Gordon Brown is in fact the new Tiberius.  The comparison extends to their predecessors, Tony Blair and Augustus – both came from new money, both overturned the existing diffusions of power and concentrated it around themselves and their unelected advisers, both saw themselves as divinely ordained – but will it extend to their successors, David Cameron and the similarly feted Caligula?  I don’t know if he yet has plans to appoint his horse as Home Secretary (I presume he owns several) but it would certainly raise the profile of his lacklustre shadow cabinet.

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Amazing disgrace

Regular readers will be pleased to learn I wasn’t executed for bringing drugs, or pirate DVDs, into Singapore.  I spent a couple of weeks in the weirdo socialist-consumerist city-state; and a few days in Malaysia, which boasts the world’s most laid-back Muslims, where we took a very rickety sleeper train through jungle highlands to reach the beautiful, secluded Perhentian Islands; a couple of days among the spectacular ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia; and a few days in Thailand, which is always one of the world’s most welcoming countries and, happily for us, refuses to involve foreigners in its domestic squabbles.  In other news, I’ve also been working on and off at the House of Lords, which is usually pretty soporific, but something newsworthy happens every 400 or so years.

Anyway, you’ll be relieved I’m back home just in time to share my thoughts on the forthcoming European Parliament elections.  As on various other issues, I am broadly Eurosceptic more for practical than ideological reasons.  The MPs’ expenses revelations which have provided so much entertainment lately are small bier compared to the high-speed Brussels gravy express.  The EU’s farming and fisheries policies (which take up the bulk of its budget) are well-documented catastrophes.  Almost everyone wants free trade with Europe, and almost everyone is glad we were able to offer former Soviet Bloc countries aid and trade in return for democracy and human rights, but almost no-one wants the political and legal superstructure that has come with it.  Amid the torrent of articles reminding us just how bad the 1970s were, and insisting there was no alternative to Thatcherism, bear in mind what a fraudulent failure her European policy was.  The rebate demand was a shoddy diversion from the evaporation of sovereignty, the acquiescence into ever greater union, which she did nothing to stop.

So, although the Conservative position on Europe might seem reasonable now, their record isn’t exactly trustworthy.  I certainly can’t vote in an EU election for any party so duplicitous (Labour) or dogmatic (the Lib Dems) as to oppose a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.  Neither am I sold on the Europhile SNP, who would have us quit sterling and join a currency run by a manufacturing giant with a completely different business cycle.  We would no longer have the option of inflating ourselves out of debt, of devaluing our currency to boost exports, or of realigning interest rates to boost demand or cool inflation.  Even if you take the nationalist view that these rules are dictated by London anyway, they are at least dictated for the needs of an economic cycle to which Scotland is inextricably attached.  This wouldn’t be the case in the Euro: how could Scotland, with low interest rates set by the EU, have avoided an Irish-style housing bubble and subsequent crash?  I’m not a doommonger about Scotland’s independent economic prospects generally (alternative energy has magically replaced oil overnight as our future source of great riches, but the case is much more convincing when applied to Scotland than to Britain as a whole), but on the currency question I’ve yet to be convinced.  In fact I’ve only very rarely heard anyone from the SNP defend the pro-Euro policy, so perhaps it’s something they’d rather not talk about.  Salmond was asked about it at a talk I went to recently, and replied that he had always favoured more monetary and fiscal stability.  But surely any stability would be greatly at the expense of flexibility.  Is there any debate on this within the SNP?  Is there a wing of the party which supports pegging to the pound, or having our own currency altogether?  If any SNP fans are reading, please educate me.

I’m slipping off topic: the Euro’s not on the agenda in this election.   Giving Labour a final boot in the balls before their crucifixion on the Appian Way out of Downing St next year is on the agenda, so the myriad smaller parties – UKIP, the Greens, No2EU – look like good protest votes to suit the new anti-politics mood.

The BNP aren’t a good protest vote: they’re the only party left that are even worse than New Labour.  Their constitution specifically prohibits anyone other than “indigenous Caucasians” from joining.  That they haven’t removed this clause, to break through as a mainstream anti-immigration party, shows what they really stand for.  As Nick Griffin said, “I am well aware that the orthodox opinion is that 6 million Jews were gassed and cremated or turned into lamp shades.  Orthodox opinion also once held that the earth is flat.  I have reached the conclusion that the ‘extermination’ tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie and latter witch-hysteria.”  He should really team up with the Islamic fundamentalists.  And what would his electorate make of him trashing the creation myths of WWII?  I’m all for free speech, but I’m more offended by crimes against history than I am by their censorship: so in the case of denying something as undeniable as the Holocaust, I’m inclined towards the (modern) German position.

Anyway, I can’t think of anything more irrational or inhuman than discriminating against individuals or groups on racial grounds, whether the old-fashioned way or by affirmative action.  It shouldn’t be a crime to judge people on the basis of their beliefs, such as that Muhammad ascended to Heaven with the archangel Gabriel from the Dome of the Rock on the back of a winged mare, or that man coexisted with dinosaurs in 4004 BC, or that gays and adulterers should be stoned to death, or that women should be neither seen nor heard, or that the Holocaust didn’t happen.  You can nail your colours to the mast, but not to your skin, as it were.  So voting for the BNP – and giving these knuckle-dragging thugs a seat in the European Parliament – will do nothing but strengthen the state-sponsored industry that exists to exaggerate the BNP’s threat.  See Peter Hitchens for fine expositions of why even right-wing little Englanders should reject the BNP.

Ideally I would like to vote for a party that combined Green views on the environment with UKIP views on immigration.  The two are perfectly related: I no more want to live on a concrete island of 70 million people than I do on a boiling world of 9 billion.  Liberal democratic capitalism can’t continue to grow much beyond the level of resource depletion we’ve now reached without destroying the planet, and human civilisation with it.  This century we’ll either have to reduce the scale on which our existing system operates or invent some new one.  Either way, population control globally and nationally seems a sensible place to start.  Unfortunately most on the right seem convinced that because lefties noticed global warming first the whole thing must be a lefty plot.  It isn’t, but a lot of right-wing commentators are doing their best to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The ‘green left’, meanwhile, don’t believe in things like national borders or cultural differences.  This is a pity, because their insistence (with the full support of the pro-business right) on mass immigration and cultural segregation has created, in Britain and Europe, a huge and growing section of society with archaic, extreme and in many cases medievally conservative views.  (I don’t know how many British Muslims they asked in this survey, but it’s telling that none of them thought homosexuality was morally acceptable.)  This probably wasn’t what they had in mind, wracked with postcolonial guilt forty years ago, but the road to Helmand is paved with good intentions.

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