Several ingenious attempts to do ideology today in the Guardian:
1. Tony Blair's awful blunder shows the deadly notion of macho leadership that dominates British politics when heroes take risky decisions and heed no words of caution from the faint-hearted but correct. That's why Britain went to war in Iraq (and Afghanistan, but that might still be a 'good' war, as was promised at the time? And Libya, but no-one is talking about that, and we still have special forces there? And we nearly went into Syria --well, bombed it -- and some people still want to, so no mention of that). How does that fit Brexit? The same arrogance infected Cameron when he decided to have a referendum, the fool. And now look what has happened! Another disaster - -on the scale of the Iraq bloodshed for Guardianistas, no doubt.
2. There is a review by Kathryn Hughes of George Eliot's neglected novel (Felix Holt, the Radical --haven't read it) which is about the social turmoil in Britain in 1832 surrounding the agitation for electoral reform which had produced a riot and a death in Nuneaton -- the real location of the novel. Hang on though -- the 1832 reform had allowed respectable middle-class people to vote,so that couldn't be wrong,surely? OK then Eliot must have really been writing about the 1866 reform and the accompanying riots (Chartist ones as I recall).These were much more dangerous and unsettling because they extended the franchise to working class people. The message of the novel for the reviewer is that too much democracy can cause social disorder.The title of the piece is Can democracy be relied upon? I wonder if that still might apply today, say in a recent referendum that also has led to much disorder --weeping Islingtonites, seriously rattled media commentators, deep anxiety about the price of second homes in Tuscany, if not exactly riots in the streets, unless you count street parties in Northern towns.
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