Npb sociologist defends Remain, modern classicism and Lacan-made-simple

A new focus for npb (Academic Tendency) activists today with a piece from a self-confessed sociologist and political economist. My suspicion of confusion started right there -- how can you be both (I tried once).

The perceived attack on 'the humanities' is  a nice unifier for a moral panic weaving together fears for the BBC, modern universities, London-centric Arts, the Guardian, jolly old gut feelings, and lots more npb enthusiasms:

These various hostilities are often lumped together as symptoms of a culture war, in which the demographic and educational divisions that came to light around Brexit are amplified and exploited for political gain. But we can be more specific than that. The new conservative ideology coalesces around one theme in particular: hostility towards the modern humanities, and their elevated status in British public life.

Elevated? Objects of scorn these days I would have said, conjuring up images of puppet show versions of Hamlet, or a chorus of angry young women reading rap lyrics dressed as endangered animals.

The 20th century witnessed a distinctive model of interlocking political, educational and artistic institutions, with the humanities at their core. Public bodies such as the British Academy and the BBC...icons of mass cultural modernity as the Arts Council, BBC2, the Open University and the new redbrick universities. By the 1980s, this project had borne such fruits as the South Bank Show, the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies [blimey!] and Channel 4.Threaded through all of this was the principle that there was a public interest in understanding ideas, artefacts and events.

And a clear npb focus on smug virtue-signalling instead of analysis, a swift move away from real politics into tokenism and identity politics, a move away from anything that required old-fashioned male colonialist scholarship (those traditional humanities subjects are associated with the old aristo elites as we shall see) 

the humanities play a pivotal ideological [ie negative] role for contemporary conservatism... The figure of the publicly funded humanities graduate, whose cultural privilege grants them access to the London elite, fuels a paranoid fantasy that is now central to conservative ideology....The neoliberal position is that a humanities degree is a simple waste of money...The nationalist concern is very different, and stems especially from the perceived influence of continental philosophy over the past 50 years....humanities graduates are an enemy within, a segment of the liberal elite that lacks national loyalty.

This person is a sociologist (OK and political economist, which just might be code for some kind of marxist I suppose) who has never read Bourdieu on cultural capital and the class structure, or how culture is used for social distancing and the rest. His insights are very limited as a result, barely more than npb working ideology:

Brexit has given nationalists the confidence to cast suspicions upon a wide array of independent public bodies, from universities to the Bank of England. One thing that neoliberals and nationalists can agree on is that anyone whose education and career has been spent in publicly funded liberal institutions, telling a story about “the public interest” is a fraud [so many of them are, especially if they have no idea what the public interest might be or the need to research it]. The popular appeal of Johnsonism lies in its antipathy to this elite.

The Cummings plan is for esoteric forms of rationalism [npb people do not like experts] to topple the humanities: not just data scientists but game theorists, cognitive scientists, software developers and “people who never went to university” [heaven forbid! That would bust the whole credentialist closure strategy!] should shape government thinking....The social sciences and humanities will eventually be taken over by physicists....The brief historical period, when learning about literature or, yes, Lacan, was a gift from the state, accessible to all [ha!] regardless of background, is firmly over.

I bet he has never read Lacan in his life, with its gigantic scope and spattering of classical allusions -- I have only dipped in myself. Very few of us have had the time to wrestle with it. He might have read various humanist garbled summaries in bullet point form of some of Lacan's greatest hits, which is much more common. I wonder how much CCCS stuff he has read, how many actual sermons from St Stuart Hall, or how much he knows about the neolib origins of the OU too, for that matter.

Boris Johnson is just as likely to lapse into Latin. The liberal humanities are being caught in a pincer movement, between hyper-modern futurism and pre-modern classicism [discuss the weird hybrid that must be 'modern classicism'] . Taken to extremes, the dream of wiping away modern culture in the name of some distant future and some primordial past has inspired the most hideous of rightwing regimes

Poor old npb lost in the middle, constantly having to identify only with what is 'modern'. No wonder no-one loves them. He nearly gets there right at the end:

Resentment towards cultural and political elites has clearly been brewing for decades, especially among non-Londoners and non-graduates...Too often, these elites have reflexively countered the attacks of Thatcherites and the Murdoch press by closing ranks, relying on the power of their contact books, free tickets and charm, but only deepening the sense of metropolitan luvvies doing favours for each other

Has he not noticed the appalling partisan npb activist preachy stuff that passes for the humanities these days (and some social science too, especially 'qualitative research'). He should really try some examples. His interest in defending mush must turn on his own hatreds of those above and below -- and maybe his career prospects?

Unless it is all parodic?

BBC -- strong on grid and group*

The Graun reports an insider at the BBC describing how panels and spokespeople were selected for broadcast debates. The key to it is the construction of a grid where approved characteristics, indicating the BBC's npb version of 'diversity', were plotted:

A whiteboard would be marked up with a clumsy grid system. The grid would revolve around a set of key identities such as “woman”, “northern” or “poc” (person of colour). These would then be cross-categorised with political stances such as “Brexiteer”, “Tory” or “progressive” [close to working class, upper class and 'us']. Our task would then be to ensure that any proposed panel contained a complete balance of all these attributes.

One notable incident came when in order to find an “authentic” northern voice, all plausible interviewees who displayed any obvious erudition were vetoed. In their place, newspaper owner Danny Lockwood was slotted into the identity sudoku, as his tone was seen to more directly signal his real northern identity. Several producers thought fit to mention that said individual was, in fact, a reactionary whose past achievements include mocking the “Zorro” outfits worn by some Muslim women. But the grids didn’t have any disqualifying categories.

And the ideological results would be satisfyingly self-confirming. Relating to Brexit coverage specifically, Anonymous explains that 

Very few MPs could afford to alienate one half of the leave/remain divide and even if their constituency might have permitted it, their party whip might not....The sectarian division of Brexit was taken at face value; and guests contributed to a culture of reinforcing this schism rather than trying to understand or interrogate it. [that used to be the journalists' job before they opted for conspicuous 'calling out'] ..

Broadly speaking, there were only two types of guests for producers to choose from: Brexiteer evangelists or slick and power-hungry London remainers... As the grid became the be-all and end-all of programming in some shows, all other ways of thinking about politics went out the window.

Well -- Beebfolk were also partisan on the issue, which is disguised a bit in this article opting for technical issues/incompetence rather than conspiracy/ ideological mindset, as usual. There are some hints of conspiracy/ideology though:

there was always a boozy familiarity between presenters, writers and MPs that demonstrated the perils of establishment thinking. A handful of MPs, deeply entrenched in London’s literary and intellectual circles, treat the BBC like a university common room. By default these individuals are remainers. To continue booking them (drinking with them), the production staff must then secure the presence of their leave-voting, far-right opposition.Off-camera, a highly influential Westminster social circle revolves around trips to various holiday homes in continental Europe, where various MPs and the journalists who are supposed to report on them have long been playing just as hard as they work.

Didactic note: 'grid' and 'group' are terms popularised by the anthropologist M Douglas to classify various social groups.'Grid' refers to the strength of boundaries separating them from other groups, 'group' to the level of solidarity among members -- upperclass UK has weak grid but strong group, working class has strong grid and group, npb has strong (if constantly redefined) grid and usually weak group (except when threatened).

Labour defeat -- Brexit or antisemitism?

In the increasingly 'spiky' contest for Labour leadership, Brexit finally emerged as an issue, says the Graun:

Sir Keir Starmer came under sustained fire from Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy over what the latter called Labour’s “tone deaf” approach to Brexit, which they said helped contribute to December’s crushing election loss....

Long-Bailey implicitly [a Guardian speciality this] condemned Starmer’s Commons-based tactics against Theresa May’s minority government, saying: “Unfortunately, we focused a lot on what was happening within Westminster, and didn’t convey what we were trying to do to our community. And that led to a lack of trust. “It took so many other things down with it. So in the election, when we should have been talking about jobs, aspiration, industry, what the future will look like, we were talking about Brexit and trying to justify our position, which was confusing.”...

Nandy said Labour’s problem with Brexit was that it “took all the wrong lessons from what the public were trying to tell us”....“Brexit was a real problem for us, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. And the reason it was a problem was because our response was so utterly tone-deaf.”

Of course, Starmer (who will probably win) still doesn't get it, or rather chooses not to:

Condemning what he said was a narrative that argued that if it had not been for Brexit it “would have all been fine” in the election, Starmer said: “If we go down that route we are heading straight towards defeat in the next general election, because that’s not an honest analysis.”...Starmer, who as shadow Brexit secretary spearheaded the policy, said that during his many visits to constituencies over the campaign other issues came up, such as a lack of trust in Corbyn and worries over antisemitism in Labour....Corbyn’s leadership was the number one issue on the doorstep, as well as what he called “manifesto overload”.

None of the candidates are discussing the real issues though, but happily the Graunid is on the case:

A sustainable vagina [there are single-use ones?] revolution is under way. But beware homemade tampons

I can see why people are drawn to crocheted menstrual products – the mainstream options are far from perfect. But the trend still makes me scream with dismay

EC plays chicken as demand for legal standards reappears*

EC demands seem more and more trivial. What happened to dignity, cosmopolitanism, suaveness etc? Every petty demand is gleefully reported by the Graun, of course, in an 'leaked' exclusive heading the website:

The EU will demand the UK maintains a ban on chlorinated chicken as the price for a trade agreement with Brussels, in a move that protects European meat exports and creates an obstacle to a deal with Donald Trump.

It seems to have been sneaked in, wrapped in general proposals, apparently as a retaliation after :

George Eustice, the new UK environment secretary, refused to guarantee that the government would not allow the importation of chlorine-washed chicken as part of a trade deal with the US.

So the EC rapidly hammered out a passage that would be 

a catch-all insurance for the EU that certain methods of food production – particular pesticides, endocrine disrupters or chlorine washes for poultry – will not be used in the UK....Barnier has admitted that such a policy is a “red rag” to the UK....“Our position, it’s not a position of revenge, or punishment or sanction, it is a position that is economically rational” [said France’s Europe minister]

More generally, a debate had been ongoing between the French government, which wanted to tie the UK completely to the developing EU rulebook on environmental, social and workers’ standards, and other member states who believed it would be a demand too far....

The EU also wants to establish a “governing body” to oversee a deal that “should be empowered to modify the level playing field commitments in order to include additional areas or to lay down higher standards over time”.

A 'governing body' legally enforcing a developing EU rule book -- sounds familiar.

In other news, British farmers also seem alarmed and have made the old npb demand for legal safeguards [so politicians can be sidestepped as in neo-liberalism, the founding principle of the ECJ and various UK judicial reviews]:

Calls for food standards to be enshrined in law to avoid post-Brexit ‘betrayal’ of consumers

I hope that will cover strawberries and BLTs. Does anyone remember BSE?

Meanwhile, P Toynbee labours [!] on and on, nearing the bottom of the barrel each time:

The only way to a Labour victory may be a pact with the Lib Dems

She's only kidding. She knows that is not on. After all, it was proposed by 'two people some Labour members may be disinclined to hear [!]  – Tony Blair and Liberal Democrat leadership candidate Ed Davey'. Despite their silver tongues, 'Frankly, the notion of a merger is for the birds'.

So what might be left?

There should be a socialist and a social democratic party.

And PR voting. I wonder why no-one has tried that before?

It will all work nicely with K Starmer as new leader ('a serious heavyweight former prosecutor, backed by a strong new shadow team'). But which party would he lead?

Blue passport disgrace latest

It seems we are to get blue passports from next month says el Grud. The resultant controversy rasies as an issue one of the most puzzling bits of Remanierism -- why are blue passports hated exactly? Not the royal coat of arms nor the pompous request that HM subjects not be impeded, but a blue cover

 Redesign proves as divisive as EU referendum, with one former MP calling it ‘ignorant’

I suppose P Patel could not resist kicking the wasps' nest:

 Patel said: “Leaving the European Union gave us a unique opportunity to restore our national identity and forge a new path in the world. By returning to the iconic blue and gold design, the British passport will once again be entwined with our national identity [how exactly?] and I cannot wait to travel on one.”

Sure as clickbaits attract clicks:

pro-European campaigners and nationalist politicians in Northern Ireland predicted the new passports would result in Britons entering the slow lane at airports and ports throughout the EU....Edward McMillan-Scott, the [European Movement's] patron and an MEP for 30 years, said the blue passport would be seen as offensive to many Europeans [worse than your mother smelling of artichokes?] ...“It will be seen as a symbol of the attitude prevailing in the Conservative party towards the rest of Europe that is isolationist, ignorant and self-destructive,” he said....Without doubt this marking out of British passport holders by having another colour will make life uncomfortable, especially for the millions travelling to the EU.”...

“When I was an MEP, I remember being given a special blue pass that was meant to make it easier for me to pass through border checks on my way to Brussels and Strasbourg. It was more hassle than it was worth because some border officials weren’t sure what the document was and we got held up with endless checks.

So there must have been some anti blue thing going on for some time?

Claire Hanna, the pro-European Social Democratic and Labour MP for Belfast South, said: “The fact that this is being lauded as a big win sums up Brexit. The colour changes but the opportunity and potential has been restricted. In this case, blue will represent economic harm and limited horizons for the passport holder, and that is a crying shame.”

I think the whole issue sums up Remain -- some massive symbolic importance is being given to something in a way which seems to awaken all sorts of fears of poor, 'second-class'  treatment and sneering Euro contempt. It all makes a lot of sense to the npb but to no-one else.

Barnier throws a dead cat at Elgin marbles.

Solemn, statesmanlike and accomplished M Barnier has apparently issued a new demand as a condition for a trade deal in what would look like a hissy fit in anyone less cosmopolitan urbane, skilled etc.  First, however, the EC made:. 

an attempt to win back the Parthenon marbles for Athens. [via]...The latest draft of the EU’s negotiating position calls for both sides to “address issues relating to the return or restitution of unlawfully removed cultural objects to their countries of origin”...[and]...both Greek and EU officials...[insisted]...that the clause, proposed by Italy, Spain, Cyprus and Greece, was not related to the marbles held by the British museum but merely to a desire to stop the fraudulent movement of antiquities around Europe.

Next,  Barnier's reply to a speech by the UK's negotiator, D. Frost:

Frost had set a tough line on EU demands by claiming the consent of the British public would “snap dramatically and finally” if the UK continued to be bound to the EU rulebook after December 2020. The latest EU negotiating mandate says those level playing field provisions should further develop “over time”. ...Barnier’s response, and that of other EU officials, was one of polite fury.

Yesterday, el Grudnia included more detail:

[Frost] insisted that the ability to break free from the EU’s rulebook was essential to the purpose of Brexit... the fundamentals of what it means to be an independent country,” he said. “It is central to our vision that we must have the ability to set laws that suit us – to claim the right that every other non-EU country in the world has.”...we only want what other independent countries have....a relationship of equals.”...he hoped to dissuade the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, from the view that Brexit was about “damage limitation”.

Not weaselly enough, obviously, and far too challenging an idea. Independence? Quoi? Barnier revealed his own EC-defined notion of sovereignty:

Asked if Frost was right in his speech on Monday night to say that agreeing to such alignment in a trade deal would be undemocratic, Barnier told reporters: “Truly not. It is a sovereign decision of the EU, it is a sovereign decision of the UK to cooperate [ie obey] … That is what Boris Johnson wrote in the political declaration.”

As an indication of the statesman-like way in which talks are proceeding:

One senior EU source likened the [Greek marbles] row as throwing a “dead cat” on the table to divert attention from the fallout from Frost’s comments.

We are well used to dead cats imported from Australia by now -- but from the skilled, urbane, cosmoplitan accomplished etc etc Barnier?

Realpolitics again

A welcome return to traditional Graun fare today with the once-estimable J Harris now pursuing the proper day job and reporting scandals in social care. And this -- I nearly missed it because it disappeared from the website this morning:

‘Fighting like ferrets in a bag’ as EU tries to plug Brexit cash hole

UK’s withdrawal has left £62bn hole in bloc’s purse for the next seven years 

Budget discussions in Brussels are always rancorous affairs. But this one is of a different order: everyone will have to pay more. No one wants to.  ...There are two main rivals in the budget battle. On one side are those who proudly describe themselves as “the Frugals” – the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden and Denmark... As the biggest net payers, the Frugals have been insisting on a budget of no more than 1% of the EU’s gross national income. The European commission’s initial proposal was for 1.1% – around €1.25tn over the seven years....Then there are the “Friends of Cohesion”. “The Friends of Corruption, you mean?” spat one EU diplomat from a Frugal state....The 15 under the FoC flag are the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Estonia, Croatia, Malta, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Portugal and Greece.The Frugals say that the commission’s €90bn in cuts to agriculture and cohesion funding [!] are not enough. The FoC say they are being unfairly targeted and that the richer countries should cough up some more, setting up a battle between east and west.

The debate is all the more toxic as the commission has proposed that cohesion funds should also, in the future, be conditional on member states respecting the rule of law. It is a red rag to the bulls in the nationalist governments of Hungary and Poland...Berlin’s main concern is that they don’t come out of it looking worse than the French. In Paris, the government just worries about how much cash is going to go to its farmers...even Irish politics [is] in turmoil 

A welcome return to realpolitik here too, away from all this sentiment about common destiny, family ties, international solidarity, the four freedoms (remember them?) and all that stuff. 

Agony aunt blames hormones for npb politics

It might just be possible that the kids of neuro virtue-signallers are becoming neuro virtue-signallers themselves. As ever, the Observer agony aunt is at hand

My daughter is 13 and while she seems like a normal, happy teenager much of the time, she has frequent breakdowns about her future, the future of the planet, politics. It came to a head when she couldn’t stop crying and said: “I hate living. I wish I was born in a world before TV and internet, so I didn’t have to deal with all this stuff.” She went on to say: “What’s the point when we’re all going to die anyway? All we do is wake up and it’s the same thing again and again until we die.”...I’ve talked to her about what we can do, or are doing: being vegetarian, recycling, reducing packaging, but it doesn’t allay her angst [strange that --but she's not seeing it as just symbolic?] ....Half of me wants to say: you’re right. Is it my fault for sharing politics with her?

Mariella writes:

 Maybe you need to mix it up a little bit at breakfast. Put your fears for the planet aside, switch off the Today programme, fold up the Guardian and put on some Abba? Have some fun together... life is still worth living because, even in the worst of times, there is joy to be found. Try changing your morning radio station – Chris Evans brings a welcome blast of irrepressible enthusiasm to the day – and find activities with your 13-year-old that are just for fun

Then an odd bit, suggesting that millenial/Gen Z concerns are just mistaken responses to hormonal disturbance:

Your girl is a teenager, and already likely to be struggling with...hormonal cataclysm...In her elevated emotional state she’s capable of getting herself worked into the same frenzy about global warming as about the injustice of missing a friend’s birthday party....When I see the Bambi-like figure of Greta Thunberg on the world stage, I find myself guilty about the world they’re being fast-forwarded into. The bottom line is that world affairs can be crushing at a time when an unrequited crush on the boy next door is barely survivable

At least the fears and anxieities about Brexit seem to have been shelved -- but there's alway another moral panic in the insatiable drive to find a topic for cultural politics and social distancing. Frostrup admits as much really, underneath a bit of biological determinism -- competititon for status among friends will do just as well as getting all Bambi-like on the world stage.

M Frostrup's own attempts to protect the environment can be seen below in the picture that accompanies her other article on sleep deprivation:

Mariella wears Coco rosehip pyjama set by oliviavonhalle.com; [£420] eyemask on bed by slipsilkpillowcase.co.uk; [£50] and Echo alarm clock by newgateworld.com.[£22]  Makeup by James O’Riley at Premier Hair and Makeup using SUQQU; and hair by John Frieda. Photograph: Kate Martin/The Observer

Where are they now? #94

Remainer journalists can write consolatory and therapeutic columns, remainer politicians can brood on the backbenches, write their memoirs, or guest on Newsnight. Others must find it so difficult to accept they have been left out


Q Letts in theTimes reports that as the Cabinet reshuffle unfolded in Downing Street

 that idiot who used to scream “Stop Brexit” outside parliament [a certain Steve Bray] had taken up position with an enormous ghetto blaster. It repeatedly played The Lunatics Have Taken over the Asylum. Funny first time, this was less amusing at its 20th rendition.

Binaries and smudges

I predicted (to the wife and the birds in the garden) that  P Toynbee would be uspset by the Cabinet reshuffle yesterday-- and she is! 

The removal of Sajid Javid – and anyone who ever queried Boris Johnson’s progress – is a demand for craven cabinet obedience

Not long ago, she was predicting the failure of Johnson's spending plans as the then Chancellor insisted on cuts and further austerity. Now it seems the reverse:

The Treasury, which strove to protect the nation’s finances against the worst damages of Brexit, is a diminished force – for now.  ...This is a revenge reshuffle: off with the head of anyone who ever queried Johnson’s progress, any doubter of his hard Brexit deal-making.

 She remembers her earlier arguments halfway down and now qualifies them:

Resisting Treasury orthodoxy is often the right course of action; more spending is precisely what the country now needs. But there is scant sign that the money will flow to restoring the greatest damage done by almost a decade of austerity.

Johnson’s choice of pipsqueaks and placemen, yes-women and yellow bellies is the most under-brained, third-rate cabinet in living memory...Dominic Raab in the Foreign Office...has proved himself well able to lie like a battalion of troopers on anything connected to Brexit. On Sky he was already laying out his “blame the EU” strategy for the new red tape, tariffs and border checks Johnson’s own obduracy will create....Michael Gove, [is] in control of the Cabinet Office and de facto deputy prime minister. Never forget that behind the suave courtesy is a ferocious ideologue, devilishly effective in driving his projects through government. 

I have no time for Gove's awful education policies, but I do think it is impossible to get any sort of proper grasp with this absurd binary -- yellow bellies/ferocious ideologue

The Grun editorial goes for classic liberal smudge, with lots of conditionals:

It may [also] be that Mr Javid, a protege of George Osborne, was too wedded to fiscal orthodoxy and austerity to permit it. The truth probably lies in a mix of the two readings – centralist control and a difference over spending... it may be premature to see Thursday’s dramatic events as nothing more than a Johnson-Cummings power grab.

Both the Editor and PToynbee are also worried that 

a task as important as chairing the vital Cop26 UN climate change conference in Glasgow falls to the inexperienced new business secretary, Alok Sharma.

The whole thing seems a bit fuhrerprinzip-ish of them -- do Chairpersons dictate the whole thing? Does climate change really depend on who is chairing some meeting?

The good old days*

Brexit coverage has lapsed still further as the Graun turns its attention to other moral panics -- climate, coronavirus, HS2,an altercation with a rapper at the NME awards...

I miss P Toynbee's rants, so I thought I would revisit one of her greatest hits from 21 Jun 2016, three days before the referendum vote:

This country is not the leave campaign’s ingrown place of phobias, conspiracies and fear of foreigners. Our generosity will defeat their meanness of spirit

The polls say the vote hangs in the balance. But I refuse to believe it. I don’t believe Britain will take leave of its senses and plunge down into the dark and rancid place the Brexiters would drag us.

She faced an obvious problem even then, further revealing the negative social distancing of npb politics:

Reasons for remaining may not all be so elevated. For better and sometimes for worse, we are a small-c conservative country by nature, no great risk-takers...nor was Britain much inspired by the fine ideals of a European Union either

She developed a theme that was to make her famous:

One oddity is that usually the old are national ballast, but this time they are the outers, and the anarchists and the young have the wisdom. 

Toynbee is old herself, of course, so this is vicarious distancing --we all like to be down wiv da kids on some issues at least

There are some famous jibes about Leavers, starting with a bit of dogwhistling:

We will never know if the death of Jo Cox swayed any votes or if a referendum tendency to revert to the status quo rescued us in the end. What stares people in the face is that voting for Faragism means getting Faragism – he who said it would be “legitimate” if people feel “voting doesn’t change anything then violence is the next step” as “our civilisation is under threat”. Whose civilisation? What of the extremism of Boris Johnson and Gove’s leave campaign warning that “murderers, terrorists and kidnappers from countries like Turkey could flock to Britain if it remains in the European Union”.

She predicts one of the issues that will lead to Leave,  but offers jolly old common sense in response:

Sovereignty sounds magical, divine, absolute and indivisible....[but]...We sacrifice it in the daily compromises of family [linking national and individual sovereignty as a break with classic liberal conceptions of the sovereign individual]...Democracy is one long surrender of sovereignty to the common good

Letting the electorate define the public good would be handy --but they need 'the wise' of course as well, those who see. It's still all classic JS Mill really. And the EU enshrines his liberalism, not neo liberalism

Those freedoms the EU promotes in this the most civilised, uncorrupt, [!] humane part of the world, protected by a court of human rights, [and regulated by the ECJ with which the ECHR was often confused -- even by me] with social security a founding instinct [!]...What insanity to wish to escape it – all for some phantom “sovereignty”.

Anticipatory millenialism with this:

There’s no hope of saving the planet without making rules together [but why only in  the EU?] against scorching ourselves to death.  

Threats of doom with this:

We will no longer be a United Kingdom, with Scotland gone and Ireland riven by a hard border...a City fast losing business to the EU, all our worst propensities would see us scratch a disreputable living as Europe’s off-shore tax haven [too late there], casino and obsequious harbour for the world’s brigands...The anti-politics, anti-human rights, anti-expert, know-nothing world of the new regime would be a post-reason place,

I don’t believe those politics of isolation will win on Thursday. I can’t and won’t [!] believe it – and if I’m wrong then being wrong is the least of the despair I shall feel. I believe we will remain...Britain will hold, just, to its better self.

I do miss her.

'Disastrous' agricultural policy legally backed, argue hedgehogs,voles and yellowhammers

The GRun is still unhappy about leaving the marvelous protections offered by the EC. I do hope they don't drip on and on as in Kettle. They have to be a bit paranoid and legalistic but they can still raise alarum and despondency.

Wildlife, air quality and fish stocks are all at risk as ministers water down EU regulations

[The new environmental laws] leave[s] gaps, fail on enforcement and oversight, open loopholes for future ministers to quietly backslide from existing standards, and turn what is currently a coherent system of long-term, stable regulation into a patchwork of competing and sometimes contradictory proposals....the new standards on air – along with those on the other three priority areas – will not be set until October 2022....ministers will be required only to set out the steps they intend to take, without accountability as to whether those measures are sufficient...New powers have also been quietly inserted for the government to derogate from high standards at will. 

The existing legislation and EC protection has evidently failed to maintain air quality, of course.Maybe the laws were not enforced enthusiastically? Also:

The EU’s common agricultural policy was often disastrous for wildlife and nature [!]..... and the government was rightly cheered when it proposed paying farmers for providing public goods – clean water, good soil, flood protection.But the new system of environmental land management contracts – to be phased in over seven years – will be voluntary [market-regulated still?]

the fishing quotas each year are still to be set by ministers, with the power to depart from that scientific advice [on sustainability]  and to choose which stocks will be fished sustainably and which will not.

the UK will be quietly swapping an agreed set of outcomes and stringent [!] environmental protections for a set of vague promises, voluntary measures, and deliberately loose and leaky legislation.

So where do we start? This is the old 'progressive' view that a centralised and legally backed regulatory system will have some liberalising benefits -- to offset the neoilib damage and help us ignore it. Ordinary national governments,and certainly their electorates, cannot always be trusted to get this 'balance' right. Existing legislation has not prevented environmental damage, and was even 'disastrous' but at least it had legal backup (but why does that redeem it?) . New legislation is voluntary -- but we can at least campaign and vote against new legislation and (eventually) replace the Government in an election. Who can change the ECJ's mind?

The writer also fashionably rejects human exceptionalism with this

Hedgehogs, yellowhammers and dormice did not figure highly in the EU referendum campaign

Votes for wildlife? A social theorist I am currently reading seriously (?) advocates this.I suspect it relates only to cuddly animals. Won't anyone speak up for the slug?

Thank goodness there is no chance of further environmental pollution in the perfume industry:

Erykah Badu is making vagina-scented incense. A perfumer explained it to us

As someone who already suffers from air polluted by perfumes (male and female) in shops, lifts,on escalators, in swimming pools, bloody everywhere -- where is environmental law when you need it?

 

The personal, the political and the paranoid

Snowflakes may continue to melt even now Brexit is 'lost'. As predicted here, climate change is becoming the new abstract cause celebre of the npb, and this one is satisfyingly long-lived enough to provde virtue-signalling for years.It has a moral panic-like quality of joining up so many emotional issues -- generational and cultural politics, sentimentality towards [cuddly] animals and 'Nature', lots of opportunities to say they told us so. Odd bits include a new admiration for 'science' which is positive, if probably pretty shallow, but emotional commitments seem to drive it.

With inevitable personal consequences. The Grd reports:

‘Overwhelming and terrifying’: the rise of climate anxiety

Experts concerned young people’s mental health particularly hit by reality of the climate crisis

Over the past few weeks Clover Hogan has found herself crying during the day and waking up at night gripped by panic...The bushfires ravaging her homeland over the past few weeks have taken their toll....her lowest point came when she heard about the death of half a billion [presumably cuddly ones unless she mourned malarial mosquitoes?] animals incinerated as the fires swept through the bush. “That was the moment where I felt my heart cleave into two pieces. I felt absolutely distraught.” [me,me, me]

Psychologists warn that the impact can be debilitating for the growing number of people overwhelmed by the scientific reality [only socially constructed, surely?] of ecological breakdown and for those who have lived through traumatic climate events, often on the climate frontline in the global south..

Those actually seem to be two kinds of victim though -- real and vicarious? Vicarious victimhood only seems to increase neediness:

[vicarious victims] felt that [the crisis] was bigger than their capacity to enact meaningful change,” [an" expert"] said. “The consequences of this can be pretty dire – anxiety, burnout and a sort of professional paralysis.”

Activist commitment to moral causes at the personal level is almost always bound to exceed the actual capacity to change, of course, and any activist needs to grasp that. Must be hard if you have an overweening moral superiority and sense of entitlement, of course. 

Given the stance of most primary schools I know, it is no surprise to find that:

worrying levels of environment-related stress and anxiety [have increased] in much younger children...My own daughter was just six when she came to me and said: ‘Daddy, are we winning the war against climate change?' [and what was your reply, Daddy?]

The answer doubtless seems to be more stunts to turn plastic cups into 'art', go on crocodilian demos with hand-made placards, and make an i-Phone video where the face of a chimpanzee morphs into a globe:

parents should talk to their children about their concerns and help them feel empowered to take action – however small – that can make a difference [a contradiction here, surely?] ...the cure to climate anxiety is the same as the cure for climate change – action. It is about getting out and doing something that helps. [Even if it is only symbolic, and politically pointless?]

 To no real surprise, the psychologist quoted had:

set up Force of Nature, an initiative aimed at helping young people realise their potential to create change...that helps them navigate their anxiety and realise their potential to get involved, take action and make a stand.

Again classically, it is all one struggle:

In the global south, increasingly intense storms, wildfires, droughts and heatwaves have left their mark not just physically but also on the mental wellbeing of millions of people...“The physical impacts related to extreme weather, food shortages and conflict are intertwined with the additional burden of mental health impacts and it is these psychologists are particularly concerned about.”...Psychologists are ready and willing to help [for free?] countries protect the health and wellbeing of their citizens

Victims might even include those same heroic psychologists:

[A spokesperson for another group of psychologists] specialising in climate anxiety – said he and his colleagues were not immune from the psychological impacts of the crisis...“This is such a universal thing that [we] have all been through our own set of climate-related grief and despair, and we talk about riding the wave between hope and despair … it is absolutely as real for us as it is for anyone else.” [so -- soft pyschotherapist heal thyself?]

The real issue is that the npb can see no way to deal with new global risks in the same way they have dealt with other more localised risks -- by reassuring fantasy, social distancing,  talking or buying their way out.This is what fuels the panic. It's probably the same with the current coverage of the new corona flu virus [definitely not cuddly]: it might not care whether you can bullshit about Lacan.

They have also been demoralised hugely by their failure to talk their way past Brexit.

Observer puts fingers in ears and pinny over head

A lengthy Observer editorial today, dated from a week ago. I won't repeat it. Why do they repeat it? Are they going to repeat it every week until we see sense?

A Rawnsley discusses the Labour leadership race and blames Corbynistas for everything. There is a single mention of Brexit, rebuking Long Bailey for seeing:

nothing wrong with the fantastic policies that she helped to formulate, suggesting that all would have been just dandy but for Brexit. 

There's an staggeringly banal cartoon:

 I only hope Nick Cohen is well.

Nothing will help us now we have left

I continue to maintain my respect and admiration for P Toynbee in the Grud --and simultaneously to worry about the bitter conceptual block eating away at her over Brexit. Today's piece is an example. Here is the gist:

Boris Johnson’s mighty pledge to narrow the gap between the richest and poorest regions in the UK is the policy with everything – except the monumental sums to make it happen....Local government is drained of funds, and the places worst hit are the very same now promised investment...regional inequality of income is at 1901 levels [relatively, of course]  Other European countries face similar regional problems, but ours are worse.  [oh dear -- looks a bit ominous]

Germany is the stand-out success.  ..."They spent 10 times more than the [British] government is proposing, on research and development, gold-plated universities and business support,” says Tom Forth, head of data at ODI Leeds, a specialist in regional policy. Germany did it by using cities as hubs: he points to those cities needing fast train, tram and bus services to local towns....Rhetoric and promises are already running dangerously far ahead of any “levelling up” that people will ever actually see.

This was to help absorb the East, of course, a very well-supported project, but even so -- it's a useful comparison. But then an odd bit where her pet obsession returns in a strangely incoherent way:

Of course, one easy way to narrow the north-south divide beckons. The south’s wealth relies on the glittering gold of financial services. Brexit plans risk dealing it a hefty blow, sacrificing bankers (unpopular, but a huge chunk of our economy), for fishermen (popular, but negligible economically).

So amid the convolution, Brexit plans will not permit the north-south divide to deepen as it did before (under the EU). Surely that's good then? No --

The City sent up distress flares after Johnson’s Brexit speech on Monday, reminding him finance is “critically important”. Without it, expect empty Treasury coffers for all this levelling up. Levelling down may be what we get.

So remedying regional inequality by tackling the concentration of wealth in the South will not work, because overall, revenues will fall (or so the City has threatened). This reanimates the old Tory stuff about 'levelling down' -- is she subscribing to that after all these years? Given the apparently iron laws of capitalism, just as neolibs have always said, no non-market policy to eliminate regional inequalities can ever work, as the Southern Europeans had to learn.

How on earth did Germany manage to raise the revenue to spend in the East? 10 times more than Johnson is proposing!

Nothing will work except markets (and international neolib manifestations of them of course). If only we had stayed in (and just got used to deepening regional inequalities?). 

What makes her argument coherent is just the one focal concern  -- it is anti-Brexit and anti-Johnson (mostly for doing Brexit). Any anti Brexit arguments will do -- social democratic, neolib, all are in the mix. Only failure and deepening inequality await until we rejoin.

Guardian opts for calm over media confection (!)

R Behr reported his own heart attack in the Gruan and came near to blaming Brexit. He has recovered and  should really be sitting in his backyard reading something light like 50 Shades of Grey (well, perhaps not that). Yet the anti-Johnson diatribe seems as splenetic as ever (are spleens somehow connected to hearts? I've never been sure). The main bit of interest amid the personalised rant is about Brexit:

Johnson believes in a third way between orthodox Thatcherism, which mutated into hardline Brexitism [!], and the more paternalist, interventionist tradition sustained in recent years by Tory remainers, with Michael Heseltine as their figurehead. With typical solipsism, the current leader pitches himself as the incarnation of this hybrid idea.[ see 'pragmatism' below]

Given the Government is in power for a while, Behr pins hopes on a Tory revolt:

the salient question is what might cause a few dozen Conservatives to rebel. Precedent suggests hardline Eurosceptics will break first, which is why Johnson sustains his anti-Brussels rhetoric at campaign pitch.

But would he want this sort of revolt which might lead to more compromises with Eurosceptics ? Behr overcomes contradictions by heading for the abstract: it is a matter of principle, maybe even morals:

A new generation of Tories will have to discover the independence of mind and insurrectionary spirit necessary to restore sovereignty to the House of Commons....The EU itself will be less compliant and there are other players in this drama beyond Westminster. Scotland is not susceptible to Johnsonian wit. [the Scots will inavde?] Nor is the global economy....

Supporting the wisdom of the global economy now!

[There is no] new flaw in the structures of democratic accountability but it is newly hazardous after the steadying [!] voices of convention and protocol shouted themselves hoarse over Brexit, then fell silent

Well -- indeed. We can see the sense there.

S Moore is pretty rational by comparison:

The hashtag #thick trended on Twitter. If, I wondered, after four years, the thick people won, how thick do you have to be lose?

I continue to think that, like many things, a good chunk of Brexit is media confection. Most people have lives. Don’t @ me about the chunk that isn’t – the unsettled status of so many....When I looked at the media, I did feel things – rage, mostly. Sorry, but I don’t want the likes of Ian McEwan complaining he is now one of the “left-behinds”. If any of this was a revolt against the elite, it hasn’t worked. The elites just won’t stop eliting [staggering insight, for virtue-signallers everywhere].

[She consults her friends, as do all good Graun journalists] 

“I feel European,” they say – but Europe has not gone away. No one says: “I am feeling really EU-ish,” do they?...[the current protest -- as in the Guardina-- is] a movement led by white middle-class blokes [and P Toynbee]  – the self-appointed leaders of the remain/People’s Vote crew ... Are all these people gonna [demotic to be down wit da kids, or poor speech recognition]  strop till they drop?

What can people who think Brexit is a terrible mistake do – just hope for failure? Or maybe understand their own, which takes guts? The union-jack waistcoats are as idiotic as the blue and yellow faces [let's be nice and liberal, middle-ground.Let the npb tell you what to do] . These people could surely find common ground in a dressing-up box.

[Should opposition be confined to] 

criticising every move that Boris Johnson makes as he enters the fantasy free-trade nirvana? This is not a strategy. There has to be some attempt at consensus around certain areas.

There has been so much sentimental tosh from both sides, from Auld Lang Syne to projections on to the white cliffs of Dover. All of this has left me cold. You can tell me I am heartless, but as politics is once more happening, pragmatism is called for: around education, the NHS, the devastating cuts to local councils...Without strategy and hope, the left are becoming the left behinds.

And Jayanetti:

The unexciting truth is this. Britain voted to leave the EU, driven by concerns over immigration, sovereignty, and disaffection among some with the establishment. The Tories won a majority based on delivering Brexit and not being Jeremy Corbyn. Values influenced this – broad brush values that have been part of public opinion for decades....People’s attitude to Brexit naturally influences their view of the process of leaving the EU. But outside that, most of the weekly storms and skirmishes that are chalked up to the culture war should instead be understood as rants by bigots and bores. Casting them as some kind of profound conflict makes British society seem more intractably divided than it is, while giving the tedious whingers a political elevation they do not merit.

I don't Tweet so I haven't followed the latest, but I had a quick look at #thick (and then erased all traces of my presence -- I hope). Most of the top comments seemed to be hostile a la Moore. Some of the original ones seemed to be showing pictures of fat white blokes members with swastika tatts or gullible plonkers interviewed by media smartasses.  

I am sure there is much material for this blog in social media --but how depressing a task it would be to follow it!