Let's roll back democracy

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.

Hang Tony Blair!

The blame game goes on, and now it is MrTony in the frame. 

The argument goes like this...We now know that Mr Tony and his cronies were telling a lot of porkies about the threat from Iraq. OK, to be fair, Tony calls them 'judgments in good faith'. Once we knew this, when Chilcot finally reported,we could see how Tony had caused everyone to lose faith in politicians, and this loss of faith led to people disregarding the wisdom of politicians in 2016 and voting leave.

All you need for this one to work is to postulate a vortex in space-time itself that connects 2016 with 2003, so that people knew of Chilcot's findings before the war with Iraq actually took place.

I'm convinced

Boris speaks!

I don't often agree with Boris Johnson, but I reproduce below his blog(?): 

On Friday I heard a new dawn chorus outside my house. There was a rustling and twittering, as though of starlings assembling on a branch. Then I heard a collective clearing of the throat, and they started yodelling my name – followed by various expletives. “Oi Boris – c---!” they shouted. Or “Boris – w-----!” I looked out to see some otherwise charming-looking young people, the sort who might fast to raise money for a Third World leprosy project.
They had the air of idealists – Corbynistas; Lefties; people who might go on a march to stop a war. And so when they started on their protest song, I found myself a bit taken aback. “EU – we love YOU! EU – we love YOU!” they began to croon. Curious, I thought. What exactly is it about the EU that attracts the fervent admiration of north London radicals? It was the first time I had ever heard of trendy socialists demonstrating in favour of an unelected supranational bureaucracy.
In the old days, the Lefties used to dismiss the EU as a bankers’ ramp. Tony Benn thought it was unacceptably anti-democratic. Jeremy Corbyn used to vote against it in every division. Why has it suddenly become so fashionable among our nose-ringed friends? I tried to think which of the EU’s signature policies they were so keen on. Surely not the agricultural subsidies that make up most of the budget, and that have done so much to retard development in the Third World. They can’t – for heaven’s sake – support the peak tariffs that discriminate against value added goods from Sub-Saharan Africa. Nor can they possibly enjoy the sheer opacity of the system – the fact that there are 10,000 officials who are paid more than the Prime Minister, and whose names and functions we don’t know.
They can’t really be defending the waste, the fraud – or the endless expensive caravan of crémant-swilling members of the European Parliament between Brussels and Luxembourg and Strasbourg. Are they really demonstrating in favour of the torrent of red tape that has done so much to hold back growth in the EU? It seems an odd sort of campaign theme: what do we want? More Brussels law-making! When do we want it? Now!
Naturally, Lefties might want laws to protect the workforce – but they would surely want those laws to be made by politicians that the people could remove at elections. No: the more I thought about it, the odder it seemed. It was incredible that these young and idealistic people should be making a rumpus about the euro – the key policy of the modern EU – when that project has so gravely intensified suffering in many southern EU countries, and deprived a generation of young people of employment.
Perhaps, I mused, it was a general feeling that the EU was about openness, tolerance and diversity. But they must surely know that the EU’s rules on free movement mean a highly discriminatory regime, one that makes it much more difficult for people from outside the EU to get into Britain – even though we need their skills.
So what was it about? People’s emotions matter, even when they do not seem to be wholly rational. The feelings being manifested outside my house are shared by the large numbers of people – 30,000, they say – who at the weekend came together in Trafalgar Square to hear pro-EU speeches by Sir Bob Geldof. There is, among a section of the population, a kind of hysteria, a contagious mourning of the kind that I remember in 1997 after the death of the Princess of Wales. It is not about the EU, of course; or not solely. A great many of these protesters – like dear old Geldof – are in a state of some confusion about the EU and what it does.
It is not, as he says, a “free trade area”; if only it were. It is a vast and convoluted exercise in trying to create a federal union – a new political construction based in Brussels. But, as I say, I don’t believe that it is psychologically credible to imagine young people chanting hysterically in favour of Brussels bureaucrats. The whole protest is not about the EU project, per se; it is about them – their own fears and anxieties that are now being projected on to Brexit.
These fears are wildly overdone. The reality is that the stock market has not plunged, as some said it would – far from it. The FTSE is higher than when the vote took place. There has been no emergency budget, and nor will there be. But the crowds of young people are experiencing the last psychological tremors of Project Fear – perhaps the most thoroughgoing government attempt to manipulate public opinion since the run-up to the Iraq War.
When Geldof tells them that the older generation has “stolen your future” by voting to Leave the EU, I am afraid there are too many who still believe it. It is time for this nonsense to end. It was wrong of the Government to offer the public a binary choice on the EU without being willing – in the event that people voted Leave – to explain how this can be made to work in the interests of the UK and Europe. We cannot wait until mid-September, and a new PM. We need a clear statement, now, of some basic truths:
1. There is no risk whatever to the status of the EU nationals now resident and welcome in the UK, and indeed immigration will continue – but in a way that is controlled, thereby neutralising the extremists.
2. It is overwhelmingly in the economic interests of the other EU countries to do a free-trade deal, with zero tariffs and quotas, while we extricate ourselves from the EU law-making system.
3. We can do free-trade deals with economies round the world, many of which are already applying.
4. We can supply leadership in Europe on security and other matters, but at an intergovernmental level.
5. The future is very bright indeed. That’s what Geldof should be chanting.

Amateur experts

Of all the lovely examples of hypocrites wringing their hands over the Leave vote, the reaction of university Vice-Chancellors has been outstanding. They urged us all to vote Remain, of course, with all the authority they could muster (very little, after clamouring for higher fees and paying themselves generously). They seem to have been really hurt by Gove's remarks about not trusting experts during the campaign. They see this as a crisis for universities themselves, the home of expertise, and are urging experts to fight back.

One prof in the Guardian (30 June 2016) contrasts his own expertise (in Political Science!) with the non-intellectual views that dominated the Leave campaign (he says -- but how does he know?).  He said :

Amid the doubt and speculation there is at least some certainty. We now know that we didn’t manage to convince enough people of the importance of our science, our truth or our facts. Voters preferred a more visceral understanding of the issues that we thought mattered. Untruths as opposed to experts. How did it come to that? 

So naively positivist -- 'our truth or our facts' indeed! He suggests university experts must now make a real effort to contact those who despise experts -- not to learn from them, of course, but to be able to hector them more effectively. He must long for the days when people just accepted whatever a nice expert told them, without any qualifications like how the 'facts' were obtained, why others disagree with them, and what the implications might be for 'truth'. That experts do disagree is apparent to anyone who reads the news or uses social media, and so is the intrusion of their vested interests - the monopoly of the paid priests of orthodoxy are gone for good

University managers have done more than any single group to attack academic expertise in their own institutions. They imposed management instead. They manage complex institutions by constructing a specially simplified and far from expert paper world, the home of the amateur. I don't think many of them have acquired any actual managerial expertise (maybe an MBA -- master of bugger all --  here and there), so they have to rely on noddy stuff they have encountered at idiotic management training 'workshops'. The ones I know would never dream of actually researching the effects of their decisions. They think simple managerial techniques and slogans can replace expertise.

This is seen best in the ludicrous practice of insisting on standard validation documents for course proposals: subject experts would have to explain to managers what their objectives were, because it would only embarrass a manager with a background, say, in Sport Science to have to actually discuss English Literature (and vice versa) . There could be no more than 5 objectives in one institution I know. Proposers had to use only predicative verbs (a fancy way of saying they had to be written in ways that promised to do things). People could only suggest 10 titles for the booklist, and had to include 4 articles. Recent publications were demanded, a hilarious requirement for courses like Philosophy or History. Actual 'discussion' took place on the basis of these ludicrous simplifications, so that rank amateurs could have a say on the academic standing of courses and even veto some. Verdicts were delivered in terms of bureaucratic pettiness (eg too many web articles) or childish impressions ('We did not feel full confidence...'), or wild assertions like 'Britain does not need more courses like this'. 

People outside unis have to realize that this is the reality of 'quality control'. The real issues of quality turn on things like whether courses are representative of their disciplines and whether the teaching is adequate in covering the main topics, but managers cannot discuss those issues of course.

Amateur experts

Of all the lovely examples of hypocrites wringing their hands over the Leave vote, the reaction of university Vice-Chancellors has been outstanding. They urged us all to vote Remain, of course, with all the authority they could muster (very little, after clamouring for higher fees and paying themselves generously). They seem to have been really hurt by Gove's remarks about not trusting experts during the campaign. They see this as a crisis for universities themselves, the home of expertise, and are urging experts to fight back.

One prof in the Guardian (30 June 2016) contrasts his own expertise (in Political Science!) with the non-intellectual views that dominated the Leave campaign (he says -- but how does he know?).  He said :

Amid the doubt and speculation there is at least some certainty. We now know that we didn’t manage to convince enough people of the importance of our science, our truth or our facts. Voters preferred a more visceral understanding of the issues that we thought mattered. Untruths as opposed to experts. How did it come to that? 

So naively positivist -- 'our truth or our facts' indeed! He suggests university experts must now make a real effort to contact those who despise experts -- not to learn from them, of course, but to be able to hector them more effectively.  The idiot could not even do a good job to persuade those people he had in front of him -- the young and well-educated who voted voted to Remain -- but the majority did not vote at all.

He must long for the days when people just accepted whatever a nice expert told them, without any qualifications like how the 'facts' were obtained, why others disagree with them, and what the implications might be for 'truth'. That experts do disagree is apparent to anyone who reads the news or uses social media, and so is the intrusion of their vested interests - the monopoly of the paid priests of orthodoxy are gone for good.

University managers have done more than any single group to attack academic expertise in their own institutions. They imposed management instead. They manage complex institutions by constructing a specially simplified and far from expert paper world, the home of the amateur. I don't think many of them have acquired any actual managerial expertise (maybe an MBA -- master of bugger all --  here and there), so they have to rely on noddy stuff they have encountered at idiotic management training 'workshops'. The ones I know would never dream of actually researching the effects of their decisions. They think simple managerial techniques and slogans can replace expertise.

This is seen best in the ludicrous practice of insisting on standard validation documents for course proposals: subject experts would have to explain to managers what their objectives were, because it would only embarrass a manager with a background, say, in Sport Science to have to actually discuss English Literature (and vice versa) . There could be no more than 5 objectives in one institution I know. Proposers had to use only predicative verbs (a fancy way of saying they had to be written in ways that promised to do things). People could only suggest 10 titles for the booklist, and had to include 4 articles. Recent publications were demanded, a hilarious requirement for courses like Philosophy or History. Actual 'discussion' took place on the basis of these ludicrous simplifications, so that rank amateurs could have a say on the academic standing of courses and even veto some. Verdicts were delivered in terms of bureaucratic pettiness (eg too many web articles) or childish impressions ('We did not feel full confidence...'), or wild assertions like 'Britain does not need more courses like this'. 

People outside unis have to realize that this is the reality of 'quality control'. The real issues of quality turn on things like whether courses are representative of their disciplines and whether the teaching is adequate in covering the main topics, but managers cannot discuss those issues of course.

The ideological state apparatuses

Of all the learned analyses of ideology I have read, the one theme they might have in common is that ideology makes radical alternatives unthinkable. Ideologies set out all sorts of acceptable alternatives, of course, and sometimes ideological state apparatuses pride themselves on their balanced treatment of these acceptable alternatives. Famous analyses of television news, for example, show impeccable balance in representing the respectable alternatives of acceptable political parties – however, when confronted with an option that is outside of this consensus, panic ensues at first followed by considerable ideological work to demonise the outsider.

It was clear that in the great referendum, the leave option was literally unthinkable. Government and civil service did not prepare for it if Leave won, and the media was badly sidelined by a Leave majority. In the run up, the electronic media did attempt to construct a set of acceptable alternatives, and even interviewed some spokespersons for Leave but even here, they were using all sorts for ways to privilege the Remain option. The structuring of unacceptable views has been well discussed in famous studies by the Glasgow University Media Group. Unpopular views are interrogated more closely and aggressively, and spokespeople for them interrupted more often. Spokespeople for the acceptable alternatives are arranged neatly in the studio, but spokespeople for the unacceptable alternatives are usually interviewed outside in the street. Sometimes they are introduced in a negative way as well. Without having done a study of television coverage this time, I have no idea how often these negative images appeared, but they certainly did appear.

Ideological work after the stunning effect of the Leave vote included straightforward denial and anger, standard components of the responses to bereavement. A good example is provided by this discussion: Will Self usually appears as a cool sardonic cynic, but he was really angry this time. I think he was also stymied by having as his opponent a black woman, Dreda Say Mitchell, a novelist like him. He couldn't say all the Leavers were racist males. He couldn't really say anything, so cross was he. Jon Snow the interviewer was pretty cross too,then and earlier. The prize for tantrums must go to Evan Davies of the BBC though. His peak was asking a Tory MP, Crispin Blunt what Boris Johnson (a leading campaigner for Leave) might have meant by something he (Johnson) had written in a newspaper column - -when Blunt said it was a silly question and how should he know, Davies exploded with rage as you can see.

Two days after the vote was declared, a discussion on a BBC news channel was still talking about what would happen if there was a leave vote. Various political options emerged to reverse the vote. Scotland, which had voted overall to remain was going to declare independence and remain in the EU. So was London. People campaigned for a second referendum, and two million signatures were added to a petition. Some people, including a Labour member of parliament were suggesting that parliament itself did not have to authorize the popular referendum vote, but could itself vote to reject the result and overturn the decision to leave the EU. All of these are still bubbling under at the moment. The Guardian even ran a journal piece suggesting that there was a danger that the disaffected would turn to a strong leader who would really represent the right views, without the stupidity and inconvenience of things like referenda: the author eventually rowed back a bit and suggested that some citizens might be involved, in the form of some sort of standing committee or citizen jury who would be able to discuss policies with the all powerful politicians.

The media gave surprising coverage and sometimes even support to these views. Scottish nationalism, for example, was uncritically supported by the BBC, and seen as wholly good, liberal, tolerant, cosmopolitan and outward looking. English nationalism by contrast was narrow, inward looking and intolerant. The only difference was that Scottish nationalists supported the EU. I am still surprised that no-one spotted the paradox here. As far as I know, the BBC has still failed to interview anyone in Scotland who actually voted to leave, although there were a million of them. Instead, the leader of the Scottish parliament is able to claim that she speaks for Scotland pure and simple, and that this voice necessarily implies joining the EU, and there's been no attempt to critically question her on these dubious claims. The large minority who voted Remain in England must be considered and listened to, but not the still large minority who voted Leave in Scotland! Of course the majority that voted Leave for the whole UK do not speak for Britain. For those who might not be familiar with the population of the UK, about 5 1/2 million people live in Scotland, and 10 times as many in the rest of Britain.

There was uncertainty at first followed by a determination to find someone to blame. As the earlier blog suggested, these might be racists or cunning politicians working on raising xenophobia. The lies of these politicians were patiently exposed, and sometimes, rather more rarely, so were the lies of politicians campaigning to Remain. As if orchestrated, most of the criticism of the Leave campaign turned on the claim that £350 000 000 per day was being paid to the EU. This was repeatedly called a lie, and when someone tried to argue that it was the gross figure not the nett, a BBC interviewer said she doubted that ordinary people could tell the difference (it is clear to anyone who receives a standard wage packet of course).

Even some politicians who did support Remain were blamed, notably Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party. Purely by chance, no doubt, blaming Corbyn dominated the news exactly at the time that Blairite Labour MPs were pressuring him to resign. The constitution of the Labour Party provides for rival candidates to emerge if there is a problem with the leader, and then for members of the party to choose between them, but disaffected MPs were trying to pressure Corbyn to resign without invoking this procedure. It is not difficult to see why—those MPs could then agree to nominate just one candidate which would obviate the need for any inconvenient election by the party (which Corbyn would probably win). Normally, no doubt, this would be seen as undemocratic, but the ideological end justified the means in this case and in the ones above—scratch a thwarted liberal and find an authoritarian.

Other candidates for blame included the older generation, where a majority voted to leave. This picked up on a narrative that had been tried before, blaming the greedy pensioners for distorting the welfare bill and monopolising the Health Service. There had been fears during the campaign that the elderly would vote (!) and the greedy bastards would push the young into leaving, even though they would not be living much longer. In this case, however, it was probably the apathetic young who influenced the result: more elderly voted Leave, and they did have a higher turnout; the young who voted had a majority for Remain – but only 38% of them voted. Overall, one source claimed, more elderly people voted for remain in absolute terms than did young people. Nevertheless, the elderly still attract criticism, with some Remain voters saying they will never speak to their older relatives. No doubt a great excuse as much as a political gesture. There is a funny You Tube video taking the piss out of the young Remainers here.

There were clear bits of contempt for the working class as usual, who were almost universally depicted as ignorant, conservative and racist. Fat middle aged blokes with swastika tattoos mouthing racist abuse were much sought after. They were usually contrasted with nice middle class women wearing badges advocating love. One classic comparison occurred yesterday on BBC News, where the views of voters were sought – the Leavers represented by passers-by in Boston, Lincs, and the Remainers sought --  in Cambridge!

Finally, there seems to be no overall master narrative to join all these ideological bits together yet,and contradictions and paradoxes are rife, like those over good and bad nationalism. Perhaps the ideology-making classes are still reeling and working on a master narrative. I think they are badly demoralised at the moment, having tried to line up all the authorities on their side –bankers, economists, politicians, the Archbishop of bleedin Canterbury, the military. There were a few attempts to join up the issues into one great crusade, notably the moral panic following the killing of a popular MP – the BBC toyed with an overall narrative condemning a 'politics of hate', aimed at Leavers especially, but it was pretty feeble.

I also think that what this lack of a narrative tells us is that notions of ideology as simply dominant have to be revised. For all the efforts of elites, people voted Leave. The more elites they recruited, the less effect they seemed to have. Of course the BBC and the quality dailies do not have a monopoly of opinion: there were popular daily newspapers who advocated Leave. No-one really knows about the impact of social media either. The position seems to be like that advanced by critics of the 'dominant ideology thesis' back in the 1980s – ideology unites and consoles a dominant group but has much less effect on the subordinate groups.

Immigration and exploitation

Let's cut to the chase with the issue of immigration to the UK. I'm not a racist, and mine is an economic/political and social case about the need to restrict immigration. The economic case is quite straightforward, and has bubbled under during the great debate leading up to the referendum. It seems to me that immigrants are being recruited to Britain on a false prospectus, and certainly, the occasional interview with them seems to suggest that they think the UK is a land of milk and honey, prosperity and tolerance. My own view is that they are being exploited to become part of the reserve army of labour: in Marx's day, that was made up of the unemployed, and, later, of female workers.

Those who campaigned in favour of remaining were able to cite official statistics showing that the net economic impact of such immigrants was positive, that their payments into the State exceeded their benefits. That could even support my case that they are being ripped off. More technically, in the first place, that combines together high wage immigrants and low wage ones, and there's a strong suspicion that low wage ones are being paid only the minimum wage or less. 

Further, there has been some evidence that the net impact of immigration has not been to diminish wages in Britain, rather that government policy has done this. However, sometimes a relative lack of power and influence by the trade unions is admitted to be responsible as well. I don't know any data, but I am willing to bet that most poorly waged immigrant labour is not unionized, and that their introduction into workplaces has the effect of splitting the solidarity of the workers who are unionized. 

Finally, long-term economic impacts are unknown. However, the impact of population growth in Britain, combined with an austerity program, has produced undoubted effects on welfare provision, from inadequate school places, to an underfunded National Health Service. The increase in immigration is the largest factor in such population growth. 

Interestingly, the vote to leave seems to have finally weaned the Chancellor off his commitment to austerity too.There was much scorn for the pledge to spend all the money contributed to the EU on the Health Service instead, but some of it at least might be spent that way. The Leave campaign quoted the gross figure of payments to the EU as £350m per week.The Remainers patiently and patronisingly explained to the electorate that this was a gross figure and that the net figure was only about £110m --somehow they thought that was acceptable!

This still does not mean that we should hate immigrants, of course. Indeed, I see them mostly as the innocent victims of a continuing attempt to drastically weaken the place of organized labour in Britain. This has been much discussed sometimes in terms of 'deskilling' or mechanisation as the 'emancipation of capital from labour'. 

I'm not sure that working class opponents of immigration are all simply racist either. Contrary to popular belief, the British working class has actually been surprisingly tolerant towards immigrants, although in a variable way, depending on factors such as the social class makeup and the social attitudes of immigrant groups themselves. However, people are rightly resentful at being expected always to deal with the social disorganization involved, which can last for a decade or so before things settle down. It is particularly hypocritical to condemn such resentment, when you are able to live in a safely isolated gated community which admits only highly respectable immigrants of a similar social class, and pay for your own health care and education.

This is not to deny the presence of working class racism. However, I've also always seen that there is significant racism in the middle and upper classes as well, sometimes combined with class or gender prejudice. The upper classes only seem interested in racism if it suits their ideologies. With ideological intent, lots of things can be condemned as racism and thus denounced. The marvellously hypocritical denunciation of anti-semitism in the Labour Party is a good example: as soon as it has done its work to embarrass Labour, as a 'moral panic', we never heard of it again. 

Indeed, the campaign to regulate immigration was initially managed by seeing it as simple racism, not worth discussing. I am still not sure what led to the failure of that strategy - maybe it was feedback from actual voters supporting Leave? The racism tag even became a bit of a liability, showing how distant elites were from their voters.