Stormz in a Teacup

For a while now I have been struggling with unlocking the secret to a fair society. Nobody seems especially happy with democracy because it doesn’t always produce the outcome you want. This most recently happened in the good old disunited kingdom resulting in the installation of an opposition-busting 80-seat Tory majority. Since then you can hardly pick up a newspaper, turn on the radio or television, or dive into social media without being harangued by hair-shirt wearing extremists who are bleating about extremism.

The reality is that Boris Johnson is a pretty centrist figure politically and for all the outrage at him once using words like picaninnies and commenting on water-melon smiles; for all the accusations of racism over comparing burkas to letterboxes; for every imagined slur the left wing can conjure, nothing he has said or done comes even close to what his newly recruited voters believe, say and do every day of the week. Boris is popular; his detractors can neither understand why, nor tolerate that simple fact. And this is because the left as a whole just don’t grasp human nature.

On Friday there was outrage that Dominic Cummins is reportedly paid a salary approaching £100k by the Conservative Party. So what? Seamus Milne is paid more by Labour, but to make it appear far more heinous and ‘capitalisty’ the headline used the descriptor ‘three times the average wage’! The politics of envy in microcosm. To be honest I was surprised that a man who has just helped save us from Corbynism was being paid so little; I mean, Michael Heseltine gets about that much every year for doing nothing except big-up the EU¹. But the fact remains that headlines like this will gain traction with a certain sector of society.

Working people will shrug, possibly say something like “Nice work if you can get it” then get on with whatever fills their day. But those who fill their days with finding things to be offended by will… why they will turn to the great sage of their age, the seer known as ‘Stormzy’, who will articulate for them as few orators have done before. Move over, Churchill, step aside Socrates, a new sage is in town, motherfuckers. I don’t know what it says about society when hard on the coat tails of the messiah Corbyn, his emissary on earth is a hate-filled homophobic misogynist; at least judging by his own words.

Remember Stormzy? Who?

And words is all they are, for now. Such words may encourage others to take up sticks and stones but then that does Boris’s job for him. That the left is no more than a juvenile rabble which believes in impossible dreams just becomes more starkly revealed. They preach peace and love, but justify violence and hate to get it. Socialism constructs its own fantasy reality but when it gets into power it fails to live up to even its own limited mythology.

For the many, not the few is fine as a soundbite, but it also encapsulates the politics of envy. Kinder, gentler politics sounds all so noble, until the Momentum hate mob piles in. And in Corbyn and McDonnell – whom many revere as demigods, rather than the demagogues they really are – the simpletons of socialism have found guides, not to the promised land, but back into the wilderness of political exile. You’ll excuse me if I don’t buy into the fantasy.

¹. I honestly don’t know what Hezza gets paid by the EU, but why let the facts get in the way of a popular trope

Once upon a time...

It seemed to start in the Blair era, but it was prevalent long before then, that politics had to tell a simple story. And furthermore, in the interests of the now overused phrase ‘joined-up government’ everybody had to have a role in that story. In what came to be called ‘the narrative’ you were goodie or baddie, villain or fool and once cast you were destined to play your part until you were written out of the show. If you were lucky you got a nice, juicy departure and your name lived on, but more often than not you quietly exited, stage left and were never heard from again.

The script of the political soap opera is thinly drawn because the audience isn’t interested in layers, in depth, in subtle nuance of character. We like our players, pantomime-style, to be little more than two-dimensional; it’s much easier to understand them that way. While we may enjoy a taut, twisting plot in a ninety-minute movie, watching the good guy become the bad guy then switch back for the goodbye, such willing suspension of disbelief isn’t sustainable for long periods outside of cinema. On the outside we want the simplicity of knowing when to boo and when to clap.

Enter the junior doctors. Clearly the good guys; they bounded on stage accompanied by the theme music that said they’re on our side. Clever people, we thought, far too intelligent to be manipulated; they will only be striking because the government is cruel and stupid. Up went the cheers, discussions were held and an agreement entered into; spit, shake hands – don’t forget the anti-bacterial scrub – curtain. But wait, what’s this? They’re striking again? Oh no, we’re a simple audience and we thought we’d already seen this bit. Jeremy Hunt was the bad guy and we booed him off stage. Now we aren’t sure whose side to be on.

Doctors are supposed to be bastions of intelligence and thus, we would like to think, common sense. Everybody, left and right, should be on their side for they only speak truth, surely? But now we are watching an entirely different, yet still recognisable screenplay, the one where the oh-so-clever people are being manipulated by shadowy Marxist conspirators... or are we? In the absence of all the facts, we have to rely on the deeper narratives that have been embedded for years. Socialism good, Conservatism bad... or the other way around. It’s like watching a film where you suddenly realise you haven’t been paying close enough attention so now, whichever way it ends, you’re not going to be satisfied.

In the wider population people generally rub along and make do with what they’ve got. Their desire for colour – for most lives are insufferably drab – is fulfilled by fiction. It is little wonder then, that for most people political engagement is difficult. You have to concentrate, watch, listen and follow the arguments. But when your reward for doing all that is to realise that we are no further on and nobody is listening to you anyway, it is little wonder that most people switch off and watch Bake Off instead.

Things are actually going quite well right now. We have a new Prime Minister who seems to have the weight, the heft for the job. Unemployment is low, as are expectations, so there is little need for unrest. And yet unrest is what we’ve got. Andrew Marr’s newspaper round up yesterday seemed to be a concerted effort to find ways to attack Theresa May instead of the bastion of impartiality we have come to expect from the national broadcaster. (I jest) Why are so many people on the left so very pissed off when there is so little substance to their complaint?

It’s that bloody narrative again, isn’t it? Let’s see, despite little in the way of actual evidence their story tells of the systematic oppression of gays, disabled, trans, immigrants, fathers, mothers, students, nurses, doctors, etc, etc, etc. This is what oppositions do and the left are the eternal opposition in Britain. Sod working for the common good, instead they stir up malcontent; rejected again and again by the electorate and in the absence of any chance of gaining power the sole purpose of the political left  seems to be to piss on everybody else’s chips. And in the end it’s an attractive narrative, to play the downtrodden underdog, so attractive that even supposedly intelligent people are drawn into it.

It’s hardly a plot for the future though is it? The left wing narrative plays to a sense of despair, something which all of us have experienced at some time. But it’s not enough to despair and then get over it, succeed and move on; the beast needs feeding and the fodder is any group whose situation can be portrayed as disadvantaged. It has long been said that the left practise the politics of envy; a green-eyed monster preying on the vulnerable. So, remind me, which is the nasty party now?