Placebo

Prince Charles, our Britannic Majesty in waiting, and well-known alternative dabbler has become patron of the Faculty of Homeopathy. This is about par for the course from somebody who has fantasised about being a tampon, openly conversed with his plants, makes expensive biscuits for gullible peasants and frequently opines on subjects about which he almost certainly knows nothing. Ah well, he probably won’t be king for very long and he might even follow the example of his Uncle Edward; we can but hope.

But homeopathy, of all things? People believe in the most unlikely phenomena: astrology, the tarot, the healing power of lumps of rock and even, among the most rabidly gullible, economic forecasting. Homeopathy is almost the perfect iconotype for irrational belief. You take the cause of an ill, a poison even, then dilute it again and again until not a single molecule of the malevolent compound persists, Then you claim that the water which remains, flavoured with a little sugar, has a ‘memory’ which can cure the ailment the original compound caused. If one needed a new definition of quackery, I’d start with this.

But, as outrageously, obviously false this premise is, the placebo effect in humans is strong and if you wish for something hard enough, when it comes true you could be excused for imagining that the wish itself did the magic. Mostly harmless, was Douglas Adam’s description of Earth and much the same could be said of homeopathy, except for those who are so convinced of its efficacy that they go on to refuse genuinely effective treatment and die in agony believing themselves cured. And this is the problem when you rely on faith rather than evidence.

Religion does much the same thing; based on fantasy it promises much, delivers nothing but manages to absolve itself of blame when the victims berate themselves for not being devout enough. But possibly worse than religion itself, which can be (and largely is) overlooked in most advanced societies, there is one creature of mythology which survives all attempts to abandon it and even manages to survive its own self-defeating premises. This is the rainbow dream, the one world, unicorn promise of socialism.

Socialism is the homeopathy of politics, surviving critical analysis because its adherents just ignore the evidence. Socialism is so good, they argue, that the millions impoverished by its crackpot founding theology are dismissed as collateral damage in the greater war against the evil of people having the freedom to think their own thoughts and live as they wish. There is almost no failure in human society that cannot be excused by socialism except progress and individual wealth.

No, no, it's not a barrier to entry; it's to keep them in.

And so we arrive once again at what has become the annual socialists’ mass outside worship ceremony, where herbal remedies of all kinds are freely imbibed, mantras memorised and the sacred words of Stormzy solemnly intoned and retweeted by Saint Jeremy Corbyn. Exclusive, insular and difficult to get in; where you have to speak the same language as all the other devotees in order to avoid ostracisation; where all think with one accord, Glastonbury has become everything it once stood against. It is now the socialist version of Bilderberg.