Talking Points

A lot of politics is about generating talking points to frame the narrative. There are some interesting examples of how they can be done, and it's particularly interesting to see how one isolated news event can influence the future coverage (and therefore interpretation) of news events.

One example is with the importance of rejecting divisive rhetoric in politics, and how the intervention of one MP who gave a passionate speech about it (I remember listening to it on Radio 4) sparked a future news narrative about the importance of truth in politics.

Of course, this does not imply that without the intervention of this particular MP, a healthy discourse above cynical appeals to nativism, tribalism, and so on and so on, would not be an important theme of modern politics, or a point of discussion. After all, we have seen Guardian opinion pieces about the importance of rejecting division - or creating new 'narratives' - before, and we will doubtless see them again.

Equally, the response of certain parts of the press to breaking news events can divert political discourse down unhealthy and pointless cul-de-sacs. For instance, the response to Extinction Rebellion from much of the mainstream press focused on whether it's right to use children in protests.

The response to this would emphatically be a 'yes'. Martin Luther King's Civil Rights Movement, with its strategist Wyatt Walker, used children in Birmingham as part of the campaign to end racial segregation. The famous photo of the dog attacking a teenager, who stands helpless, appeared on every major national newspaper and struck an emotional and political chord across the country.

However, we must examine the reasons why the press chooses to cover news stories according to constituent questions. There is firstly a question of practicality; it's easy to ask questions about specific, controversial aspects of a story rather than according to general principles. Secondly, it can help to keep the news reader engaged, distilling potentially complicated issues into simple dilemmas.

Radical thinkers such as Noam Chomsky would refer to Manufacturing Consent, which highlights the importance of ownership. In this case, the press diverts attention from the constituent questions of a news item which genuinely challenge wealth and power, and instead chooses homogenised points of interest which are covered in different ways across different parts of the media.

Importantly, the same news story could be covered in a radically different way across news outlets, and across the political spectrum. Nevertheless, Chomsky would argue that this merely forms part of an ecosystem which creates the illusion of choice through vigorous debate in order to limit the range of acceptable opinions. The appearance of political engagement preserves a certain political and economic power structure.

Similarly, Orwell would argue - along the same lines as Manufacturing Consent, that much of the press is owned by 'Atlantic millionaires'. This is not to say the news media is incapable of challenging wealth and power, or exposing wrongdoing. Rather, ownership matters, and, much like the priesthood in the Middle Ages, or indeed in any period in time where the religiously ordained wielded a monopoly on the tenets and assumptions by which people would live and behave, you don't just buy a newspaper in order to make money; you buy one to control discourse, and to tell people what to think.

Nevertheless, I don't want to push the ownership point too much. It sounds too much like a conspiracy theory and long-winded rants about 'media bias' are among the most tedious tropes of modern politics. I've been to too many Labour meetings where an old bore drones on about how the BBC or the Times covered a particular story.

I mentioned it in the first place to discuss how talking points can be used to frame the narrative, and really there is a great deal of room for manoeuvre for political movements even on the left (up to a point).

Blair Quote - Murdoch University

Blair (Murdoch University): the SDP appealed to 'middle-aged and middle-class erstwhile Laboru members, who have grown too fat and affluent to feel comfortable with Labour and whose lingering social consciences prevent them from voting Tory'.

Who to Blame?

There are some claims about politics - and political issues - that utterly infuriate me, but also offer interesting insights into society and the media.

I will briefly set out some assertions: McDonalds workers shouldn't earn £10/hour because it would disincentivise me to work. Labour will tax everyone because taxing the top 5% for their promises is unrealistic. Life is shit and then you die. A four-day week is unrealistic because people won't be more productive.

These claims, though depressingly pessimistic, are revealing and important. 

I will address the McDonalds point first. This is interesting because it reflects psychological research which shows that people are highly comparative; they would rather see an opponent lose more than they would rather than see both gain - and to see themselves gain by a relatively smaller amount. I can't remember the study that showed this. 

Similarly, my colleague (on a wage marginally above the minimum wage) would rather McDonalds employees didn't get more because it would look like he was relatively earning less. One assumption he seems to be making is that McDonalds employees making more directly makes him worse off, which clearly isn't the case to any reasonable extent. I think this corroborates William Von Hippel's point on the Joe Rogan podcast. 

My colleague's point depresses me for a few reasons. Lower/lower medium earners particularly in his line of work are increasingly overworked and underpaid, all whilst dealing with pressure from increased housing prices and dilapidated public services. He is being underpaid under exactly the same set of circumstances as those who work in McDonalds, and being subject to exactly the same financial pressures. 

Indeed, he's being underpaid for the same reasons - a decline in the power of collective bargaining, for instance, and increased job insecurity. Those at the top keep the value his labour creates whilst paying him less. Yet he doesn't express his resentment towards those at the top, but those at the bottom. 

I will address more of these points in future posts. 

Rory Stewart

Currently, the Conservatives are dominated by the hard right, and they're probably going to trounce Labour in over a week's time. This is despite the perception that most people hold - reflected, I think, in hard policy evidence - that public services have in many ways deteriorated.

People feel apathetic, cynical, disillusioned with politics and politicians. We have seen the longest stagnation of living standards since the Napoleonic war. Education spending has fallen in real per pupil terms since 2010. Police numbers have been cut since 2010. We've seen an explosion in precarious work, with a huge rise in in-work poverty, a more than doubling of homelessness; rampant inequality, the erosion of the principle of the NHS. The union is in danger. The super-rich are living ever more extravagant lifestyles because more wealth is being extracted from working people. The media is failing in its job of scrutiny, facilitating the Conservative campaign rather than challenging Mr Johnson's record; dismissing Mr Corbyn as a terrorist sympathiser.

I put it to you. Had Mr Corbyn described 'watermelon smiles', dismissed death threats as 'humbug', led a political career of cynicism, backstabbing, been sacked for lying and gathered such an eminently incompetent record in his ministerial career, would the media treat him as a figure of amusement? Would they, as the Mail, the Telegraph and the Express have done, describe him in the tradition of Churchill?

For leading a campaign of ideological purification - removing the whip from 40 centrist MPs - and overseeing the most ideologically extreme cabinet since the 1970s, would they laud him as a great reformer?

More broadly, this article was supposed to be about Rory Stewart, but unfortunately divulged into a rant about the media.

I am watching Joe's interview with Rory, and he's such an eccentric, lovely man. I think his brand of politics would hugely benefit the UK.

In part, this is because he's non-ideological. As Prisons Minister, he actually had a really good record. He wasn't dogmatically bound to privatising the prisons; franchising them out as America has done (to disastrous effect).

It's frustrating that he would be a really good Prime Minister, certainly in policy terms, and yet much of the electorate seriously think that electing Boris Johnson would be a good idea. Five years later, with a record of incompetence - and an ideologically extreme cabinet, people will realise that actually he hasn't dealt with the very things that made them frustrated in the very first place.

This goes back to the reasons why people are frustrated. In part, I think it can be linked to tensions in modern capitalism. Inequality (regional, wealth and income) and globalisation; these, in turn, are linked to stagnating living standards, the tedious, underpaid and insecure reality of work in modern Britain, the absurd cost of housing and crumbling public services. People are also starting to care more about the environment, which is a wonderful thing to see, and I feel guilty about not getting involved with ER. I'll write more about thinkers like George Monbiot, and I'd like to investigate whether we need to get rid of capitalism to deal with the environmental crisis (as he tells us).

More to the point, people feel really cynical and angry, but why on earth would they seriously think that a person ideologically aligned with the forces that facilitated these tensions in the very first place is the person to solve these problems? 

Yeah, all very depressing.

Notes on Factors that determine Voting Behaviour

What factors determine voting behaviour?

Gender: this is a somewhat negligible factor, though there are certain differences. In the 1997 election, women were more likely to vote Labour. This may have been as a result of the family-friendly policies of the Labour party, e.g. SureStart.

- The Fawcett society found that in the 2017 general election, women were 2.5% less likely to say they were certain to vote. Nevertheless, this doesn’t translate into historical trends - in 1997 women were more likely to vote than men, but it was the opposite in 2010.

- Plays heavily with age - in the 2015 general election, younger women were 16.5% more likely to vote Labour than young men.

Class: continuing process of class dealignment, where traditional class-based voting interests become less pronounced and lose their influence. This is not to say that people don’t still vote based on their own economic interests.

- In 2017, those who identified as ‘old middle class’ were far less likely to vote Labour (28%) than those who identified as ‘new middle class’ (41%). The progression from the 2015 to the 2017 election quite clearly shows the process of class dealignment - in 2015, 27% of those who identified as ‘working class’ voted Conservative, but in 2017, 45% did.

- Those with a degree (and who are more likely to be middle class) were more likely to vote Labour in 2017 - 39% for Conservatives and 48% for Labour. However, those with no education were also more likely to vote Labour - 46% to 44% Conservative.

- Reflects broader shifts in the economy towards a service industry.

- One would assume that a socialist platform would attract more working class voters, but there are many other issues affecting this, for instance issues around foreign policy and law and order. Many of the ‘core’ Labour voters are far more socially conservative. Labour lost Stoke-On-Trent but gained Kensington.

- Significant differences in turnout between classes. In 2017, turnout among AB was 83%, whereas for C2 and D was 52%. This 31% difference, though exceptionally high, is part of a consistent trend.

Age: a highly significant factor. YouGov found that 66% of 18-19 year olds voted Labour in the 2017 general election, and 69% of those who were 70+ voted Conservative.

- Turnout for the young is normally significantly lower than for the old - it was 84% among 70+.

- ‘Youthquake’ in the 2017 general election. This saw Labour gain control of younger, metropolitan constituencies like Canterbury.

- Increasing division between older and younger generation on class; Conservatives increased their support among old middle class from 2015 to 2017, from 54% to 59%.

Ethnicity: not a particularly important factor, though ethnic minorities are more traditionally inclined to vote Labour, perhaps because of their historical commitment to racial equality and progressive, anti-poverty measures. For instance, Harold Wilson’s Race Relations Act 1965.

- In the 2010 election, 60% of ethnic minorities voted Labour but only 16% for the Conservatives.

- Turnout is lower for those from ethnic minority backgrounds - 51% versus 67%. However, the BME population rose from 5% of the total population in 1991 to 13% in 2011.

- Number of constituencies where BME are 40+% of the population have risen from 7 in 1991 to 49 according to the 2011 census. It’s becoming a more important factor.

Region: strong regional bias. In former industrial areas with high structural unemployment there remains much animosity towards Conservatives and the legacy of Thatcher. For instance, in Liverpool in the 2010 general election, Labour won five times as many votes as the Conservatives in the five constituencies.

- Issues that are salient in the South are not resonant in the North.

- Regional pride, for instance in Scotland, has resulted in the collapse of Labour. In the 2015 general, Labour were reduced to just 2 MPs. Perhaps a form of instrumental voting?

- Labour is increasingly losing support in traditional working class seat and increasing it in more metropolitan constituencies. Emma Dent Coad narrowly won Kensington for Labour, a metropolitan and liberal area, but Corbyn is increasingly being seen as more appealing to socially liberal voters than economically left-wing ones.

1979 General Election Party policies and manifestos: both Labour and the Conservative manifestos were notable for their moderation - both proposed to bring inflation down. Callaghan was, though an ‘old Labour’ Prime Minister, part of Labour’s right wing, and he resisted many of the left-wing proposals. Thatcher, though mentioning returning recently nationalised industries to private hands and removing some trade union powers, made no suggestion of a radical crusade to scale down the state. Campaign: Callaghan’s ‘crisis? What crisis?’ gaffe added weight to the Conservatives’ claims that the country needed a new economic direction. The Conservatives adopted many of the techniques of modern advertising, under the guidance of Gordon Reece and Tim Bell. Thatcher made effective use of photo opportunities. Though Callaghan was 20 points ahead of Thatcher in terms of who would make a better Prime Minister, it was the wider political context that determined the outcome of the election. Context: Callaghan’s government lost a vote of no-confidence prior to the election, and he mistimed it; there was widespread expectation that he would call an election in 1978, but he backed away from doing it. This was shortly followed by the winter of discontent which had disastrous political implications - same mistake made by Brown. Perception that Callaghan was failing to deal with unions. Vote against Labour: Healey, the Chancellor, came under criticism on his tour around Scotland.

1997 General Election Party policies and manifestos: Blair drove the modernisation of Labour. ‘New Labour’ abandoned the traditional Labour policies of nationalisation, high taxation and the strengthening of trade union powers. Gave off tough signals on law and order, an issue that mattered to voters following rising crime rates in the early 1880s. Blair emphasised his links to the business community. Won the endorsement of the press, including the Sun and the Times. 1997 platform stressed specific policy details, e.g. smaller class sizes and cutting hospital waiting lists, or reducing child poverty. Constitutional reform was very important - common ground with the Liberal democrats. Easier for Liberal Democrats to vote tactically for Labour in marginal seats. The importance of constitutional reform was shown by the fact that all but 1 of the then-new 34 Liberal Democrat MPs in England came at the expense of the Conservatives. Conservatives won no seats in Wales or Scotland. McKibbin sees 1997 as a result of the contradictions of Conservative government. The deflationary, monetarist rhetoric, it was assumed in 1979, would alone mobilise the electorate. But this was not the case. The government had to decide whether it was ‘productionist’ or ‘consumptionist’. It was ‘productionist’ in its deflationary policy, thought that thrift, hard work, managerialism. But this was unpopular. Government’s recourse was a ‘consumptionist’ boom fuelled by North Sea oil. As long as you were in the right time at the right place, you could make money easily and quickly. This led to the notion of citizen as consumer. Britain, though, did not have the productive capacity to maintain the Lawson boom. There is only so much privatization and oil can do. Black Wednesday obliterated the Conservative party line that all other parties were incompetent and they were the stable managers. The government’s notion of ‘popular capitalism’ and idea that shares in selling off state owned assets and right-to-buy would create a clientele wedded to the Conservative party. This has certainly had an ideological impact, but large pension funds and wealthy investors disproportionately gained. These effectively constituted large payments by the taxpayer since many of the assets were sold at extremely low prices. At the same time, top rates of taxes were slashed and customary constraints on executive pay were reduced. This was not particularly popular with the electorate, indeed it contributed to a growing sense of resentment as people realised that they were not sharing in this new capitalist bonanza. There was a sense that the Conservative idea of ‘hard work’ and ‘thrift’ had been exposed as a sham against the extraordinary greed and absurd behaviour of Britain’s boardrooms who were profiting off of undervalued public assets. Thatcher was seen as a very authoritarian leader, particularly due to her promotion of centralised authority and dismissal of constitutional reform. This was viewed unfavourably. Contradiction between Thatcher’s idea of starting a revolution to sweep away the ‘wetness’ and the inefficiency, implying a radical and critical edge, and the fact that her ideology was essentially reactionary. New Labour, in their election campaign, placed a big emphasis on developing a professional vote-winning process, employing public relations experts to handle the media. Alastair Campbell played an important role in this. Importance shouldn’t be overstated. Share of the vote increased by 12.5% of the seats it targeted, but by 13.4% in the constituencies it neglected. Turnout was relatively low at 71.4%, so only 30% of the registered electorate voted Labour. Perhaps more accurate to describe it as the failure of the Conservative government. They had lost their reputation as competent economic managers. Big impact of sleaze. Reinforced the perception that the Conservatives were faded compared to the new, professional Labour. There was a larger swing to Labour among women (10%) rather than men (8%) Substantial impact of the media. Much of the press got behind Blair - ‘Sun Wot Won It’. Blair made a conscious effort to get on good terms with Murdoch. Met with him, along with the New Labour team, on the Cayman Islands. It is unclear about the actual impact the Sun had, though it was undoubtedly true that media backing across the establishment press helped Labour (but much of the press still backed Conservatives). Possible that right-wing broadsheets like the Telegraph and (though more establishment) the Times were becoming less important. Spin doctors as Campbell attempted a deliberate strategy of press management and pushing the Labour message at all times, with MPs towing a deliberate and consistent line. Context of embourgeoisement meant that Labour were losing their traditional bases of support as unions and manufacturing, heavy industries, were decimated by Thatcherism (reduced manufacturing base by 30%). Blair appealed to what he thought of as the Mondeo Man. He wanted social advancement and was interested in policies of reward rather than redistribution (typically from C1, aspirational lower middle class). 41% of ABs voted Conservative, 50% of C2s, 59% of DEs voted Labour. But since 1992, the Conservatives share among AB decreased by 15%.

The Oliphaunts of Brexit

I published this article in 'Social Europe' some months ago. The notion of 'Parliamentary gridlock' is looking more and more like an immovable object, even despite Theresa May's attempts to psychologically intimidate MPs into voting for her deal through large amounts of funding for a no-deal scenario. 

The recent anti-Brexit march represented an exciting burst of democratic participation. As a young person, it was incredible to be part of a march that proved that we are not apathetic, but care deeply about the cosmopolitan, liberal values that can best be achieved through cooperation with our European neighbours via the EU.

It was disappointing to have to face accusations that we were part of an anti-democratic faction seeking to crush the will of the people. After all, what is more democratic: the mantras dogmatically repeated by a minority of hardline Eurosceptic backbenchers, or the largest political march since the Iraq War?

The simple fact is that a second referendum represents a solution to the highly likely scenario that Theresa May will be unable to get a deal through Parliament. Logistically, it is nearly impossible that she will get a deal that will simultaneously satisfy the Remainer MPs, the DUP and the European Research Group. Parliamentary gridlock looms large, and a second referendum is the only sensible way out of this.

It is certain, though, that any deal Theresa May comes back with will vary substantially from what we were promised in the EU referendum. When the public voted, at least a significant portion of those who voted Brexit wanted to retain membership of the customs union, or merely have a looser arrangement, like Norway, for instance. There were also false promises made over the transition agreement, the European Court of Justice and the ease with which negotiations could take place.

But, as Jacob Rees-Mogg pointed out in a recent Twitter post, ‘we have already had a People’s vote’. Except, we haven’t. When the public voted, they did not know what the actual deal would look like, so to imply that they’ve endorsed any deal irrespective of its merits is ludicrous. To use the analogy of a protestor on BBC News, if you were engaged to someone and they turned out to be a psychopath just before the wedding, you would be well within your rights to cancel the whole affair.

It is deeply frustrating that the response to any form of democratic engagement is simply a dogmatic insistence that ‘the people have spoken’. It is maddening to have everything that I care so deeply about trampled by those who have a Jihadic certainty in the merits of their own post-Brexit utopia.

The Tory right are like the Oliphaunts in Lord of the Rings - ancient, blundering creatures, impervious to nuance or compromise. And they are trampling us all in their wake.

Erebus Politics Blog

To what extent do socialists agree on the economy?

Although socialists are united in their recognition of the atomising effects of capitalism, it will be argued that there is nevertheless substantial, irreconcilable divergence within socialism on the economy. ‘The economy’ can be defined as the relations between different economic agents. On the one hand, Marxists assert that capitalism is inherently exploitative, and is doomed to collapse as a result of its internal contradictions. On the other, social democrats and third-way proponents argue that capitalism can be reformed, and that the ‘internal contradictions’ that Marx predicted had not materialised. However, there are also significant differences within each of these individual strands, particularly within the revolutionary socialist tradition.

All socialists agree that capitalism can have detrimental consequences for the wellbeing of the general population. Though there is divergence on the extent to which capitalism should therefore be reformed, Marxists, democratic socialists and advocates of the third-way accept that a free market economy can have atomising effects, destroying bonds of community and mutual recognition (similar to Durkheim’s ‘anomie’). Marx, for instance, argued that capitalism alienates the workers from each other and the products of their labour, whilst Giddens accepted that the ‘selfish’ brand of capitalism of Thatcher ignores the underlying tendency of humans towards sympathy and cooperation, stressing the importance of community. Socialists similarly recognise that capitalism produces inequality, which can be economically inefficient and socially destructive; Anthony Crosland, a social democrat, therefore argued in ‘The Future of Socialism’ for programs of income redistribution, whilst both Giddens and Crosland support of the idea of ‘equality of opportunity’. Though revolutionary socialists disagree that capitalism can be reformed, asserting that it is inherently exploitative, there is nevertheless agreement between Rosa Luxembourg and Marx that capitalism is doomed to collapse and must be replaced by a communist system. Further, both Luxembourg and Giddens can be seen to recognise the attributes of a globalised capitalist system. Luxembourg, in ‘the Accumulation of Capital’, foresaw the global spread of the free market into less economically developed markets, whilst Giddens recognised that the dominance of globalisation meant countries had to provide competitive economic policies. On balance, though, these areas of agreement are exceeded by the substantial and irreconcilable divergence among socialists on the economy.

Though socialists agree that inequality is generally a destructive force, they do not agree on the extent to which it should be reduced. There is a clear difference between Marxists, who advocate absolute equality, and social democrats and third-way proponents, who argue that this is economically impractical. Instead, Crosland and Giddens place far more emphasis on equality of opportunity. Nevertheless, there is a clear distinction between social democrats and third way proponents. Social democrats accept widespread wealth redistribution to achieve relative equality, though Giddens rejected the extensive social engineering that underpinned such schemes. Instead, in his view, a ‘social investment state’ would provide a ‘contract’ between government and citizen so as to discourage a culture of dependency. Socialists also strongly disagree on the ownership of the economy, as utopian socialists such as Emile Babeuf thought that the origins of private property lay in violence and exploitation; others, such as Charles Fourier, advocated the organisation of society into ‘phalanxes’ where workers are able to democratically control the means of production. However, Beatrice Webb thought that the centralised state should gradually take over the running of public services. Assuming workers to be too ‘self-interested’ and selfish to run their own affairs, she thought that socialism could only be delivered through the coordinated efforts of highly trained specialists and administrators. Anthony Crosland, however, thought that the collective ownership of the economy in post-war Britain had gone far enough, theorising that the internal contradictions of capitalism that Marx had predicted (including the increasing division between worker and capital owner) had not materialised due to the dispersal of business ownership through the extension of democracy and industrial bargaining. Further, Giddens entirely rejected state ownership of the economy, advocating the importance of private property and asserting the primacy of the market over the government - in his view, ‘top down’ state intervention was both ineffective and inefficient.

In conclusion, therefore, socialists disagree far more on the economy than they agree. There are significant, irreconcilable differences between the various strands of socialism, for instance, democratic socialists think that capitalism can be gradually reformed and replaced with socialism (through Webb’s ‘inevitability of gradualness’), whilst social democrats and third way proponents disagree that capitalism will ‘replaced’. Revolutionary socialists, meanwhile, state that capitalism cannot be reformed, as it is inherently exploitative; this particular contrast was clearly highlighted by the antagonistic relationship between Luxembourg and Eduard Bernstein. There is a clear contrast between the Marxist notion - of the inherent contradictions in capitalism, rejection of private property, and belief that capitalism alienates humans from their cooperative nature - and the view proposed by Giddens that capitalism even encouraged positive attributes like responsibility. Within the revolutionary socialist tradition, Marx and Luxembourg disagreed about the economic circumstances through which revolution could arise (Luxembourg arguing that it could occur spontaneously in societies that had not reached ‘late-stage’ capitalism). Though all socialists recognise that an ideal society is one which is more equal, where there are bonds of mutual cooperation rather than an ‘atomistic’ collection of individuals, overall socialists disagree far more on the economy than they agree.

EreErebus Politics blog