POLITICS/NOT BORN YESTERDAY
There's a market gap where the Opposition used to be
The editor argues that a Party opposing the culture could join with the existing electoral minority groups to form a formidable power base.
If the credit disaster has shown one thing above any other, it is that the common people no longer have a true Party which, under normal circumstances, either listens to or cares about them. Things now being not so much abnormal as paranormal, such informal opposition as can be mustered has at last shown itself. In the States, ordinary citizens quite rightly bombarded Congressmen with objections to the Paulson Plan, and so for once the Bush retinue had to stop and listen. Hank's face when they lost the first vote was a study in puzzlement and disbelief. In the UK, the last bastion of constitutional sanity - a House of Lords New Labour wishes to turn into Cronyville UK - decisively rejected quite the most illiberal (and unnecessary) detention Bill to appear before Parliament since 1939. Again, Jacquie Smith's peevish response represented the paucity of this woman's credo better than any ranting blog could ever do.
Despite this opening observation, I am not the stuff of which levellers are made. My argument about a lack of opposition refers as much to the small o as large O version. And it's based on numbers, observation and hopefully some insight. The UK (and much of the western world) unquestionably needs to break the political box that is not so much a mould as mouldy; but the real requirement is for a cultural opposition to the correctness that insists There is No Alternative. What the Americans call 'framing' is alive, well and squeezing the very life out of the kind of creative thought we so badly need today.
This is as true of the unbalanced Friedmanites, bankmasters and globalists at one end of the spectrum as it is of the anal gender balancers and buckshot welfare kneejerkers at the other. They are two deaf, blind and determined elite minorities desperate to exercise control over those in the median range of wisdom and common sense. As Harriet Harman collects violently frustrated males with her every utterance, Freddie Goodwin attracts death threats with his long-overdue silence. Their intolerance is obvious, but the typology remains oblivious to how intolerable that is for many on both sides of the Pond.
The problem is that they (and the soi-disant expertise set) have been allowed to operate in a civic culture where it has become increasingly hard to be contrarian. There are many reasons for this - constitutional vandalism, legislative arrogance, the online silo mentality, a ludicrous representation system, risk-averse shareholders, process obsession, the instincts of a severely frightened herd and so forth - but the most fundamental one is that both commerce and politics operate in 2008 on the segmentation principle of marketing.
This entirely logical view of life holds that one can't appeal to everyone, so concentrate on a niche: play to your strengths. Unfortunately, a little learning is a dangerous thing: marketers (especially retailers and financial service providers) and contemporary marketing-enthralled Parties have moved this principle on a further stage. The new mantra runs thus: 'Some people are irrelevant to us'. It's like a sociopathic reworking of the famous Lincoln maxim - as in 'You can ignore some of the people all of the time'. In western nations with wealth disparities now approaching those of France in 1787, this is a deadly philosophy for any society with ambitions to be stable and content. There will be no revolution as we understand it. But there is alienation, and - very soon - there will be desperation.
For some six years now, every poll on immigration has shown that over three-quarters of all ethnicities in the UK want it controlled, and preferably stopped. Until twelve months ago, barely a single MP had the issue on his or her radar. Further, the 'repositioning' of Labour engineered by the arid mind of Lord Gould has left a massive group of the underprivileged without any real representation - and others besides without a banner. It is true to say, I would argue, that the most important electoral college by far in Cool Britannia is that with but one collection of members: the media.
While the poor don't make Party contributions, don't vote that often, don't write craven columns, don't fit in the big-basket quartile of Tesco's relationship marketing programme and almost never engage in activism, ignoring them (and their very real fears) can only have two results: increasingly feral citizens, and perfect raw material for extremists. If ever Islamism and the nature of bomb-makers demonstrated anything instructive, it is that obvious conclusion.
However, the 'niche marketing' mentality's exclusive approach has created perhaps the first real opportunity for a serious political realignment since the early 1980s. If anything - given the current financial crisis is a pin-sharp reflection of our declining, almost sclerotic, culture - it could be based on a genuine social movement for the first time since the 1880s. The bad news is that the speed of change enabled by digital information could hand this opportunity to lots of folks with whom you really wouldn't want to have lunch - or indeed, any form of contact involving addresses.
As part of trying to expand my website www.notbornyesterday.org I have spent a fair amount of the last year reading media blog forums on a more or less daily basis. While this is no time for self-pity, it is time somebody audited the content more carefully: like it or not, electronic democracy is the future. If nothing else, with things the way they are the Prime Minister needs to reduce his telephone bill.
Some of the commonalities are striking. The words deaf, arrogant, hammy, overprotected, laughable, crooked, privileged, corrupt, incompetent, cosy and club are ever-present right across the spectrum of all press titles, websites and visual media. Nothing especially new there (save for the increasing ubiquity) but there is an enormous tendency (which I group under the working title 'decency nostalgia') whose reading habits and demography are kaleidoscopic.
Their daily newspaper could equally be the Mirror or the Daily Telegraph. It most decidely is not The Sun. They watch a great deal of midbrow television, but rarely soaps or political programmes. I'd estimate that over 60% of them are women. Unsurprisingly, they're often over fifty. But they tend to be either blue collar or senior white collar. They are almost universally rude about the Daily Mail, supermarkets, Murdoch, the EU, Harriet Harman and Islam. To observe that they feel disenfranchised is rather like saying Heather Mills-McCartney is mildly upset at the moment.
Another group of great interest to any New Opposition consists of those I'd term 'Young Ersatz Cynics'. These are the folks who say 'nothing makes any difference', 'what's the point?', 'nothing will ever change' and so forth. What gives the lie to this surface apathy is that they write into blogs and say this kind of stuff. Their media consumption is completely different: hardly any press media, some interest in fairly naff conspiracy sites, but clearly almost obsessive ranters and bloggers. Not what you'd call literate - and obviously already fairly alienated from the idea of career and 'getting on' - they are (or were) almost always employed, but in clerkish/institutional roles. They don't claim to be disenfranchised so much as disenchanted: but they would regard jumping up and down outside a G8 summit as both pointless and somewhat risible.
What both these groups share is a conviction that the existing socio-economic-political model in the West is a stitch-up for the few - an intrinsically unfair and pretty blatant attempt by 'fat cats' and power-freaks to dump on everyone else. Both of them use terms in relation to cultural leaders about not being able to trust, stand or look up to any but a tiny minority. All of them would agree that what they crave is a more honest, ethical, balanced and cooperative community and family approach to life. And above all, they 'know' that the current cultural model is irretrievably broken: a sham kept 'alive' by a combination of spin and denial.
Given what is happening to our econo-fiscal system at the moment, these are voters who may well feel their time is coming - if they can find a coherent and cohesive Party to support. They are the segments ignored as 'out of our reach' or 'likely to vote for us anyway' by the strategic 'planners' among the Blairites and Cameroons. They are in many cases the old Left and the soft Right so vilified by Thatcher and Mandelson. And most of the rest are too disgusted with the hypocrisy and dissembling of either major Party to ever suport them again.
But again, they all feel a sense of responsibility towards the poor - the electors I can't analyse online: who don't blog or join forums because they haven't got pcs or can't read.
It was a not dissimilar coalition to this one which formed the original Labour Party - and who used fellow-travellers in the Liberal Party with whom they cooperated electorally at first. There is no rationale for a Labour Party (New or Old) in 2008. But there is a blindingly obvious gap for a proper Opposition to the way things are - as indeed there was in 1882.
As a focal point, the name for such a Movement would have to incorporate or exclude several features. England, British, Left, Right, national flags and any suggestion that the barmy tin-pot army are involved would be death. A crystal clear, upfront statement of core intent is crucial. Not 'New'. No Soviet-speak. No pc-speak. No freedom, individual, national, collectivist or feminist. (About the worst thing one could call this Standard would be The New United English Hard Work Gender Equality Path.)
It's central platform and values can be succinctly put: balance, justice, constitutional reform, devolved democracy, good-humour, honesty, plain speaking and new ideas of substance based on social realities not polemics. It's guiding principle - I venture to suggest - should be 'Consultation up, decisively informed action down'. But its foundation stones would be compassion and responsibility. With those provisos, the name-field is open to anyone with a profound, crisp idea that isn't 'slick'.
Apart from the decent folks, faux cynics and very poor groups, where would it most obviousy draw support in the immediate future? Professionals unceremoniously dumped by globalism, every child-rearer who isn't feckless, less-than-fanatical Greens, anyone who can't abide New Labour but doesn't want Cameron's Cads either - and anyone not in those groups completely confused about what Nick Clegg is trying to do with the Libdems.
Both the Greens and the Libdems would do well to pay attention to the potential for coalition here. The Establishment clearly isn't going to - and therein lies the opportunity.