The Permanent State

Commenting on the Infected Blood Inquiry report, Andy Burnham said "The unelected state in Britain has too much power. It's too easy to cover up". He went on to recommend a statutory duty of candour, which was originally proposed as the "Hillsborough law". There are two things worth noting here. First is the reference to the "unelected state". This is closer to the traditional British "men from the ministry" than the paranoid American trope of the "deep state", but it has a similar function in suggesting a power that is both persistent and unaccountable. The second point to note is that the proposed solution to this perennial problem of organisational failure isn't any sort of organisational change. A duty of candour - to be open and honest - is simply an appeal to virtue. In practice, it would be difficult to prove that an official had been insufficiently candid, particularly where they could point to the constraints of national security, commercial confidentiality or a poor institutional memory (i.e. conveniently missing records). The idea that if you change the culture of an organisation you thereby reform the organisation itself is naive ("You can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig"). It also misunderstands cause and effect. The Home Office isn't terrible because it employs bad people; but it probably attracts bad people because it's terrible.

The UK state has always been unelected because it ultimately derives its authority from the Crown. The advance of democracy has been limited to the legislature and local government, and while the former is the most powerful component of the state apparatus it is also one whose remit is carefully constrained both by the constitution (the Lords, the Supreme Court and the in loco regis powers of the Prime Minister) and by raison d'etat, which is most obvious in the subservience of the UK to the US in international affairs. In the US many states elect sheriffs and judges. In the UK we elect Police and Crime Commissioners whose purpose is largely to provide a fig-leaf, hence the low turnout in their elections. In the one instance where that authority might prove effective, the Mayor of London's oversight of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, it is constrained by the competing authority of the Home Secretary. The "unelected state" is a tautology by which the Mayor of Greater Manchester seeks to create an implicit boundary between the political class and the state apparatus. If nothing else, this reminds us that for all his "good bloke" PR he is a fully-paid-up member of that class.

In all of the scandals listed by Burnham the root problem wasn't rogue public servants but the demands of the government, and often the personal prejudices of the Prime Minister. Margaret Thatcher decided that the South Yorkshire police were not to be held accountable for Hillsborough in the politically-charged climate following the miners' strike. Her government also decided to cover up the use of infected blood in the NHS. The Windrush scandal arose as a direct result of the hostile environment championed by Theresa May at the Home Office, itself a result of her need to get the rightwing press onside in advance of her long-planned leadership bid. The Grenfell tragedy arose from a combination of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea's disregard for its poorer citizens and the undermining at national level of building safety standards in the cause of market deregulation. The Post Office scandal can be traced to the political pressure to make privatisation work. A point to emphasise here is that these scandals arose from policies that were shared across the entire political class. The last Labour government took 13 years to pull its finger out over Hillsborough, while the Liberal Democrats failed the subpostmasters and subpostmistresses just as much as the Conservatives did.

The problem in the UK is not that the "unelected state" has too much power, as Burnham suggests, but  arguably that it has too little. Consider the furious reaction to the (unelected) Supreme Court temporarily thwarting the government over Brexit and more recently Rwanda. In suggesting that the state apparatus needs to be subservient to the will of the people, Burnham is making exactly the same populist claim as the newspapers that charged the justices with being the "enemies of the people". My point here is not that we need more checks and balances to guard against an "elective dictatorship" but that the people demanding that public servants be further constrained and if necessary jailed for their misbehaviour are the representatives of a political class that is almost uniquely unconstrained amongst Western democracies. It is also a class that has been notably successful in neutering attempts at accountability for its own calamitous acts (cf. the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War), and which has provided cover to limit the accountability of our feral press (cf. the Leveson Inquiry).

A less populist, more Olympian tone was adopted last week by Martin Kettle in the Guardian. His argument is that we rarely change governments, which he clearly considers a good thing on the whole, and that when we do the state apparatus ensures smooth continuity. This is not simply Kettle once more insisting that democracy needs to be bridled. He is also suggesting that the permanent state has a quasi-constitutional role in sanctioning change: "Our democratic ethos and institutions understand, in principle and without challenge, the legitimacy of such a change of party government." You only have to cast your mind back to the fevered speculation about a government of national unity in 2019, whose sole purpose was to deny Jeremy Corbyn entry to Downing Street in the event of Labour winning the general election, or to the overt threats made by anonymous military top brass since 2015 and amplified by the press, to realise that this legitimacy is not extended to everyone. In fact, the mandarins of the Civil Service would probably have accommodated a Corbyn government with little fuss: his mild social democracy was hardly a radical departure. The problem was the para-state centred on the intersection of the media and the political class.

One thing Burnham's intervention has made clear is the extent to which government is now about the management of scandals. They have always been part of the mix, but usually as a side-order in the UK: governments rarely fall because of them. But where the government has no coherent programme, or where its purpose has been reduced to simply clinging on to power, scandals can come to the fore simply because there is otherwise a vacuum. A good example of this is Israel today where "victory" seems ever distant. Netanyahu's sole aim is to hang on to office (if only to avoid any criminal charges) and to that end he will pursue the folly of his policy in Gaza. But there is no meaningful opposition to that policy. For example, Yoav Gallant's recent criticisms are both banal (get out of Gaza) and impossible (impose a non-Hamas authority). While the far-right seeks to fill the vacuum with an alternative impossibility (kill 'em all), mainstream attention has focused on the families of the hostages and the coverage of their plight has shifted from sympathy to outrage over the government's mishandling of negotiations for their repatriation.

The parallel with the UK is obvious. Labour's current pitch is: "We should be in charge, and we're promising nothing". But the more subtle echo is that politics is now coalescing around groups wronged or betrayed by the state. The problem with this is not just that it relegates issues of class and political economy to the margin, which Labour is happy enough with, but that it treats politics as a series of unnconnected matters for potential redress. The dots are not joined. The marketisation at the heart of the infected blood, Grenfell and Post Office scandals is largely ignored and the only commonality recognised is the malign nature of officialdom. While this superficially promotes a populist politics, it also treats the electorate as petitioners and the government as a higher judiciary, there to bring the state to account. It also incidentally reinforces the role of the media as public prosecutors, their own part in scandals such as Hillsborough and Grenfell obscured.

The dilemma for an incoming Labour government is whether to lean into this trend, presenting itself as the tribune of the people, or whether to resist it by insisting that the change of government has been enough to "reset" the state. Burnham and Kettle represent these two poles. Given that Keir Starmer's fundamental goal is to restore the authority and gravitas of the state, it's likely that he will lean towards Kettle's position. And given the stranglehold he has achieved over the Labour Party and candidate selection in particular, it is unlikely that anyone in the PLP after the general election will strongly oppose him, which explains why it's Burnham, with his separate mandate, who is pitching the alternative now. The challenge for Starmer is that despite his success in burying the Forde Report the press will be keen to pursue other historic scandals because they will be increasingly starved of political substance under an administration characterised by caution and a conservative aversion to real change. And then he will find that his own record of dissembling will not inspire popular confidence in government statements. The scandals will not end after July.

Too Big to Fail

Arsenal fans were resigned to coming second in the Premier League after the home defeat to Aston Villa in mid-April, a loss that was quickly followed by a 0-1 exit to Bayern Munich in the Champions League. This wasn't because a more general collapse was anticipated but simply a recognition that Manchester City don't drop points during the run-in. The hope that this would be the season that they did was based on nothing more substantial than a belief that funny things happen. In the event, the funny stuff turned out to be Spurs fans willing their side to lose against City in order to ensure Arsenal wouldn't finish top. The reward for this was missing out on the last Champions League place to Villa and having to settle for Thursday night football in the Europa League. Perhaps the more lasting reward will be the realisation on the part of Ange Postecoglu that Tottenham simply don't have the mentality he demands. He certainly seemed mightily pissed-off with the behaviour of Spurs fans in the game against City and clearly felt that the malaise of "Spursiness" extended to parts of the club itself. At least he can console himself with a round trip to Melbourne on Wednesday for a friendly against Newcatle United.

Despite Arsenal's attempt to make a go of the final run of 6 matches, winning them all and matching City's final goal difference of +62, the predictable efficiency of the Abu Dhabi works team meant that only the most romantic still clung to the belief that West Ham might get something at the Etihad on Sunday. As the news of Kudus's goal went round the Emirates Stadium, swiftly followed by the rumour that the Hammers had pulled back another, there was obviously excitement, but as soon as the truth became clear there was mostly rueful chuckles rather than depression, as if the chief emotion was embarrassment for having been daft enough to believe the rumour. The real measure of how much Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan's money has surgically removed jeopardy from the title race was clear in the Arsenal crowd's reaction. We were happy that the team had produced a season statistically comparable to that of the Invincibles in 2003-4 (28 wins now versus 26 then, 89 points versus 90), but we also recognised that short of a fluke (such as the team 20 years ago drawing multiple games they should have lost), bumping City off their perch was never likely to happen.

In terms of thirds, the story of Arsenal's season was one of steady improvement, which seems paradoxical given the relentless way in which the team were overtaken in the final furlong. In points gained, we went from 27 to 28 and then 34. Goals for also went up, from 26 to 32 and then 33, but the most impressive trajectory was goals against: 10, 12 and finally 7. Had we managed to concede only 8 in that middle third then we'd probably have gained an extra 4 points (e.g. drawing with West Ham and beating Fulham). That would have given us the contingency of a possible defeat in the final third, so the Villa game might not have marked the end of our slim chances. It was the defence that got us to 89 points, a tally that was equalled or bettered only 11 times in the 25 seasons of the pre-Guardiola Premier League. Since then, the average points of the winners has been 93.7, with a points per game of 2.47. Arsenal finished with a points-per-game of 2.34. It's not a great difference, hence it went down to the wire, so the question must be: what can Arsenal do to marginally improve?

The answer could be divined in Sunday's final game. Bukayo Saka was injured, which meant Gabriel Martinelli took his place on the right of attack. Though he played well, we weren't as dangerous because he couldn't cut in on his left the way that Saka does. Martinelli has had a mixed season, but he remains close to a first choice on the left, where he can cut in on his right, in fruitful competition with Leandro Trossard. Arsenal's problem is that they lack a top-grade alternative to Saka, which means putting an excessive burden on him that at times has resulted in tired performances. We need another wide attacker. In the middle of the park, Thomas Partey gave what has become his signature performance: driving and dominant at times, but sloppy and easily caught at others. With Elneny going, and Jorginho staying as the old man of the squad who makes occasional cameo appearances, there was always going to be a defensive midfield recruit, and that will have to be a younger and more energetic model than Partey. The other interesting development was the return of the talented and flexible Jurrien Timber, reminding us that the defence can still improve.

Arsenal are getting close to having two top players available for each position. The most obvious gap now is central attack. Kai Havertz has done well, but his attraction for Arteta is his adaptability rather than his goalscoring prowess. In fact, I'm not sure that Arteta thinks in terms of positions at the top end of the pitch: it's more about having flexible patterns. Though he's still only 27, Jesus looks like he may be approaching the autumn of his career, and though flexible has never been prolific, so I wouldn't be surprised if he is allowed to move on if there's a decent offer. Pretty much every fan and pundit reckons Arsenal need a top goalscorer, but there aren't many about at the moment so I suspect Arteta may think laterally, just as he did with Havertz and before him with Ben White and David Raya. The latter has cemented his position as number 1, and gradually won over the fans, which probably means the popular Aaron Ramsdale moving on over the summer. There are still occasional heart-in-mouth moments but that low of only 29 goals conceded owes as much to Raya as to the widely-praised obduracy of Gabriel and Saliba. 

In the middle of the park Ødegaard and Rice are automatic starters and have struck up a fascinating odd couple relationship. It's not that they pass to each other that much - both are looking to feed the wings or slip balls into the penalty area - but that they complement each other's movement and positional play intelligently. The obvious issue for next season is how we replace them if they're injured. Smith-Rowe isn't quite at the captain's level in terms of pressing and general busyness, but he can deputise and has a good eye for both assists and goals. There's no obvious substitute for Rice, so that may be another area Arteta and Edu look to strengthen. There were hints in the Everton game that Tomiyasu could fill in the left-8 role, essentially as a more robust and energetic Zinchenko, not least his early wayward header in front of goal (shades of Xhaka) and then his smartly taken equaliser (ditto). Above all, Arsenal are going to have to evolve rather than just replicate what they already have. Constant evolution is what Guardiola has managed to achieve at City and that, as much as the financial doping, explains their dominance of the league.

There was a lot of love in the air after the final whistle, despite the players' obvious dissapointment at not winning the title, which is in marked contrast to a few season ago. Not only do the fans feel they've "got their Arsenal back" (a ridiculous but forgiveable trope), but there is an air of expectancy, rather than expectation, that a trophy may be there for the taking. Given the young squad's capacity for learning, and Arteta's proven ability to mastermind key wins (we've moved on from the mantra of "control" to something closer to "dominate"), I suspect the club wants to make a serious push for the Champions League, if only because that may actually turn out to be easier to win than the Premier League. The fans might prefer the latter, but it is no secret that the club hierarchy has long hankered for the one trophy to have eluded it over its storied history. At some point, we'll come up against one of City, Real Madrid or Bayern Munich, and I fancy us to beat any one of them across two-legs (or ideally in the final) if we can make those marginal improvements. Of course, the banter scenario is that we get knocked out by Bayer Leverkusen and specifically by a Xhaka rocket that deflects off a defender. Or is that just a bit too Spursy to be credible?

Looking at the league season more broadly, it was fortunate for the neutral that Arsenal made a contest of it. Liverpool ended 9 points off the top and stuttered to the finishing line, the announced departure of Jurgen Klopp failing to provide the spark for a late surge. They look like a team in need of further rebuilding, with too many of their recent acquisitions appearing oddly matched. In contrast, Chelsea have started to look less comical as Pochettino has started to work out the best combination of players, though the owners are perfectly capable of sabotaging his good work in the transfer window. Spurs will flatter to deceive early on next season; Villa look like they'll struggle with the extra demands of Champions League football, much as Newcastle did this season; and nobody can be sure what direction the clapped-out Manchester United team bus will head off in. VAR will stay - the issue isn't the technology but the PGMOL - and instead we'll all be chuntering about the new Champions League format. And the least surprising development of the coming season will be when Manchester City are acquitted on all charges of breaching Financial Fair Play rules. They have become too big to fail.

The Lord Protector

It has been amusing to see the reaction of centrist commentators to Keir Starmer's decision to welcome Natalie Elphicke into the Labour Party as a sitting MP. One school of thought sees this as strategically sound (Rafel Behr's "advertise [an] open door to Tory voters") but tactically maladroit, the subtext being that Starmer still lacks the sensitive antennae of a more seasoned political operator. The other school of thought espies the hubris of a leader who thinks his entry to Number 10 by Christmas is nailed on. For example, John Crace in the Guardian reckoned that "Starmer could have told Elphicke: “Thanks, but no thanks. We appreciate your offer but don’t think you’re quite the right fit. ...” Then the party might have claimed the moral high ground and still banked the win. Instead, it got greedy." Crace suffers from the deformation professionelle of the Parliamentary sketch-writer in that he sees politics in the combative terms of "sides". What he struggles to acknowledge is that Starmer is engaged in a campaign to make Labour the national party of Britain and to that end will not refuse entry to anyone on the right of the political spectrum short of Nigel Farage.

The suggestion that Starmer remains occasionally tone-deaf, even naive, is a useful fiction. While he is clearly a cuckoo in the nest of the Labour Party, he is also an experienced member of the establishment who lives and breathes the particular governmentality of the UK state. The embrace of Elphicke and the rhetoric of "stopping the boats" is not merely an opportunistic attempt to attract xenophobic voters that in turn worries progressives. It is a more fundamental reassurance to the state apparatus that a Labour government will increase disciplinary powers, hence the pledge to create a new "border security command" by diverting the funds earmarked for the misbegotten Rwanda scheme, and hence the absence of detail on the creation of "safe and legal routes" for asylum-seekers. This conscious identification of Starmer with the state and its rhetorical proxy "the country", and the incongruity of his leadership of the Labour Party, will only become more pronounced once he is installed in Downing Street. It is the suggestion that he doesn't "get" Labour or politics more generally that will come to seem naive.

Liberals are never even-handed in their treatment of the "extremes" of left and right. The one cannot be tolerated under any circumstances; the other can be both tolerated and negotiated with. An example of this was David Lammy's recent speech to the Hudson Institute in Washington where he both insisted that the UK could find common cause with a future President Trump and that "the lowest point of his political life had been Labour’s failure to tackle antisemitism under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn". The first claim goes beyond Atlanticist Realpolitik to emphasise that from the elevated view of international relations there is no discernible difference between a self-proclaimed "centre-left" Labour Party and whatever stripe of centre-right or rightwing administration is in power in the US. In contrast, the second claim is almost bathetic in its mundane focus on bureaucratic procedure and office politics - the grubby reality of the sabotage undertaken by the Labour right and the hypocritical connivance of the "soft left" represented by the likes of David Lammy and Lisa Nandy.

What Crace and his mates at the Guardian cannot admit is that if your priority is keeping out the left, then any expansion towards a big tent politics necessarily means accommodating the right. And what Lammy and others in the PLP cannot admit is that Starmer does not see himself as a Labour man but as the representative of the state, and as such has little compunction about challenging the party's shibboleths and will display zero loyalty to those MPs who helped him into power. One thing you can be confident of is that Starmer will be increasingly brutal in his reshuffles once he has become Prime Minister and that there will be a lot of disgruntled ex-ministers on the backbenches who suddenly discover their political conscience after their sacking. It is becoming more and more clear that Starmer will head not only an authoritarian government but a distinctly nationalist one as well. Those Union Jacks aren't just for show. Though the SNP are likely to take a battering in the general election, this will ironically help them thereafter as Labour offers a revived unionism that will be light on further devolution and heavy on the cultural insensitivity.

In terms of his personal style, Starmer has started to display the characteristics more usually found in French public life: the idea that the head of government should be above the fray of mere politics and not subject to the "tribal" loyalties of party, which is straight out of the Charles De Gaulle playbook that lives on today in the "Jupiterian" style of Emmanuel Macron. But where Starmer and Macron differ in their performance of the role is that the latter appreciates the need for dramatic panache, hence the often ridiculous interventions on the European stage and the traditional obsession with domestic biopolitics. In contrast, Starmer sees his role in less quasi-monarchical terms, but he also appears to see it in more puritanical and small-c conservative terms, hence his tendency towards the condemnatory (outside of football fluff you rarely hear him ehthusiastically celebrating anything) and his use of an antiquated iconography (the flags, the toolmaker dad, the pebbledash semi etc). If Macron is inescapably bound to a tradition established by Napoleon Bonaparte, Starmer appears more in the mould of Oliver Cromwell.

Zones of Interest

Elections focus our understanding of society not only in terms of political preference but in terms of geography and demography. Though there has long been a vogue among political scientists to divide society into competing blocs defined by "values", as opposed to the more traditional socio-economic dimension that dominated twentieth century psephology, these have usually been interpreted through a combination of the where and the who: the "left behind" regions of a post-industrial society and the fortunate generation of "boomers" who have monopolised property wealth. In recent decades the where has perhaps been dominant, certainly in the UK where Brexit and immigration focused politics on national boundaries more than social composition and where "levelling up" has been presented as a matter of spatial equality rather than class differentials. That may now be changing as the focus shifts towards the antagonisms evident between the young and the old (much of what is classed as "culture wars" is really just inter-generational conflict). We are then in a transitional moment in which social tensions appear specific to place one moment and then particular to age cohorts the next. This is particularly evident in the flexible use of the idea of "zones".

No-go zones are a longstanding fixation of the political right. While this is often couched in lurid tales of foreign lands - think of American claims that London toils under the yoke of Sharia law - the typical no-go zone is very much domestic: the slums, the wrong side of the tracks, the lower depths. That said, these days you will see foreign horror stories imported wholesale, thus British reactionaries will trust Fox News reports about London over the evidence of their own eyes. These territories are usually defined by an alien population, whether in the form of a immigrant ghetto or a lumpen proletariat of scroungers and welfare queens - i.e. people we have neither sympathy for nor empathy with because they are culturally or morally other. A common theme in the characterisation of these areas is violence. This is not just a feral disregard for law and order, where the ostensible focus on the former ("knife crime") is really about the necessity of enforcing the latter ("robust policing"), but the product of an intrinsic barbarity: a propensity to "mindless violence", which must be distinguished from the judicious volence of the state. In this, the threat of Islamist or other radicalisation and the prevalence of vice are, despite their apparent contradictions, of a piece.

A variation on the no-go zone defined by territory and a fixed population is that of public spaces occupied by a transient crowd whose very presence excludes others. This isn't always presented negatively in the media as a "mob" challenging our way of life. It may even evoke fulsome praise - think of the anti-Brexit protests or marches against antisemitism of a few years ago. What's noticeable is that occupying space has expanded from a tactic favoured by the disempowered to a performance of privilege and the defence of hierarchies, even at the risk of challenging order. A recent example was Gideon Falter of the Campaign Against Antisemitism goading police officers. In its intent and execution this was no different to the Football Lads Alliance claiming to be defending statues from BLM "thugs". The premise of the protests against the dystopian fantasy of 15-minute cities is that control of public spaces by the "elite" is a vector of the "woke" conspiracy. This extends beyond the far-right protesting drag queen story hours at public libraries to gender critical feminists obsessing over public toilets.

One of the more bizarre sights of recent years has been the focus on college campuses as the highest form of public square, where cherishing freedom of speech is paramount. This despite them being mostly private institutions deliberately shielded from wider society through by-laws and the power of money. That the NYPD can descend on Columbia University and arrest students protesting in support of Palestinians is precisely because it isn't the public square. Some liberal commentators have been disturbed by the apparent hypocrisy of rightwing commentators who previously berated students as "snowflakes" incapable of accommodating different views and their new insistence that disputing US (or UK) support for Israel's actions in Gaza must be stopped for fear of making Jewish students feel uncomfortable (which, incidentally, in equating Jewishness with Israel is antisemitic). But there is no hypocrisy here. They see colleges as sites of privilege; they're just insistent that it should be their own worldview that is privileged.

Liberals are less likely to fixate on territorial zones, recognising that this would require consideration of the socio-economic factors that clearly define their spatial reality, such as power differentials and ingrained poverty, but they can divert their feelings of disgust towards the hoi polloi into idealised zones that have been corrupted. Perhaps the most telling of these has been the family unit, which is typically described in terms that are all too obviously class-based: the "problem families" of the working class versus the "high achievers" of the middle class. This is in a long tradition of the sanctification of the (nuclear) family unit that goes back to the Protestant Reformation and which achieved a peak of idealisation in contrast to the harsh reality of capitalism during the Victorian era (i.e. as a refuge, not as a rebuke). A specific aspect of this is the zone of childhood innocence (think Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies), which offers the opportunity to indulge in the grief of the individual as a distraction from the grief of a people.

Today the zone of innocence manifests chiefly in a paranoia, shared by both liberals and conservatives, about the negative effects of smartphones and social media. This goes beyond banning TikTok as a security risk to attempting to micromanage childhood. As this latest moral panic has gathered momentum, it is clear that the concern resides chiefly - as ever - with middle-class children, hence the threat is couched in terms of traditional virtue, such as educational achievement - e.g. Jonathan Haidt's "Smartphones vs smart kids". In contrast, the cultural expressions of working-class children are still more likely to evoke baffled disgust, rather than sympathy, not to mention legal censure. A secondary manifestation, though necessarily narrower in scope, has been the rise of trans scepticism, the idea that children who believe they should be another gender are simply confused and ought to be encouraged to think otherwise. The delay in the use of puberty-blockers is presented as a precautionary concern over irreversible change, but it looks a lot like a desire to preserve childhood innocence by paradoxically embracing puberty.

What all of these expressions share is a concern with property rights, whether in the negative sense that property values may be undermined by too close a proximity to the poor or immigrant, or in the positive sense that existing property must be defended against the importunate and naive claims of the young (that the Mayor of New York is desperately searching for evidence that Columbia students are being led astray by middle-aged "outside agitators" is telling). Beneath the anxiety about social media lurks the traditional fear that childhood could be "stolen", which is really a fear that children themselves could be spirited away, either physically or by being alienated from their parents. Once it was Gypsies who were thought to steal children, now it's "groomers", a term so capacious it covers trans rights activists, Islamists and the Chinese government. As we have increasingly delayed adulthood as a social life stage, through low wages and unaffordable housing, so we have extended the ideal of innocent childhood past 18 and increasingly now past 21. With politicians reversing course on trans rights and climate change, thereby making it clear that they don't value the opinions of the young, the idea that you should be able to vote at 16 increasingly looks out of step with our reactionary times.