Perhaps the most significant casualty of the current "terror" at the BBC will be Newsnight. I suspect it's for the chop (or at least a revamp that amounts to the same thing), not so much because of its misjudgement in the North Wales case last week as for its gradual decline over recent years. It was interesting to note this leak: "It is understood that Newsnight's political editor, Allegra Stratton, had such grave concerns over the allegations ... that she refused to conduct a two-way interview for the programme. Stratton, however, would not confirm this." It doesn't take a genius to work out the source of that briefing. Stratton has been one of the chief culprits in the declining integrity and competence of the programme, both in terms of her obviously partisan spin on many topics and her abuse of interviewees. While there are good journalists on board (Paul Mason, Susan Watts and Liz McKean spring to mind), and the foreign coverage is usually of a high standard, there is less sense of a cohesive house style now. It's just a bunch of people doing their own thing, with little loyalty to the Beeb or each other.
I think the change can be sourced to two pivotal events. The first was the Hutton inquiry. Newsnight was conflicted because it ran some of the original "sexed-up dossier" allegations and then had to quiz BBC management when Gavyn Davies and Greg Dyke resigned. Given the anti-BBC bias elsewhere in the media, they were obliged to be rigorous and confrontational or face accusations of cowardice. It looks like many on the programme became emotionally detached from the corporation at that point. The second key event was the financial crisis, which revealed the emperor in all his stark-bollock-naked glory. Though the programme was initially good on the misbehaviour of the banks and the failures of the regulators, it soon allowed its agenda to be shifted towards the iniquities of public debt and scare stories about demographic timebombs. The tone of the programme has consequently become pessimistic and borderline misanthropic. This has been exacerbated by the Eurozone crisis over the last couple of years.
It's also noticeable how often the government chooses not to send a representative: "they were asked but declined". The significance of this is not the disregard of the government but the cynical flaunting of it by the presenters. This petulance peaked with Eddie Mair's performance on Friday. Paxman's scepticism and barely-concealed contempt for the political class is amusing in small doses, but it has become exasperating as the leitmotif of the programme. Its monotonous deployment has become anti-political, which means it ultimately provides succour to those who would dismiss democracy as inefficient. Paxman himself has become increasingly bored. He seems unable to read an autocue now without at least one stumble. He's not incapable, just visibly showing his lack of interest. From his peak, skewering Michael Howard 15 years ago, he has subsided into a Clarksonesque caricature.
Paxo's own statement points the finger at the growth of a biddable and cowardly middle management tier in the wake of Hutton, however I think this has to be seen as the perspective of someone fronting a programme that was badly burnt by that inquiry. The evolution of the BBC's dysfunctional organisation and management culture has wider roots. One aspect of the BBC's recent travails that faded into the background last week was the coincidental announcement that freelancers will now join the BBC payroll. The use of personal services companies is widespread across the professional classes (probably affecting 1.5 million workers), though we usually only hear about it in the context of BBC "talent" and civil servants, or high-profile cases such as Ken Livingstone. It's no secret that the BBC's commitment to sourcing a large part of its productions via independent providers was achieved by moving many staff off payroll to freelance status.
The internal market mechanisms introduced by John Birt in the 1990s, and the widespread use of freelancers through PSCs and agencies, seem to have led to a managerial culture at the BBC in which anything not in the contract is deemed out of scope and therefore beyond oversight. It's a common experience where services are outsourced that management becomes biased towards arse-covering rather than doing the right thing. We saw this recently in the G4S Olympics fiasco, and arguably are seeing it now in the recklessness of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. To this extent, Entwhistle's incuriosity was endemic. It can also be said that he lost his job because he proved himself poor at arse-covering (after the initial Savile furore, he could have insisted on every sex abuse story being personally cleared with him).
The Newsnight epic-fail reflects the degree to which too many players in the drama do not appear to think of themselves as BBC loyalists, with a "duty of care" to the corporation and by extension public service broadcasting. The ultimate beneficiaries of this may turn out to be the famously "incurious" Murdochs and others who wish the BBC harm. The Birt era was a conscious attempt to head off break-up and privatisation by introducing commercial rigour to a famously uncommercial organisation. In the event, costs remained high but the money was increasingly diverted into the private sector and to a burgeoning professional and managerial class. While this may have saved the BBC as a public corporation, the real cost now appears to have been a loss of esprit de corps and the sense of responsibility that extended beyond the bald requirements of a contract.
Monday, 12 November 2012
Friday, 9 November 2012
How to frame an argument, with Ai Wei Wei and Arsene Wenger
The week has been dominated by oppositions, the contrast of this with that, most noisily the US Presidential election. No sooner was the result known than political commentators were busy contrasting American democracy with China's leadership regeneration process (not quite as exciting as Doctor Who's). The reporting on China tends to assume that the common people really want Western-style democracy, hence the high profile given to those like Ai Wei Wei who deal in concepts such as freedom of expression, even though all the evidence of recent decades, from Iran in 1978 (before the Khomeini putsch) through to Libya last year, is that what the people want may only loosely relate to the Western model.
The philosophical debate about democracy tends to polarise between a relativist view, which sees it as culturally determined and contingent (many varieties), and an idealist view that sees it in terms of universal principles (the one true church). This is not a straight left-right division, as many proponents of relativism are pessimistic conservatives (or "agnostic liberals", like John Gray), while some on the left cleave to the Enlightenment belief in a rational ideal. Others, like Ai Wei Wei, are sensitive to both views without explaining how this can be resolved. Broadly though, neoliberals tend to believe that democracy and free markets are the same thing, a species of consumer choice, and that one inevitably entails the other. This is the underlying assumption of much reporting on China, hence the "growing demand for freedom" trope in reports on industrial workers, as if agricultural workers didn't give a shit. When those liberated from the yoke of tyranny fail to adopt western-style democracy and markets wholesale, this is attributed to the baleful influence of religion, tribalism and poor education, or just plain "backwardness". A neoliberal take on false consciousness. Thus enlightenment liberals end up supporting anti-Islamic pacification while women demanding education and improved health care get more column inches than trades unionists demanding higher wages.
The idealist-relativist argument is intractable because the idealists invariably identify the form of democracy they are committed to as the one truth, while the relativists say that this very behaviour proves their own view to be correct: a variant on Arsene Wenger's "everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife" crack. In the West we "bracket" this problem and simply ignore the wrinkles in practical democracy (money in the US, the House of Lords in the UK, the EU's "democratic deficit" etc). Instead, we eulogise those features we think are common and foundational. Prominent amongst these is the notion of a "free press", though the term has long been hijacked to mean the liberty of media owners rather than the right of anyone to publish. As anticipated, the media agenda-setting for the upcoming Leveson Inquiry report is focusing on the narrow question of statutory regulation, with no discussion about media ownership or plurality.
The amount of heat and noise generated over an issue is often inversely proportional to the degree of difference between the two opposing positions, a variant on Sayre's Law (usually attributed to Henry Kissinger in the form "academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small"). Sometimes there is no meaningful opposition. In a piece charmingly entitled "the tribal grunts of left and right", Simon Jenkins today delivered a beauty: "The right has no answer to the widening gulf between rich and poor. The left has no answer to the chronic need for welfare targeting and means testing." These positions are not equivalent. One, inequality, is a consequence of policy, while the others are policy prescriptions. Jenkins seems oblivious to the role that the latter may have in creating the former.
All of this high-falutin' nonsense is just a preamble to a discussion of the latest chunterings in the world of Arsenal. As noted by many, the sports media have been indulging in an "Arsenal supporters deserve better" riff for some weeks now, legitimised as they see it by the dissent at the recent AGM (much of which was obviously influenced by prior media stirring). Henry Winter in the Telegraph has accused them of having a "runners-up mentality", while Richard Williams in the Guardian thinks Wenger is "finally losing his grip" (note the use of the word "finally").
The contrast here is between Arsenal's current performance and league position and where they "should be". As the more sane Arsenal fans regularly point out, the club's current resources would predict a 4th place position in the League, which is where we've tended to end up in recent years. Between 1998 and 2005 we finished in either first or second place. Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea in 2003, moving them from the 4th-6th range to 1st-2nd from 2004 by spending shedloads. The Abu Dhabi United Group bought Man City in 2008, working their way from 10th in 2009 to 1st in 2012 by the same method. Since 2005, Arsenal have finished either third or fourth. Over the same period, Liverpool have dropped out of the top four. Achieving the "runners up" slot, taking Winter's phrase literally, would be a good result. Indeed, coming third last season (ahead of Chelsea) was no mean feat. Unless you look at the season-on-season history, it's easy to forget just how consistently good Arsenal have been relative to the competition, and how misleading talk of Wenger "losing it" is.
League position, and cup success, broadly reflect the amount of money invested in the team, though the cups are obviously more arbitrary. Chelsea enjoyed luck on their way to the Champions League title last season, but no one could claim it hadn't been coming over the last decade. A good manager, like Wenger, can push a team higher, but the difficulty of this increases exponentially - i.e. you can add 5 or 6 places at the bottom of the division, 2 or 3 in the middle, and only 1 at most at the top. A new manager would not result in Arsenal suddenly jumping from 3rd to 1st, though presumably the calls for a change are working on the assumption that a new broom would result in a lot of money being spent on new players. This is unlikely. Most observers estimate that there is enough free cash to buy one or two top-level players, though we need to recognise that the top-whack price is never fixed. If Lionel Messi were on the market, we could in theory make a bid, but we'd quickly be blown out of the water by a richer club setting a new world record transfer fee.
All debates about Arsenal ultimately boil down to the willingness of the owners to spend money with no expectation of a return. It should be obvious that this isn't going to happen under Stan Kroenke, any more than it did under previous owners. When Arsenal had the "Bank of England" tag in the 1930s, this was on the basis of a self-sustaining model - i.e. the new ground at Highbury delivered big crowd receipts that funded record-breaking transfers. The Hill-Wood family did not spunk their fortune, any more than Danny Fiszman did. Anyone who argues for a massive cash outlay now must therefore accept that they are arguing for a full takeover by Alisher Usmanov, but without any guarantees that he will actually do what they want. You see, football clubs, being businesses, aren't democracies, and there is little in Usmanov's track record to indicate he is a champion of the rights of the little guy.
My personal day-dream is that some kindly benefactor (i.e. me, after I discover a garden shed-sized gold nugget underneath my garden shed) buys the club and then hands it over to the fans on a one-fan-one-vote basis (my definition of fan would cover all existing members plus fan clubs and others on payment of a reasonable minimum sub). This would, by definition, commit the club to operating on a self-sustaining basis (the occasional whip-round might be possible, but I doubt that would raise enough for cover at left-back). Presumably, those fans who think we should be finishing in 1st or 2nd would vote for the club to abolish its new-found democracy and become the plaything of a rich mogul.
Given that my daydream isn't going to happen, the only feasible revolution would be an Usmanov takeover, which could happen if Kroenke has his price or simply loses interest. The odds are that Usmanov would spend silly money, but then the odds are that we'd morph into a combination of Chelsea and Man City. While this would on the face of it satisfy those who chant "we want our Arsenal back", it would ironically be the one thing that would utterly divorce the club from its history. We didn't sell our soul when we moved to the new stadium, so let's not start now.
The philosophical debate about democracy tends to polarise between a relativist view, which sees it as culturally determined and contingent (many varieties), and an idealist view that sees it in terms of universal principles (the one true church). This is not a straight left-right division, as many proponents of relativism are pessimistic conservatives (or "agnostic liberals", like John Gray), while some on the left cleave to the Enlightenment belief in a rational ideal. Others, like Ai Wei Wei, are sensitive to both views without explaining how this can be resolved. Broadly though, neoliberals tend to believe that democracy and free markets are the same thing, a species of consumer choice, and that one inevitably entails the other. This is the underlying assumption of much reporting on China, hence the "growing demand for freedom" trope in reports on industrial workers, as if agricultural workers didn't give a shit. When those liberated from the yoke of tyranny fail to adopt western-style democracy and markets wholesale, this is attributed to the baleful influence of religion, tribalism and poor education, or just plain "backwardness". A neoliberal take on false consciousness. Thus enlightenment liberals end up supporting anti-Islamic pacification while women demanding education and improved health care get more column inches than trades unionists demanding higher wages.
The idealist-relativist argument is intractable because the idealists invariably identify the form of democracy they are committed to as the one truth, while the relativists say that this very behaviour proves their own view to be correct: a variant on Arsene Wenger's "everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife" crack. In the West we "bracket" this problem and simply ignore the wrinkles in practical democracy (money in the US, the House of Lords in the UK, the EU's "democratic deficit" etc). Instead, we eulogise those features we think are common and foundational. Prominent amongst these is the notion of a "free press", though the term has long been hijacked to mean the liberty of media owners rather than the right of anyone to publish. As anticipated, the media agenda-setting for the upcoming Leveson Inquiry report is focusing on the narrow question of statutory regulation, with no discussion about media ownership or plurality.
The amount of heat and noise generated over an issue is often inversely proportional to the degree of difference between the two opposing positions, a variant on Sayre's Law (usually attributed to Henry Kissinger in the form "academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small"). Sometimes there is no meaningful opposition. In a piece charmingly entitled "the tribal grunts of left and right", Simon Jenkins today delivered a beauty: "The right has no answer to the widening gulf between rich and poor. The left has no answer to the chronic need for welfare targeting and means testing." These positions are not equivalent. One, inequality, is a consequence of policy, while the others are policy prescriptions. Jenkins seems oblivious to the role that the latter may have in creating the former.
All of this high-falutin' nonsense is just a preamble to a discussion of the latest chunterings in the world of Arsenal. As noted by many, the sports media have been indulging in an "Arsenal supporters deserve better" riff for some weeks now, legitimised as they see it by the dissent at the recent AGM (much of which was obviously influenced by prior media stirring). Henry Winter in the Telegraph has accused them of having a "runners-up mentality", while Richard Williams in the Guardian thinks Wenger is "finally losing his grip" (note the use of the word "finally").
The contrast here is between Arsenal's current performance and league position and where they "should be". As the more sane Arsenal fans regularly point out, the club's current resources would predict a 4th place position in the League, which is where we've tended to end up in recent years. Between 1998 and 2005 we finished in either first or second place. Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea in 2003, moving them from the 4th-6th range to 1st-2nd from 2004 by spending shedloads. The Abu Dhabi United Group bought Man City in 2008, working their way from 10th in 2009 to 1st in 2012 by the same method. Since 2005, Arsenal have finished either third or fourth. Over the same period, Liverpool have dropped out of the top four. Achieving the "runners up" slot, taking Winter's phrase literally, would be a good result. Indeed, coming third last season (ahead of Chelsea) was no mean feat. Unless you look at the season-on-season history, it's easy to forget just how consistently good Arsenal have been relative to the competition, and how misleading talk of Wenger "losing it" is.
League position, and cup success, broadly reflect the amount of money invested in the team, though the cups are obviously more arbitrary. Chelsea enjoyed luck on their way to the Champions League title last season, but no one could claim it hadn't been coming over the last decade. A good manager, like Wenger, can push a team higher, but the difficulty of this increases exponentially - i.e. you can add 5 or 6 places at the bottom of the division, 2 or 3 in the middle, and only 1 at most at the top. A new manager would not result in Arsenal suddenly jumping from 3rd to 1st, though presumably the calls for a change are working on the assumption that a new broom would result in a lot of money being spent on new players. This is unlikely. Most observers estimate that there is enough free cash to buy one or two top-level players, though we need to recognise that the top-whack price is never fixed. If Lionel Messi were on the market, we could in theory make a bid, but we'd quickly be blown out of the water by a richer club setting a new world record transfer fee.
All debates about Arsenal ultimately boil down to the willingness of the owners to spend money with no expectation of a return. It should be obvious that this isn't going to happen under Stan Kroenke, any more than it did under previous owners. When Arsenal had the "Bank of England" tag in the 1930s, this was on the basis of a self-sustaining model - i.e. the new ground at Highbury delivered big crowd receipts that funded record-breaking transfers. The Hill-Wood family did not spunk their fortune, any more than Danny Fiszman did. Anyone who argues for a massive cash outlay now must therefore accept that they are arguing for a full takeover by Alisher Usmanov, but without any guarantees that he will actually do what they want. You see, football clubs, being businesses, aren't democracies, and there is little in Usmanov's track record to indicate he is a champion of the rights of the little guy.
My personal day-dream is that some kindly benefactor (i.e. me, after I discover a garden shed-sized gold nugget underneath my garden shed) buys the club and then hands it over to the fans on a one-fan-one-vote basis (my definition of fan would cover all existing members plus fan clubs and others on payment of a reasonable minimum sub). This would, by definition, commit the club to operating on a self-sustaining basis (the occasional whip-round might be possible, but I doubt that would raise enough for cover at left-back). Presumably, those fans who think we should be finishing in 1st or 2nd would vote for the club to abolish its new-found democracy and become the plaything of a rich mogul.
Given that my daydream isn't going to happen, the only feasible revolution would be an Usmanov takeover, which could happen if Kroenke has his price or simply loses interest. The odds are that Usmanov would spend silly money, but then the odds are that we'd morph into a combination of Chelsea and Man City. While this would on the face of it satisfy those who chant "we want our Arsenal back", it would ironically be the one thing that would utterly divorce the club from its history. We didn't sell our soul when we moved to the new stadium, so let's not start now.
Wednesday, 7 November 2012
Some guy wins, some guy loses
It was tense watching the contest unfold on TV last night, particularly after an early lead had been eroded by some lacklustre moments, but we hung on for a valuable point in Gelsenkirchen. Oh, and yer man, Barry O'Bama, won as well.
US election day saw the usual media bollocks-fest and wanton acts of stupidity on both sides of the pond. Tracking Janet Daley of the Torygraph was a particular joy. Early yesterday she insisted that her sixth sense indicated a Romney victory despite polling data indicating otherwise: "disagreeing with the state polls is not simply a species of Republican wishful thinking". Well, apparently it was. As the night progressed she opined: "It looks as if we may be heading for one of the most perplexing (to outsiders) and unsatisfying (to Americans) outcomes which the arcane US electoral system can produce." I suppose the result might appear perplexing if you relied on Daley for insight, but fortunately few of us outsiders do, and it wasn't at all clear why Americans would be unsatisfied because their votes counted. At this stage the great clairvoyante was still predicting that Romney would at least win the popular vote (he didn't) if not the electoral college, allowing her (in the time-honoured fashion of soothsayers) to claim she was sorta right all along: "both camps were right – those of us who believed intuitively that there was a popular groundswell for Romney, and those who bored for the nation with endless reams of statistical data showing that Obama would win enough states to push him over the line". Damn those statistical bores. Come the full horror of realisation this morning, she promptly changed tack with a post that topped even the previous day's wishful thinking: "US voters still blame Bush for economy: bad news for Labour?"
The most popular theme in the media coverage was the supposed polarisation of US society. Pundits from both sides talked of poisonous division and deep cultural differences. This sort of well-defined opposition is catnip for the media. Nobody wants a polite contest in which the ideological and policy differences are slight. The post-mortem is focusing heavily on demographic change, notably the Republicans' lack of popularity with the growing Hispanic community, and the emergence of a liberal backlash in respect of healthcare, abortion and gay marriage. To Janet Daley's "outsider" this must look like both a titanic contest and the shifting of tectonic plates. The generally hysterical reaction of right-wing propagandists encourages the belief that this is on a par with Gettysburg. It's nonsense, of course. Over the last 4 years Obama has proven to be more of a centrist than his campaign in 2008 implied, while everyone fully expected Romney to shift to the centre if elected. This is not to suggest that there wasn't a real choice on offer, but the degree of difference can easily be over-stated. Obamacare is not the NHS and the auto-industry bailout is not nationalisation. As Gore Vidal never tired of saying: "the United States has only one party—the property party. It’s the party of big corporations, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican".
The tendency to present politics in terms of demographics is a reflection of the influence of public choice theory and microeconomics in political science. This is part of the wider neoliberal paradigm that sees voters both as individuals pursuing their self-interest and as members of blocs with common interests to be addressed via fiscal policy. In other words, voters as consumers and democracy as an economic exchange. Over the last 3 decades the act of buying, of expressing choice through money, has been repeatedly upgraded and expanded through technology: credit cards, debit cards, direct debits, buying online, near field communications, mobile payments etc. In parallel, the means by which we gauge the will of the public have expanded beyond the voting booth through the addition of complementary techniques such as focus groups and opinion polls. The latter have taken on such a significance in the US (though the UK is not far behind with the ubiquitous YouGov), that earlier this week their accuracy and interpretation seemed to eclipse the candidates' campaigns. There is irony in the praise being lavished on these "mathematical models" today. It's as if we've already forgotten the idolatrous worship of financial models prior to 2008.
In contrast, while the act of voting is sacrosanct and retains huge symbolic importance, it has become more unreliable and antiquated due to failing technology ("hanging chads") and long queues. While this is often claimed to be evidence of partisan voter suppression in the US, it actually looks more systemic, hence the similar issues experienced in the UK in 2010. With our new found fondness for narrow referenda and superfluous elections, it's surely only a matter of time before you can vote from the comfort of your sofa, at which point the boundary between democracy and the TV studio (and "sponsored messages" in the US) will blur beyond recognition.
In such an environment, where individual "issues" must compete in a market for the voter/consumer's attention, binary oppositions and emotional subjects have a natural advantage. In the US, culture war friction points, such as abortion and gun control, act as proxies for an ideological debate that revolves around the competing claims of personal freedom and collective responsibility - i.e. the gamut of neoliberal orthodoxy. The role of wealth and property is largely absent. There are grounds to believe that US society is far less polarised than is generally thought, and that this polarisation myth serves a political establishment keen to accentuate small differences and a media industry keen to sell conflict. Last night gave little evidence to the contrary.
The privileging of market research in formulating policy is already leading to calls for the Republicans to start grooming Hispanic candidates, though they'll probably end up with an anti-gay evangelical one, while Hillary Clinton now looks a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination in 2016 on the assumption that women are the new black(s). It's also the reason why the American TV networks were confident in "calling" many a state vote last night, often extrapolating from little more than a couple of percent of the votes cast. Janet Daley was wrong because she is a true believer, sensing groundswells and relying on intuition, but at least she has a belief. Beneath the confected bluster and rage, the neoliberal orthodoxy treats the electorate coolly. They are biddable and easily scared. Whatever happens, the party of property wins.
US election day saw the usual media bollocks-fest and wanton acts of stupidity on both sides of the pond. Tracking Janet Daley of the Torygraph was a particular joy. Early yesterday she insisted that her sixth sense indicated a Romney victory despite polling data indicating otherwise: "disagreeing with the state polls is not simply a species of Republican wishful thinking". Well, apparently it was. As the night progressed she opined: "It looks as if we may be heading for one of the most perplexing (to outsiders) and unsatisfying (to Americans) outcomes which the arcane US electoral system can produce." I suppose the result might appear perplexing if you relied on Daley for insight, but fortunately few of us outsiders do, and it wasn't at all clear why Americans would be unsatisfied because their votes counted. At this stage the great clairvoyante was still predicting that Romney would at least win the popular vote (he didn't) if not the electoral college, allowing her (in the time-honoured fashion of soothsayers) to claim she was sorta right all along: "both camps were right – those of us who believed intuitively that there was a popular groundswell for Romney, and those who bored for the nation with endless reams of statistical data showing that Obama would win enough states to push him over the line". Damn those statistical bores. Come the full horror of realisation this morning, she promptly changed tack with a post that topped even the previous day's wishful thinking: "US voters still blame Bush for economy: bad news for Labour?"
The most popular theme in the media coverage was the supposed polarisation of US society. Pundits from both sides talked of poisonous division and deep cultural differences. This sort of well-defined opposition is catnip for the media. Nobody wants a polite contest in which the ideological and policy differences are slight. The post-mortem is focusing heavily on demographic change, notably the Republicans' lack of popularity with the growing Hispanic community, and the emergence of a liberal backlash in respect of healthcare, abortion and gay marriage. To Janet Daley's "outsider" this must look like both a titanic contest and the shifting of tectonic plates. The generally hysterical reaction of right-wing propagandists encourages the belief that this is on a par with Gettysburg. It's nonsense, of course. Over the last 4 years Obama has proven to be more of a centrist than his campaign in 2008 implied, while everyone fully expected Romney to shift to the centre if elected. This is not to suggest that there wasn't a real choice on offer, but the degree of difference can easily be over-stated. Obamacare is not the NHS and the auto-industry bailout is not nationalisation. As Gore Vidal never tired of saying: "the United States has only one party—the property party. It’s the party of big corporations, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican".
The tendency to present politics in terms of demographics is a reflection of the influence of public choice theory and microeconomics in political science. This is part of the wider neoliberal paradigm that sees voters both as individuals pursuing their self-interest and as members of blocs with common interests to be addressed via fiscal policy. In other words, voters as consumers and democracy as an economic exchange. Over the last 3 decades the act of buying, of expressing choice through money, has been repeatedly upgraded and expanded through technology: credit cards, debit cards, direct debits, buying online, near field communications, mobile payments etc. In parallel, the means by which we gauge the will of the public have expanded beyond the voting booth through the addition of complementary techniques such as focus groups and opinion polls. The latter have taken on such a significance in the US (though the UK is not far behind with the ubiquitous YouGov), that earlier this week their accuracy and interpretation seemed to eclipse the candidates' campaigns. There is irony in the praise being lavished on these "mathematical models" today. It's as if we've already forgotten the idolatrous worship of financial models prior to 2008.
In contrast, while the act of voting is sacrosanct and retains huge symbolic importance, it has become more unreliable and antiquated due to failing technology ("hanging chads") and long queues. While this is often claimed to be evidence of partisan voter suppression in the US, it actually looks more systemic, hence the similar issues experienced in the UK in 2010. With our new found fondness for narrow referenda and superfluous elections, it's surely only a matter of time before you can vote from the comfort of your sofa, at which point the boundary between democracy and the TV studio (and "sponsored messages" in the US) will blur beyond recognition.
In such an environment, where individual "issues" must compete in a market for the voter/consumer's attention, binary oppositions and emotional subjects have a natural advantage. In the US, culture war friction points, such as abortion and gun control, act as proxies for an ideological debate that revolves around the competing claims of personal freedom and collective responsibility - i.e. the gamut of neoliberal orthodoxy. The role of wealth and property is largely absent. There are grounds to believe that US society is far less polarised than is generally thought, and that this polarisation myth serves a political establishment keen to accentuate small differences and a media industry keen to sell conflict. Last night gave little evidence to the contrary.
The privileging of market research in formulating policy is already leading to calls for the Republicans to start grooming Hispanic candidates, though they'll probably end up with an anti-gay evangelical one, while Hillary Clinton now looks a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination in 2016 on the assumption that women are the new black(s). It's also the reason why the American TV networks were confident in "calling" many a state vote last night, often extrapolating from little more than a couple of percent of the votes cast. Janet Daley was wrong because she is a true believer, sensing groundswells and relying on intuition, but at least she has a belief. Beneath the confected bluster and rage, the neoliberal orthodoxy treats the electorate coolly. They are biddable and easily scared. Whatever happens, the party of property wins.
Monday, 5 November 2012
Spartans versus the Death Star
I don't know why it should have lodged in my memory, but I recall Michael Gove, when he moonlighted on BBC2's Late Review in the mid-noughties, once saying that his film of the year was 300, the glossy interpretation of Frank Miller's bonkers comic book about Thermopylae. I initially thought this was something to do with Gove's public school fixation, an attraction to the heady mix of classical Greek, crypto-Fascism and well-oiled male bodies, but I now think it was more his appreciation of arguably the biggest theme in cinema these past 40 years, namely rebels against the empire. This memory was revived by the coincidence of the government's defeat on the EU budget last week, which was preceded by anti-EU noises from Gove, and George Lucas selling-up to Disney.
Star Wars arrived a year after the celebrations of the bicentennial of the US Declaration of Independence, so it was pretty obvious what the main rebels-vs-empire parallels were, though you'll still catch sight of the myth that Lucas was secretly referring to the Viet Cong and the US military in a sort of Buck Rogers meets Apocalypse Now mashup. Such an expansive and flexible trope allowed for many variations, the two main ones being the quest with a happy ending (the rebels defeat the empire), such as The Patriot and The Lord of the Rings, and the consolatory tragedy (the empire defeats the rebels but cannot crush their spirit), such as Braveheart and Gladiator. The attraction of this theme to the anti-government right is obvious, providing a ready-made identity for the Tea Party in the US. While they focus their ire on the federal government (the "evil empire" of the USSR is now but a nostalgic relic), their UK equivalents tend to ignore the centralising tendencies of Whitehall (though I note that Tolkein is now being cited in respect of the Orc-like menace of wind farms) and direct their contempt at the European Union.
Gove is reported to have said of the EU: "We have to tell them if they don’t return some of the important powers they have snaffled from us, we will leave". I love the use of the word "snaffled", which calls to mind the truffle-loving gourmands of Brussels. The foundation myth of the eurosceptics is that what began as a free-trade collaboration of equals (the Common Market) has morphed into the repressive Belgian empire. This transformation is being accomplished through creeping bureaucracy and excessive regulation, which is presented as simultaneously incompetent and malevolent. This explains the ideological importance of the euromyth (straight bananas as examples of eurocrat madness), the subsuming of pre-existing initiatives as "more EU meddling" (e.g. the conventions on human rights and extradition), and the legend that the EU now writes (and imposes) most of our laws.
The non-partisan House of Commons Library reported in 2010 that 7% of UK primary legislation (statutes) and 14% of secondary legislation originated with the EU. It also noted that the Government had estimated "that around 50% of UK legislation with a significant economic impact originates from EU legislation" (my italics). Given the focus of the EU on the single market, that should hardly be surprising, however the figure is routinely quoted as if it referred to all legislation. Most EU regulations are for the purpose of market harmonisation. This means that 27 different regulations are replaced by a common standard. From the perspective of the average citizen, this is a net-zero change, but from the perspective of a business operating in multiple EU states, it's a radical simplification. And that's the point. Most EU legislation is enacted for the benefit of business because the EU is fundamentally a neoliberal endeavour. The primacy of business can also be seen in social policies that focus on working time and parental rights - i.e. it's about creating a level-playing field for business operations in terms of personnel costs. The objective is only partly to establish minimum social standards. The real imperative is to avoid regulatory arbitrage between nation states.
The role of regulation for business was highlighted in Michael Heseltine's report, No Stone Unturned in Pursuit of Growth, which was published last week. As a long-time europhile and champion of state intervention, Hezza took pleasure in advocating both a regional industrial strategy and the benefits of state regulation: "I reject the premise that regulation in itself hinders growth. Good, well-designed regulation can stop the abuse of market power and improve the way markets work". This is clearly directed at the fashionable nonsense regarding excessive business red tape, but it has an obvious relevance to the debate over the EU as well. Unfortunately, the high profile of Europe this past week has rather detracted from the bigger issue addressed by the report, which is the regional imbalance of the UK. Predictably, Heseltine has no real answers to this beyond reprising his previous PR-heavy approach to regeneration on Merseyside in the 1980s. This remains popular, but the reality is that the regions need more than elected mayors and superfast broadband.
Regional balance is, to a large degree, a zero-sum game. You cannot expect Liverpool or Leeds to thrive while London continues to suck in the lion's share of financial and human capital. Heseltine's fence-sitting on London's airport capacity (he merely urges the government to speed up a decision) is emblematic of a willingness to talk tough while avoiding tough decisions. This perhaps explains the warm response from David Cameron for a report that has been widely interpreted as decidedly plan B-ish. For all the Olympian thundering, it's the same old noblesse oblige - "something must be done", with no likelihood of anything beyond the palliative.
The cause of the rebels against the empire is the cause of the periphery against the centre, the weak against the strong, the poor against the rich. The neoliberal détournement of this trope sees the City of London cast as the plucky Spartans to the EU's Persian Empire. The maintenance of the City's dominance and liberty, in respect of both domestic and EU financial regulation, remains the government's chief objective, and the reason for their flirtation with the threat of withdrawal. It also remains the key reason for the entrenched disadvantages of the regions and the imbalances in industrial strategy. The Death Star is a square mile in size.
Star Wars arrived a year after the celebrations of the bicentennial of the US Declaration of Independence, so it was pretty obvious what the main rebels-vs-empire parallels were, though you'll still catch sight of the myth that Lucas was secretly referring to the Viet Cong and the US military in a sort of Buck Rogers meets Apocalypse Now mashup. Such an expansive and flexible trope allowed for many variations, the two main ones being the quest with a happy ending (the rebels defeat the empire), such as The Patriot and The Lord of the Rings, and the consolatory tragedy (the empire defeats the rebels but cannot crush their spirit), such as Braveheart and Gladiator. The attraction of this theme to the anti-government right is obvious, providing a ready-made identity for the Tea Party in the US. While they focus their ire on the federal government (the "evil empire" of the USSR is now but a nostalgic relic), their UK equivalents tend to ignore the centralising tendencies of Whitehall (though I note that Tolkein is now being cited in respect of the Orc-like menace of wind farms) and direct their contempt at the European Union.
Gove is reported to have said of the EU: "We have to tell them if they don’t return some of the important powers they have snaffled from us, we will leave". I love the use of the word "snaffled", which calls to mind the truffle-loving gourmands of Brussels. The foundation myth of the eurosceptics is that what began as a free-trade collaboration of equals (the Common Market) has morphed into the repressive Belgian empire. This transformation is being accomplished through creeping bureaucracy and excessive regulation, which is presented as simultaneously incompetent and malevolent. This explains the ideological importance of the euromyth (straight bananas as examples of eurocrat madness), the subsuming of pre-existing initiatives as "more EU meddling" (e.g. the conventions on human rights and extradition), and the legend that the EU now writes (and imposes) most of our laws.
The non-partisan House of Commons Library reported in 2010 that 7% of UK primary legislation (statutes) and 14% of secondary legislation originated with the EU. It also noted that the Government had estimated "that around 50% of UK legislation with a significant economic impact originates from EU legislation" (my italics). Given the focus of the EU on the single market, that should hardly be surprising, however the figure is routinely quoted as if it referred to all legislation. Most EU regulations are for the purpose of market harmonisation. This means that 27 different regulations are replaced by a common standard. From the perspective of the average citizen, this is a net-zero change, but from the perspective of a business operating in multiple EU states, it's a radical simplification. And that's the point. Most EU legislation is enacted for the benefit of business because the EU is fundamentally a neoliberal endeavour. The primacy of business can also be seen in social policies that focus on working time and parental rights - i.e. it's about creating a level-playing field for business operations in terms of personnel costs. The objective is only partly to establish minimum social standards. The real imperative is to avoid regulatory arbitrage between nation states.
The role of regulation for business was highlighted in Michael Heseltine's report, No Stone Unturned in Pursuit of Growth, which was published last week. As a long-time europhile and champion of state intervention, Hezza took pleasure in advocating both a regional industrial strategy and the benefits of state regulation: "I reject the premise that regulation in itself hinders growth. Good, well-designed regulation can stop the abuse of market power and improve the way markets work". This is clearly directed at the fashionable nonsense regarding excessive business red tape, but it has an obvious relevance to the debate over the EU as well. Unfortunately, the high profile of Europe this past week has rather detracted from the bigger issue addressed by the report, which is the regional imbalance of the UK. Predictably, Heseltine has no real answers to this beyond reprising his previous PR-heavy approach to regeneration on Merseyside in the 1980s. This remains popular, but the reality is that the regions need more than elected mayors and superfast broadband.
Regional balance is, to a large degree, a zero-sum game. You cannot expect Liverpool or Leeds to thrive while London continues to suck in the lion's share of financial and human capital. Heseltine's fence-sitting on London's airport capacity (he merely urges the government to speed up a decision) is emblematic of a willingness to talk tough while avoiding tough decisions. This perhaps explains the warm response from David Cameron for a report that has been widely interpreted as decidedly plan B-ish. For all the Olympian thundering, it's the same old noblesse oblige - "something must be done", with no likelihood of anything beyond the palliative.
The cause of the rebels against the empire is the cause of the periphery against the centre, the weak against the strong, the poor against the rich. The neoliberal détournement of this trope sees the City of London cast as the plucky Spartans to the EU's Persian Empire. The maintenance of the City's dominance and liberty, in respect of both domestic and EU financial regulation, remains the government's chief objective, and the reason for their flirtation with the threat of withdrawal. It also remains the key reason for the entrenched disadvantages of the regions and the imbalances in industrial strategy. The Death Star is a square mile in size.
Saturday, 3 November 2012
A Hero of our Time
Skyfall, the new James Bond film, is being interpreted by some as a sign of a new seriousness in popular culture, though I think the downbeat and realistic tone that has marked Daniel Craig's stint was a necessary corrective as the series became increasingly ridiculous. In an interesting review, the Russian film critic Valery Kichin noted his compatriots' fascination with Bond in the 70s. I suspect this was more than just awe at capitalist product placement and extended to an empathy with the themes of imperial decline, betrayal and the need for the individual hero to protect the Motherland. Vladimir Putin has not been shy in emphasising his credentials as a KGB officer. Kichin mentions a Russian study of Bond from that period called A Hero of our Hero-less Time. The echo is of Lermontov's A Hero of our Time, the early nineteenth century study of a self-indulgent and self-destructive anti-hero, which is ironically referenced by Ian Fleming himself in From Russia With Love.
Bond has always been a symbol for evolving British anxiety, both in terms of loss of status abroad and the erosion of class and gender certainties at home. Over the years, insouciance dissolved into flippancy, stiff upper lip into smirk. One constant has been Bond's instrumental attitude towards women. You know: shagging them before they get topped. Skyfall makes a nod towards redressing this, with the new Moneypenny shooting him in error to balance the main "Bond girl" getting shagged and then topped. To complicate matters, and perhaps engage Freudian analysts in the audience, the death of M is preceded by a lingering shot of the gravestone of Bond's mother, who we learn was named Monique. The Scottish scenes are dreamlike and full of incongruities, not the least of which is Albert Finney's accent. The eponymous house is more Hogwarts than Scottish Baronial, and it's built on low-lying bogland next to a loch, which no one in their right mind would ever do. It's clearly less a place than a state of mind.
Another constant theme has been technology, which gradually moved from a sort of plausible ingenuity that combined Barnes Wallis and Heath Robinson to the pointless high-concept of an invisible Aston Martin. In Skyfall Bond's personal gadgetry has been reduced to the quotidien, but this is because technology is now central to the plot, concerning as it does hacking and cyber-sabotage. The key visual metaphor is a spinning ball of information spaghetti, representing a mass of encrypted data, which Bond just happens to discover the key to as if it were an acrostic. The new geekish Q is commendably generous in his praise. This amusing fluff is matched by the villain's data centre on a deserted island in the tropical South China Sea. It's an old, ruined building, full of dust and debris, in which the baddy has installed banks of servers but no air-con, unless you count the open windows. Good luck with that in the summer. M's speech to a parliamentary committee about threats from "the shadows", the villain being a cyber-terrorist, and the retreat of MI6 to "one of Churchill's bunkers" must have made Theresa May curl up her toes and squeal with delight. How could anyone dare stop her Communications Data Bill now?
The central matter of Bond has always been international relations. He first appeared in 1953, just before Suez and the point of no return for Britain's global pretensions. The bromance with Felix Leiter of the CIA inverts the realities of the special relationship: here the Brit is the muscle and the Yank provides logistical support. In contrast, the French usually only appear as villains or dispensable totty, along with caricature Germans, Russians and orientals. The jetting-off to exotic locations was an obvious compensation for the loss of empire, though in recent decades it has tended to reflect centres of growing power that we need to take an interest in. Alex Salmond is probably pleased that Skyfall climaxes in Scotland, but of more note is that it starts in Turkey, the ambiguous giant at Europe's door, before moving to China, the global behemoth with a penchant for state-sponsored hacking.
This nostalgia for empire, combined with a hard-headed willingness to go where the business is (or at least attract their footloose rich to London), are two sides of the same coin. The claim that the British Empire was acquired in a fit of absent-mindedness is the modern ideological successor to the old idea of the white man's burden, in other words an attempt to justify a mercantilist endeavour by appeal to nobler (or at least less ignoble) motives. This attitude heavily coloured Ian Hislop's recent BBC series, Stiff Upper Lip, in which he claimed that the transformation of the emotionally incontinent English of the 16th century (when Italians were the epitome of cool restraint) into a nation typified by the phlegmatic Wellington and the reserved Jane Austen was a reaction to the French revolution and after, as if an entire people had gone through emotional rehab just to spite Boney.
This Burke-inspired narrative skates over a few inconvenient facts. Arthur Wellesley was Anglo-Irish and learnt his trade as a soldier in India. In other words, he was shaped by the imperial experience of living among subject (and thoroughly unreliable) people. Austen did not become well-known till the late 19th century and didn't really achieve popularity until the 1940s. The popular writers of the Napoleonic years were the Romantics, such as Wordsworth and Byron. Neither Wellington nor Austen were representative of early 19th century English sentiment, while Nelson, whom Hislop dismisses as a relic of the older 18th century emotional order, undoubtedly was. The evolution of the stiff upper lip owed more to the development of empire abroad and the social impact of the industrial revolution at home, than it did to a reaction against the French.
Hislop's episode on empire wheeled out the self-serving myth that the whole thing was a massive confidence trick in which a handful of public school-educated district commissoners ruled millions, seducing the idiot native with durbars and displays of pluck. You'd think we'd have moved beyond Sir Sidney and Lady Rough-Diamond in Carry on up the Khyber, but apparently not. The lie to this was famously given by George Orwell in his description of shooting an elephant in Burma in order to maintain face in front of the natives. The point was to prove your willingness to deploy overwhelmingly superior force, whether in the form of gun-boats, advanced rifles or arbitrary justice. The Indian Mutiny and other rebellions proved that given half a chance a subject people will invariably revolt. It's violence that keeps them under control, and its use is not an aberration but systematic policy, as the current Mau Mau torture case has made clear. The latter part of the episode was Hislop's wry but sentimental appreciation of the English public school, the training ground for DCs. This added little beyond a recognition of the damaging delusions that it produced, which led directly to Ypres and Paschendale.
The final episode was an indulgent review of the "long withdrawing roar" of empire and Victorian certainty in the 20th century, i.e. amusing cartoons about blimpish attitudes and reduced circumstances. The Blitz Spirit was called as a witness for the defence, as was our ability to laugh at ourselves. A key trait of the idealised image of the Englishman (more than the Briton) is humour, particularly in the form of irony and self-deprecation. The empire? That was just a jolly jape that got out of hand. The chief charge against the French has nothing to do with garlic or hairy women and everything to do with pomposity. They take themselves too seriously. This explains why Private Eye has such cultural clout, and why we value whimsy and eccentricity (a pathological denial of reality) so highly.
James Bond is no more conceivable without his quips than his Omega or his Walther PPK, which is why I think the claims of a new seriousness are wrong. What the retro-chic and "honest brutality" introduced with Casino Royale indicate is heavy nostalgia rather than engagement with the world of today. The reintroduction of Moneypenny and a male M looks like a desire for familiar features in a troubled landscape. The reintroduction of the Aston Martin DB5, which is then utterly destroyed, highlights the risk of such longing.
Bond has always been a symbol for evolving British anxiety, both in terms of loss of status abroad and the erosion of class and gender certainties at home. Over the years, insouciance dissolved into flippancy, stiff upper lip into smirk. One constant has been Bond's instrumental attitude towards women. You know: shagging them before they get topped. Skyfall makes a nod towards redressing this, with the new Moneypenny shooting him in error to balance the main "Bond girl" getting shagged and then topped. To complicate matters, and perhaps engage Freudian analysts in the audience, the death of M is preceded by a lingering shot of the gravestone of Bond's mother, who we learn was named Monique. The Scottish scenes are dreamlike and full of incongruities, not the least of which is Albert Finney's accent. The eponymous house is more Hogwarts than Scottish Baronial, and it's built on low-lying bogland next to a loch, which no one in their right mind would ever do. It's clearly less a place than a state of mind.
Another constant theme has been technology, which gradually moved from a sort of plausible ingenuity that combined Barnes Wallis and Heath Robinson to the pointless high-concept of an invisible Aston Martin. In Skyfall Bond's personal gadgetry has been reduced to the quotidien, but this is because technology is now central to the plot, concerning as it does hacking and cyber-sabotage. The key visual metaphor is a spinning ball of information spaghetti, representing a mass of encrypted data, which Bond just happens to discover the key to as if it were an acrostic. The new geekish Q is commendably generous in his praise. This amusing fluff is matched by the villain's data centre on a deserted island in the tropical South China Sea. It's an old, ruined building, full of dust and debris, in which the baddy has installed banks of servers but no air-con, unless you count the open windows. Good luck with that in the summer. M's speech to a parliamentary committee about threats from "the shadows", the villain being a cyber-terrorist, and the retreat of MI6 to "one of Churchill's bunkers" must have made Theresa May curl up her toes and squeal with delight. How could anyone dare stop her Communications Data Bill now?
The central matter of Bond has always been international relations. He first appeared in 1953, just before Suez and the point of no return for Britain's global pretensions. The bromance with Felix Leiter of the CIA inverts the realities of the special relationship: here the Brit is the muscle and the Yank provides logistical support. In contrast, the French usually only appear as villains or dispensable totty, along with caricature Germans, Russians and orientals. The jetting-off to exotic locations was an obvious compensation for the loss of empire, though in recent decades it has tended to reflect centres of growing power that we need to take an interest in. Alex Salmond is probably pleased that Skyfall climaxes in Scotland, but of more note is that it starts in Turkey, the ambiguous giant at Europe's door, before moving to China, the global behemoth with a penchant for state-sponsored hacking.
This nostalgia for empire, combined with a hard-headed willingness to go where the business is (or at least attract their footloose rich to London), are two sides of the same coin. The claim that the British Empire was acquired in a fit of absent-mindedness is the modern ideological successor to the old idea of the white man's burden, in other words an attempt to justify a mercantilist endeavour by appeal to nobler (or at least less ignoble) motives. This attitude heavily coloured Ian Hislop's recent BBC series, Stiff Upper Lip, in which he claimed that the transformation of the emotionally incontinent English of the 16th century (when Italians were the epitome of cool restraint) into a nation typified by the phlegmatic Wellington and the reserved Jane Austen was a reaction to the French revolution and after, as if an entire people had gone through emotional rehab just to spite Boney.
This Burke-inspired narrative skates over a few inconvenient facts. Arthur Wellesley was Anglo-Irish and learnt his trade as a soldier in India. In other words, he was shaped by the imperial experience of living among subject (and thoroughly unreliable) people. Austen did not become well-known till the late 19th century and didn't really achieve popularity until the 1940s. The popular writers of the Napoleonic years were the Romantics, such as Wordsworth and Byron. Neither Wellington nor Austen were representative of early 19th century English sentiment, while Nelson, whom Hislop dismisses as a relic of the older 18th century emotional order, undoubtedly was. The evolution of the stiff upper lip owed more to the development of empire abroad and the social impact of the industrial revolution at home, than it did to a reaction against the French.
Hislop's episode on empire wheeled out the self-serving myth that the whole thing was a massive confidence trick in which a handful of public school-educated district commissoners ruled millions, seducing the idiot native with durbars and displays of pluck. You'd think we'd have moved beyond Sir Sidney and Lady Rough-Diamond in Carry on up the Khyber, but apparently not. The lie to this was famously given by George Orwell in his description of shooting an elephant in Burma in order to maintain face in front of the natives. The point was to prove your willingness to deploy overwhelmingly superior force, whether in the form of gun-boats, advanced rifles or arbitrary justice. The Indian Mutiny and other rebellions proved that given half a chance a subject people will invariably revolt. It's violence that keeps them under control, and its use is not an aberration but systematic policy, as the current Mau Mau torture case has made clear. The latter part of the episode was Hislop's wry but sentimental appreciation of the English public school, the training ground for DCs. This added little beyond a recognition of the damaging delusions that it produced, which led directly to Ypres and Paschendale.
The final episode was an indulgent review of the "long withdrawing roar" of empire and Victorian certainty in the 20th century, i.e. amusing cartoons about blimpish attitudes and reduced circumstances. The Blitz Spirit was called as a witness for the defence, as was our ability to laugh at ourselves. A key trait of the idealised image of the Englishman (more than the Briton) is humour, particularly in the form of irony and self-deprecation. The empire? That was just a jolly jape that got out of hand. The chief charge against the French has nothing to do with garlic or hairy women and everything to do with pomposity. They take themselves too seriously. This explains why Private Eye has such cultural clout, and why we value whimsy and eccentricity (a pathological denial of reality) so highly.
James Bond is no more conceivable without his quips than his Omega or his Walther PPK, which is why I think the claims of a new seriousness are wrong. What the retro-chic and "honest brutality" introduced with Casino Royale indicate is heavy nostalgia rather than engagement with the world of today. The reintroduction of Moneypenny and a male M looks like a desire for familiar features in a troubled landscape. The reintroduction of the Aston Martin DB5, which is then utterly destroyed, highlights the risk of such longing.
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