A Radical New Government? An update.

This morning, I listened to The Laura Kuenssberg Show, featuring Labour leader, Kier Starmer, and I have slightly moderated the views I outlined in my last blogpost. In that post I attacked the Tories for their ideological stance on the NHS and Brexit. The opposite position to ideological dogma is pragmatism, which is the idea that we don’t impose ideas onto reality but respond to the world as it really appears to be.

In his interview, Starmer said that his values, in respect of the NHS, were to oppose further privatisation, but that the practical reality he is likely to have to engage with, if he became Prime Minister, would be that he would have to reduce hospital and doctors’ patient waiting times, and that would mean having to use private health services. I can’t criticise the Tories for their idealism and lack of pragmatism, while at the same time insisting that Starmer stick to his principles. So perhaps I should give him more of a chance.

Not sure that his pragmatic approach to Brexit was quite so convincing though. When the British people voted for Brexit, they weren’t given the option of whether they thought we should leave the Single Market, the Custom’s Union or whether they thought we should allow free movement. Yet we left all of these, which were driven through by the Tory ideological zealots with, a kind of, winner takes all mentality, regardless of the impact they might have on ordinary peoples’ lives or on the economy. Why did Brexit happen? The only possible driver for Brexit could have been the intuitive drive to promote British sovereignty and its perceived status in the world, underpinned by feelings of patriotism, but what is patriotism and why is it there?

As human beings we seem to have an instinct for what scientists call in-group/out-group behaviour, and patriotism is a manifestation of that fundamental human instinct. We divide us, Britain, from them, the EU and all those other funny foreigners. The problem is that the instincts that underpin our behaviour evolved during the emergence of our species, when we were living in tribal units in a world very different to the one we live in today, and under the auspices of the mechanistic forces of nature, like Darwinian natural selection, and selfish genes, that have no moral dimension nor any bearing whatever on what we want, or should want for ourselves. The consequences of the behaviour of the simple-minded ideologs, like Brexiteers, could have even more profound and dangerous consequences:

We evolved; we are a species of social primate with a suite of behavioural attributes. If we are to understand what it is to be human, we must learn what these instincts are, the context in which they evolved and to confront them where necessary. This has important implications for philosophy, our view of ourselves, and by extension politics.

In the final episode of my series of podcasts, I pose the question “Could our species be terminally ill with the genetic disease of patriotism?” In a world bristling with nuclear weapons, it may turn out that Brexit is the least of our worries.

Find out more by listening to my podcasts: https://podcast.peterdfisher.com/share

A radical new government to deal with radical problems?

We are indeed living in strange times. The National Health Service is on its knees, or as in the words of Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer, “it’s not just on its knees, it’s on its face”. People are dying on hospital corridors, or in their homes waiting for ambulances that don’t arrive on time, or sometimes not at all, while all the main stories in the press, on the BBC and news channels is what Harry said about Wills. What is going on? Don’t ordinary people matter anymore? When did we lose perspective? Has human life somehow been sneakily devalued?

The undermining of the NHS, and by extension the value of human life itself, seems to have happened directly as a result of the failure of successive British governments to understand what is important.

When the Tories were elected twelve years ago, they had a clear vision of how things should be run. No one doubts that they had a plan, a clear and simple ideology, that they “knew” would provide the answer to the problems of the British economy. Simple minded ideologies are wonderful things, and they have special appeal to the simple minded. In the clear-cut Tory doctrine, if they focussed on creating economic growth, they would be better able to fund public services, and they claimed, paradoxically, that by cutting back spending on public services with swinging austerity measures, that the economy would be freed from the cost burdens creating a boom time, and that these “jam tomorrow” policies would eventually produce benefits for all. A less kind interpretation of their aims, given that all during the austerity period they cut taxes for the better off, was that they and their supporters had an antipathy about paying their fair share of tax, and just wanted a better income for themselves. Why put their hard-earned income into the pockets of ordinary folk, and especially the subset of the “poor” who they deemed workshy benefit scroungers?

Now, I am not an economist, and the following comments must be seen in that light, but as I understand it, economies are driven by supply and demand. And what the Tories wanted to do was to support the supply side of the economy: the small businesses, the producers, entrepreneurs and multinationals (their people), who, in their mind, produced the wealth. Unfortunately, the deficits of poor ideologies, whether clear-minded or not, are soon revealed. As soon as simplicity collides with the complexity of reality things start to go wrong. As I see it, there are two problems with the Tory approach, one is that if the better off do well they tend to filter much of their money into offshore tax havens so that tax revenues are reduced, and this money is effectively lost to the economy, reducing the effectiveness of their policy. The second is that for a supply/demand economy to work effectively there has to be a balance between the two parts, and by imposing pay restraint on vast sectors of the working population, this necessarily reduces demand. The supply side cannot make big profits, grow the economy, and pay their taxes if no one can afford to buy their products, which is where the impoverishing of the majority in an austerity driven economy inevitably leads.

Most people in Britain were clever enough to be suspicious about the Tory’s wonderfully clear vision for the future, despite the Tory “friends in high places” right-wing press propaganda. And in election after election the majority of voters voted against them, unfortunately the corrupt first-past-the-post electoral system meant that they won time after time, and in one case with a massive majority.

However, no one can deny that the British public voted for the Tory policy of Brexit however narrowly the result was, even if the suggested benefits of it were grossly exaggerated, and even lied about, and the hard-line extreme Brexit that was eventually implemented seriously damaged the economy, and meant that one part of Britain, Northern Ireland, was left without any government at all.

While the Labour Party have much to be proud of for creating the NHS in the first place, the half-way-house policies of Tony Blair introduced an internal market in the NHS, and we now see the results of that policy as contractors are now creaming off NHS funding for their own private profit, at the expense of the taxpayer, and robbing funding from the cash starved hospital trusts who desperately need the money.

If, as expected, the Labour Party win the next election, they will be faced with a massive task to rebuild the country and repair its devastated economy. Radical action will be necessary. A new EU referendum would obviously be a necessary step, and a recent poll found that two thirds of the British public would favour a second referendum. And, in the massive NHS crisis, where innocent people are dying all over the country, what is the cornerstone of Sir Keir’s message? While he is right to want to increase taxes for non-doms and those who can oppose it, his key policy seems to be… Wait for it… More devolution. Let’s move decision making from Westminster out to the regions. What! Who cares? People want their loved ones to have ambulances available for them. They want to know that if they become ill, they will have the treatment they have a right to expect, they want to know that their wages will be enough to cover their monthly costs. At a time like this, who among the general population is interested in devolution? As for a second EU referendum this also seems to have been ruled out.

Will we get a Labour government the country needs? The signs do not look good.

Passionate about the “Compassion Culture”?

Is there a rise in sloppy sentimentalism, and a “compassion culture”, growing in this country? The former editor of The Telegraph and the Evening Standard, seventy-something historian, Sir Max Hastings, seems to think so. He spoke said about the pandemic recently on the BBC Radio 4 “World at One” programme:

“We mustn’t, as the older folks, worry about the consequence, the ideas, of our getting ill or even dying for our own sakes because we have had so much that we have no grounds to complain. What we must worry about is not becoming a dead weight on the NHS. Where compassion culture has taken hold. We don’t face the fact that all these stupendous sums of spending that are coming up, they’ve got to be paid for by somebody. And I for one, when I pop my clogs, I hate the idea that my children, my grandchildren are going to be the ones who pay.”

In one sense this might be thought of as a selfless, perhaps even noble, sentiment. I have no way of knowing what his children and grandchildren think of him making this statement, one would hope he has. Would his children be ready to sacrifice a few more years with their loved one in exchange for a few pounds off their future tax bills, I wonder? 

It would be easy at this point to dismiss Hastings as an insensitive, compassionless individual who has somehow failed to connect with his emotions, or at least those of his family. But, it seems this is not so. After the Death of Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh he appeared on “Any Questions”, another BBC Radio 4 programme, here is part of what he said:

 “We took the Queen and Prince Philip for granted.

The dreadful loneliness that must afflict the Queen, because to be royal, it is almost impossible, you can’t really have friends. Yes you can have people with whom you spend time, but one of the things about being royal is that royals almost without exception feel that nobody else could possibly share their experience, their lives, and they’ve nobody to talk to, they’ve nobody to confide in, but of course the Queen has councillors and the Queen has friends of whom she spends time with […] all our thoughts go out to the Queen, but who has she got to talk to now about her unique predicament?  And Prince Philip was the only person with whom she could discuss the situation. And that poor woman, to whom we owe so much, her loneliness in this circumstance and it is something that’s one of many, many reasons that most of us, thank goodness, that we are lucky enough not to be royal is because the dreadful loneliness of being royal in general and especially of being the Queen. […] by gosh, I will be praying for the Queen’s welfare more fervently than I have for years.”

It would be hard to disagree with him in his heartfelt and quite moving response to, “that poor woman”, the Queen’s predicament. I am going to resist the temptation to make a cheap jibe about hypocrisy, because this raises a fascinating question about feelings. Which feelings should we value and which not?

Should we empathise more with a high-status individual whom, because of their media prominence, we feel we know rather than some ordinary anonymous person who we’ve never heard of? Hastings might point to the Queen’s commitment to her role of monarch, her quiet dignity and the public service to which she has dedicated her life. But many other people might well have admirable qualities having dedicated their lives to their respective trade or profession, and to their families. While the Queen might certainly suffer dreadful loneliness so will tens of thousands of people bereaved by the pandemic who are now forced to live on their own. Isn’t this the very time that we should be promoting a “compassion culture”?

Should there really be a hierarchy of feeling? Is the compassion we feel for a fluffy puppy of a lower “status” than the feelings we have for our most exalted leaders? Feelings are just feelings aren’t they? Perhaps people like Hastings miss the point when they denigrate the so called “compassion culture”. Here it seems they are revealing an interesting aspect of human nature. We don’t just have feelings about real people, whether they are still living or not, we also have feelings about feelings themselves. Perhaps Hastings and those who share his views should realise that feelings about other people’s feelings should count for less than feelings for real actual beings, whether they are victims of the pandemic, their loved ones, or other people in distress for whatever reason.

This is why we must value the rights and feelings of all human beings, indeed those of all other sentient beings. To lose contact with our compassion is a step towards the failure of empathy that has characterised all the human generated evils, like war and genocide, that have so profoundly destroyed life and soured the quality of life of millions around the world. Perhaps this is something on which the historian in Hastings should reflect.