Tomorrow the results of the European elections will be laid bare, and it is almost a foregone conclusion that the Conservative Party will be able to claim another landslide victory as they have done in the local elections. Within the next 12 months, and, depending on the reaction from what remains of the Labour government, possibly within a few weeks, we will have a new Prime Minister: David Cameron, the Gingerbread Man.
Those casual observers in the States might be tempted to draw comparisons with their own recent election. The Gingerbread Man is, after all, a fresher, younger face taking over from a tired, failed and collapsing party.
Others might be tempted to take the other route and equate the Gingerbread Man with George W. Bush's victory in 2001; not for the controversy surrounding the vote counting, but both men's claims to be "compassionate conservatives," not to mention their succession representing a rightwards political shift. Even moreso than that, both Bush and the Gingerbread Man rose because of the capital granted to them by their political aristocracy. Bush, of course, was son of former president George H. W. Bush and grandson of Wall Street executive Prescott Bush, whilst the Gingerbread Man comes from more privileged stock still, the son of a stockbroker, the grandson of Sir William Mount, 2nd Baronet and direct descendant of King William IV. His wife, Samantha, is a descendant of King Charles II, and together the couple have a personal fortune of around £30 million. To call them the aristocracy is a regression of their royal lineage.
However, the Gingerbread Man is not a Bush, for many reasons. There is a long-standing tradition of keeping religion and politics apart in the United Kingdom, perhaps, ironically, because of the lack of official separation of church and state. The last incumbent of the highest office in the land, Tony Blair, famously affirmed this desire for secularism within the Commons and within the Cabinet when he said, "We don't do religion." The Gingerbread Man's vanity has caused him to remark in the past that he is the "heir to Blair," suggesting that a Christian Coalition-style reorientation of politics around faith is massively unlikely and that the Anglo-American tradition will continue, with conservatism remaining a brand of liberalism rather than a concealed far-right assault upon it.
He is also not a Barack Obama. The US president, in one of his more insightful moments, noted the Gingerbread Man was "a lightweight," and is in opposition to his hawkish foreign policy record and Euroskepticism. Obama arguably rose to the top in spite of his relatively unconventional background, whereas in stark contrast the Gingerbread Man has slithered to prominence as leader of the opposition via an old boy's network and has since honoured his connections by promoting his Etonian chums to high positions within the party.
In short, while Obama represents something new, the Gingerbread Man is a return to the days of political hierarchy reflecting the imbalanced order of its society: rich, white males governing. The Tory party has done everything in its power to convince people of the opposite. The patently fake concern for the environment, the "understanding" hand it intends to raise against yobs, the outwards rejection of Thatcherism, the pathetic usage of popular indie bands' music at its conferences - none of it can hold up under the most light of inspections.
The key to understanding the Gingerbread Man, perhaps, is to look at what he sees as the cause of the "broken society" he intends to fix, which is inevitably "the family." Any politician announcing his attention to protect "the family" or "family values" should, in this day and age, be immediately suspected of both homophobia and sexism, but the implication is so rarely picked up on. In the Gingerbread Man's case, it is at the very least pure patronising, a vomitive attempt to appeal to a plastic and hypocritical upper-middle class who will stay with their partners no matter what "for the sake of the children" and actively enforce the stigma that makes life so needlessly difficult for single parents socially and professionally all down the class scale. A more obvious transgression against those lower down the scale was to be found in his utterly juvenile tirade against the poor and the unhealthy, declaring it was their own fault and speaking out against "moral neutrality." Conscious of sounding like a pre-Marxian aristocratic apologist in a post-Marxian age, he hastened to add, “Of course, circumstances — where you are born, your neighbourhood, your school and the choices your parents make — have a huge impact. But social problems are often the consequence of the choices people make.” A few months later, returning to his "family" gimmicking, he added race into the mix, saying too many black fathers were shirking their responsibilities and calling for a "responsibility revolution."
How has this chubby bore been allowed to remain uncatchable? Criticisms have barely stayed in the media for days, satire has been in relatively short supply. The Tories have backed all of Labour's most awful policies - the Iraq War, tuition fees, and so forth, and lacked the economic skill, philosophy and influence to have prevented the current crisis had they been in power. Whilst it is true much of the Conservatives' having managed to escape the public bludgeoning Labour have been subjected to over the expenses scandal is a result of Britain's ignorance, a conflating of "parliament" and "government" that allows the opposition to slip by whilst the party in power bears the brunt, there is more to it. More than anything, what the Gingerbread Man represents is the death of New Labour, contributing actively as it did to the global irresponsibility that finds us where we are now, and perhaps the death of the Labour Party altogether; a nostalgia for the good old days; and working-class apathy. The upper-classes have received their last punch on the nose in the form of Alistair Darling's latest tax increase, and have rallied, whilst those below them, having had no real representation since 1994, have been stamped into the mud and are unwilling to go and vote to counter this resurgence of the nervous overlords shivering in their castles.
The whole country seems unconsciously aware of Giambattista Vico's historical model and is attempting to regress back from the chaotic precipice into the safe, comfortable aristocratic age that proceeded it. This collective urge to return to the womb seems as darkly, comically Jungian as it is ultimately flawed and doomed to failure. Even though the Gingerbread Man's crimes, his racism and his social elitism, his plastic personality politics, his laughable and almost unbelievably egotistical "Cameron Direct" programme, his passive support of the Botha regime, his complete lack of policies, his hypocrisy over drugs, have all failed to catch up with him so far, eventually he will walk into the fox's mouth and dissolve into the cruel river of public and media disapproval. But whilst the Gingerbread Man's vileness seems to know no bounds, for now, he looks likely to stay a few steps ahead of his detractors in this distracted time, for no reason other than there being no enemies to measure him by.
Showing posts with label new labour. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new labour. Show all posts
Saturday, 6 June 2009
Tuesday, 2 September 2008
V For Vendetta and The Establishment
Recently I was involved in a discussion about anti-establishment films, and which films sought to subvert the order in the most admirably artistic way. Admittedly, there were some great suggestions. Punishment Park (Peter Watkins, 1971) was brought up. If... (Lindsey Anderson, 1968). Guy Debord's films, too. Perhaps the most obscure was a Turkish film called Yol (Yılmaz Güney and Şerif Gören, 1982), a cruel indictment of the post-1980 coup Turkish prison system written by Güney whilst he himself was jailed (an "assimilated Kurd," he later escaped and finished the film in Switzerland). I had never heard of the film before, but as a supporter of a united Kurdistan, it definitely appeals.
There were, too, some ridiculous suggestions. Yes, V For Vendetta was brought up. I'm treading old ground here, but bear with me. It's vaguely terrifying that a film made by a major studio can today be seen as anti-establishment, but actually terrifying that it is in this case one so pro-establishment as this, a capitalist parable in which social liberation is withheld by a tangible political force and won, not by violence, but by docile submission. I need not remind you of what the revolting proles do when they amass in London, but I will anyway: they stand quietly transfixed by fireworks. Ironic, because this is exactly what the audience do, before going away contented by what they have seen rather than outraged at the real life government.
This is typical of a society that has been Prozaced to the point where "Orwellian" is a cliche term that clatters, useless and hollow on the ground, when someone spies a speed camera coming off the motorway. It seems that the imagination of the average cinema-goer only stretches as far as to see the symbols of V For Vendetta (the raised fists in the rain, victims dragged away in the night, the shaved heads of the prisoners, the giant red-and-black icons of fascism) as genuine subversive social criticism rather than cardboard cut-out relics of an early 20th century fear that can no longer hurt us. True irony rang unknowingly in the voices of the film's defenders as they criticised us for being elitist.
Perhaps this mirrors the political apathy in Britain, which can be laid square at the door of New Labour. Some in the 1970s and 80s, outraged at how far the UK could be privatised by Thatcher's Conservatives, foresaw political revolution. Surely this strike at the membrane of the welfare state could only result in a vicious recoil?
These people were hopelessly optimistic, and the government was allowed to continue castrating the unions and placing basic human needs such as gas in the hands of cynical corporations until, quite simply, nobody cared any more. When the Tories could no longer be controversial idealogically, they slipped into sleaze and irrelevance, to be replaced in the 90s by a cleaner, rebranded version of themselves: the Labour Party. Once a bastion of the British left-wing, Labour simply kept privitised Britain ticking over the way Thatcherites had intended. Again, I recall celebration by naive old socialists eleven years ago: if the Tories had not been overthrown, at least they had been replaced by a new, sensible centralist party. But what have been their most controversial and newsworthy policies? Tony Blair's legacy is to be found far from home, all the way in the Middle East, whilst a bill to reduce freedom of speech was not just a sideline issue but actually supported by hordes of university students who campaigned outside the Old Bailey for Nick Griffin to be imprisoned for speaking his mind more or less in private.
The irony is that the two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives, have become so indistinguishable that the battle between them is no longer fought on ideology but on image. Just as Labour defeated Tory in 1997 due to the latter's sleazy image, David Cameron's party is poised to take over from Labour because of clever rebranding. No Conservative voter I have talked to has been able to name ten polices of theirs that differ from Labour's. After the credit crunch, the fall of the housing market, the loss of personal data and several other high-profile cock-ups by Labour, the general consensus among political commentators is that the Tories are going to win not on their own merits but simply because they aren't Labour. This is seen as the pinnacle of political stagnation. The truth is far more horrfying: the truth is that they are going to win because they are Labour, a new, shiner Labour, just as Blair's Labour was a new, shiny Conservative Party. The same fortnight tired Gordon Brown unwisely compared himself to Heathcliffe, David Cameron began his campaign against fat and poor people and a Tory front bencher used the word "nigger" in the House of Lords, and, a month or two later, one of Cameron's favourite think tanks came to the conclusion that Northern English cities such as Newcastle and Liverpool, which have successfully undergone major refurbishment in the past few years, were beyond hope and should be abandoned altogether. But which of these four stories made the front pages? Yep, the Heathcliffe comparison.
There is an opportunity for change, however. The fastest growing party in the UK resembles neither of the Big Two. It is the British National Party, once a stalwart of the National Front of the 1980s that believed Thatcher's Conservatives had the right idea but weren't nearly right-wing enough. To give you an insight into what they stand for, in Stoke, one of their high-ranking bullies has become a martyr for their cause after pushing his Muslim next door neighbour too far (reports indicate a campaign of racial abuse years long, including Mr Khan's son being beaten into unconsciousness) and being stabbed in response.
A return to Gladstonian liberalism now seems impossible. We've become so anaethetised politically and artistically that borderline fascism is now waiting in the wings to strike. This is the ultimate sad irony that escapes those that champion partisan wankery like V For Vendetta as a defender of our right to be subversive and to think and live outside the box.
There were, too, some ridiculous suggestions. Yes, V For Vendetta was brought up. I'm treading old ground here, but bear with me. It's vaguely terrifying that a film made by a major studio can today be seen as anti-establishment, but actually terrifying that it is in this case one so pro-establishment as this, a capitalist parable in which social liberation is withheld by a tangible political force and won, not by violence, but by docile submission. I need not remind you of what the revolting proles do when they amass in London, but I will anyway: they stand quietly transfixed by fireworks. Ironic, because this is exactly what the audience do, before going away contented by what they have seen rather than outraged at the real life government.
This is typical of a society that has been Prozaced to the point where "Orwellian" is a cliche term that clatters, useless and hollow on the ground, when someone spies a speed camera coming off the motorway. It seems that the imagination of the average cinema-goer only stretches as far as to see the symbols of V For Vendetta (the raised fists in the rain, victims dragged away in the night, the shaved heads of the prisoners, the giant red-and-black icons of fascism) as genuine subversive social criticism rather than cardboard cut-out relics of an early 20th century fear that can no longer hurt us. True irony rang unknowingly in the voices of the film's defenders as they criticised us for being elitist.
Perhaps this mirrors the political apathy in Britain, which can be laid square at the door of New Labour. Some in the 1970s and 80s, outraged at how far the UK could be privatised by Thatcher's Conservatives, foresaw political revolution. Surely this strike at the membrane of the welfare state could only result in a vicious recoil?
These people were hopelessly optimistic, and the government was allowed to continue castrating the unions and placing basic human needs such as gas in the hands of cynical corporations until, quite simply, nobody cared any more. When the Tories could no longer be controversial idealogically, they slipped into sleaze and irrelevance, to be replaced in the 90s by a cleaner, rebranded version of themselves: the Labour Party. Once a bastion of the British left-wing, Labour simply kept privitised Britain ticking over the way Thatcherites had intended. Again, I recall celebration by naive old socialists eleven years ago: if the Tories had not been overthrown, at least they had been replaced by a new, sensible centralist party. But what have been their most controversial and newsworthy policies? Tony Blair's legacy is to be found far from home, all the way in the Middle East, whilst a bill to reduce freedom of speech was not just a sideline issue but actually supported by hordes of university students who campaigned outside the Old Bailey for Nick Griffin to be imprisoned for speaking his mind more or less in private.
The irony is that the two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives, have become so indistinguishable that the battle between them is no longer fought on ideology but on image. Just as Labour defeated Tory in 1997 due to the latter's sleazy image, David Cameron's party is poised to take over from Labour because of clever rebranding. No Conservative voter I have talked to has been able to name ten polices of theirs that differ from Labour's. After the credit crunch, the fall of the housing market, the loss of personal data and several other high-profile cock-ups by Labour, the general consensus among political commentators is that the Tories are going to win not on their own merits but simply because they aren't Labour. This is seen as the pinnacle of political stagnation. The truth is far more horrfying: the truth is that they are going to win because they are Labour, a new, shiner Labour, just as Blair's Labour was a new, shiny Conservative Party. The same fortnight tired Gordon Brown unwisely compared himself to Heathcliffe, David Cameron began his campaign against fat and poor people and a Tory front bencher used the word "nigger" in the House of Lords, and, a month or two later, one of Cameron's favourite think tanks came to the conclusion that Northern English cities such as Newcastle and Liverpool, which have successfully undergone major refurbishment in the past few years, were beyond hope and should be abandoned altogether. But which of these four stories made the front pages? Yep, the Heathcliffe comparison.
There is an opportunity for change, however. The fastest growing party in the UK resembles neither of the Big Two. It is the British National Party, once a stalwart of the National Front of the 1980s that believed Thatcher's Conservatives had the right idea but weren't nearly right-wing enough. To give you an insight into what they stand for, in Stoke, one of their high-ranking bullies has become a martyr for their cause after pushing his Muslim next door neighbour too far (reports indicate a campaign of racial abuse years long, including Mr Khan's son being beaten into unconsciousness) and being stabbed in response.
A return to Gladstonian liberalism now seems impossible. We've become so anaethetised politically and artistically that borderline fascism is now waiting in the wings to strike. This is the ultimate sad irony that escapes those that champion partisan wankery like V For Vendetta as a defender of our right to be subversive and to think and live outside the box.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
