Red, White and Who?

Representative McCarthy is on his 11th (& counting) vote to become Speaker of the House of Representatives in the United States Congress. The Speaker is the headteacher of the HoR, enforcing its rules and controlling what can happen. 

It's a political position; a Republican speaker - like McCarthy - would only allow Republican business to occur. Traditionally the party aligns behind its chosen nominee and the majority party wins. The House is open for business.

However, the Republican party's slim majority means that a 20-strong bloc of right-wing Reps are denying McCarthy the position, voting against him for various reasons.

This is despite McCarthy having President Trump's endorsement. Such an endorsement may have been a golden ticket in the past, but on this issue has little effect. Many are now speculating that Trump's hold on the Republican party - and those on the right who are most loyal to him - is weakening. (See Politico and Reuters)

This is mistaken, and typical of a short-term media emphasis which still has no understanding of the deep causes of Trump's rise. Basic analysis argues that the Republican party is moving beyond Trump. More intelligent analysis sees that the party is still led by 'Trumpism', just not Trump any more. Neither are quite right.

Trump is failing to get his way: true. But the Republican right, and the 'Freedom Caucus' prominent within it were never his to begin with. He is a part of an older story that has troubled America for far longer than a journalist's memory.

In fact, they pre-dated his rise by several years, emerging in the tumultuous post-Bush years alongside the the Tea Party (remember them?); a mass movement opposing Obama's Democrats and fears of government overreach. This movement, in turn, was enabled by the increasingly combative style introduced to Congress by Newt Gingrich under President Clinton in the 1990s.

The Republican Party had been struggling with internal divisions since Obama's election in 2008, and was shifting ever further right anyway, before it found a lightning rod in one of America's most famous billionaires. (For more on this, read Tim Alberta's superb chronicle of the period, 'American Carnage')

This means Trump - and the Trumpism he unleashed - are only fellow heads on the hydra to the Freedom Caucus, the Tea Party, the evangelical lobby, and other right-wing influences. For long, Trumpist influences were the most powerful heads, but they were still attached to a body of thought far greater than they.

Radical Republicans on the right-wing know this. They have always owed their loyalty to what their constituents want and feel about America, from well before the 2016 election. For a brief time their electorates then demanded a bending of the knee, but now it's business as usual again.

Trump, then, is a part of this story, but it is a mis-framing to say the Republican Party is moving past him as though they have unceremoniously dumped their driver on the side of the road. At most, Trump is an over-zealous navigator with a hand on the wheel. He make take back control of this movement again.

But even assuming he doesn't, the deep forces and dislocations in American society remain. There is a reason Republicans still do well at gubernatorial and state legislature level; millions of Americans are uneasy about the country they live in, and what the Democrats want for it. Many are frustrated by left-wing moral hectoring while the economy struggles; many fear government overreach; many are angry about elite privileges ('Strangers in Their Own Land' by Arlie Hochschild is worth reading here).

These are not new problems. The only difference is that Trump is no longer the vessel for them, just as he wasn't a decade ago. 

At least American politics is consistent; there seem to be no solutions either, ten years on.

Until that changes, McCarthyite chaos will continue.

Assume There Is No God

What is the most important choice you will ever make?

(Assume there is no God.)

The single clenched fist lifted and ready,

Or the open asking hand raised and waiting.

Choose:

For we meet by one or the other.

                                                  Carl Sandberg.

In the beginning there were humans, roaming around, huntering and gathering. Then some berk decided to plant seeds and come back the next year to see what happened. The result was an ancient agricultural community, settled around a stable food source. 

This community got a bit nervy about other communities in the area and also needed its own people to stop threatening the stable food source by thieving and fighting. So they chose a chap to handle all that stuff and keep everyone safe. But what happened when this community joined another community, becoming bigger and more complex in the process?

Since the 1700s single communities have spread across ocean and continent, creating new demands, and mixing with other communities in awkward ways. No longer is mere security, provided by one man or a small group, enough. Now, the act of keeping communities safe through government is a profession practiced by millions, from neighbourhood level right up to space exploration.

Which means all of your life is defined by its relationship with government. Our educational options, drunken behaviour, conservatory extensions, tree chopping, television viewings, and car buyings are all shaped by what the government has decreed is acceptable. We cannot build there because the law says no (it is our neighbour's property). We must give up our income because the law says to (it funds the provision of things we need, like healthcare).

We acquiesce to this situation. We are used to it. We are used to the understanding, both instinctive and learned, that we must follow the law; this understanding is so simple that we never register its presence - it's almost silly to point out. 

We simply make sure our actions are in accordance with this law. Even our births, marriages, and deaths are all limited by what the law requires. We sign the right papers and pay the correct fees to ensure all is proper. We grasp its 'open, asking hand', greeting the long arm of the law as an honouring companion, and don't think too much about it.

But many people break the law. Many do not accept the state's structuring of all life.

No agrarian community can tolerate the theft of crops, or violence in the streets, limiting the labour needed for harvest. Such action must be stopped. This is also the primary responsibility of the modern state: to maintain security so that citizens may contribute to common welfare. The government, and the government alone, may use violence in order to achieve this. 

If we cannot choose to live in conduct with that security, then the 'single clenched fist' will meet us. Regardless of all else we do in life - who we marry, what we do with our money, where we work - the iron fist will punish a failure to acquiesce to the state. It will deny us freedoms; it may hurt us physically, confine us to small spaces, take from our property, or even kill us. 

It is this simple. This is why most simply shake the law's hand, agree to its terms and conditions, and move on.

And nothing we do - assuming there is no God - can escape these parameters. Our only freedom is in this greatest choice: the open asking hand, or the single clenched fist?

Choose.

Go slow and fix things

On Newspeak, and national and student politics

There was only ever one swear word on my radio show, and thankfully my grandparents weren’t listening that week. To be fair, the guest had gone 36 hours without sleep and still led a great conversation.

Such was the weird world of ‘Newspeak’, a weekly political talk show on 87.7 Bailrigg FM (the university student radio station) that I hosted on and off for two years. It combined farcical conversations with a deeply formative way of doing political discourse. 

Now in my final year, I feel Newspeak (listen here) had lessons to teach in both student and national politics, and it is my hope that it has made a counter-cultural contribution to both, however short-lived.

Newspeak is ‘freedom of speech going live’, a place for discussing the world with honesty and integrity. What this means is that the show is built on certain values above winning debates or landing soundbites. We invite guests on each week and allow them to explore certain topics through conversation with each other, and provide unfamiliar viewpoints for each other and our listeners. 

What is British identity? Is it right to block roads in protest? Is fighting in the    Sahel neo-colonialist? The term ‘newspeak’ is Big Brother’s thought-suppressing language in Orwell’s ‘1984’, so it’s an ironic name for a show emphasising diversity of opinion. We encourage disagreement, and the joy of the new ideas that always follow when disagreement is done well.

This was often an ideal. Conservations could become soft, and my questions often lacked bite. But some weeks you could hear the wheels turning. Genuine, unexpected points of recent conversation involved: are there ideals higher than individual life? (In Conversation with Matthew Dowling – Oct 2021) Is it morally more wrong for individuals or corporations to not pay tax? (‘Biden Doctrine’ & Pandora Papers – Oct 2021) Aren’t progressives in the culture wars just students with no incentive to think carefully? (British Culture Wars – Feb 2022) And which cake is better – Nanny Blair’s sponge, or Ed’s Grandma’s apple puff pastry? (The World in 2022 – Jan 2022)

This type of give-and-take conversation wouldn’t work at a national level, obviously. When Dominic Raab pops up on Andrew Marr to defend government policy, he can’t and won’t start to say ‘well yes, maybe the Scottish National Party do have a point there.’ Government cannot engage in running debate and reconsideration over policy; that’s what elections do, and the consequences of continual stop-start are too high for constant debate. 

But journalists can change. Nick Robinson and Jeremy Paxman represented a frustrating approach to interviews that goes like this: ‘you once said this – but now you don’t. Why? Are you mad? And are you tough enough? [politician repl]-but that’s not right, because you also said this’. It’s like muscled lumberjacks chopping at stone: fun to watch, sparks flying everywhere, but ultimately frustrating. You don’t hear anything new, and there’s no space for the story of who people are to emerge. So we need something different.

Consider Emily Maitlis. Veteran journo, and the interviewee of Prince Andrew. Maitlis realised there was an absurd, unmissable story to be told, as long as she asked the right questions and stepped back so Andrew had room to fall on his face. Newspeak is similar: there is always a story to be told. The trick is allowing it to be said. 

Last year we were discussing BLM and XR. Instead of spending an hour splitting hairs over the best approaches to racism, our Conservative guest discussed his experience as a Roma individual compared with that of a black Brit. The conversation was flipped, and the result was brilliant. Politicians aren’t incentivised to change their approach, but when journalists listen for the story - give it the space to emerge by adapting their questioning and tone – everyone benefits.

One group of politicians who could learn something are our student politicians – those in party politics and union politics. Student politics is amateurs playing out painfully obvious routines via organisational incompetence, never realising that the lower stakes of uni politics offers the space to do things differently. Newspeak has had various student emerges politicians on the show, all of them polite and thoughtful. 

But as soon as many leave the studio, gossip, bringing various infighting and tensions to life, all played out on a backdrop of lancfessions, group chats, and racial frictions. Where Newspeak (hopefully) prioritises  respect and humility, students politics revels in its absence of decency and the joy of victory. Kindness ends when it requires sacrifice or ceding ground to an opponent.

This is the not the only way. There has been some fantastic work by LUPS and the various politics societies this year at consistently bringing groups together and making potential opponents less mysterious (and therefore harder to slag off). 

The recent council by-election was incredibly decent thanks to a pact by candidates. And I hope that Newspeak has helped in clearing barriers and enabling different stories to be shared together, reflecting that, in the conflict of respectful conversation, something better emerges. What Newspeak has certainly given me the confidence to say is that if you want a different tone to our student politics – really want it – it’s there for you to make happen.

Thanks for listening everyone.

Theo

Political Leadership: Managers (Angela Merkel) 5/5

It took just 1 minute and 40 seconds for Angela Merkel to dismiss Norbert Roettgen from his job. There were no platitudes or well-wishes, simply a limp thank-you and the nomination of his replacement in front of the press.

The Minister for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety was gone. 

He remains just one of two ministers Chancellor Merkel has ever sacked outside of reshuffles, dismissed in 2012 for helping lose a major regional election.

Merkel is Europe's longest serving democratic leader. She has overseen four coalition governments and everything the twenty-first century has to offer. 

And she is the epitome of the manager-leader. This is the politician who can lead a complicated team through any trouble, exercising both ruthlessness and patience at the very top level. 

And after sixteen years, she's still very ruthless. That second minister was sacked just last year.

Political Leadership: Innovators (Charles de Gaulle & Mikhail Gorbachev) 4/5

Gorbachev

In late April, 1986, reactor number 4 at Chernobyl exploded.

The effect was catastrophic. Not only on lives and buildings, but also on the health of the USSR.

General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, in seeing the devastation, realised that incompetence and failure was rotting away at the Soviet Union, and that far-reaching changes were needed in response.

But his subsequent reforms, instead of liberating the  nation, instead hastened its decline.

Gorbachev lost control of events. His innovative spirit ended in failure. He, like all his fellow innovator-leaders, hoped he could lead his community into a better future. Some innovators succeed, some fail. But they all try. 

Political Leadership: Empaths (Joe Biden & Ted Heath) 3/5

Chopin's 'Prelude, Op 28, No.15' swirls around an opening scene in the 'Crown'. The piece is played by Prime Minister Ted Heath, who was in turn swirled around by miners' strikes across his premiership.

Heath is seen as removed from the action. He is distant, aloof. Yet these strikes would lead to rolling blackouts and a cold, long winter. 

The British people would suffer and no-one was telling them why. Heath took the blame, losing a general election soon after.

A thoughtful leader knows they are responsible for not just the economic, but also the emotional wellbeing of their people. 

In times of crisis, this wellbeing can fracture; the leader must restore it. They have to articulate the population's feelings, soothe their grievances, and forge a path out of the depths.

This is the 'empath-leader'.