Glance N.3 by Giovanni Faleg
07/12/2010
Two dramatic and unforeseen events are disrupting British citizens’ daily activities and diverting their attention from the realm of government and politics, something we can and ought to control, to a narcotic observation of events that are beyond our command: nature and gossip. Let’s be frank: people are addicted to these two forces. Social life depends upon them, in a way. The reason why we are so fanatical about is twofold: our total incapacity to regulate and delimit them and the sense of community awakening as a result of a direct or indirect involvement. It’s part of our DNA, to eagerly seek what we can’t handle.
As the first decade of the 2000s draws to a close, the emergence of the “W factors”, Weather and Wikileaks, in British politics reveals how self-contradictory our democratic societies and how vulnerable we are to any attempt, normally conveyed by the media, to hijack our participation in politics (the essence of Democracy, according to Tocqueville) and our interest in the res publica.
Weather is a natural factor with significant micro socio-political fallout. We might despise energetic consumption affecting climate change and do our best to counter it, but in our inner nature we are compelled by extreme weather conditions. Annoyed when finding ourselves grounded at airports and railway stations, thrilled when media reports of a “snowmageddon” in Scotland shakes our boring routine as the Die Hard series used to jiggle a rainy Wednesday night. The truth is: we fancy it, as long as it does not threatens our safety and we are pretty much sure that is not turning into a natural disaster. The result is under our eyes: impressive media coverage eclipsing any other domestic or international, political or economic news, with the exception of the exception of England missing out the 2018 World Cup.
Wikileaks is a political factor with minor social and significant macro political fallout. The first batch of 250.000 US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks in the past few weeks do not hold the same meaning for political élites and ordinary people. The two categories are affected in two very different ways. For the former, the “leaks” represent the first case of cyber threat menacing global security by non-military and non-material means. They constitute a direct attack to one of the pillars of national sovereignty and a core principle of interstate relations – diplomatic secrecy. While Wikileaks constitutes a serious concern for national diplomacies, the whistle blowing acquires a totally different meaning for public opinions. Documents provide an extraordinary amount of material that national media can use in many different ways: malicious portraits of leaders, revelations of mutual suspicion among people and organizations, espionage are broadcasted to appease gossipmongers’ appetite. We did not need the leaks to realize that Mr Berlusconi is “feckless, vain and ineffective as a modern leader”. But recognizing who the sinner is, is far more interesting that knowing what the sin was.
While we should not – or not necessarily – play down these two factors, it is important to recall that overplaying them ought not shade other important issues that are shaping UK’s future. The spending review presented by Chancellor George Osborne on 20 October 2010 fixes spending budgets for each Government department up to 2014-2015. Presented by the Coalition Government as a necessary measure to bring the UK economy “back from the brink”, the scale of the reform contained in the 2010 spending review is impressive as cuts are the deepest since the Second World War. Cuts hit Education, Welfare reform and Defence particularly hard.
Education: On Thursday 9th December, MPs in Westminster will vote for an increase in tuition fees put forward by the Coalition Government that is to modify – radically the education sector in the years to come. Cuts to public funding to higher education, accompanied by the highly controversial plan to raise the cap on tuition fees above the current level of £3,290 a year, have brought mass protests throughout the country, with many universities being occupied across the UK (See Glance_4).
Welfare: The 2010 spending review is the biggest shake-up in welfare since the 1940s. Plans for welfare reform to reduce public spending mark a key moment for both the Coalition and Britain. Main candidates for cuts are middle-class, out-of-work and child benefits, a contentious plan that has been explicitly called into question by the opposition leader Ed Miliband during his first PMQs speech. While government officials are confident that scrapping benefits and replacing them with a single universal credit is a necessary simplification of British welfare and is to make working people better off, Labour says that a precondition for the reform to be successful is that jobs should be available to ensure people get into work.
Defence: the strategic defence review presented by the Government mid-October unveils significant armed forces cuts, with defence spending to fall by 8% in four years and £4.5bn savings at the Ministry of Defence, including a reduction of civilian staff by 25,000 by 2015. Prime Minister Cameron said UK will meet NATO’s requirement of spending 2% of GDP on defence and continue to have the 4th military in the world. But the RAF and navy are to loose 5,000 jobs each, the army 7,000, and the strategic blueprint of the review seriously undermines Britain’s capacity to effectively address security needs in the years ahead.
Wrap-up
Beyond and besides the impressive media coverage of the “W factors” (Weather and Wikileaks) in the last two weeks, the debate over the 2010 spending review is a major political challenge that will deeply affect UK’s citizens lives in the medium-long term. Choosing the right path to recovery is a priority for Britain. If the Coalition Government holds the political accountability to fulfill reforms, the opposition and civil society have the historical responsibility to prevent the executive from going in the wrong direction. This requires active participation in politics by the citizens and effective opposition in parliament by their representatives.
Ed Miliband is right when saying that Labour party must do more than wait for the government to “screw up”. His vision of the Labour as a campaigning force, a movement beyond the New Labour, reaching out people (namely the “squeezed middle”) and standing up for their hopes and aspirations is without a doubt the good approach to set out overhaul of the party after defeat. But, as shown by his speech to the Labour party’s national policy forum last week, morality does not necessarily pay off in politics. Finding a new identity rooted on idealism and morality – Labour as “a force for good”? – must not go to the detriment of practical policy formulation and proposals. The bitter truth is: Ed is not impressing as a Leader, nor Labour as an opposition party. Despite initial fervor following the leadership election – granted outside the House of Commons – and encouraging public support to the project of a “new generation for change”, now the wind is changing. From the BBC to the Guardian, the media are less and less enthusiastic of a Labour leader who took an inexplicably long paternity leave and whose political strategy is ill defined at best. In his BBC Newslog, Nick Robinson denounces Ed’s focus on the squeezed “middle” as a deliberately vague and questions the exact reach – and potential political outcome – of what he ironically labels as the squeezed “muddle”. Not an isolated comment. Most of the reactions after the national policy forum were mild when not adverse.
Labour is at a crossroad. Its leader, Ed Miliband, is getting busy reshaping the party identity to rebuild a widespread coalition of support after the shrinking of the New Labour. But contingency, and short-term policy action, matter too. In our society, people’s hopes and aspirations grow fast. Politics and politicians must keep up. Labour must act both as a “force for good”, shaping a new identity for progressive politics in the long term, and a “contingent force”, showing its capacity to creatively and pragmatically address urgent policy issues.
I call this “the Wilson factor”: the capacity of Labour’s leader to take over a dispirited party, make it a “natural party for government” and, at the same time, unite it under a shared identity and principles. Harold Wilson is the most famous example of a leader who was able to achieve this almost impossible mission. The “Wilson factor”, merging short and long term policy priorities as well as an inevitable process of identity reconstruction, will impact not just on the faculty of Labour to survive the storm, but also on Britain’s ability to avoid the economic and social crash and implement a full, sustainable recovery.
