Fear and self-doubt in politics

Yesterday I read an article that suggested that Michael Gove might end up being the best hope this country has seen for some time to carry through liberal reforms of the criminal justice and penal systems. Once I had picked my laptop back up off the floor I read the article again and gave it some serious thought. Because, although I detect a worryingly uncritical attitude to Gove's destructive and anti-intellectual 'reforms' of the education system, I think perhaps on this specific issue the writer may have a point.

The thing is that any putative incoming Labour justice minister would have been prey to the same fear of 'not being tough on crime' that over the past few decades has led Labour Home Secretary after Labour Home Secretary to ramp up both the pointless rhetoric and the unproductive policies of harsher prison sentences. It is called "doing a Blunkett" in the trade. Michael Gove has no such fear. For a start he is the darling of the Right and thus immune from criticism in this sort of area, and secondly he is entirely devoid of any emotion as humanising and empathetic as self-doubt.

Thinking about this led me to reflect more widely on what it takes to be a 'great' political leader: to be a Hero in the terms of the hero-quest narrative of election campaigns that I discussed in a previous post. And it seems that one of the key elements is indeed a complete absence of normal human self-doubt. Thatcher had it, as did Blair in his messianic post-Iraq years, and maybe Cameron has it too, though for a different reason- he has had his self-doubt removed, not by zealous belief in his cause but by utterly impenetrable arrogance.

But why does removal of self-doubt help a leader? Is not self-doubt one of those things that make us human? That allow us to relate to those around us and to question the effect of what we do on others? Indeed it is, but as Shakespeare understood, the qualities that make us human are almost diagrammatically opposite to those that make some of us 'great leaders' in these terms.

(Yes, I had to get it back onto Shakespeare, didn't I.)

King Lear is the best example that comes to mind. Admittedly it is not established particularly forcefully at the start of the play that King Lear is a great leader, but presumably one is expected to take that as read. The country certainly seems settled and prosperous- a "fair kingdom" with "plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads" and Lear is very certain of his own "majesty", appealing to "the sacred radiance of the sun" more or less as an equal and describing himself with grandiose images such as in the phrase "come not between the dragon and his wrath." Even Tony Blair never went quite that far.

What changes, particularly in the course of the thunderous third act, is that he discovers self doubt. At first it is just self-pity, as he describes himself as "A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man," but eventually becomes a genuine impulse to question himself and his previous actions. He admits that "I have ta'en/Too little care of [the plight of the poor]!" and later famously describes himself as a "foolish fond old man" and "not in [his] right mind."

This is far more Ed Miliband than Tony Blair (let alone Thatcher or Cameron) and it is very clear that, although he is bizarrely recrowned King just before his death he is not, by the end of the play, any sort of King at all (or in the terms of my previous post on elections, any sort of Hero). What he is though, possibly for the first time in his life, is a decent, caring human being.

Does this then lead us to the depressing conclusion that what it takes to be a Hero, and thus a successful political leader is a level of hubris and arrogance that banishes self-doubt? Surely not!

For a start, I have never fully understood why absence of self-doubt is equated with heroism (or even bravery) in the first place. Certainly in the more simplistic fairy tales that you find in Hollywood blockbusters it often seems to be (I am not sure that John McClane would ever describe himself as a foolish fond old man) but surely true heroes are those who confront their fears and their self-doubts and work through them in the interests of others. Aren't they?

Interestingly, that is an idea that Hollywood has a peculiar take on, which maybe points us to some of the reasons why thoughtful, questioning politicians are so infrequently successful in the Anglo-American world. In super-hero films self-doubt seems often to be symbolised as something entirely external to the Hero (Superman's kryptonite for instance) which almost fatally weakens him (the gendered pronoun is deliberate) and has to be utterly excised before he can triumph. Far from being an intrinsic and potentially valuable, humanising aspect of his character self-doubt is the enemy of true heroism, or so it would appear to Hollywood executives.

My sense though is that this antiquated notion of political leader as Hero has a pretty limited shelf-life now anyway. In the internet age everything is open to question as never before, and my hope is that any political leader who obdurately refuses (or is unable) to question themselves, their policies or their effect on peoples' lives will not retain public support for ever. To quote the Who, surely to God we won't get fooled again.

And there have been great political leaders who had not had their self-doubt surgically removed, haven't there?

Admittedly the only one who comes to mind right now is Nelson Mandela, but surely there are others.

So what does the election result say about the British people?

My previous post was about the political parties' election campaigns, but election campaigns only explain so much and there are many people out there who believe that the way the general population (or a proportion of them) voted says something profound about the nature of society. And whilst those (like me) on the left may be heartened by the upswell of social consciousness north of the border we are in danger of descending into misanthropy when considering what the election appears to have revealed about our fellow citizens in the rest of the country. Faced with the evidence of the Tories' anti-immigrant, anti-poor, pro-rich policies they voted for more of the same and the Guardian readers amongst us have reacted with something like disgust.

The difficult point though is that, if your sensibilities are democratic then the use of that 'they' is problematic. If we believe that the English are fundamentally self-interested and illiberal then what are we supposed to do? Emigrate? Establish a dictatorship? What? These people don't deserve the vote, do they?

By coincidence, there was an item on the Today programme this morning about the Bradford stadium fire, in which  a doctor who had treated some of the victims commented on the extraordinarily uplifting atmosphere amongst those waiting for emergency surgery. And as he described their unselfish good humour and patience I reflected that more than likely a lot of those football fans would have been UKIP (or at least Tory) voters, holding forth in the pub about fucking immigrants and fucking benefit scroungers.

Certainly, history shows that there is in the English character (if such a thing exists) a strong impulse towards mutual supportiveness, consideration for the underdog and rejection of illiberal dictatorship. Yet there is an equally strong strand more recently for Little Englander insularity and a what-I-have-I-hold lack of generosity towards the 'undeserving' poor. How can that be?

It has often been said that what the right wing parties tap into is a sort of selfishness born of fear. Certainly fear was a powerful weapon for both the Tories and UKIP this time round. UKIP's support is fundamentally dependent on whipping up fear of immigrants and the EU whilst the Tories were all about fear of a Labour-SNP coalition and a descent into the abyss of financial crisis.

However what the Bradford City example (and countless others) show me is that when faced with real and overwhelming fear the British people generally seem to respond nobly and well. In the really tough times they never supported a Hitler or a Stalin (not even a Putin) or turned on their own minorities and the vulnerable within their populations. So why are they apparently doing the latter now?

Well actually I think it is because the fear that the Tories and UKIP evoke is NOT real and NOT immediate, and whilst real fear and real danger can bring about nobility and selflessness the prospect of fear and danger somewhere down the line rarely does. Take immigration for instance. It has come to appear almost a given that the English fear immigration and vote UKIP to protest about it. Yet in the place where immigration has actually been the highest, and had the greatest effect (London) the UKIP vote was the lowest. It is in places near but outside the capital that fear of immigration is at its highest. People from the Home Counties and East Anglia for whom a visit to London is something of an occasion look at the bewildering diversity of ethnicities in the capital and it terrifies them. People who live in the midst of that diversity are relatively much more at ease with it.

Or take the fear of economic crisis and poverty. It is a fact easily ignored, but amidst all the talk of austerity and hard times and financial crises there is a large swathe of the British electorate who have done just fine over the last few years. Yes, their salaries might not have increased, but their mortgage payments have gone down, prices in the shops feel more affordable than they have ever done and their house has shot up in value. Most people in this country aren't on zero-hours contracts. They haven't had their benefits slashed. They probably haven't even lost their jobs, or necessarily know anyone who has. So while everyone has gone on about the economic crisis they have quietly wondered, what economic crisis?

Meanwhile all around fear is being whipped up about the dire and far-reaching consequences of economic ruin and a seed of fear has lodged there, but it is a sort of theoretical and abstract fear- not one that forces its way into their faces and brings out whatever fundamental decency they have deep down. Instead it turns them inwards. Makes them feel grateful that none of this seems at the moment to have affected them too badly and makes them want things to stay that way. So they have voted out of something like cowardice. They don't actively want policies that will lead to a dismantling of the Welfare State and the creation of an entirely unprotected underclass, they just want to ignore all that because, for the moment, they are doing fine and all that talk emanates from a scary parallel reality which they really don't want to think too much about.

My hope is that once the reality of Tory policies start playing themselves out people may start recognising that it is not some parallel reality at all, but their country and their people who are affected, and that may start triggering the fundamental nobility and decency that has served the British so well in times of actual crisis. Once they have seen the implications of the removal of Human Rights legislation, the sell-off of social housing, the £12.5 billion cuts to the last rump of benefit payments, the removal of schools from local democratic accountability, the triumph of insularity over internationalism on the EU question, and more.

Then maybe they will realise that they have sleep-walked into something they really cannot stomach and someone will be able to channel their shame and disgust into a genuinely progressive politics.

The narrative of election victories

The results of the 2015 UK General Election have been described as extraordinary now more times than I can count, and everyone is scratching around for explanations as to why the pollsters got it so wrong and why two neighbouring countries with a shared heritage should have elected two such entirely different sets of political representatives- broadly, England (except for London) going Tory/UKIP and Scotland going to the left of Labour.

(One VERY important caveat here, by the way. Though Cameron's victory is being hailed as if it were virtually unanimous, his party received well under 40% of the vote and still has a majority slimmer than John Major's in the 90s. Still...)

The SNP whitewash has been categorised south of the border (and particularly by the tabloids) as a nationalist, anti-Union and even anti-Labour surge but actually it seems to have been in a sense more extraordinary than that. A country which has always been if anything more socially conservative than its neighbour has apparently swung politically to the left of the most left-wing of the UK-wide parties. The SNP is anti-Trident, anti-austerity, pro-progressive taxation and increased welfare spending and pro-immigration. The Siriza of the UK, or more akin to pre-Blair Labour than anything else. The Tories whom the English elected, meanwhile, argue for reduced taxation and the taking of a flamethrower to the Welfare State.

So how did that happen? One argument of course would be that the Scots have, en masse, moved politically to the Left whilst England (and Wales, it appears) have moved to the Right. To some extent this is no doubt true, but in a sense saying that does no more than restate the original question, with no real explanation. So why has it happened?

Well, one explanation, that is appropriate to the (vague) themes of this blog is the issue of narrative. I have argued before (here for instance) that there is a strong narrative imperative in the way we view the world. As a species we use narrative to construct and inform our view (political and otherwise) of the world, and a simple, clear narrative is more powerful than any logical argument, however clearly stated. And it seems to me that this election has shown that fact more clearly than ever, because the parties that won were the ones with the clear narratives.

First, the Tories. Like any political party facing an election it presented the electorate with a hero quest narrative and they did it very well: there was a goal (the Long Term Economic Plan), a serious danger to escape from (the nameless horrors of the global economic crisis), a villain (the Labour party, which single-handedly, recklessly and with malice aforethought created that global economic crisis), various perils to be navigated (Europe, immigration, financial perdition) and of course an element of comedy (Ed Miliband). Essentially of course there was a hero (David Cameron). I will come to the hero bit in a minute, but it is worth pointing out that there was even a mini-narrative for the election campaign itself (Lynton Crosbie's assertion that polls would not budge until a sudden last-minute swing when people realised they couldn't afford the Miliband risk) and a useful prop (the jokey note to a 'friend' left by the Labour finance minister).

The SNP had an equally strong hero quest narrative. They also had a goal (the establishment of a Scottish Shangri-La), a serious danger to escape from (austerity and the Tory dismantling of the Welfare State) and a villain (a three-headed monster, the ThatcherBlairCameron). Their unexpected, but archetypally Scottish, heroine was Nicola Sturgeon, a feisty wee woman who rose to superstar status.

The UKIP narrative started simple and direct (I have just eaten, so really don't want to spell it out) but began to lose its clarity as Farage back-pedalled from some of the more extreme crap spouted by supporters. It is maybe for that reason that, thank God, UKIP began fading in the polls and didn't achieve their breakthrough.

So what of the losers? Well, I don't think I am the first to point out that neither Labour's not the LibDem's narrative was in any way clear or comprehensible. The LibDems villain was (sort of) the coalition partner they had been in bed with for five years. The danger to be escaped was both (sort of) the same as the Tories' and (sort of) the Tories themselves. Labour's danger to be escaped was in some ways their own past in government (never a strong start...). Business was both a villain and an ally and the prop they used to counter the Tories' treasury note was both literally and metaphorically a tombstone.

(On a side note, it is quite extraordinary how Labour failed to construct a coherent narrative out of the Tories' record, with its failure to eliminate the deficit, bring down immigration or protect the NHS from top-down meddling. It is also extraordinary that they only once seemed to mention that the bogeyman economic crash was brought into existence by policies on bank deregulation that the Tories of the time condemned as not going far enough!)

The disappointing performance of the Greens was another illustration of the narrative imperative. The key moment was Nathalie Bennett's 'brain-melt' in that LBC interview. This was presented as going to the trust issue- that potential voters lost trust in her competence- but I think it was simpler than that. Her inability to recall her party's policies on social housing showed that she had quite literally lost the plot (or forgotten the narrative she was attempting to outline). The Greens have always presented a clear narrative (danger to be avoided- environmental catastrophe and villain anyone who recklessly pursues economic growth) but this time they seemed sometimes to forget themselves what it was and they paid the price.

So what of the heroes of these respective narratives? There is not much point discussing the inadequacies of Clegg and Miliband in that regard. Flawed heroes are all very well in literature, but not for politics. Miliband came across as a decent, well-intentioned geek, Clegg as an unprincipled, power-hungry wannabe, but what they had in common was the fact that both lacked an indefinable something that both Cameron and Sturgeon (for all their diagrammatic dissimilarities from each other) had in spades- self confidence. Clegg knew that the fresh promise he had held out in 2010 was tarnished beyond repair by the student fees betrayal (and more) whilst Miliband was, and no doubt still is, in some sense still the nerdy boy who used to shut himself into the library of Haverstock School every lunchtime.

So what about Cameron and Sturgeon? Well, both had one enormous thing in common: neither had anything like as much to lose as either Miliband or Clegg. Cameron had already announced he would not be standing again after this election and Sturgeon wasn't standing at all. For Sturgeon, anything even vaguely close to what the polls were predicting was always going to be a vast improvement on any previous SNP performance and for Cameron, even if he lost he could pretend that he had sacrificed himself and his political career in the greater national interest and laboured on with the politically unpopular 'tough choices' that only he was brave enough to make (sorry- had to stop for a while. I feel a bit sick).

But there is something deeper still about the nature of both of these heroes. Utterly different in almost every ways, their cultural heritage has gifted both of them a sort of fearlessness that removed the self-doubt which condemned Clegg and Miliband to oblivion. Cameron's fearlessness is born of entitlement- the utterly impervious arrogance of the public school elite, which I have discussed here for instance. This innate self-confidence was boosted by the fact that I really don't think that he (or Gideon or the rest) actually care that much. They haven't got Thatcher's passion or Blair's messianic zeal. They're just doing it all for kicks.

Sturgeon has a different sort of fearlessness. Her's is the 'fuck it, why not?' of the perennial Scottish underdog. She is an Archie Gemmill for the 21st Century, nutmegging the Dutch goalie as Scotland celebrated yet another heroic sporting failure at the 1978 World Cup. She (and all Scotland) knew that however many SNP MPs they sent to Westminster it was unlikely to make a lot of difference so they really had nothing to lose, and God, did she make the most of it.

So how important is this sort of fearlessness to elections in general? Utterly crucial, unfortunately. Thatcher had the fearlessness of the zealot while Major was racked by self-doubt and tempered by reasonableness. Blair was positively Messianic whilst Brown was clearly tortured by inner demons. Some US presidents (Reagan, George W Bush. Need I go on?) have had a fearlessness that is born of stupidity but interestingly Obama- clearly beset with self-doubt of his own when  it comes to actual, policy delivery- seemed able to either simulate or genuinely experience a sort of selfless embodiment of some higher force when contemplating the large and abstract concepts of government.

So there you go. And the implication is obvious really. If Labour wants to return to electoral success (and that is not a redundant question- Miliband often came across as terrified of the idea), then what they need to construct is not so much a coherent set of policies as a compelling narrative. And, like it or not, the primary quality they need in their leader is neither intellect nor compassion nor even political vision, but self confidence.