"Need to reinvigorate the centre"
There is at the minute, an effort being undertaken by the ghosts of recent parliamentary history, to insist that what is required in not only British, but global politics, is a revamping of what is typically labelled 'the centre ground'. Tony Blair appeared on the Andrew Marr show two weekends ago, arguing for this pretty much verbatim, while Nick Clegg, in his dead-man-walking role on the increasingly comical Newsnight, ended his showpiece on the Brexit deal with footage of him listening to a small group of sixth-formers, each declaring a wish for Labour, the Lib Dems and the Conservatives to 'get their act together', to 'offer people something fresh and different' in order to stop people going 'extreme left or extreme right'.
It's clear from this language that the self-styled centrists have learned nothing at all from the last one, five, ten or even twenty years. Firstly, the idea of politics as a shopping mall: a place consumers gather in to pick that which appears to best suit their preferences, a kind of political version of neoclassical economist consumer choice theory, in which all one needs to do is offer the prying hands of an electorate something juicy enough to bite at, in order to attain power. Marr prodded Blair only gently on the mistakes made during his reign in regards to his misregulation of the financial sector, and of the people who now feel left behind by the Labour Party, living within its traditional heartlands. Blair's answer, which was half-right, was that these things were all part of the fallout of recent globalisation, and that we would be best served by considering how we - Britain - could re-engineer its relationship with globalisation (as opposed to severing it, as per Brexit) in order to serve these people better. Blair's basic idea is to form a thinktank, which will develop and then handout policy built along these lines to government. What Blair fails to recognise is that his version of politics, a kind of elitist factory in which a group of wealthy men in expensive suits slide and skid across the laminate floors of Parliament and Whitehall, cooking up the daily temperature for the rest of the country as however they see fit, is exactly what has turned so many people away from the Labour Party, and from 'P'olitics itself. In an age where people feel helpless, barely keeping afloat within currents which no one seems to know how to direct, nor where they end up, Blair decides to offer us all a policy thinktank - not for us to join and contribute to, but simply to help hand an already despicable Westminster set the keys to our voting-ticks yet again. Fuck him. Blair understands the need for a new political settlement of some sort, but can't for the life of him understand that this settlement - if it is to succeed - simply must include the neglected and apathetic at its very own mechanical centre, not as some engineered front wheel to help cart himself and his pals into power.
Blair correctly noted that people are 'fed up' of the status-quo, without ever realising that by definition, the 'Centre' of politics is simply a support of the status-quo. His entire political career was devoted to the Centre, to redefining the Labour Party as a business-as-usual set of Johnny come latelys, protecting and carefully refining old methods in order to present them as vogue. The idea of the far ends of the political spectrum holding danger, that we must see the Centre as some kind of refuge to stop bad things from happening ignores the ecological and economic disasters the Centre is driving us towards, and has already ruthlessly ploughed us all through. The Centre which predicated an entire network of global wealth on financial speculation, gleefully hammered hospitals and schools in order to save the balance sheets of big banks - we're expected to trust in order to make life better again. Crucially, the kind of talk espoused by Blair and Clegg is naked bourgeois ideology, intent on preserving the class structures of British society as they stand. The fucking cheek of Clegg, the man who sat by idly for five years while Cameron &co. burned all they could of the welfare-state in order to 'reduce the deficit' - something they never even remotely achieved - to now hold a slot on primetime evening television, telling us all to give his party another vote in order to make things better, is enough to drive anyone into a fucking ugly hole in the ground.
It perhaps says a lot about political television in this country though, that figures such as Clegg and Blair, with their nonsensical riffs about centres and 'keeping it together', are still afforded so much airtime attention. This is a set of the Establishment entirely devoted to and controlled by the managerial class, aimed at trying to work out how to 'get things back on track' even after Donald Trump, even after Brexit, even after failed austerity, the never-ending Greek default, [insert social disaster here]. This is a group of people who will never understand that the track has in fact disappeared, gone, eaten up in the rain, hellbent on preserving their stolen lot while the world all around flashes in flames.
It's clear from this language that the self-styled centrists have learned nothing at all from the last one, five, ten or even twenty years. Firstly, the idea of politics as a shopping mall: a place consumers gather in to pick that which appears to best suit their preferences, a kind of political version of neoclassical economist consumer choice theory, in which all one needs to do is offer the prying hands of an electorate something juicy enough to bite at, in order to attain power. Marr prodded Blair only gently on the mistakes made during his reign in regards to his misregulation of the financial sector, and of the people who now feel left behind by the Labour Party, living within its traditional heartlands. Blair's answer, which was half-right, was that these things were all part of the fallout of recent globalisation, and that we would be best served by considering how we - Britain - could re-engineer its relationship with globalisation (as opposed to severing it, as per Brexit) in order to serve these people better. Blair's basic idea is to form a thinktank, which will develop and then handout policy built along these lines to government. What Blair fails to recognise is that his version of politics, a kind of elitist factory in which a group of wealthy men in expensive suits slide and skid across the laminate floors of Parliament and Whitehall, cooking up the daily temperature for the rest of the country as however they see fit, is exactly what has turned so many people away from the Labour Party, and from 'P'olitics itself. In an age where people feel helpless, barely keeping afloat within currents which no one seems to know how to direct, nor where they end up, Blair decides to offer us all a policy thinktank - not for us to join and contribute to, but simply to help hand an already despicable Westminster set the keys to our voting-ticks yet again. Fuck him. Blair understands the need for a new political settlement of some sort, but can't for the life of him understand that this settlement - if it is to succeed - simply must include the neglected and apathetic at its very own mechanical centre, not as some engineered front wheel to help cart himself and his pals into power.
Blair correctly noted that people are 'fed up' of the status-quo, without ever realising that by definition, the 'Centre' of politics is simply a support of the status-quo. His entire political career was devoted to the Centre, to redefining the Labour Party as a business-as-usual set of Johnny come latelys, protecting and carefully refining old methods in order to present them as vogue. The idea of the far ends of the political spectrum holding danger, that we must see the Centre as some kind of refuge to stop bad things from happening ignores the ecological and economic disasters the Centre is driving us towards, and has already ruthlessly ploughed us all through. The Centre which predicated an entire network of global wealth on financial speculation, gleefully hammered hospitals and schools in order to save the balance sheets of big banks - we're expected to trust in order to make life better again. Crucially, the kind of talk espoused by Blair and Clegg is naked bourgeois ideology, intent on preserving the class structures of British society as they stand. The fucking cheek of Clegg, the man who sat by idly for five years while Cameron &co. burned all they could of the welfare-state in order to 'reduce the deficit' - something they never even remotely achieved - to now hold a slot on primetime evening television, telling us all to give his party another vote in order to make things better, is enough to drive anyone into a fucking ugly hole in the ground.
It perhaps says a lot about political television in this country though, that figures such as Clegg and Blair, with their nonsensical riffs about centres and 'keeping it together', are still afforded so much airtime attention. This is a set of the Establishment entirely devoted to and controlled by the managerial class, aimed at trying to work out how to 'get things back on track' even after Donald Trump, even after Brexit, even after failed austerity, the never-ending Greek default, [insert social disaster here]. This is a group of people who will never understand that the track has in fact disappeared, gone, eaten up in the rain, hellbent on preserving their stolen lot while the world all around flashes in flames.
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