Why Politician-Bashing has to Stop

Afternoon - hope you've all got your eye in and are in good form.

If you're looking to start your own blog or set yourself up as some sort of social or political commentator then here's a bit of useful advice being offered by somebody in the know, totally free of charge. A really 'fast forward' way of securing some sort of fanclub, cheap validation and a bargain basement round of applause is to latch onto the 'anti-politician' line of argument, crank up the distortion on your amplifier and screech into the microphone as loudly as you can. You can come at it from either end of the spectrum, both of which have their own brand of anti-politician type populism, but as is always the case with Toddler Left and Toddler Right, the formula is the same.

If you're coming at it 'from the left' then you need to bang on about how 'the political elite' have 'betrayed' the ordinary people of this country through its cosy relationship with 'the rich' and big business. Scapegoats include 'the 1 per cent', male or white privilege, the entrepreneurial class (many of whom are of course 'class traitors' by Toddler Leftist logic) and of course, those career politicians who have 'let this happen'. If your diaper happens to lean 'to the right', then simply substitute these scapegoats with immigrants, foreigners, 'political correctness gone mad' and politicians ignoring 'the silent majority' and 'the white working class' in particular.

All of this is perfectly doable on an easy-to-digest 'by numbers' basis and with very little original thought whatsoever. You'll become more popular than this site within about a month and probably go on to achieve some sort of mainstream recognition while accumulating a bit of a fanclub and the desired reviews in various publications, both positive and negative. I'm not even charging a fee for the spot of first class 'consultancy' you've just been given, so please simply remember me when you clean up at the Total Politics awards, or appear on Question Time - "without whom", and all that. In fact I'm pretty sure this is what a lot of 'political commentators' are actually doing.

I'm back writing not to service personal ego, but because I know that having used the blogosphere in the past as a tool for rationalising my own thoughts, I have something far more profound to talk about 'this time' than I did when I was actually 'somebody' within the Libertarian corner of the blogosphere six or seven years ago. Unfortunately, I engaged in a bit of crude politician-bashing of my own back then, partly because what I was saying had more than a grain of truth to it and to pick off the low hanging fruit that was 'the political class' to create a feelgood vibe among our readers. It was a cynical, stupid and counter-productive thing to do, something I rather regret.

To be clear this doesn't mean that I have a fundamentally different view of politicians to that which I previously held. Look, career politicians in particular, those who have precious little and in some cases virtually no 'real life' experience, are  of course a pretty dismal bunch on all sides and perhaps the old maxim of "if you've nothing nice to say then say nothing" can apply here. Nor am I saying that the particular actions of individual members of Parliament, public figures or indeed governments should not be analysed and criticised robustly if needs be, as and when they occur. This stuff is in the public eye, frequently impacts all of our lives and is quite rightly fair game.

What I changed my mind about circa 2 years ago was this depiction of 'ordinary people' as 'victims of politicians' as if we're all suffering from some collectivised version of battered wife syndrome. If you look at the Toddler Left and Toddler Right, both appropriate self-righeous victimhood at every chance that presents itself, usually on the basis of nothing more than membership of some 'oppressed group' that they feel has been 'betrayed' by politicians and is therefore 'owed something' for what most sane, rational adults would be inclined to conclude is an imaginary or made up reason rather than a real one. 'Politician-bashing'  merely feeds and amplifies this sense of victimhood.

A good analogy would be with the 'unlucky in love' type individual who has maybe half a dozen short lived relationships and reaches a conclusion along the lines of 'all the same' or something like that. Now it may seem 'nice' to offer validation and a sympathetic ear to someone in that position but it's quite apparent that once you're into relationship four, five, six then they are either the unluckiest person on earth or at they are at least a partial cause of their own problem and in need of some introspective time out of the game to work that out. They might be picking 'the wrong types', be poor relationship-builders in some way, have unrealistic expectations, 'issues' of their own or whatever.

Saying "there there, it's not your fault and I'm sure you'll meet the right person soon enough"  is probably what they want to hear, but is ultimately going to lead him or her down the path of doing anything other than the work that they almost certainly need to. It will either lead to a form of messiah-seeking, a rather unhealthy quest for that 'special' individual who is "not like all the others" or the polar opposite, a narcissistic retreat towards isolation and self-imposed Spinsterism, the whole 'nobody is good enough for me' thing. Either way, the sense of self-righteous victimhood (and therefore entitlement) ends up being re-enforced rather than challenged.

Politician-bashing is just another variation on this ridiculous princessery, one which I'm rather embarrassed about ever having participated in. Setting ourselves up as Cindarella outside the ballroom at five to midnight, waiting to be 'swept off our feet' by the latest 'messiah', then claiming victim status for ourselves when they don't deliver the 'utopia' they promised us is pretty desparate, especially when we then delude ourselves "don't worry, Mr or Miss Right will win the next election - and if that doesn't work out then it's not our fault either". The 'first move' here is not politicians magically changing their behaviour, it's actually us uplevelling as individuals.

When we do that work then two important changes occur organically. One is the immediate rejection of victimhood based solely on group identity rather than real events that might have occurred in real people's real lives - I find it striking that while we embrace such nonsense as Black Lives Matter and LGBT, we seem to have become less empathetic towards each other on the individual level. Secondly, once we reject the Utopia that career politicians believe that they have to promise us in exchange for our votes, the question of what purpose they serve (if any) becomes one we can ask rather loudly, one I'm struggling and am honestly not that keen to find an answer for.

So...why not replace RepDem with Sortition and deal in this new reality ourselves?

I understand to an extent that the language of "betrayal" and "it's not your fault" provides something of a warm glow, but it's astonishing how many otherwise sane, rational and intelligent people engage in social and political issues with a mindset that they would find lamentable in others as and when they came into contact with it in 'real' life. "Left wing victimhood" has brought Momentum to the brink of running the country and the government preferring to keep a lame duck leader in office rather than triggering an election they would probably lose. "Right wing victimhood" gave us 'the Donald' and the misfortune of a squalid Brexit that happened for all the wrong reasons.

It's an unhealthy sort of silliness that I should never have gone near and be assured I will not indulge again. Please pull me up if you notice any 'slippage' on that point as I'd like to think we're above all that on here.

Anyway, thanks for reading and I'll leave you with some appropriate music. Catch you on Sunday.

I Was Wrong about...the Apolitical

Evening - philosophy is an ongoing process in which some humility is not just desirable but necessary.

In the coming weeks I will (amongst other things) be going into several subjects on which I have changed my mind in either the very recent or not-so-recent past and offering a few reasons why I was wrong in the first instance (given the scale of the eureka moment I had in the Autumn, there are a surprising number which fall into the former category).

We'll be discussing such challenging topics as Conservatives, Libertarians, the BBC, Political Correctness and Societal Pressure.

But first up it's our apolitical friends - thanks very much to any non-partisan neutrons who've decided to drop by, I hope you're not disappointed.

Before we start let's get a definition of the word apolitical out there that at least most of us agree on. From where I'm stood, defining anyone who rarely or never votes in elections as apolitical strikes me as being far too broad brushstroke a way of approaching it, an over-simplification which fails to examine the possibility that at least some apolitical people do vote with a degree of regularity. A far more sturdy and reliable definition of an apolitical individual would be someone who does not identify themselves as being of a particular party, tribal, ideological or philosophical label (left/right, small state/big state, libertarian/populist etc) and generally does not vote.

This, I think, is what I'm gonna roll with.

Now at the heart of my previous misunderstanding of the apolitical was a mistaken belief that the failure to get to a point where you could identify some sort of consistent thread running through what you believed could only be attributed to either a) a basic lack of intelligence or b) a sort of intellectual laziness - in short, either an inability or lack of desire to think about a number of different subjects and then rationalise the angle from which you tend to approach at least most of them. Look, there's the collectivist angle, the individualist angle, conservative, liberal etc. Some monumentally thick people at least manage to establish a tribal affinity, so what's the problem?

The apolitical always struck me as being possessed of a particular brand of immaturity. These, I reasoned, were the zombies who sat there watching Strictly, then switching channels right on cue for another exciting episode of the X Factor, followed by an hour of the 'utterly hilarious' Ant and Dec (who, lest we forget, are actually about as funny as leukemia). How can this gerbil-like existence be satisfactory to anybody but the incredibly fucking stupid? Did they ever think about anything more meaningful than their favourite colour, or who they wanted evicted from the Big Brother house that week? Day 31, and Karen from Telford is still missing a chromosome...

Only...I should have known better at the time. My younger brother is and always has been apolitical - as far as I'm aware when he voted Remain in the EU referendum that was the first time he had voted in pretty much anything and I've never heard him apply a particular preference, label or name to describe 'what he believes' in layman's terms. Knowing that he is certainly not Strictly/X Factor/Big Brother fodder and could not be described as dumb in this lifetime or the next, I concluded that he was simply a bit of an oddball, a statistical outlier, someone who had fallen into being apolitical for reasons we could only ever file under 'miscellaneous' or 'other'.

This is probably as good a point to state the obvious - my brother is not an outlier at all, and quite inexcusably, I found that I was guilty of treating 'the apolitical' as if they were some homogenous block rather than unique individuals.

Eventually I realised that it was me who had been arrogant, intellectually lazy and just plain wrong.

Once I began to retreat away from party or tribal politics myself, one of these misplaced assumptions began to collapse around me immediately - just because someone is apolitical does not mean that they do not think about and/or discuss deep, serious topics that might fall under the umbrella of politics or philosophy. In fact, those of some intelligence who detach themselves from 'the process' of politics tend to be some of the most rational, objective and rewarding people to exchange ideas with. In many ways, the failure or refusal to pin a convenient label on what you believe should be considered a strength rather than a weakness.

If others 'don't get it' then that's their problem - and none of us are under any obligation to dumb ourselves down for the benefit of the genuinely dumb or intellectually lazy.

Labels are helpful most of all to those who refuse to acknowledge the presence of nuance or grey areas, and in that regard they are very much a mixed blessing.

I remember an ex-work colleague and the father of a childhood friend who both liked the game of football but didn't have a team that they particularly supported. As well as talking more sense about the sport than most, they had the benefit of not getting ridiculously stressed out or anxious in a way that many football fans do about their team's results. In the same way, the apolitical don't have 'a horse in the race' and are therefore more likely to remain clear-headed, not become 'politically angry' and start playing the man rather than the ball through the use of ad homs and personal insults. It usually augurs well in terms of the honesty and value of any discussion you might have.

Perhaps most importantly given the nature of so much of what we're been discussing on here, the apolitical by definition are not on the lookout for a messiah and have altogether more realistic expectations of politicians generally than those who have 'picked a side' in the team sport being played around them. The politically active and tribal have this dreadful tendency to put 'their side' on some sort of divine pedestal while regarding 'the other lot' as Lucifer's representatives on earth. This leads to all sorts of logical and moral inconsistencies which you just need to turn on your PC or television to be exposed to. Being apolitical is basically a bulletproof vest to this nonsense.

So from a position of sweeping and misplaced generalisation, I've come to regard the apolitical (and particularly the thoughtful apolitical) with a great deal of respect. Refusing to take part in 'the process' does not (as some stupidly claim) deny you a right to an opinion, in fact that non-participation is itself an expression of a wider view in many cases. Even if it's a straightforward case of "can't be arsed", well the examples we know of within the Toddler Left and Toddler Right should serve as compelling evidence that getting off your arse and doing something is not automatically a good thing (this is another ridiculous and oft-parroted claim by politicos which is easily rebutted).

Once we establish that this is true then some sort of reverse thesis also applies. The apolitical are, by definition, a threat to the life, liberty and property of precisely nobody solely by virtue of inaction. They are not chasing a messiah, demanding bribes or validation in exchange for their vote or identifying 'enemies' who will be 'punished' by their demagogue of choice in a rather unhinged act of passive-aggressiveness by proxy. Seeing as they never had false expectations of the government or politicians in the first place they're far more likely to take responsibility for their own lives and think with a greater degree of reason and logical consistency than their tribal counterparts.

In short I was wrong about the apolitical and must say on reflection I rather like at least most of them - sincere apologies for my previous stupidity.

I'll leave with some appropriate music and catch you all at the weekend - thanks once again for reading and take care.

Rejecting "Real World" and "Common Sense" Politics

Evening - hope you're all in fine form, especially anybody inclined to engage in a spot of plagarism of what they have read on here. Much obliged.

Apologies to Malpoet who I know has already heard this story. Before I left home it got to the point where I was refusing to discuss 'anything serious' with my parents. Part of this stemmed from their general hostility towards 1) logic 2) objective truth and 3) being disagreed with on anything, ever. Anyway, one night the biological mother comes up with her latest 'policy initiative', a suggestion that the children of all who currently receive tax credits (of whom she was one) should also receive free school meals. I listened to the rather flaky 'rationale' and 'moral case' behind this and patiently waited for my turn, rapidly compiling a list of Paxman-esque questions in my mind.

Now it's the easiest thing in the world to argue that you should be in receipt of even more 'free stuff' than you currently get with no regard to the cost or where the resources for it would come from. What I wanted to know was how this would be paid for, and (perhaps mischievously) what SHE was prepared to lose elsewhere in order to find that money. Of course, turkeys never argue in favour of Christmas and likewise the biological suggested something silly like "tax the rich" as a way of raising the required funds. I ended up calling out the obvious, namely that she thought it was a wonderful idea because she personally would gain from it. And for no other reason.

Predictably enough, this didn't go down too well.

I spent years working with a fella who I found myself in disagreement with about pretty much everything. Maybe I'm being unfair but his worldview seemed to be shaped by 1) regular chats with pub racists and bar-room bores 2) Jon Gaunt's radio show and 3) the editorial of the Daily Star. I remember us having quite a heated argument about the war in Libya (he and his mate were well up for it, I thought it was insane at the time) and he said something which became a constant during any instance of differing perspective "see Daz, you're not used to dealing with people who live in the real world are you?". It was a clear ad hom and I was taken aback by it.

I asked what he meant by "real world" (as opposed to the, er, surreal one?) and he told me "house, kids, filling the car, all that 'normal' stuff".  Well, not being the owner of a car or the father of any kids I know about it's unlikely that I could ever inhabit my friend's 'real world' but it's something that stuck out and I felt the need to reflect upon for some time. This fella liked to present his 'worldview' as if it was something coherent, logical and well thought out but it was really a set of prejudices rather than a belief system of any significance or meaning. Even the gentlest cross-examination found more holes than Swiss Cheese and 'real world' was his way out of dodge.

Another former sparring partner from social media used to use the term 'real people' to describe people who saw the world exactly the way that he did. Given that he was a rabid Nationalist with a soft spot for the English Defence League and Britain First, this left a lot of 'surreal people' out there having the temerity to, er, not agree with this fella about absolutely everything. One day I said some less than flattering things about his beloved EDL and he abruptly terminated our association with each other, leaving a series of 'invisible' (and, I'm going to guess, highly malicious) messages on my wall when I woke up the next morning and found myself blocked.

The tactics people use in these situations reveal a huge amount about their mentality.

I'm remembering all of this because the whole 'real world' and 'common sense' angle seems to be something that is surfacing as an alternative to thought, ideas and any type of philosophy. Both the Toddler Left and Toddler Right follow a type of politics that reflects their 'real world' and a 'common sense' solution to the problems that exist within it. Both reject the presence of an objective truth, the concept of 'ideas' or anything whatsoever to do with philosophy or values in favour of fixed lists of 'the oppressors' who must be punished and 'the oppressed' who are 'poor victims' deserving of some restitution, as well as 'forced respect' from the State.

In short, 'real world' or 'common sense' politics is retarded politics-by-numbers, designed specifically for people either too dumb or too lazy to think. During the Brexit campaign I was horrified when Michael Gove muttered the words "I think people are rather sick of experts".  Well, when my eye test is due I tend to visit an optician and in the event that I ever need open heart surgery then I think getting a qualified surgeon (y'know, one of those ghastly 'experts') to carry out this life and death procedure might be smarter than letting Karen from Telford do it. Of course she's entitled to a view about the state of my eyes or my ticker, but then I'm equally entitled to ignore her.

This misplaced sense of anger and grievance is what lies at the heart of the philosophical 'endarkenment' we see taking place before our eyes. Yes, a democracy means that anyone is entitled to hold a view about any topical subject that they wish, even one that others might construe as ill-conceived, insane and probably dangerous. However, who and what people decide to take seriously is a completely different matter, and every last one of us chooses to ignore opinions in our daily lives on the basis that they might be irrational, built on a false premise, motivated by greed, bigotry etc. We don't all have an inalienable right to be taken equally seriously.

I watched a few videos of the all new party of the future 'for Britain' recently, so that I could earn the right to speak about them from a position of knowledge. Quite apart from being a modern day Joan of Arc who probably dreams of being assassinated, their leader, the quite brilliant (in a way) Anne Marie Waters kept referring to her new party being first and foremost for 'common sense', which should serve as an immediate red flag to anybody who likes to keep their politics on the right side of the psychiatrist's door. The claims that she's some sort of 'actual Fascist or Nazi' are wide of the mark, but their manifesto is up online and, well, it's an interesting shade of authoritarian madness.

They will fail spectacularly for a very, very obvious reason that doesn't even go into the realistic prospect of 'for Britain' being infiltrated by arms of the State. Look, 'common sense' is NOT a philosophy, belief system or set of values that can bind thousands of people together when you're regularly losing your deposit in elections. You need a bit more than 'we hate the EU' or 'we hate Muslims' to remind people what they are campaigning for (rather than against) when all that effort really doesn't seem worth it. That means ideas, it means a clearly stated direction of travel, it means some values and, dare I say it, a philosophy. 'Common sense' is 'anti' all of this.

The notion of 'common sense' or 'real world' solutions to problems is a wholly subjective one which means entirely different things to different people. Your 'common sense' or 'real world' perspective might be my perception of madness and vice versa. Moreover, all of this is limited by the axes of x) conventional wisdom and y) a snapshot of the present. It was once 'common sense' to think that the plague was a punishment from God, that women did not deserve the vote, or that the world was flat. 'Common sense' is hostile to progress, challenge and that guy in the corner of the room with a 'leftfield' idea. It can only ever end in an authoritarian state, and quite possibly a totalitarian one.

Finally, back to my mother's argument:- 'common sense' or 'real world' politics is normally nothing more than crude and cynical self-interest dressed up as some sort of quasi-philosophy or belief system. This is probably necessary in a democracy as a means of re-packaging the appeals of "free stuff for me" as something more palatable, whether it's 'social justice', 'national identity' or whatever. Yes, 'paying our gas bill and keeping the lights on' is important but last time I checked it didn't have its equivalent of JS Mill or Adam Smith who'd written with some eloquence on the subject. That's the cue to think again by the way, as opposed to having a book bonfire.

I'll be back Sunday, perhaps with a case study of Fathers4Justice and quite possibly covering some other topical issue.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with Talk Talk and catch up with you all at the weekend. Thanks again for dropping by.

Politics and Policing Where Do They Divide?

In the wake of the riots we are bombarded with competing claims about who controlled them. The police are sure that the successful tactics were evolved by them while the politicians say that it all got sorted when they returned from holiday. I think that the riots stopped because the weather turned bad, but there is a serious issue about who should do what in keeping us safe from crime.

The government have said that they will scrap the costly and useless police authorities and replace them with elected commissioners. Well OK, but what exactly is a commissioner? The chief of the Met Police is called the Commissioner whereas the people who run all other UK police forces are called Chief Constables. If the Metropolitan Police Authority is to be replaced by an elected commissioner they are going to have to sort out the titles.

The real issue, of course, is what part of policing should be decided by politicians and what is decided by the police chief. The standard answer is that policy is for politicians and operational matters are the responsibility of the uniformed cops. But where exactly is the line drawn between these? Many libertarians support the idea of directly elected police control in some form because they want policing priorities to be responsive to citizen concerns and they also wish t oget policing to be closer to specific community conditions. These are legitimate aspirations, but I would suggest that focussing on election of a figurehead does not address the right issue.

Britain is unlike most other countries in its insistence on having a single police service in which personnel deal with everything from dropping litter to multiple murder, parking infringement to complex fraud. This is all done through 43 different police forces, roughly relating to counties, that are far too big to provide genuine local accountability and much too small to address large scale, organised crime.

The apprehension of criminals and even the prevention of crime is a technical process which most people would agree requires skills, experience, training and a high degree of efficiency. Quite obviously these are things which require stability and are not compatible with the turnover resulting from elections or the absence of appropriate background that election candidates are likely to have. Whatever title you give them, the operational head of any level of policing cannot and must not be determined by popular election.

At present, Police Authorities do not perform any worthwhile role. They are meant to be the means by which Chief Constables, or the Met Commissioner, are accountable for the performance of themselves and their force. The reality is that the Authority is composed primarily of Councillors selected by the local authority who have no knowledge of policing and no idea how to hold the professionals to account. Serving on the Police Authority is just another little source of responsibility allowance and a diverting couple of hours from time to time.

An elected person with specific responsibility for setting policy frameworks for police and holding the Chief constables to account would have more focus and authority and might gain sufficient insight to be able to probe the effectiveness of the force if s/he held office for long enough. The problem is that this doesn't deal with the problem of getting policing organised on an appropriate scale to deal with the whole range of crime and public safety that is required. Also, in those places which have an executive mayor, particularly London, the elected Police Commissioner is going to be a competing figure to the mayor and a dilution of the executive mayor role.

A few years ago it was unquestioned that only the state could run prisons and handle prisoners. Now we have many privately owned and run gaols and prisoner transport is largely contracted out. Tiny steps have been taken to improve policing by de-criminalising some traffic management roles and introducing Police Community Support staff to deal with anti-social behaviour and petty crime. Even these micro moves have been met with implacable hostility from the Police Federation which, although they are prohibited from organising industrial action, is one of the most intransigent and powerful trade unions in the country. Apart from the rank and file union, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) is a formidable barrier to reform. ACPO is the senior officers trade union, but at the same time it gets large amount of taxpayers money so it is one of those strange hybrid organisations by which the state extends its tendrils where they shouldn't be. Financial pressures brought about change in the prison system and that will go further. The present economic constraints should be an aid to breaking the massive institutional barriers to police reform.

The way forward is to go ahead with abolition of Police Authorities. In those areas with an executive mayor policing should become part of his/her responsibility. In the rest of the country an elected police commissioner would be OK.

The real job though is to get the right sort of policing. Major crime and the contingency arrangements for large scale incidents must be coordinated nationally and internationally. All motoring offences, which does not include such things as manslaughter by use of a vehicle, should be de-criminalised. The task of enforcing the civil motoring laws needs to be contracted out to private providers. Local crime and crime prevention needs to be separated into its specialisms of theft and burglary, rape and sexual offences, fraud, etc. and delivered in the manner chosen by the communities they serve.

It is my view that the vast majority of policing and public safety would be best handled by private contractors, but there is no reason why mayors or commissioners should not keep it as a directly employed service or a mixture of public and private provision.

More Libertarian political thought at:

http://malpoet.wordpress.com/