Before England got booted out of the World Cup last week, I asked you why politics has come to dominate so much of our lives, and what vacuum it is filling.
I received many thoughtful responses – thank you to all who wrote in. While there’s not space for all of them in today’s letter, I’d like to share a few of them with you today.
I’m 77 years old, so I’ve seen how this country has changed.
Certainly, the collapse of Christianity and the nuclear family have resulted in many undesirable changes. The state now has to pay benefits to an army of single mothers to compensate them for large numbers of absent fathers. Boys grow up in female dominated homes and schools largely without much in the way of a male role-model.
In addition, the teaching profession is resolutely left-wing and pro-remain in its political views and has carte blanche to instil its views into its hapless charges. (Any teacher who supports Tory or UKIP has to keep quiet about it in the staff room)…
The real reason for today’s polarisation lies in the fact that with Brexit we are at an existential turning point in our history, just as we were in the 1930s, (i.e. like when we had to decide whether we were going to fight another major war with Germany or make a neutrality deal with Hitler and let him take over mainland Europe in the hope he would leave us alone). Many of the upper classes, remember, then admired both Hitler and Mussolini.
So far as I’m concerned, however, the real difference between the Brexit and Bremain camps is this. I find that those who favour Bremain tend to be those who are concerned with the short-term and more personal or local effects of Brexit, while those who favour Brexit take a more long term view and see the big picture and the national interest.
We are facing this situation while loaded up with debt: £1.6 trillion in public sector debt alone – and that does not include ‘off-balance sheet’ debt. Private sector debt is probably of the same order. Not a strong position to be going into a crisis that might require government financial intervention in various parts of the economy.
And we don’t have a Churchill or a Beaverbrook to lead us, only the current crop of political Munchkins. The two-party parliamentary system, (laughingly called ‘our democracy’) too is also proving to be an obstacle. Under this system we regularly vote out one party of crooks, fools and chancers and by doing so vote into power the very bunch of crooks, fools and chancers we voted out last time. Now, however, there is an added complication. Both parties are divided over Brexit. Really, both ought to split and form new, fully pro-brexit and anti-brexit formations. Under ‘our democracy’ however, this will never happen; too many careers are at stake. They will squabble and fight like cats in a sack until whatever is going to happen – happens.
‘Sorry to be depressing.
No need to apologise. As another reader aptly puts, the situation is “unwelcome but riveting”:
The Brexit referendum uncorked the bottle and the Truth Genie escaped. As a result it is now absolutely beyond doubt that our politicians do not work for us, have not worked for us for at least 40 years, still have no intention of working for us, and that Tories Labour Lib-Dems are all the same but wear different clothes.
The veils of deception have collapsed under the sheer weight of contradiction that we are being asked to believe and Mrs May can now be seen as the naked capitulator that she is, rather than as our well-armed negotiator in chief, since she threw all her weapons away. Democracy itself is shown to be a falsehood, with consequences that we cannot foretell.
This is unwelcome but riveting stuff, especially against a backdrop of highly suspect but unbelievably extensive central bank manipulation that can only end badly (but also not easy to exactly foretell). Add in Trump, and the well-known British love of the very freedoms which are being inexorably eroded by the very same politicians that don’t work for us and you have a powder-keg just waiting for a stray spark . . .
Where might the spark come from? We’re betting on Italy, and the collapse of the eurozone. But as another reader rightly puts:
Politics has become a large part of our life because of “centralisation”, we are the most centralised economy in the G20, and the problem of centralisation is that the general populace becomes disengaged and then ever more strident because they think nobody in authority is listening to them (they aren’t) – they feel unrepresented, so they get “bolshie” & refuse to countenance alternative opinions.
Contrast that with Switzerland, which has a highly decentralised democracy, with frequent referenda (the latest on a topic as “arcane” as the merits, or otherwise, of Fractional reserve banking) that engage the population who feel empowered as a result of which barely anybody knows who the political authorities are because they’re just not that important.
The problem with making a centralised system decentralised is the forces in control don’t want to hand over the keys.
Decentralisation certainly has its benefits for spreading risks – but will the gatekeepers allow it? Not willingly from my perspective…
Don’t you think the fervour for the fringe is actually being created by the Media itself? Politicians are what they have always been but they – and their constituents – have been suckered by the over indulged, emotionally handicapped brat pack that run social media – into believing in the nirvana of instant and permanent communication and those of you who work as journalists have swallowed the bait as well.
There are several consequences of this:
- Politicians (almost always natural talkers and external processors) now have complete freedom to “think out loud” to the world. 20 years ago, a politician who wanted to communicate would have to write a speech, wait for a secretary to type it and probably have it reviewed by a couple of advisors before it ever got heard or published. While this meant a time delay for him or her, it also gave him or her time to refine his or her thoughts. So when the speech was broadcast, the press and the people at large could genuinely get some idea of what that person was thinking, rather than just being a witness to the thought process. This is what we are getting with Donald Trump. He appears unpredictable because everyone is pretending that Twitter is the same as making a speech to Congress or writing a paper. If you recognize what he is doing as the verbal diarrhoea of someone with a chronic need to test ideas out loud, you don’t get so worked up about him and can switch off.
- Electronic media is designed to keep its audience hooked, to enable it to stream the advertising on which it depends. This means it has to use adrenalin generating, formulaic methods of communication to keep people in a heightened state of tension so that they keep checking their screens. They can only do this by the use of polemical language. Politicians no longer “state something” or “say” anything. They can only “confess” or “reveal” and cannot “disagree” with another person’s views, they have to “reject” them or “slate” them. This has the effect of creating a great deal of heat with no light and because of the need to keep people coming back for more, news stories provide no edification but are just a continual, unfinished strip-tease, which generates emotion but no wisdom. Thus we all live with increased feelings of panic, but no idea of the solution.
- Because e-news is immediate, nobody bothers to check their facts, their spelling or their syntax. This can result in the genuinely “fake” news (apologies for the oxymoron) but more often it is merely incomplete or badly phrased reporting, leading to misconception and more panic and confusion…
I definitely agree that the media is complicit. But I think they’re taking advantage of a broader trend – that we are looking to the news to provide us with something that we no longer have.
Perhaps I’m barking up the wrong tree, but we’ll see.
Explosion of the media has a lot do with our obsession with politics. Back in the 1950s there was only the daily newspaper, providing largely factual and unemotive political coverage. Now there are vast amounts of webpages, social media, radio-hours, television-hours, as well as newspaper pages to be filled on a continuous basis. Politics is manna from heaven for all these media and their hacks, added to which the tenor has become much more emotive and psychologically manipulative.
We live in a much less deferential age. In effect, we’re being whipped into a frenzy. What can be done about it? Basically nothing, other than to advise people at an individual level to switch off much more frequently. Doing so won’t make any difference to their lives and may even improve their health by keeping blood pressure at bay.
Here’s to switching off!
Until next time,
Boaz Shoshan
Editor, Southbank Investment Research
Category: Brexit