This is quite welcome. Johnson's efforts to gut the meagre accountability available to the Commons has hammered a few more cracks into the coalition of interests the party holds together, if not at the base then at least among ruling circles. Any opposition worth its salt would be doing all it can to lever these cracks open. But for some, it seems, Major's intervention is a moment for another thing, an occasion for unseemly gushing. Whenever a Tory, any Tory, emerges from the woodwork and ventures criticisms of the current administration, British liberalism breaks out the blu tack for their latest pin up. Regardless of past misdeeds and damage done.
Consider Major. During his seven wretched years in office, he tightened the screws on the labour movement, slung hundreds of thousands out of work, marketised public services and bedded down the forms of governance that blights our society and its politics today (Major gets a full chapter in the book about how his government was crucial for bedding down the class settlement struck during the Thatcher years). People suffered, and people's lives were cut short unnecessarily because of his devotion to the project. Watching so-called liberals throwing in the Persil and laundering his reputation is pretty grim. Grim, but not unsurprising considering it didn't affect them.
There is a pattern of behaviour among the overlapping worlds of liberalism, centrism, and continuity remain. You might recall when Rory Stewart ran for London mayor, or the Tory MPs who resisted Johnson (and Theresa May) on Brexit. These people were hailed as heroes and, in some cases, talked about as if they were the "proper" opposition. And it's happened again. Since Owen Paterson resigned, liberals and centrists got very excited about the possibility of an anti-sleaze candidate for North Shropshire, especially when news broke about brief talks held between Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Cue speculation about who could fit the bill. Our man Rory was there. As was John Bercow, Ken Clarke, David Gauke, Anna Soubry, a proper who's who of ... former Tories. Even the one celebrity who got thrown into the mix - Carol Vorderman(!) - has something of the right about her. Coincidence?
The Conservative Party is a structurally dishonest enterprise. Its job is to present the minority bourgeois interest as the universal interest, and has had a great deal of success doing so. From this flows all the other features we associate with the Tories. Its propensity to lie. The resort to scapegoating. Its habitual impulse to divide and rule. Given its record in office, you could be forgiven for thinking anyone following politics would conclude these efforts are the party's defining characteristics, not occasional quirks. And yet at times of political crisis, particularly recently, liberals and centrists gather up their search parties and start searching the woods for the Good Tory. What is it about their outlook that conditions this curious and seemingly bewildering behaviour?
Liberalism and centrism aren't just a body of ideas, they're a movement in wider society. A class movement. In the first place a current with impeccably bourgeois credentials, the destruction of the old Liberal Party - their proper home - after the First World War saw its political expression fold into the Tories and Labour, with a small rump leading a twilight existence. Occasionally as an independent third party, occasionally as an adjunct to the Conservatives. To cut a long story short, by the European Union referendum they were out of sorts. Theresa May assembled an impressive electoral coalition by appealing to - mostly - older voters on a nationalistic basis, with the Tory press recruiting voters on the basis of seeing off the traitors who would do Britain down. She pointed at the direction the Tories needed to travel to win big, and Johnson duly followed. Except he was fortunate enough to be faced by a divided opposition whereas May was not. Meanwhile in the Labour Party, during the Jeremy Corbyn interlude the liberals and the centrists were no longer pre-eminent and calling the shots. They were fighting for their political lives, even if it meant shredding the party and, in some cases, their own chances of re-election. For the first time in liberalism's existence, it was locked out of front rank political influence.
The result? Crisis. Most, hitching their bandwagon to Brexit and overturning the referendum result, used it to try and reassert their power. Some did so outside of parliament via mass mobilisations. The other track was within parliament, both in the inner party struggles in the two main parties, and by positioning the Liberal Democrats as the party of remain. We know what happened next. Johnson evicted his centrist-tinged wing, while years of wrecking topped off by converting Labour to the second referendum (not that, in the end, it had much choice) saw the party lose heavily. Keir Starmer won the subsequent leadership election, and the centrists and liberals were in the ascendency in the party again. But, ultimately, it's grasping this precarity, of not having an authentic home of one's own that underpins the position the Good Tory occupies in the liberal/centrist imaginary. It comes from, politically speaking, being a junior partner.
To reiterate, it's a bourgeois trend spread over the two big parties and the "dedicated" party of liberalism is a distant third in England. They are, or were, variously integrated, but exist in their hosts under sufferance. This anxiety gives liberalism a certain rootlessness, which manifests itself in the infamous liberal/centrist conceit of being free from "ideology" and viewing the political scene without the encumbrance of "tribalism" - in a manner akin to how the petit bourgeois misrecognises their structural location caught between the vice of capitalist and worker as being somehow above it all. With just this illusio as their star map to the political firmament, liberalism like/dislike politicians not on the basis of making people's lives harder (or for that matter, better), but on the feels. In other words, those who make their dominated/dominant position welcome, accepts their rules as the proper way of doing things, or gestures in their direction. This is affective politics, so if someone does something that aligns with their values, or appears to promise to return liberalism to an imagined pre-eminence, then these figures become objects of their affection. For example, it's how, simultaneously, the continuity remain elements of liberalism and centrism simultaneously adored Keir Starmer (until last December, anyway), and Michael Heseltine. It wasn't just their pro-EU credentials, but the appearance that they played by the rules of their politics illusio: constitutionalism, nice suits, estuary accents, and knowing better than the hoi polloi.
But why should this result in the Good Tory trope? Because, more often than not, when push has come to shove liberalism has lined up with the Tories. They did this between 2010 and 2019. And they did it in the 1930s to try and crush the Labour Party. There is form, and this preference lies in the class origins of the trend. Liberalism is a fundamentally bourgeois philosophy and sensibility because property is the root of individuality. Socialism is antithetical because it turns the claims of liberalism against its class basis. I.e. liberty consistently applied is the enemy of private ownership in the means of production, the real relation liberalism, like Toryism, defends. Any kind of social democracy, no matter how mild, threatens to open this question. The Good Tory then is how they wish to see the Tories, a projection of class instinct, and so are predisposed to seek these figures out. The hope is the Good Tory will come to recognise themselves in liberalism. After all, what they disagree on can be resolved by polite conversation: how to keep the capitalist show on the road. And this also helps explain the affected hate for Johnson's corrupt bunch: They gnash their collective teeth with the bitterness of a lover spurned.
Surveying politics in 2021, it's obvious the Tories don't need liberals and centrists. And for those who haven't drifted back into Labour or washed up in the LibDems, life outside is a back and forth between searching and praying for the Good Tory, undergoing repeat public breakdowns blaming the evil Jeremy Corbyn for their ills, and feting the European Union as if it's the shining city on the hill.
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8 comments:
«The Conservative Party is a structurally dishonest enterprise. Its job is to present the minority bourgeois interest as the universal interest»
That to seems a bit too coarse and too fine a description: the Conservative party has also historically represented anti-bourgeois interests, because it is more generally the vehicle for the interests of *incumbents*, whether bourgeois or not. In general they have tended towards the interests of incumbents in property rather than in business, even if for some decades the business side was leading the party, and currently the incumbents in finance lead it in alliance with the incumbents in land.
«Liberalism and centrism aren't just a body of ideas, they're a movement in wider society. A class movement. In the first place a current with impeccably bourgeois credentials»
More precisely liberalism used to be the class movement of the incumbents in business, the "whig" ironmasters, as opposed to the "tory" landowners, and as such it was a right-wing "revolutionary" party, trying to wipe out the semi-feudal state of the english economy.
In more recent times whiggism/centrism instead is mostly the class movement of the incumbents in finance, allied with tory landowning interests, in opposition to business owning interests (thus "Fuck business").
«Johnson evicted his centrist-tinged wing»
It was rather more interesting than that: Johnson actually evicted the "one nation tory" business wing (e.g. Ken Clarke, Michael Heseltine), and the "whig globalist" wing left of their accord (David Cameron, George Osborne), leaving the "propertied tory nationalist" wing in sole control (with the support of the "financialist whig" wing that makes huge profits from property lending).
«Liberalism is a fundamentally bourgeois philosophy and sensibility because property is the root of individuality.»
Whigs are mostly about incumbency in privileged positions of market power, not property. Tories are incumbent in privileged relationships of social hierarchy. Property, of land or productive capital, is just expression of those social relationships, not the fundamental point for either. Propertarianism, as in libertarianism, is largely obfuscation. Right wingers are not about principles, like the sanctity of property, but about outcomes favourable to them, and will adopt whichever principles achieve those outcomes. An ancient saying of lawyers resembles that:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/07/04/legal-adage/>
“If you’re weak on the facts and strong on the law, pound the law. If you’re weak on the law and strong on the facts, pound the facts. If you’re weak on both, pound the table.”
"Winners do whatever it takes" :-).
«Socialism is antithetical because it turns the claims of liberalism against its class basis. I.e. liberty consistently applied is the enemy of private ownership in the means of production, the real relation liberalism, like Toryism, defends.»
That seems to me a bit coarse marxism: torysm is not about private ownership of the means of production, but of incumbent opportunities of (mostly land-based) rent extraction. It is whiggism that is fundamentally about control of the means of production to achieve an unfair advantage in the markets,
Perhaps those who have read so far may think that I am splitting things too finely between tory land incumbents, whig (with some torysm if established) business incumbents, and whig finance incumbents, but while the three main wings of the right have common interests as to extracting from non-incumbents (workers, renters, upgraders), they also of course attempt to extract from each other. The beardy guy himself remarked:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm
"In present-day society, the instruments of labor are the monopoly of the landowners (the monopoly of property in land is even the basis of the monopoly of capital) and the capitalists. [...] In England, the capitalist class is usually not even the owner of the land on which his factory stands."
“Its job is to present the minority bourgeois interest as the universal interest, and has had a great deal of success doing so.”
It is aided and abetted in this endeavour by the entire corporate media of course. Journalists are nothing but the stenographers of ruling class interest, with the exception of Julian Assange of course.
Don’t think Phil knows who Assange is, but he is currently rotting in a bourgeois prison for threatening minority bourgeois interest. Not that this concerns our Phil, who is very selective in his dismay at minority bourgeois interest.
Of course, the real myth is the myth of the Good Labour, which every bit as much as the Tories represent minority bourgeois interest. Think of Labour as the chief advisor to the slave master, can I have a word in your ear my Lord, maybe if you whip the slaves a little less ferociously they might work a bit harder. This is the nature of all reformist parties, the campaign to reduce the working day at the end of the 19th century made the argument that workers who worked less hours per day could be made to work more intensely, and for a longer time, so over the lifetime of the worker you would end up getting out more time. This proved to be true, however fast forward to Keynes and the reformist wing of minority bourgeois interest proved to be limited, which is why it was dismantled and the whipping got more ferocious.
«private ownership in the means of production, the real relation liberalism, like Toryism, defends.»
Put another way, torysm is fundamentally about the tenancy relationship, as a social institution, whiggism is fundamentally about the employment relationship, as market transaction. In both cases land and machinery are means of production, and the means on which the relationships are based, but that is not the essence of the politics.
There are mixed forms: to some extent in "paternalistic" businesses the employment relationship becomes partially a tenancy relationship.
Sometimes the tories and whigs cooperate in extracting the most from tenants/employees, sometimes as in the case of Corn Laws, or current housing costs, they are in competition.
Which offers an opportunity for the servant classes: a temporary alliance of convenience with the productive business interests, against the unproductive landowning and financial interests, which extract from both employers and employees with great dedication.
«feting the European Union as if it's the shining city on the hill»
But the EU is indeed the shining city on the hill, despite its many flaws, as Jeremy Corbyn gave it a 75% positivity rating, because it is the one hope (in the long term though) to take Europe back to the pre-WW2 state where its countries were mostly independent instead of protectorates; post-WW1 and even more so post-WW2 it is the era of continental powers, and Europe as the USA either hangs together or its states will be hung separately. In 1965 Tony Benn himself wrote very lucidly, and things have not changed fundamentally:
“Defence, colour television, Concorde, rocket development - these are all issues raising economic considerations that reveal this country's basic inability to stay in the big league. We just can’t afford it. The real choice is — do we go in with Europe or do we become an American satellite? Without a conscious decision being taken the latter course is being followed everywhere.”
But that is not why the neoliberals/whigs/centrist fetishize the EU, the real reason is that the EU works on majority rule, as it should, and currently the majority of EU governments is globalist neoliberal, and therefore currently the EU is a tool of the neoliberals; it is pure opportunism, not principled geopolitical strategy.
Were the majority of EU governments internationalist social-democratic, or even nationalist tory (as the polish or hungarians), I am sure that the same whigs/centrists/neoliberals would be against the EU.
Thanks for this: it helps articulate, amongst other things, why the Guardian totally lost the plot during the Corbyn years, bet the farm on Starmer, and now hasn't a clue what to do next other than hope the Tories screw up. That paper's liberalism was totally exposed.
QUOTE: "Watching so-called liberals throwing in the Persil and laundering his reputation is pretty grim. Grim, but not unsurprising considering it didn't affect them."
That rings a bell, from the 1960s. This class of people are horrible, but at least they're consistently horrible - which makes them predictable. "Ten degrees to the left when times are good, ten to the right when it affects them personally". RIP Phil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLqKXrlD1TU
The Tories behave differently if they have a strong opposition. Their policics on the Red Wall was the result of Corbyn being leader.
That Labour showing in 2017 was to stimulate a response from the establishment that was both savage and creative. Not only did the establishment media embark on the most vicious campaign against a leader of the opposition in modern times (central to it all being a doubling down on the antisemitic smear) but it also brought forth a creative response which reflected the Tory Party’s superior capacity to “read” the British working class.
It was as a direct result of the 2017 election that the “Red Wall” became visible to the Tory Party. It was the strength of that visibility within the party that led to the election of Johnson as leader and it was Johnson’s capacity to understand his role by way of policies which won him the 2019 election – all aided by the inability of the Labour Party to understand what was happening.
This was the tenor of our second editorial at Labour Affairs, November issue which you might find interesting.
https://labouraffairs.com
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