Time was when the efficacy of any given political communication was judged by how well it expressed clear ideas in a simple yet soul-stirring manner. So how is it that these days most Labour MPs seem intent on presenting their message with all the clarity of a particularly taxing cryptic crossword?
A case in point is health minister Ivan Lewis’s piece on Labour’s electoral prospects, originally penned for Progress magazine before being picked up by the News of the World, not usually considered the left-leaning Hampstead intellectual’s Sunday read of choice. You can read it here.
Lewis - pictured - doesn’t promise to fight, fight and fight again to save the party he loves. He does not seek to persuade us that Labour is a crusade or it is nothing. Instead, we are treated to an inane expanse of buzzword boilerplate.
Remember how the Pornsec in Big Brother’s Fiction Department ingeniously creates newly-minted erotic novels by chopping up old plots and feeding them into a literary kaleidoscope? New Labour MPs must surely employ a similar device to recycle the same half a dozen speeches in endless combination. Sadly, the resultant output is not anywhere near as stimulating. Or maybe I am being unfair; being able to write this badly is actually kind of impressive, in its own way.
Mr Lewis informs us that the task facing Labour activists is to ‘show we are on the side of ordinary people’. As opposed to what, exactly? Issuing leaflets to inform the public that Labour regards them as objects of scorn, contempt and ridicule, and farts in their general direction?
In a democracy, claiming to be ‘on the side of the little guy’ must be what they teach ‘em in lesson number one at politico school. All politicians mouth this platitude. All the time.
Yes, make no mistake about it. Lewis wants Labour to appeal to ‘the mainstream majority who play by the rules’ and who ‘want reassurance that we are still on their side’. Labour favours ‘empowered citizens and communities’ and an ‘active state’.
Such rhetoric is no longer even party-specific; barring a few inveterate hard right anti-statist whackjobs, no Conservative MP would claim anything different about the Tories.
Media interest in what Lewis has to say has tended to focus on the small handful of dog-whistley soundbites that can be extracted from this dross. These are couched, quite oddly for a New Labourite, in rightwing Old Labour terms.
On the one hand, there is – in the name of ‘fairness’, you understand – a call for a spot of wealth redistribution. On the other, again in the name of fairness, there is a demand to lock up more baddies, especially darkie baddies.
It is only when you reach the final three paragraphs that you realise the entire article boils down to an attack on Brown for lacking the ostensibly broad appeal of Blair. Subtext: Labour are 13 percentage points behind the Conservatives in the polls, and those of us in marginal constituencies are starting to panic.
All of this could have been fully stated in two or three paragraphs, with no loss of meaning. But in the culture that has reigned over New Labour since 1994, simply saying what you mean, in unconvoluted plain English, is no longer a possibility open to the payroll vote, or even modestly aspirational backbenchers. Political debate is all the worse for it.
Posted at 14:47, 31 March 2008
Comments (6)
I'm always amused by the contortions to which Blairites subject themselves in order to argue that what's needed is their man back in charge, when he remains the main architect of the mess, and of the gutting of the language that Dave laments.
The language of these people is indeed artfully inane, making what seems like an "honest admission" of problems, but having no concrete remedy to them at all. Whether it's a result of cynicism or stupidity varies, but this stuff is basically what happens when you strip "politics" from "political debate". The general sense I get from New Labour politicians at the moment is that they basically no longer have any idea who they're talking to, or for what purpose. It's neither earthily populist nor high-falutin' and philosophical, just this sort of mush, in which meaningless buzzwords like "narrative" are used to disguise a paucity of both analysis and policy activism.
And they NEVER actually talk about politics.
I read a report of the speech the other day on Teletext, in which Mr Lewis was reported as saying that NuLab was perceived as too much in favour of the status quo, and I thought, 'if only...'. There is not one part of this country and its institutions that they have not wrecked, tossed into the air and watched it fall to the ground in disarray to be picked up by their chums in Big Business. Still, they are well rewarded with seats on the boards of various multinationals. Talking of Orwell, listening to Harriet Harman yesterday on Steve Richards' show (very early Sunday morning), the term 'duckspeak' sprung unbidden into my mind, adn I realised what a prescient genius Eric Blair had been. But then, the main satirical object of 1984 was teh Labour Party, just proving that nothing much changes.
When I wrote my recent review of Wendy Alexander's "strategic vision" for Scottish Labour, it struck me how it distilled New Labour perfectly. It claimed to be a something that addresses ordinary people's concerns. It did nothing of the sort. It aimed to equip Labour activists politically for the period ahead. But didn't do that either. It was pure vacuity.
Incidentally, politics anoraks may be interested in the news that's been leaked to me over at my blog ...
Come, come, now a very pblic sociologist, it's an April Fool joke. I mean one can understand that Respect councillor switching over to the Tories, because he was never a socialist in the first place, but Richard Birnbrook joining the SWP. You've been had. (By the way, I can't be too pompous, I believed the BBC's story about flying penguins this morning, until my 11-year daughter pointed out it was a joke.).
It's just occurred to me that you may be playing the joke on us!!! Hooray for the Carnival of the Oppressed (if sociologists count as an oppressed group).
Well, a couple of days ago I signed the nomination form for the Labour candidate in my ward, for the forthcoming local elections - asked to by the full-time Agent who's a near neigbour.
Though one's loathing of the local Liberal-Tory Junta and the fact that the Agent is a good bloke who reads Tribune may explain some of this, does that count as a pre-emptive April Fool joke?