The Americanisation of British politics

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In my previous post, I talked about how British culture is becoming more American, and how this is largely to the country’s detriment. Unfortunately British politics is also being Americanised, and the effects are similarly harmful. Here are a few examples:

The first is an increasing political polarisation, and as a consequence, an increasingly adversarial political culture. Throughout much of the 20th century, it was difficult to tell the difference between a Democrat and a Republican. America’s parties were less about ideology and more about representing  demographic groups and regions. Democrats represented socially conservative poor white farmers living in the South, and then increasingly black people who wanted civil rights. Republicans represented businesses and middle class people living in the North East and the Midwest. But now, everything has changed. Republicans have adopted a doctrine of nationalism, while still being dependent on fiscally conservative donors. Democrats have also become more ideological- they are a far more socially liberal party than even just ten years ago. This has helped them appeal to young people, college graduates and pro-immigration ethnic minorities. Today, America is a very polarised country, with Democrats and Republicans seeing each other as complete enemies.

Traditionally, Britain’s parties were more ideological than America’s. The Labour Party has always been socialist, though its socialism was moderated by Christianity and applied practically through trade unionism. Meanwhile, it has always had an intellectual wing, first started by the Fabian Society. Labour’s intellectuals largely reside in North London, where the party still enjoys considerable support. The Conservative Party was less ideological- its opposition to radical change and support for traditional institutions won it support in market towns and villages across the country, as well as the wealthier parts of the inner city. With the exception of the 80s, Labour and Conservatives were able to work together on issues like housing, rebuilding the country after WW2, the NHS, schools and policing.

However, Britain’s parties are now just as polarised as America’s. On the one hand, Labour is led by an unreconstructed socialist. Jeremy Corbyn proposes a radical expansion of the state. Partly in the form of renationalising various industries. But mostly by spending vastly increased sums of money on virtually every aspect of government. Schools, hospitals, infrastructure and the police would all receive far more money than today. To pay for it, Labour proposes increasing taxes on the top 5% and borrowing more. On the other hand, the Conservative Party has become increasingly nationalistic, especially since Britain’s decision to leave the EU last year. Despite having played an instrumental part in creating the European Single Market, the party now views it as a mortal threat to the country. The common sense harmonisation of regulations the Single Market provides is consistent with the Thatcherite desire to reduce barriers to companies doing business around the world. But Conservatives now want to make it harder for British businesses to operate in Europe, and don’t seem to care that our influence on European politics is waning- this is all worth it to restore Britain to greatness. The Conservatives’ perception as an anti-EU, anti-immigration party is hurting its standing amongst young people, a record proportion of whom voted against them earlier this year.

It isn’t just political polarisation that is making British politics more American. There is an increasing dependence on strong leadership for electoral gain. In the 2017 election, Theresa May played down the fact she is a Conservative, and instead focused on herself as a strong leader. She asked people to vote for ‘me and my team’ to make a success of Brexit. Similarly, Jeremy Corbyn has become a cult figure for many people, who see him as a socialist messiah. Chants of ‘oooaah Jeremy Corbyn!’ could frequently be heard at Labour rallies. In the age of mass media, personality seems to matter more than ever.

One of the most worrying aspect of political Americanisation is the tide of anti-intellectualism sweeping through popular discourse. Expert opinion is often dismissed out of hand, even when there is a consensus. While there isn’t as much explicit climate change denial as there is in the US, environmental issues were barely discussed in the 2017 election despite 2016 being the hottest year on record. When it was, it was assumed that new technologies and increasing fuel efficiency will save the day. Scarcely did anyone talk about the need for swift and decisive government action necessary to rid our cities of killer diesel. Air pollution- which frequently violates EU limits and results in premature deaths for thousands- wasn’t mentioned. Anti-intellectualism was also evident in economic debates. The Conservatives were guilty of gross and misleading optimism as to what would happen if we left the EU without a deal. Labour were naive in the extreme as to how much debt would be accumulated as a result of their planned spending increases, and they vastly overestimated the amount of revenue gained by their proposed tax rises.

As I said in my previous post, there are many wonderful things about America, at least culturally speaking. But politics is one area that the country definitely doesn’t excel at. Instead, I believe Britain and America could learn from Europe, and in particular, Germany, Austria, the Low Countries and the Nordic Countries. There, policy is a far greater factor than personality in determining election outcomes, even if some personalities have come to be attributed with positive traits; Germans largely see Merkel as a safe pair of hands. Parties have a less adversarial relationship with each other, and instead work together in the national interest. People do not dismiss their opponents with vulgar or nasty insults. And while there is a great diversity of opinions (more so than the US due to a greater choice of parties), there is also a general respect for the facts, experts and the findings of academic studies. Of course, Europe is far from perfect: Poland and Hungary show worrying signs of becoming increasingly authoritarian. But the nations of Europe are capable of reforming, as seen by Italy’s recent adoption of a new electoral system. In contrast, Britain doesn’t look to be making urgently-needed reforms anytime soon, and America is as entrenched as ever.

The right to die

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The Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland are the three European countries that permit assisted suicide for non-terminal illnesses that cause unbearable suffering, taken to include mental suffering.

A 2007 independent survey found that 80 per cent of people supported assisted dying for the terminally ill, but only 43 per cent did for those who are not definitely terminally ill. For many, assisted suicide is a step too far, even for the terminally ill. “This (assisted suicide)is not compassion – it’s abandonment,” says Stephen Drake of the US group Not Dead Yet, which opposes the idea.

In general, the public only approve ending life for those with terminal illnesses, but draws the line on depression and other mental ills. Unlike with most physical illnesses, there are no blood tests or brain scans that can give someone a definitive diagnosis of a psychiatric problem. Also, people with mental illnesses are frequently given different diagnoses at different points in their life, and no one knows if that means their first diagnosis was wrong or their condition has genuinely changed. We still don’t know enough to be able to say how a condition will progress. The US National Institutes of Health has said that the whole system of classifying mental illness is flawed and needs to be based more on neuroscience, and has launched a major research effort to base diagnosis and treatments on the underlying problems at the levels of genes, neurotransmitters and brain circuits.

In reality, Belgian doctors, for instance, know the pitfalls and only a minority of requests are granted to people with mental disorders. At a Belgian psychiatric hospital, they granted 48 out of 100 requests, although only 35 people completed the act. Psychiatrists must believe the person is mentally competent, has had a long-standing wish to die and that there is no prospect of treatment. Typically they have more than one psychiatric diagnosis, which may include depression and a personality disorder.

Common sense tells us that someone in mental anguish, but not terminally ill, could be seen as being in a worse situation than if they had known they had just weeks to live. The misery of mental disorder goes on and on, endlessly. Just having the option of assisted suicide can help. Even if they choose not to take it at least they have had a choice, and if they take the assisted route it is better than a violent, lonely, unplanned death.

These points are disputed by religious groups and disability rights activists. They believe that legalising assisted dying sends a message to people who are disabled, sick or elderly that their lives are worthless. (based on an article by Clare Wilson)

I personally think that this comes under a similar banner to abortion. I can see the danger of some ruthless money-grubbing relative engineering the death of a sick family member for private gain, but on balance I think each individual owns his or her own life, and it is for them to say when that ends and not succumb to the moral scruples of others, especially some religious people, who advocate a morality that they are unwilling to adopt themselves. We have been bullied and manipulated for far too long by churches who subscribe to an all-powerful god who seems unable to stamp out sin, violence, theft, misery, and end of life diseases. My message: mind your own business!

Suggestion: everyone asking for assisted suicide should be assessed by three different doctors, and nothing should be done unless there are three serious requests from the patient to prove they are serious.

Are Oxford and Cambridge being racist? Part 2

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What is the job of a university? To produce people who can think laterally, not literally; who can think critically and for themselves; who can mentally assemble information in a logical way, and transmit the information to others in a clear, concise manner.

It is not the job of universities to reflect the racial make-up and ethnic origins of the country. The job of preparing racial minorities for an equal adult life lies with the schools and it is the responsibility of the government to facilitate integration and education of minorities by making schools and their teachers first class. Yes, universities should quite naturally look like the population they serve, but youngsters have to be educated and prepared first – at school. This requires adequate funding. Education (true education, not learning by rote and taking useless tests all the time – something conservatives seem to love) should be the most important investment a nation can make. The Scandinavian countries got the message, why can’t the British?

Which brings me to private schools. In my last term at my own private school, I took part in a debate on the abolition of private schools, and, at risk of being lynched, proposed the motion before 600 boys: “This House would abolish all private schools”. I lost! Surprise, surprise. What I now think is that the taxpayer should fund such a huge improvement in State schools that private schools wither on the vine. Don’t abolish them; make them irrelevant. Then there would be a level playing field and we can forget the endless complaining about the present system, the unfairness, the vested interests, and the sniping. Ah! That will be the day!

Are Oxford and Cambridge being racist? Part 1

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“Oxford and Cambridge Universities are being accused of a form of “social apartheid”. More than 80% of their offers go to “the top two social classes, the children of barristers, doctors and CEOs”, many of them privately educated pupils from the south-east. In 2015, one in five colleges at Cambridge and one in three at Oxford failed to admit a single black A-level student. Yet, confronted with these figures, Oxbridge has blamed everyone but themselves.

“Former Cambridge admissions officer Andrew Tettenborn strongly disagrees. Most college fellows today are people who haven’t gone to private schools: a big majority are on the Left and “plagued by the usual middle-class guilt complex”. You need only look at how many students of Indian, Pakistani or Chinese origin get places there to see there is no discrimination against minorities. The truth is that only a few hundred black Britons scored the requisite three As or above, and even fewer were attracted to apply.

“It’s not as if the Government hasn’t made a concerted effort to level the field, said The Times. If a university wants to raise annual tuition fees above £6,165, it has to sign an agreement showing how it plans to recruit more disadvantaged pupils. Last year, universities spent £725m on school visits, summer programmes and bursaries in an effort to do just that.
The fact remains that Oxford and Cambridge, compared with Harvard or other top US universities, is still astonishingly white, said Priyamvada Gopal in The Observer. But the fault doesn’t just lie with them: it lies in Britain’s education system, in the unequal contest between its pampered independent schools and its woefully underfunded state ones that struggle to attract good teachers.

“Equally deleterious, said Clare Foges in The Times, is the bias that occurs after university. Such is the romantic hold that Oxford and its dreaming spires exert on the national imagination, recruiters to the top jobs lazily assume the mere fact of having gone there makes you special. Instead of trying “to break more people into Oxbridge”, we should be “breaking the Oxbridge stranglehold on the best opportunities”.

I will comment on this collection ofobservations tomorrow. To do so here would make the post far too long.

Debasing the language

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When my wife and I were growing up, she in Virginia, I in England, we never ever, either of us, heard our parents, their friends, our friends, use crude language. Indeed, I remember a teacher telling the class, “We have an amazing language with a huge vocabulary. There are subtle, clever and inoffensive ways of expressing your annoyance or distaste about something without using vulgar bathroom terms”. I heard the “f”word used by my fellow soldiers in the army but only among themselves, never in front of women or older people.

Now it seems acceptable to use the ”f” word, a..hole, the human excrement word and so on in too many conversations. This is especially so on the internet, where anonymous louts and bullies direct these terms at everyone they disagree with, safe in the knowledge that no one knows who is uttering them.

In some ways it is even more shocking that this type of language is used in plays and movies by playwrights and writers who are presumed to have some form of education. This is justified by saying they are a reflection of “real life” as it is lived (and you old f**ts need to know what how ordinary people converse).

Total nonsense!! Using cuss words, swear words, trash-talk, lavatory vocabulary is a sign of lack of imagination. Let me repeat that: lack of imagination. They add nothing to a show, but merely illustrate how second-rate and uncreative you really are. The audience can hear this vocabulary every day – they don’t need it in the theatre as well.

People rebelling against poverty, inequality and globalisation have my sympathy, but once they use foul, derogatory language they demean themselves and win no friends. As my teacher said, “We have a wonderful language. Use it imaginatively”.