Where, exactly, will a culture of righteous wrath take us?
What is happening to modern-day political discourse? Whether in Scotland, the UK or across the Western world, politicians, parties and the commentariat all grapple with the sea changes in public opinion that appear to challenge conventional thought.
Citizens are becoming obsessed with individual’s rights, mainly the right to dissent. The language of that dissent finds its voice just at the point where free market capitalism had almost succeeded in shifting the concept of “citizen” towards the more convenient classification of “consumer”.
A sizeable group of people no longer accept anything they are told by “mainstream” politicians and the “corporate media”, so the narrative goes. Each new scandal – from Lord Sewel to food banks, the Calais refugees to the Heath allegations – serves to reinforce the popular, growing perception that everything is rotten, everywhere. That narrative is not restricted to the young and radically minded who supposedly fuelled the massive growth of the SNP, or those who have turned old assumptions upside down during the Labour Party’s internecine leadership campaign by backing the outsider Jeremy Corbyn.
Scepticism is strong also among their parents’ generation. Many angry protesters on the streets, letter writers, bloggers and online commentators are middle aged these days. Today’s generation of grumpy old men and women seems more open to radical politics than its predecessor. The popular demand is ill-defined; the language of protest sounds more like righteous wrath than a call for more familiar types of political change.
As the American comedian George Carlin remarked: “Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.” In our modern world we are witness to both. Society and social attitudes are changing rapidly. Less clear is what we want as “citizens” and what we reject as “consumers”, specifically. Disgruntlement can be traced back decades, but its heightened status as a collective state of mind can be attributed most directly to the 2008 banking crisis. Its discourse is amplified hugely by social media.
It is worth summarising the perceptions of many people about what happened in 2008, and why this has given rise to massive disillusionment not only with the institutions directly involved but a much broader swathe of the establishment. Many assumed that the banks, somehow, would be brought to heel, their high-fliers hauled from the roulette wheel of global markets, their bonuses slapped down. Massive fines in America, jail terms in Iceland and a lot of grim-faced lecturing in London would see to that. Conventional banking would be protected from reckless “investment” management, Gordon Brown’s “light touch” regulation replaced by something tougher. We citizens/ consumers could rest more easily at night after an inevitable but brief downturn. Reality has been different. Many banks paid lip service to the blame game, then reverted to their old ways. The recent fines and scandals about Libor rate-rigging, money laundering and “mis-selling” – that quaint euphemism for what is essentially theft and fraud – cover periods since 2008.
The true cost of the crisis has been paid by private customers, businesses and shareholders. When a bank whose TV advertising seeks to assure us that it “cares about here” while being forced to set aside more than £1 billion compensation to customers, it will find it hard to win sympathy from people to whom it “mis-sold” payment protection insurance (PPI) or complex hedging products disguised as business loans. And so our mistrust spreads from banking to the supermarkets who whack our farmers, manipulate food prices and cause planning blight; to the energy companies that charge a fortune to keep the lights on; to the oil giants, the corporate media, governments, the EU, and so on. None of these institutions has yet discovered a viable response to our disgruntlement.
In fact, their apparent indifference feeds the perception that what matters above all else is their survival, their continued success and their grasp of power. When the slightest hint of a new establishment scandal emerges or the many allegations of child abuse lead to the Goddard inquiry, people readily assume the worst of politicians and public figures.
The lengthy delays to the publication of the Chilcot inquiry findings, whose very tardiness would be comical were it not so serious, feeds the suspicion that the good Lord’s probing has uncovered industrial scale law-breaking. But that’s all there is: suspicion. The vain pleadings of Messrs Cameron and Osborne that “we are all in it together” rang hollow in 2010 and seem hollower still to many in 2015. Even winning a Commons majority in May might be attributed as much to the failures of opposition as to anything else. The bottom line is that people – even some of those English Tory voters demonised by Scots – feel less economically secure, more powerless, than before. The grip of the rich and powerful, the apparent ease with which individuals and corporations can play games with tax law, the disengagement of an economically overheating London from the rest of England, point to a dysfunctional society.
The real issue for many Tory voters on May 7 was their fear that a Miliband government would have made things worse. Why does this matter? The disillusionment within Western society about what that society stands for in these modern times – what it offers its citizens in terms of happiness and prosperity – still does not provide much by way of alternatives. That would be the reasoned response of a hard-bitten cynic who supports the status quo. Be careful of what you wish for, and all that.
Oppositionist politics found a voice during the referendum campaign. The unprecedented rise of the SNP shows no sign of buckling. Even though public perception of the SNP’s record in government is not all positive, the party seems likely to break all records when it wins next year’s Holyrood election.
It is a cliche to say it, but the SNP message remains “hope over fear”. Its supporters, and other Yes voters, are evangelical in their support of real political change, change that remains quite unspecific, beyond the concept of Scottish independence. Labour in particular struggles with the idea that SNP supporters might come to politics from a range of perspectives – right, left and centre – rather than one.
The same is true of the Corbyn campaign. The Bennite leftie of tabloid notoriety may seem like a throwback to the early 1980s to Blairites who abhor the thought of his victory next month. They forget that his support stems from middle-aged people who lived through Thatcherism and feel more “excluded” than ever, alongside a younger generation of mainly English people impressed by Nicola Sturgeon’s popularity in Scotland, and were born after the Tony Benn era of 1981.
‘‘ Society and social attitudes are changing rapidly. Less clear is what we want as ‘citizens’ and reject as ‘consumers’