Theresa May is a true child of George Orwell’s Newspeak
The PM’s obstinacy to pursue a bad plan is putting us all at risk, writes Mike Sagar-Fenton
The Sergeant said “Sir, are you sure
This is the best way back to base?”
“It’ll be a little soggy but just keep slogging
We’ll soon be in a dry place” We were waist-deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said – to push on.
That’s from Waist Deep in the Big Muddy by Pete
Seeger, a song he wrote during the Vietnam war. It was based on a real incident in 1956 when a platoon of soldiers was marched into a creek in South Carolina and pushed on by their Sergeant until six of them drowned.
Seeger was a well-known protest singer and the political significance of the song, as America continued to pour troops into their doomed Asian venture, led to it being banned by American TV.
So there’s a moral question for you. When is it brave and noble to stick to a cause through thick and thin, and when does it just indicate that you’re incapable of finding another solution?
Once this wasn’t even a choice. The only acceptable stance for a true Briton used to be summed up by a different song, Harry Lauder’s Keep Right On to the End of the Road, a perennial favourite of older folks on request shows in my youth. It inspired many people during the hard days of th Second World War.
However in peacetime people began to look around and notice that other roads might also lead to a favourable end.
The doggedness of Keep Right On... started to look like banging your head against a brick wall because you weren’t clever enough to find a way round. It did, however, remain Gordon Brown’s favourite song – make of that what you will.
The mood shifted. At school we were force-fed Tennyson’s Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die..., and it took until 1967 – the same year as Seeger’s song – before the concept of thoughtful alternatives gained any respectability. The credit was claimed by Edward De Bono and the process was named lateral thinking; literally a sideways look. For example : farmers are losing money selling milk. Farmer A responds by producing more and more milk. But farmer B uses it to feed pigs, which are selling at a premium. Sideways thinking.
But sadly it didn’t catch on in the arena that needed it most – politics.
By the 1970s the dreaded phrase U-turn had entered political commentary.
Edward Heath was accused of it, and Margaret Thatcher made it sound like an obscenity.
From then until now MPs wait ready at any ministerial announcement, poised to yell U-turn at any discernible change.
It left a horrible burden. What choice is there if an original decision should prove mistaken?
Changing course in light of the evidence could never again be a respectable political move.
The only acceptable option is to continue right on to the end of the road, with disaster built-in, waist-deep in the Big Muddy.
Thus Margaret Thatcher ploughed on with privatisation although her imaginary democratic shareholders quickly sold out to multinational companies.
John Major wanted to – and could have – stopped rail privatisation, but instead left us with the dog’s breakfast we still endure.
Gordon Brown could have curbed the City madness when he saw it was running out of control, but instead smiled at it until the roof fell in.
And Tony Blair took us to war rather than admit he’d been wrong.
Loyalty too has a different meaning in politics. The further up the pecking order politicians get the closer they have to stick to the party line, however indefensible. Day after day on the media, educated ministers make ridiculous cases for policies that everyone, including they themselves, know is nonsense.
And if a leader has proven hopeless and destructive, loyalty prevents any honest or orderly discussion of making a change until, one midnight, the quiet knives go in.
And so, inevitably, to Theresa May. It’s possible that there’s an intelligent person behind her bleak facade, but if so she will never let us see it. Instead she simply pushes on, parroting away the same old phrases, running up narrower and narrower blind alleys, and trying to make the facts fit the tiny area of consensus she occupies.
Not for her any reconsideration, lateral thinking, or a whiff of a Uturn. She is a true child of Orwell’s Newspeak, denying things we know are true, defending things we know she doesn’t believe in, and keeping on to the end of the road together with her unloved and smelly dog of an agreement, to where the Big Muddy awaits.
A whole country’s future rests not on the merits of anyone’s case but the degree of obstinacy with which it is pursued. That’s how we decide things now.
There are better ways.