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Events, dear boy, events.
Jun. 20th, 2011 01:53 pmThe International Monetary Fund, in a rare display of perceptiveness that differed from its normal "Why can't you all be like Germany?" line, has said that the current crisis is entering its "political phase" – an observation, perhaps, that just because a solution is the "right" one according to economic tenets, that isn't much use if the populus will rise up as a result and hang the males among you upside-down from lampposts with your balls cut off.
However, the IMF attitude had a slightly more aggressive tone about it. In a sense, it was saying "we've done our bit, now it's the politicians' turn to do theirs", once again showing that economists fail to realize that there are limits to what politicians can do. This is finally being evidenced in Greece, where with all the will in the world the politicians are not going to be able to get the Greek people to come face to face with reality.
But what the IMF should be saying is "economics, like politics, has to become a bit of an art of compromise". This is not the same as the current politicial solution, which is to do nothing apart from postpone the fateful day to an ever-dearer date in the future. That's not a compromise -- that's a failure to reach a compromise leading to a postponement. Before too long the politicians (and I include the ECB and the bank lobyists in this group) will, I suspect, realize that there is no solution within their own parameters. The sooner they realize this and come to an agreement that is a long-term solution, the less likely it is that southern Europe will once again become a home for dictators rather than democrats.
I was pondering these rather important democratic matters when reading Michael White in The Guardian on Saturday, where he was writing about Parliamentary Question Time (PMQ) and why we should keep it.
PMQ is, in my oipinion, representative of all that is bad in British democracy. It does none of what its defenders claim it does, and does much to reduce the significance of what is going on to a silly game of points-scoring and debating-chamber rhetoric. It's something loved by political junkies and hated by people who wish politicians would spend their valuable time solving the shit that we find ourself in.
But White is an insider. He doesn't get it. How much is he an insider? Well, in defending PMQ, he writes:
White then quotes leaders of the parties as support for his argument (including Thatcher). But a party leader has been brought up in the political game. A party leader is, by definition, an insider, someone who will see it as important to "win" at PMQ. Just because all monks say that they believe in God, that is not evidence in supporting the existence of God, because they would have most likely had to believe in God to become monks in the first place. All one is saying is that people who believe in God are likely to say that they believe in God. Prime ministers don't attempt to curtail PMQ because they think it unimportant. They tend to do so because, by their own parameters, it is very important.
In fact, none of the White article justifies PMQ at all, to my mind, although it spends a lot of time stating why politicians and leaders take it seriously. But that does not make them right. PMQ is in a way the apotheosis of the parliamentary and political debating game. But that doesn't make it worthwhile. White's claim that Thatcher lost her position because she lost her authority at PMQ is pure gibberish. She lost her position because the men in suits (and the whips) knew that the game was up. They would have known that with or without PMQ.
Indeed, if one wants to talk of "decisive moments" in parliament over the past 100 years (of which there are very few), none of them have come at PMQ. The moment for Thatcher was Geoffrey Howe's speech, prequelled by the resignation of Lawson and Heseltine. Heseltine, remember, used TV rather than parliament to quit. He knew what mattered, and what mattered was Sky News, not the Parliament Channel.
Two moments that changed governments did not start in PMQ; they were started by votes of confidence. Leo Amery's destruction of Chamberlain ("In the name of God, Go!") didn't happen in PMQ. And Callaghan's loss of power was caused by simple numbers. If you want a devastating example of the futility of PMQ, just look at Suez -- not at the deception of parliament at the time (and the lack of opposition at PMQ), but at the failure of any PMQs subsequently to achieve an inquiry. As Peter J Beck put it in the Historical Review, talking of parliamentary demands for either an inquiry or an Official History:
Michael White happens to like PMQ, probably because he has "gone native" and sees the whole thing as a game of points scoring. Take this White quote on an Ed Miliband performance (citing Letts and Hoggart, two other insiders).
The point that interests me is that the subject matter was deemed irrelevant. This wasn't about cancer patients, it was about how well Miliband projected himself. Even the "important quotes" from White are nothing to do with policy; they are about people. About who "wins".
Currently we are in a dangerous situation where the people don't matter. I don't give a shit whether Balls is plotting against Miliband or Osborne is disagreeing with Cameron about Laws. But this is what White cares about; it's what Hoggart cares about. And in all of this what actually matters -- that the economy of the developed world is in deep fucking shit and that we could be heading for a Lehman-squared type of financial seizure -- is used as part of the points-scoring career-enhancing process.
When the shit does actually hit the fan (see, for example, that weekend in 2008 when RBS was on the verge of having to turn off the ATMs, or the Irish crisis at the same time that led to the suicidal guaranteeing of all Irish bank debts) what is interesting is how all of these "major differences" between politicians disappear. Suddenly they all pull as one (a point that Fine Gael quietly forgot in the run-up to the recent election). Because, of course, the theatre of PMQ, the theatre of Jeremy Paxman and the theatre of TV's Question Time all depend on the differences being exaggerated as part of the points-scoring game. What does it need for these people to realize that the real world out there is gradually getting into a more and more serious mess, and when the next Lehman Brothers disaster strikes, there won't be any government back-ups, because it will be the governments that are insolvent, rather than the investment banks?
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However, the IMF attitude had a slightly more aggressive tone about it. In a sense, it was saying "we've done our bit, now it's the politicians' turn to do theirs", once again showing that economists fail to realize that there are limits to what politicians can do. This is finally being evidenced in Greece, where with all the will in the world the politicians are not going to be able to get the Greek people to come face to face with reality.
But what the IMF should be saying is "economics, like politics, has to become a bit of an art of compromise". This is not the same as the current politicial solution, which is to do nothing apart from postpone the fateful day to an ever-dearer date in the future. That's not a compromise -- that's a failure to reach a compromise leading to a postponement. Before too long the politicians (and I include the ECB and the bank lobyists in this group) will, I suspect, realize that there is no solution within their own parameters. The sooner they realize this and come to an agreement that is a long-term solution, the less likely it is that southern Europe will once again become a home for dictators rather than democrats.
I was pondering these rather important democratic matters when reading Michael White in The Guardian on Saturday, where he was writing about Parliamentary Question Time (PMQ) and why we should keep it.
PMQ is, in my oipinion, representative of all that is bad in British democracy. It does none of what its defenders claim it does, and does much to reduce the significance of what is going on to a silly game of points-scoring and debating-chamber rhetoric. It's something loved by political junkies and hated by people who wish politicians would spend their valuable time solving the shit that we find ourself in.
But White is an insider. He doesn't get it. How much is he an insider? Well, in defending PMQ, he writes:
"Everyone remembers Cameron's opening salvo against Blair in December 2005: 'You were the future once'".Well, no, sorry Michael, but I didn't remember it. That you do is fine, but that you assume that everyone else does says more about you than 5,000 words on the "importance" of PMQ ever could.
White then quotes leaders of the parties as support for his argument (including Thatcher). But a party leader has been brought up in the political game. A party leader is, by definition, an insider, someone who will see it as important to "win" at PMQ. Just because all monks say that they believe in God, that is not evidence in supporting the existence of God, because they would have most likely had to believe in God to become monks in the first place. All one is saying is that people who believe in God are likely to say that they believe in God. Prime ministers don't attempt to curtail PMQ because they think it unimportant. They tend to do so because, by their own parameters, it is very important.
In fact, none of the White article justifies PMQ at all, to my mind, although it spends a lot of time stating why politicians and leaders take it seriously. But that does not make them right. PMQ is in a way the apotheosis of the parliamentary and political debating game. But that doesn't make it worthwhile. White's claim that Thatcher lost her position because she lost her authority at PMQ is pure gibberish. She lost her position because the men in suits (and the whips) knew that the game was up. They would have known that with or without PMQ.
Indeed, if one wants to talk of "decisive moments" in parliament over the past 100 years (of which there are very few), none of them have come at PMQ. The moment for Thatcher was Geoffrey Howe's speech, prequelled by the resignation of Lawson and Heseltine. Heseltine, remember, used TV rather than parliament to quit. He knew what mattered, and what mattered was Sky News, not the Parliament Channel.
Two moments that changed governments did not start in PMQ; they were started by votes of confidence. Leo Amery's destruction of Chamberlain ("In the name of God, Go!") didn't happen in PMQ. And Callaghan's loss of power was caused by simple numbers. If you want a devastating example of the futility of PMQ, just look at Suez -- not at the deception of parliament at the time (and the lack of opposition at PMQ), but at the failure of any PMQs subsequently to achieve an inquiry. As Peter J Beck put it in the Historical Review, talking of parliamentary demands for either an inquiry or an Official History:
Between 1956 and 1964 successive Conservative Governments rejected such demands, given the involvement of several ministers in the Eden government. Despite fostering expectations of a change of course, the 1964-70 Labour governments merely followed the position taken by their Conservative predecessors, particularly given the continuities in official advice pointing to the adverse domestic and foreign policy consequences of commissioning either a public inquiry or official history about Suez".
Michael White happens to like PMQ, probably because he has "gone native" and sees the whole thing as a game of points scoring. Take this White quote on an Ed Miliband performance (citing Letts and Hoggart, two other insiders).
Miliband thus recovered on Wednesday ("a score draw" – Quentin Letts, Daily Mail) by wrong-footing Cameron ("he switched quickly to abuse, which he does when he knows he's got it wrong" – Simon Hoggart, Guardian) over the impact of coalition benefit cuts on recovering cancer patients.
The point that interests me is that the subject matter was deemed irrelevant. This wasn't about cancer patients, it was about how well Miliband projected himself. Even the "important quotes" from White are nothing to do with policy; they are about people. About who "wins".
Currently we are in a dangerous situation where the people don't matter. I don't give a shit whether Balls is plotting against Miliband or Osborne is disagreeing with Cameron about Laws. But this is what White cares about; it's what Hoggart cares about. And in all of this what actually matters -- that the economy of the developed world is in deep fucking shit and that we could be heading for a Lehman-squared type of financial seizure -- is used as part of the points-scoring career-enhancing process.
When the shit does actually hit the fan (see, for example, that weekend in 2008 when RBS was on the verge of having to turn off the ATMs, or the Irish crisis at the same time that led to the suicidal guaranteeing of all Irish bank debts) what is interesting is how all of these "major differences" between politicians disappear. Suddenly they all pull as one (a point that Fine Gael quietly forgot in the run-up to the recent election). Because, of course, the theatre of PMQ, the theatre of Jeremy Paxman and the theatre of TV's Question Time all depend on the differences being exaggerated as part of the points-scoring game. What does it need for these people to realize that the real world out there is gradually getting into a more and more serious mess, and when the next Lehman Brothers disaster strikes, there won't be any government back-ups, because it will be the governments that are insolvent, rather than the investment banks?
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