Alternative Editorial: New Dogs Old Tricks
There's a lot of fury and outrage on the front pages of the UK newspapers this weekend. In a rare moment of unanimity, The Guardian, Independent, Times, Financial Times and Daily Mail apply their headlines to the Metropolitan Police, as the obstacle to justice over 'partygate'. All the stories refer to a dilemma for Sue Gray. With a reputation as 'the safest pair of hands', this senior civil servant has been charged with the difficult task of writing up the independent inquiry into the parties that took place in 10 Downing Street during the lock-down.
'Frustrated and angered' at the Met who are proposing to remove key bits of evidence they deem will prejudice their own criminal inquiry, Sue claims they have put her 'integrity at risk'.
Other papers deflect attention from a drama that could cost the PM his job by bigging up his hard power – meaning his ability to wield guns and money. Johnson is literally wading into the tension in Ukraine by dropping in uninvited and offering to send troops (not requested ref). At the same time, Downing Street deployed a 'no ifs no buts' language around a tax hike - one that could push those already unable to meet the cost of inflation permanently into the red (such tough love!).
Only the Daily Star notes that all these pieces of a puzzle could be part of a 'cunning plan' involving the Met to let the PM off the hook. But the Daily Star has long lost its credibility: not only because of its comical partisanship but also its regular focus on the, shall we say, unlikely. If anything, The Star calling out the PM’s chicanery helps him to ridicule his accusers.
Even if you admire Boris Johnson it's unlikely that you will be unaware of a growing distrust of his government. Within his own party, the issue is less that he might be a liar and more that he might be caught lying. It's an important distinction because once the latter happens, keeping him in position will discredit this whole government. The whole Conservative Party will appear, by association, indifferent to integrity. Once that happens, the electoral magic is gone: they will have given up their claim to represent you and your troubles.
Once there might have been some insouciance from this government – after all, they might say, the Tories can’t represent everyone. But the most recent election broke through the Red Wall to traditional Labour territory. To safeguard that shift – which gave them an 80 seat majority – large amounts of money are swiftly being dispatched to key towns in the area under the guise of ‘levelling up’. Only to Tory led towns, mind.
Whereas once the general public might have been entranced by the PMs ducking and diving, we are now living in an era where calling it out is a national sport. Compare Johnson’s thrashing about, for example, to Tony Blair's relatively smooth call for the public to “Trust Me”, even as his complicity in the horrors of the Iraq War in the early 2000s was increasingly examined. While there was frustration, it never gained the momentum that Boris is facing today.
Even so, the trust reluctantly granted Blair at the time has now turned into a feeling of bitter betrayal (over a million people signed a petition for Blair’s Knighthood to be withdrawn). There’s no doubt that the memory is now playing a part in the public's wider disillusion with political power.
The mythic money tree turns out to be real
Today it is normal for mainstream commentators to describe the process of deceit.
Laura Kuenssberg - arguably the nation's most watched interlocutor - has no hesitation in pointing out the way Johnson weaponizes his honesty (humbly apologising to the Queen) and plays confused (I didn't know what was going on). She observes him calling in favours (aka using blackmail) to demonstrate loyalty from those that know him best. And Kuesnberg even questions the deflection to international crises which have easy precedents to point to as mentioned above.
Buying time to generate headlines to please voters. It's all too easy to spot.
Meantime, the majority of MPs in the 'mother of all parliaments' will experience a lot of pain in the process. One might compare them to professional magicians watching Derren Brown show an otherwise entranced public how the conjurors have been fooling them.
It’s interesting to dwell on Brown. He’s not a party clown sharing how to do a dextrous card trick by sleight of hand - something we know takes hours of practice and can only be admired. Brown instead introduces us to how our minds have been trained to look away from what is happening in plain sight. He demonstrates how easily our long-honed biases can be turned against our own interests. He teaches us to distrust our own ability to judge the reality of a situation.
At the same time he shows us the kind of actors who manipulate us for their own gain: advertisers being paid to sell us stuff we don't need. Media of all kinds, triggering our emotions to gain views. In each of Brown’s programmes, he leads us right up to the edge of our own certainty before revealing our gullibility. The net result is our growing expectation that yes, we've been fooled again!
Yet when that maps over to how citizens increasingly look at politicians in general, is that a good development? It takes years of experience in the world of politics to be able to deliver results despite the complex psycho-social-economic terrain everyone is standing on. With globalisation, even national economies have never been as simple as running a household budget yet they must be able to appear so for government to be supported.
But when Corbyn stood at the General Election for a massive upgrade of technology and support for impoverished communities, he was taunted for imagining a money tree. It reminds us of former Newsnight anchorman Jeremy Paxman confessing that he listened to all politicians thinking "why is this lying bastard lyging to me?".
For those who have dedicated their lives to fighting the injustice of inequality and defending citizens against the impact of a destructive economy on the planet it is tragic to be tarred by the same brush as the worst of them. At the same time, they continue to collude with outdated rules and practices that make HM's government risible.
As political entrepreneur Pete Barden said in a plaintive Tweet this weekend: "it's easier to get thrown out of the House of Commons for calling someone a liar than for lying itself. How can that possibly be right?"
However, from the perspective of the future flourishing of our planet, we might end up being grateful to Boris Johnson for teaching the public to withdraw any kind of blind trust in Westminster. After all, there is every evidence that our political system is constructed to keep us in thrall to the growth economy that is destroying our planet. We need to find an alternative way to exercise our agency, in service to a future we can all look forward to. And while that alternative is not yet visible to the wider public, it is helpful that we are learning to become more skilled at 'seeing' how the presentational magic happens.
To go back to our earlier point about the magicians, teaching mental health patients simple magic tricks increases their sense of control and hence their self-esteem. This can apply to all forms of learning by observing. As Buckminster Fuller said, "if you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don't bother to teach them. Give them a tool, the use of which leads to new ways of thinking."
On the other hand, millions of citizens are now equipped to call out the government but not able to interrogate their own entanglement (and often complicity) in the socio-political culture: they can be dangerous too. For example, conspiracy theorists - those who attribute clear intent to a collection of disconnected events - quickly appoint new authorities to displace the old ones. In the case of Covid, replacing government authorities with random doctors with new theories lead to increased, not decreased vulnerability for millions of people.
But even if you are simply disillusioned with Westminster, in a logical way as described above, apathy is not a good outcome - it cuts against the question of our own survival. Where can we invest our trust, leading specifically to a more flourishing future for all of us? For some this will continue to mean choosing a political party and sticking with it - despite all the evidence that party-political cultures and structures cannot deliver the results we need, in the time we have left. We can be credibly grateful to those that work tirelessly at the coal face of democracies as they stand, preventing the wholesale collapse of the institutions that keep us alive.
At the same time, if we don't invent better ones that can harvest the more regenerative ways of acting on the planet quickly enough, we are lost. Think of the story of Hans Brinker - the fictional Dutch hero who put his finger in the dyke to save several towns from flooding. Imagine if - with the license of science fiction! - the Netherlanders had been able to build hydroelectric dams behind the young boy as he held on grimly. So that when the moment inevitably arrived - the flood breaking through the old structure - there would be something already in place to transform these torrents into streams of energy, useful to everyone.
That's the task on which regenerative innovators of all kinds are hell-bent: building the containers, infrastructure, architecture, tools and practices that can transform the energy of a system gone entropic. Providing people who are lost with new spaces to talk and deliberate, build new relationships and begin to build a viable future. Core to this process will be the growing capacity to 'see' the dynamics of power and become response-able under stress. Learning how to process complexity without losing sight of the goal.
For those already engaged and invested, the new system is already emerging. When you can put your feet firmly on that ground, it's easier to watch the weakness of the old system and welcome its invitation to step away. To escape the trance, rediscover your own agency and invest your energies in something better.