Graeme Archer: Time for some politics of 'and'?

Well, that's a cheeky title, because 'The Politics of And' is copyright Tim Montgomerie, editor of this site, and I'm going to disagree with Tim's articles this morning, both here, and in greater detail at The Times (£). In his discussion of the future of the Coalition, he presented an Either/Or: either we fight the next election as what he called 'Mainstream Conservatives', or we fight as a Coalition with the Lib-Dems. I think this choice is too restrictive, unnecessarily so.

Since I'm in the middle of the tortuous process of the no-doubt futile attempt to retain my place on the approved list of parliamentary candidates, let me be plain at the start. I don't advocate infinite Coalition with the Lib-Dems (as they are, now) and I'd love it were David Cameron governing with a Tory majority of 100. But, to nod acquaintance at the old joke (a joke that's probably illegal these days): that's not where we're starting from. I'm beyond bored with the tortuous ping-pong about why we didn't win in 1997, 2001 and 2005 (We were too right-wing! No, you fool, we weren't right-wing enough! Oh don't be stupid, it was obvious we weren't sufficiently right-wing! etc) and only slightly more interested in the competing, untestable hypotheses to explain the lack of a majority in 2010 (We weren't right-wing enough! no, you fool! etc). If you don't like David Cameron, you will think one thing. If you are quietly impressed with his premiership and his vision, you will think another. Let's leave that there, and think about what's next.

Football Crazy, Football Mad

Michael Gove must sometimes think he's wandered into the Twilight Zone. There he is, revolutionising education through a combination of free schools, radical changes to teacher training, reintroducing academic rigour both to the GCSE syllabus and the league tables which score the efforts of individual schools - I could go on, because his white paper certainly does - suffice to say that he was one of the two best reasons for voting Conservative before the election, and remains one of the two best reasons for supporting the Coalition subsequent to the vote (the other best reason, of course, being IDS), and what does he find? The shrill and pointless attacks from the teaching unions on, oh, everything, because the LEA-controlled comprehensive system is such a tremendous success ((c) Fiona Millar) were to be expected. But to have to devote time to a grudge match against sporty Andy Burnham on the utterly parochial topic of how schools organise their competitive sports activities must strike him as one perfect example of how British politics - top-down command and control that would make a Soviet Collective blush - doesn't work. 

Rather than telling schools how much money they should spend on competitive sports through the "Schools Sports Partnerships" (a prize if you can work out how many implied apostrophes are missing from that wretched quangoesque name), Mr Gove is going to let headteachers sort this out for themselves. Cue Leftist hysterics, as described on the BBC website:

His Labour counterpart Andy Burnham accused him of jeopardising a decade of improvement in school sports.

And leaders of some of the 450 local School Sports Partnerships (SSPs), which face an uncertain future as a result of the removal of ring-fencing, had accused ministers of risking a cut in the amount of competition pupils take part in. 

Risking a cut in the amount of competition pupils can do! If this risk is real - and sadly I doubt that it is - may I offer a counter opinion to the apparently commonly-held view that all competitive sport is A Good Thing, so that the more that we make children do it, the better their lives will be? Jumping, running, throwing things, hitting things, and trying to do these things more quickly than other people, are pointless activities. Do them if you enjoy them, but for heaven's sake stop implying that there's something defective in the child who doesn't want to take part.

Graeme Archer: Only Connect

Look at your hand a minute (then come back to this!). Think of all the carbon atoms in it, formed at the same time as our solar system. So much of the very matter which gives us our form, and therefore our function, is common to all of us, so very, very much. Ancient and fundamental. We are all made of stars, in the words of the song.

Of course we’re not all the “same”. There are visible differences between human beings. Most of these differences, though, are accidental: unplanned outcomes of evolutionary bifurcations, and in the scheme of things they are tiny. Even the most visible biological human variation, that between men and women, is of little material weight, if you think about it, if you calculate that biological difference as a percentage of the biological total of “male” compared to “female”. For a relatively small proportion of our lives, that difference manifests itself in an important way (in terms of biology, not psychology): but I think it’s a category error to believe that men and women are hugely dissimilar. Psychology is a man-made construct we use to describe our “intentions” as phenotypes of the human species: but the biology came first. I think this applies a fortiori to other manifestations of human groupings.

Graeme Archer: The Spirit of Broadway

"My card’s just been rejected, what we gonna do?"

Welcome to Broadway Market in Hackney. Someone once said to me “I don’t mind your columns, but they’re so bloody Hackney focused, it’s Hackney this, Hackney that, I mean the whole world isn’t Hackney”. I know what he (the distinguished GLA candidate for one of the south-eastern London boroughs) meant, even if I don’t agree with his premise. But what can I do. The only things I really care about are: Love, my family, and Hackney. I get back to E8 of an evening and feel my whole body relax, let go of the working day’s tension with a sigh of relief. Thank God. I’m home.

So I listened to the young woman whose credit card was refused at the bar with interest, as she and her friend scrabbled to find enough coppers in their nearly empty purses to pay for their coffee. Suddenly, there isn’t enough credit to go around, whether between lending banks or on the cards of Creative Types in Hackney coffee shops. The gap between a vague awareness of something called a “credit crunch” happening Somewhere Else to Other People, and the growing proportion of people who have spent the last decade remortgaging their home in order to fund a debt-driven lifestyle with the equity, is narrowing. And whoever bears primary responsibility for this debt, I bet the anger will be directed towards that formerly Iron Chancellor. You know, the one who put an end to all that boom and bust.

Graeme Archer: Mind the Gap

We bought my father a joke gift once, I remember. A coffee mug, with a cartoon of a serious looking sheep wearing a pin-striped suit, and the caption “Died in the wool Conservative”. One day, when I was a student, we were driving down the Great Western Road in Glasgow. We pulled up at the lights on a level crossing and watched a young woman with pink hair and outlandish clothes make her way precariously across the road. I drew breath and waited for the imprecations about Young People to begin. Quite unfairly: Isn’t it great, mused my dad, the died-in-the-wool Tory, that there’s a space for everyone to live like they want to?

*

So: gaps, and their uses, and the danger of not having any. I’m writing this in a gap, coincidentally, in the air, over the Atlantic, somewhere between London and Philadelphia. I’m like Schroedinger’s cat in its horrible box, neither home nor away, just sort of “being”. And the enforced pause allows time for reflection. Even more coincidentally, I’ve just read this:

“It can never be perfect. He can never forgive me.”

“That’s not the point,” said Crystal. “What you must do is forgive him. That’s what will make it perfect. If you forgive him then there’ll be—a kind of open space—and he’ll be able—[to effect a recovery]”

(It’s from A Word Child by (surprise) Iris Murdoch. Of course Iris has already written everything we need to know about gaps, and their key role in forgiveness.) 

Graeme Archer: Hemlock and After

Why is the story of Socrates’ death so chilling? At least I have always found it so, and not because the noble mind was extinguished by the democratic vote of a jury. I think it’s the gap between the start and the completion of the act, and the fact that it was entered into voluntarily (so to speak: no-one forced his hand to lift the cup and drink). An existential gap between commitment to the death-action, and the coming of death itself, seems, literally, horrible to contemplate. I think this is what is meant by the phrase like watching a car crash in slow motion.

Well, and what? Another word for that existential gap could be “life”, after all, a sentence we all receive at birth. Except, of course, we don’t elect to be born. Having found ourselves on the life-track, we don’t usually seek to hasten our demise. We don’t choose to drink the hemlock, in the knowledge that it will bring our oblivion.

More correctly: most of us don’t choose to drink the hemlock. Politically speaking, however, that is exactly what the Labour Party did when it set Gordon Brown as its leader. Surely they could see how electorally toxic he is? How disliked? How almost completely unsuitable he is to a party which requires the votes of England? How that everything he touches turns to dust, with only the mocking laughter of the disbelieving voter left to fill the (embarrassed) silence of his Commons peers?

It is not that the philosophy of Socrates (as poorly as I understand it) reminds me of Gordon Brown. Socrates told us that virtue is its own education, since once we see good, we will do good. To be good is to understand. I find it hard to see any parallels between that concept and the actions of Mr Brown’s government, packed to the gills as it is with ministers funded by campaign back-handers, led by a man who can speak in favour of that amoral excrescence Livingstone. Whither the moral compass?

Graeme Archer: Home Thoughts from Abroad

So let me see if I’ve got this right. MPs have been ripping off taxpayers in order to buy – not subsistence accommodation, but kitchens, bathrooms, bedroom fittings etc from John Lewis. John Lewis! One of my favourite institutions, now sucked into the (swine-) fevered debate about MPs’ allowances. I dream of being able to afford a kitchen from John Lewis, and, know what? I would be able to if I didn’t have to pay so much bloody tax. Can’t wait to hear an MP lecturing us about the need for restraint in public expenditure in the year ahead.

Meanwhile: Och yes, says Mr Speaker, ah’ll get oan with the inquiry intae they expenses just as soon as they’ve sorted oot that wee bathroom fur me. Cab thon fabric swatches roon with the groceries, will ye no? (I think we now know why John Lewis opened a food hall).

*
Election fever! Who’s going to win? Who’s up? Who’s down? No, not the increasingly deadlocked Change vs Fear slugathon, swinging its way towards beautiful Pennsylvania like an out of control juggernaut careering the wrong way down a motorway. Only one winner there! It’s [insert name of favoured candidate and retain fond belief that it’ll make that much difference anyway]. Oh calm down. None of them is Reagan II and one of them is clearly insane. Anyway – no, not that election. It may have escaped your notice, since there’s been scant mention of it in the press, but Italy – you know, major trading partner, the place you’ve yearned to go since reading too much Forster in your early teens – has a general election of its own on April 13th, to replace the redundant government of Mr Prodi. I’ve been at work in Verona since Wednesday this week so I’ve been asking everyone what the main issues are, to bring a Conservative Home update this Sunday. Well. The Bank of Italy just revealed that which has been clear to those of us with staff in Italy for some time – the rate of growth in income there is nearly stagnant. So, how did odds-on favourite to be the next presidente del consiglio, Mr Berlusconi, respond when asked a question about how to survive on a low income, by a young (female) voter? You can always marry my son, or some other millionaire, he said on TV last night. Perhaps Lord Tebbit’s been helping with his campaign?

By the way, the main reason the centre-Left government fell was because it was held to ransom by a minor coalition partner. The Justice Minister, a Christian Democrat, being investigated by magistrates for corruption, withdrew his party’s support from Prodi’s coalition. (At least he went). Now neither main Left nor Right block can muster enough support in parliament to change the ghastly PR voting system back to something with a semblance of reason. Even the man who designed their current system calls it porcata, something between a dirty trick and junk. Why have we let so much PR infect our own election systems? Euro-lists, Scottish Councils, various regional assemblies, London Mayoralty … minor plea to Planet Dave: not a huge manifesto thing, but could we just quietly repeal it, everywhere?

Graeme Archer: "Racist c**t"

I was called a racist c**t today.

I admit, my attention had been wandering until she said this.

- What?

- This young Turkish kid. I told him three times to stop messing with his mobile. He kept playing with it, and –

- hang on. You told him three times? Why was he playing with his mobile anyway?

- three times. They all play with their mobiles. You have to go on and on at them to get their attention. Anyway, I told him three times to put it away, and he wouldn’t, so the rest of the class is descending into chaos, so I called for Patrol, and they came to -

- Patrol? What?

- We can’t put them out the class ourselves. Too much grief.  So you call “Patrol” and they come and witness what’s happening, and deal with the kid. So they came, and I took the kid’s mobile off him, and he’s, like, “You racist c*nt”, and then he’s out the classroom, and we sort of get on with the lesson. But I know there’s gonna be grief from his parents, which means grief from the school. I don’t know how much longer I can put up with it.

Just another day in a Hackney school! I think it’s impossible to underestimate the deleterious consequences of this type of situation. Let’s count as many as we can...

• A de-socialised child has failed to grasp any of the consequences of turning his back on education.
• His life chances are effectively over.
• Around him is a class of children whose own chances are being curtailed as a result of his behaviour, regardless of their own desire for schooling.
• A school has suffered so many legal and quasi-legal repercussions from the families of excluded pupils that it has had to resort to a patrol system so that no teacher can be accused of mistreating a child.
• Even with this system in place, a young and idealistic teacher has to suffer physical and verbal abuse of the sort that would lead to any adult being arrested.
• How many years before another excellent professional is burned out?

[Interlude. How often has a bar-room bore told you that there’s no difference between Labour and Tory politics these days? Try telling that to the teachers living with Labour’s exclusions policy.]

How many circles of hell have we passed through? We’re not finished. A liberal might stop here, because their primary concern would be with the contract between state and parent. A socialist would shrug, and then send her son to one of the most elite public schools in London (yes you, Abbott, you hypocrite).

Graeme Archer's Diary: Bohemian, Like Us

I’ve written before about the dehumanising machines that Labour creates as it seeks to transform the country irreparably: the Tax Credit Machine, The Human Rights Machine and so on; devices that grip humans in their pincers and squeeze all hope and courage out of them. But perhaps my imagery was misplaced. For today I woke up to hear that Gordon Brown’s got a new agenda, helped by his best friends at the Daily Mail: he’s declaring war on plastic bags. There are to be targets for the numbers of plastic bags in circulation, and perhaps an element of compulsion. No doubt a quango will be established to monitor plastic bag usage, with special attention given to the needs of various minority groups. Perhaps a new role for Lee Jasper? I’m tempted to write that since Brown couldn’t poke his way out of a wet paper bag without getting in a mess, perhaps he’s bitten off more than he can chew here. But I’m sorry - it defies parody. The party of Keir Hardie, reduced to fretting about plastic bags. It was a new dawn, was it not?

*
“I mean, look around you,” said Councillor X. “We’re about the least ideological Conservative association in the country”.

He was right, I think. It was a post-leafleting session in some N16 wine bar and Hackney Conservatives’ crack squad of activists [is “crack squad” a good name for you? – Ed] were chewing the political cud. I’m explaining this so you know that I didn’t just happen to find myself in N16 by chance. I always feel a little uncomfortable in Stoke Newington. It’s full of people like me, only more so. Bars filled with visions of yourself, playing at maximum volume, is not a relaxing experience.

I hate leafleting, anyway. You’re either wandering a mile up some driveway, in terror of canine attack (Release the dogs!) or running up and down flights of stairs in council blocks (at least they’ll probably vote Tory). You spend ten minutes at each block trying to find the Tory voter on the intercom to let you in. You shred your fingers pushing the literature through letterboxes, helpfully placed one inch off the ground, designed to shield the interior from a thermonuclear explosion, let alone anything as mild as a “Vote Boris” leaflet. And all the time your bladder is telling you that you need to pee. Never mind. It seems to work.

Anyway, what Matthew was saying – sorry, Councillor X, must protect my sources – was that in all the years we’ve leafleted and canvassed our way around the borough, no-one in our association has ever got hissy about political theory. Perhaps the, erm, uphill nature of our struggle against the monolithic Hackney Labour machine keeps us focused on what really matters? I dunno; maybe we just like hanging around in bars too much. But how unlike the comment pages of our own dear ConservativeHome!

The warm glow of ideological fudge we inhabit in Hackney came back to me when I read of Norman Tebbit’s attack on Michael Gove. How helpful it was, to diss one of the most intellectual, thoughtful and politically effective members of the shadow cabinet. If only Michael Gove spent more time telling people to get on their bike, rather than writing books about the dangers of extremism, presumably he’d get Lord Tebbit’s seal of approval. In my humble opinion, a little ideology goes an awful long way. But what do I know? I just deliver the leaflets to help these political giants get elected.

Graeme Archer's Diary: The Integral Calculus

I’m sat on Bethnal Green tube platform, waiting for the eastbound train to take me to Snaresbrook, ready for my last day of jury duty. We’re going to start with the judge’s summing up at about 10, and then deliberate, and then deliver our verdict. On Mr M. Mr M who doesn’t speak a word of English, washes dishes in a curry-house, and has been accused of threatening to kill two family members with a kitchen knife.

The seriousness of what we’re about to do this morning has been growing on me all night. York Hall pool is next to Bethnal Green tube, so I’ve been swimming there this week with the early morning crowd, rather than closer to home in the Lido, and it’s a very grumpy pool compared to the Lido, and this morning I was quite disgruntled anyway (thinking about Mr M), so I’ve come down here to wait for the tube in quite a bad mood. Harrumph.

And then. One of those London moments. A Hainault-via-Newbury-Park train pulls in, no use to me, harrumph, again, and a young black woman gets off, and our eyes meet. I don’t know why, but we smile at one another. And then our smiles grow larger and we’re grinning. Mouths open, grinning. Shared happiness. Shared something. Then she’s gone.

Graeme Archer's diary: Losing his religion

Jury Waiting Room, XXXX Crown Court, London...

Not much of a “diary” this week, I’m afraid, as I continue to spend most of my waking hours in this increasingly sweaty Jury waiting room. That’s me in the corner, tapping away on the laptop with the Apple logo. Yes, I’m one of them, those snotty Apple users from whom you instinctively shy away in coffee shops the length and breadth of the nation. Lots of moaning in the room about all the waiting around, but I’m loving it. Which statistician could resist this: total immersion in a completely random focus group of 250 Londoners who, despite their best British attempts to talk about nothing more contentious than the weather and the state of the tube, have nearly all given in to temptation and started revealing their opinions about – well, I’d better not say. Yet. I bet Jacqui Smith’s ears are burning though. A lot of good people come from Hackney.

*

That’s me in the corner, losing my religion. So, imagine you’re the most senior primate of the established church of the country. There’s this national discussion about the implications of the growing Muslim population who live here, whose self-selected spokespeople have been making increasingly vociferous demands for decades: from burning the books of Salman Rushdie (I’m showing my age, aren’t I – east London’s militants have moved onto more relevant issues, like preventing a film being made of Monica Ali’s novel in Brick Lane), to the “right” to have a muezzin issue a call to prayer across Oxford. Imagine that you’re Dr Williams. What, in a very real sense, would you do?

Graeme Archer's Diary: Brownian motion

Every undergraduate statistician – and, I think, every City trader – is familiar with the concept of Brownian motion: the random, aimless, jittering path taken by particles suspended in a fluid; a completely random walk, where the direction taken at time t isn’t deterministically predictive of the path to be taken one step into the future. It’s called “Brownian” after the botanist Robert Brown, who noticed, in 1827, that particles in the cell-fluid of pollen suspended in water moved in such a random path.

I can’t think why the concept of a random walk, with no deterministic path clear to an observer, no obvious ultimate destination and no idea about which way to turn next – I can’t think why, as I say, it should seem so fitting that such aimless dithering should be labeled “Brownian” – can you?

*
Am I a one-man Twilight Zone? Whenever I leave the country, some annoying event seems to fall on the party. I set off for Verona last Monday morning, the sun was shining, we were 10 points ahead, Hain had just resigned and the net was closing in on Harman, Alexander et al. Then Derek Conway’s sons pop up, and Brown must be gripping his sides in glee at this “Get out of jail” card handed him. (I’m using “jail” metaphorically, Mr Brown – don’t be too gleeful).

I don’t know what annoys me more: that Mr Conway’s family funding arrangements have given our opponents some sticky mud to fling at us, or that his No.1 son does his best to live up to every toe-curling stereotype about homosexual men known to the tabloids. The result of all that expensive public school education appears to be a man who throws “F*** Off I’m Rich” parties in B-list London nightclubs. All funded with public money. I dunno. Maybe I was wrong about Section 28 after all.

Graeme Archer's Diary

I’m sat in the Cat and Mutton, Broadway Market, Hackney, watching the two chefs prepare the gourmet English food they’ll serve for dinner tonight. I love bars with open-plan kitchens. Outside about a thousand commuters are making the last push for home, serious faces on top of so many bicycles you might be forgiven for thinking of Amsterdam. On the street outside you’ll find Argentinean, French, Turkish, Indian restaurants, two delicatessens, two uber-trendy coffee shops, dress shops so haute they defy parody, a shop that sells nothing but pink stuff, an independent book shop, a proper butcher, the best fish and chips in east London, yer authentic pie-and-mash, Spirit’s Caribbean cuisine, a real art gallery and, yes, a kebab shop. Through the huge picture window in front of me I can see London Fields, the twilight falling on a criss-cross of children, shoppers, lovers, dog-walkers and winos. In the distance I can see my home-from-home, the Hackney Lido. Wash me, thoroughly, from my iniquity. And it does. Every day.

Alright, I’m not expecting you to junk Tuscany and choose E8 as your next holiday destination, but Jacqui Smith MP annoyed me this week, with her casual denunciation of Hackney as a place where no Home Secretary would dare tread after dark, no matter how desirous she may be of her nocturnal appointment with a kebab (nutritional sustenance, apparently, for those of you reading in the Home Counties, and not, as I had feared, something disreputable to do with premiership footballers).

Any problems that Hackney has can be connected in a straight line with the maladministration of Labour at a local and a national level. If you’re so concerned about our safety, Ms Smith, stop releasing violent prisoners early and stop demanding bail for thugs. Isn’t it telling that she picked a Labour borough to be snotty about? How far these New Labour ministers have risen from the people they once sought to represent.

There’s more spirit, community, passion and love in one street of one ward of the borough of Hackney than exist in the entire upper echelon of our Brownian ruling class in government. “I’m always in bloody Hackney!” David Cameron once joked to Keith and I, when we were mumbling hello at a London Tory meet-and-greet. Good for you, David, and shame on you, Jacqui Smith.

Graeme Archer's Sunday diary: Liberal/Fascist?

What would a liberal-totalitarian government look like? Is that too strange a concept to get your head around?

Well. It would be a government which enforced rigidly, and with severe sanction for those who disobeyed, a single-minded worldview of correct and incorrect behaviour. Plurality would not flourish, indeed it would be frowned upon. Such a government might, for example, give succour to an unrepresentative body of religious faith, prioritising something like the MCB over any other community of Islamic faith (and it would prosecute any civil servant brave enough to attempt to bring such misguided policy to light). It might ignore any scientific evidence about passive smoking, or animal cruelty, and enforce a ban on legal activities, such as smoking in pubs, or fox-hunting. It might project itself as “the political wing of the British people” (© Tony Blair, 1997), in order to delegitimise any political opposition. You don’t support ID cards? Aren’t you British? (The irony is intentional).

It would certainly, and with as much velocity as it could afford, take as much child-care into the hands of the state as possible, marginalising, de-funding and eventually obliterating any community-based self-help groups in favour of something like Sure Start. It would most definitely employ Stakhanovite-type statistics to prove that every year we’re becoming cleverer, more productive, more crime-free and healthier, dismissing any contrary opinion as that of psycho-sociological dysfunction. 

Graeme Archer: How well have we got on with our ex-leaders?

Graeme Archer, a blogger and activist in Hackney, reflects on the emotional wrench with which Tony Blair leaves office and reflects on our own history of relationships with Conservative Party leaders.

How do you get on with your ex? Something most of us have to struggle with at one time or another. What about if you have a string of ex-s? Are they banished from your consciousness, expunged from your frontal lobe, hidden from mental view? Do you think fondly of them now and then, remember the good times, have a wry smile at one or other of their foibles? Or do you grimace with horror, feel momentarily dirty, shake yourself like a dog in a mud bath, and thank the Lord that they're not mucking up your life any more?

Like it or not, there's an overlap between how individuals view their ex-lovers, and how parties view their ex-leaders. More relevantly, it's a two-way thing. What your ex-leader thinks of you matters just as much as the reverse. Probably more.

So on this momentous morning of New Clunking Hope, when Scotsmen all around the globe raise a wee dram of salty porridge in anticipation of the wave of Calvinism shortly to be unleashed on this godless land, our Tam O'Shanters shaking with glee at the thought [that's enough Scottishness - ed] OK, now that Blair has finally gone, how will the Labour Party feel about him? And he it? And how have we Conservatives variously treated, and been treated by, those who have worn the yoke of Party Leader?