Proroguing protests. Credit: Daniel Leal-Olivas/Getty
The dim roar of affront and panic emanating from Westminster yesterday, in the hours after the Government’s surprise rearrangement of the parliamentary calendar, was expressed in much of the media as “outrage” at this constitutional “coup”. In reality, it was more akin to an existential yelp, as, after years of talking and procrastination, the Brexit saga moved decisively into the ‘action’ phase.
The reaction was a reminder of just how much of a difference the disposition and life-philosophy of political leaders makes. Three years of Theresa May’s fearful, procedural style of government had smothered politics in a deathly, but comforting, torpor – Brexit had become a never-ending story, in which politicians would always be discussing options and deadlines would always be extended. There’s something rather nice about stalemate: a political version of Freud’s “death instinct”, where everyone gets to hide from the horror of actual, you know, events.
Yesterday’s announcement marked the end of that whole paradigm. The new occupants of No 10 are animated by the opposite instinct, in ways that many find deeply unsettling. Here, suddenly, is a government which delights in using the levers of power it has available and bringing events to a head.
The prorogation is not a coup. It has been designed with just enough points of justification to fall narrowly short of a constitutional outrage (it allows for the conventional September recess for party conferences, the new Queen’s Speech, and time for debate both at the start and end of the period before 31 October) but it is, without doubt, a brazen use of executive power to set the timetable for political advantage.
Its main effect will be to bring the action forward, so that the Remainer coalition in parliament will have to make its counter-move immediately and boldly when parliament resumes. To procrastinate is to lose. It’s the opposite of what we have been used to in the never-ending story of Brexit.
Looming large over this pivot to action is the figure of Dominic Cummings, the PM’s de facto chief of staff and architect of the Brexit campaign. To Brexiteers, Cummings is a hero; to Remainers, he’s a villain. To almost everyone he is intriguing and alarming in equal measure. Anyone who watched his extraordinarily rude testimony to the Commons Select Committee over the referendum campaign, or observed his lofty refusal to return when invited back, would realise that he’s an unusual character. He doesn’t seem to feel fear; he is devoid of deference to authority; and he is obsessed with theory and radical thinking.
Such strength of conviction can be attractive. Certainly, his team in No 10 seems to like his vision and clarity of purpose. But while the characteristic of being existentially unafraid of action may be found in a disproportionate number of history’s heroes and villains, it’s also at odds with the genteel traditions of British democracy. He’s not chummy or collegiate; he’s contemptuous of precedent, and in a country without a formal constitution that feels scary.
His well-documented obsession with game theory and process also has the effect of flattening the whole of politics into tactical warfare. When the warring parties are different arms of the British state – the executive versus the legislature – it feels especially uncomfortable. Of course, there are always tactics and ‘pathways to victory’ in politics, but the main pathway is usually to win the argument on its merits.
Now, the decisive phase of the Brexit story will take place with an almost exclusive focus on process and little attention to the underlying arguments. It completes the professionalisation of our politics, the conversion of voters into speculators and tacticians, co-conspirators in a procedural game. YouGov has already polled voters on their approval of prorogation as a strategic device – an odd thing for voters to have to think about.
The combination of Cummings with his boss, Boris Johnson, only heightens the sense of unease. Where Boris famously sees both sides of an argument (remember those newspaper columns he drafted for and against Brexit?), Cummings sees things perhaps deceptively clearly. Where Cummings is hard-edged and uninterested in being liked, Boris is eager to please. The combination fuels fantasies of Cummings as an evil Rasputin figure, whispering instructions into his genial master’s ear.
Boris’s own personality is famously hard to pin down; he’s changeable and weirdly detached from the consequences of his actions. Where Theresa May used to appear at world summits visibly strained to breaking point, Boris seems to find them… fun. There is a disconnect between the gravity of all these events and the cheerful blond who pops up on news clips to say how everything is going swimmingly (sometimes literally). No death-instinct on view here: the Prime Minister continues to visibly enjoy himself.
Inside No 10 they have it all mapped out: what happens if there’s a vote of no confidence next week, what happens if Parliament legislates to thwart their timetable, when an election is most likely to be. It remains to be seen whether the odd couple at the centre of power will be credited with executing a perfect masterplan or whether it will all go spectacularly wrong for them in ways they haven’t foreseen. But what’s clear is that in the ‘OODA loop’, the ‘Observe-Orient-Decide-Act’ theory of combat strategy that Cummings is known to favour, we are now firmly in the Action phase. Welcome to the endgame.
Freddie Sayers is the Editor-in-Chief & CEO of UnHerd. He was previously Editor-in-Chief of YouGov, and founder of PoliticsHome.
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SubscribeThe old lame excuse for criminality: society is to blame.
There is a minority of people who if they can benefit from violence will use. Unless people are trained not to use violence for personal gain, are not punished for using it such that they are an others are deterred from using it, violence will flourish whether it is the school bully, organised crime or Putin.
Congratulations to those who managed to read the entire article.
I would think that the increase in U.K. stabbings could be easily explained by the arrival of people from cultures where knife violence is common.
In the introduction of the documentary ‘Shakespeare: Rise of a Genius’ on BBC iPlayer, it notes that in London in the 15th Century, theft & violence was so rampant that it was extremely common for people to carry knives and use them.
I’m unsure if the Mods v Rockers were what prompted the Offensive Weapons Act 1959, banning carrying flick knives and other blades/pointed articles? Knives were clearly a big problem that needed tackling legislatively.
Knife crime in the UK is not a new phenomenon.
William Shakespeare: Rocker or Mod?
I vote Mod.
Middle Eastern honor cultures.
Another day, another report of a child stabbing another child.
Surely, reasonable common sense knife control is the answer, right? That’s what I keep being told about my country’s ownership of guns as if it’s the objects that are at fault and never the people using them.
Perhaps we can finally recognize that there is a cultural problem afoot. Metal objects are not new; the willingness to use them indiscriminately is. Culture involves a mentality that puts the criminal over the victim, a mentality that treats the criminal as the victim in the affair. In New York, a man named Daniel Penny faces trial for the audacity of coming to the rescue of people being attacked by a crazy person on a subway. THAT is why, in the YouTubed conflicts that are so ubiquitous, people are far more likely to be recording the event than trying to stop it.
Culture involves a primal attitude of “he disrespected me,” as if no course other than attempted or achieved homicide exists. And there is a glaring lack of consequences for bad behavior, not just among criminals, but also among the allegedly respectable elites who face no repercussions for ideas that harm others.
This is not about ‘desire.’ It is about incentives. When bad behavior is coddled or otherwise rewarded, there will be more of it. The reverse is true when such behavior is sanctioned, harshly if necessary. It has always been thus.
“The second approach focuses on those broader social conditions, or what sociologists would identify as embedded ‘structural factors’, which include various measures for deprivation. In this reading, insight is less concerned with dangerous individuals than with society more generally.”
Hey, the 60s called. They want their outdated, discredited “it’s really all our faults” philosophy back.
You know what these kids need? Midnight basketball.
To say ‘you’re pushing the philosophical and sociological boundaries’ would be an understatement. This is full of citation and assumption signifying nothing (with apologies to the Bard).
A symbol simply of a country wantonly destroyed by limitless immigration that has brought any number of overseas warzones home to British streets.
Video games and austerity causes stabbings? Are you sure you are a professor?
I’d say that ticks the boxes nicely.
I work regularly in schools. The level of violence in primary schools – primary schools – that goes unrecorded and unreported is eye watering. Hitting, biting, kicking, chair throwing. It has become normalised in part because there is a ‘therapeutic’ culture that sees this as a legitimate expression of children’s trauma which adults, and other children, just have to suck up. We are in an almighty mess folks and good luck trying to solve it because everyone involved is just trying to live their best life, like the culture promised, so who are you to stand in their way?
I’m a retired high school teacher, and the top reason I retired early was smart phones. The last three years were a nightmare. The students were so addicted to their phones it was a losing battle. Administration would not do anything to support teachers, unlike the other high school that banned the things and breaking the rule had serious consequences. I didn’t take away in phones, because three female teachers on campus were violently assaulted when they took a phone. I loved teaching, and I ran a tight ship. But GenZ defeated me. Many of my students were poor, but all of them are going to have dismal futures. They couldn’t read well and couldn’t write their out of a paper bag.
I tried to edit my comment, but I failed. My iPad would not cooperate.
I’m impressed. This is probably one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. Look, I’m from the US and I have heard all this useless crap before. I remember homeboys in the inner cities trying to settle scores with bullets back when videogames were still 16 bit. I grew up around in a place with arsenals that would cause a Brit’s eyes to bulge and almost no violence. I have heard all the “economics” arguments before. Guess what? There are plenty of falling apart places filled with drugs and despair and somehow no drivebys. You can blame gangs but somehow these things also happen between dumbasses who have never worn colors. Don’t even get me started on the whole “social services” garbage. Also, for the record, the zombie genre is like a decade out of its zeitgeist. Oh, and before you start your “but yer gunz!” stuff, I want you to understand that the sharp-edged solution, the blunt force bludgeoning, and the good old fashioned curb stomp are still extremely popular problem-solving methods in America’s inner cities. I guarantee you take away all the guns and your brand of hoodlum would still not last a week. You should see what people get up to in other parts of our hemisphere!
It’s popular to talk about “culture” in vague terms but do you want to know the common factor in all of this petty violence? It’s an attitude. I’m not talking about anything like a, “you have insulted me. We will settle this with fists and move on with our lives.” If our inner cities had that attitude half this crap would end in a week. It is hard to describe in simple terms because it is basically an entire unwritten code of behavior. You are either strong or weak, predator or prey. Even if you want to be left alone, you have to respond to threats or even minor disrespect with serious violence otherwise you have let it be known that you are an easy target. That is why stupid, petty social media spats can end with chalk outlines. This is what you are going to have to deal with and no attempts at banning sharpened bits of metal or installing more cameras is going to help.
Want to know another thing that is absolutely going to make things worse? It’s called stopping innocent people from defending themselves in reasonable circumstances. I don’t care if you think you are oh so advanced and “civilized”. If you think that defending yourself and your family with a baseball bat in your own home from a violent thug or stabbing a murderous assailant with his own knife you wrestled from him is “scandalous”, then you are part of the problem. That’s not acting like a violent criminal. It is acting like a man and doing what needs to be done because you are left with no other choice. If you punish someone for that, you are only reinforcing this predator/prey mindset and taking away potential consequences for antisocial violent behavior. If these young men see their only choice as being some messed up binary between a dangerous thug that people fear or some disrespected weakling they will pick the thug every time. Oh, and one last thing! Some violent jackasses just need to be put in a cage away from society at large. The only way to deal with them is to get them off the streets.
FFS – I may have had a glass or two of wine this evening but this article is drivel!
A teen knifes a number of other teens (and a teacher) at a school and the corollary is that “it’s time that our society started taking seriously the desire for such violence.”
Actually NO, it’s NOT. What it is time for is for society to recognise that it is actually parents responsibility to raise their children to adulthood with a set of values and morals that say “stabbing people is not OK”. And that in order to do this they have proper authority over their children. This means they are not going to be prosecuted for smacking them, or disciplining them, or failing to “recognise” their “pronouns”, or accept their “new gender”, or punishing them for bad behaviour, or impinging upon their “rights”, or having the police rock up and arrest them for “not affirming their gender identity”. And that Schools, when the precious progeny are therein, also have a responsibility to carry that baton on the parents behalf, and not sneak around the back undermining parental input at every turn.
You want to lay the blame for this somewhere? How about the rights culture in western society, which has gone mad. Blame that. If you look at any pack animals in nature, from elephants to wolves, the young are disciplined and socialised by their parents and the herd and the pack. If they step out of line they get a whack on the backside with a trunk or a cuff across the ears with a paw. What is it that makes young humans so special that they should be exempted from this?
Virtual worlds . . . digital dystopias . . . zombie genres . . .
How about some straight forward plain and simple teaching of rights and wrongs by parents to children in the REAL world . . . Want to fix this? Then empower parents to BE parents once more and not just the sidelined caretakers of a tottering museum of useless social ideologies.
Bed.
A much bigger problem of simply importing myriad troubled families from overseas who inculcate such cultures on Britain’s streets.
That does seem to be the elephant in this particular room
At the beginning of my high school year, I had to teach the kids manners for several months. Raised by wolves.
Insulting to wolves.