Bye mate (Leon Neal/Getty Images)
We used to call it the TD at school. And it was a terribly effective strategy: total denial. No matter what evidence they have on you, even if caught red-handed, just TD it.
A teacher saw you coming out of The Crown. He wasn’t even on the other side of the street, but right there in front of you as you walked out of the pub. He reported it to your house master, who called you through into his study. Just TD it. Give no ground. “But Mr O’Hanrahan saw you as broad as day,” he says. Look them in the eye and say with total assurance: “Nope, sorry, it wasn’t me.” If you can find some way to believe in your own words, so much the better.
Forget our post-truth era. Boorish public schoolboys have been at this for generations. The school authorities didn’t quite know what to do with the TD. And nor does the former Director of Public Prosecutions, for that matter.
On the matter of Downing Street Christmas parties, Boris is doing a classic TD. It’s my party and I’ll lie if I want to. Everyone knows what he is up to. But there is always just a little anxiety when you say something like the word “lie”, especially in print. Can you soften it a bit, comes many an editor’s cautious reply? Just say it a little differently. That’s why the TD is so effective. It bludgeons people into submission.
This situation is not complicated. Christmas parties were not allowed. They were illegal and people were fined for holding them — yet they clearly had one at Number Ten. It makes no difference if the social distancing rules were kept. The Prime Minister has now ordered an inquiry into the matter, which is very strange. Who needs to have a high-level inquiry into whether a party took place in your own house?
It’s not just that he broke the rules; he broke the rules that he himself had made. One rule for them, another rule for everyone else. On the very same day that Boris’s mates were knocking back the mulled wine, there were people out in the country who were being denied the opportunity of holding the hand of a dying relative because they were keeping the rules. One day, this will bring him down. Like at Belshazzar’s feast, the writing is on the wall. Mene, mene, tekel, upharshin.
The leaked footage of Allegra Stratton, the then Press Secretary to the Prime Minister, chuckling to herself at the ridiculousness of trying to defend the patently indefensible was the final straw. You could see the TD being formulated in real time. “Err, err, what’s the answer?” she asks around at fellow aides, looking completely stumped. “I don’t know,” says one. “It wasn’t a party, it was a cheese and wine,” says another. But the TD only works when it is rock solid. This TD is now broken, exposed, busted. It’s one thing for a 16-year-old schoolboy to do it. It’s quite another for the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
It’s often the things we like about our politicians that bring them down. Tony Blair’s belief that he could do anything was hugely attractive, right up until the point when he invaded Iraq, his can-do attitude slipping over into a monstrous kind of hubris. With Boris, many of us warmed to the merrie England Cavalier. We were all in on the joke. And those who weren’t were Puritan kill-joys, the grim faced ranks of Labour moralists, always shouty-angry, always wagging their fingers. Who’d want to party with them anyway? That’s the perpetual problem of the Left: a preference for morality over joy.
Still, it’s totally fitting that Boris will be brought down by a party. I will always be grateful to him for pushing Brexit though. And there was much to appreciate in parts of his Covid response, particularly the fast roll-out of the vaccine. Credit where it is due. But the party is over. Even your own supporters don’t believe you, Boris. You can hear it in the voice of every Conservative wheeled out to defend you. When the TD crumbles, everyone around is left exposed. You have taken us all for fools. It’s time to go.
Boris’s apology for his Press Secretary’s behaviour only highlighted his leadership failure. In the world of our Prime Minister, it’s always the fault of someone else, someone junior. And so, surprise, surprise, Allegra Stratton has been thrown under the bus. How long can Boris expect to rely upon colleagues if he treats them like this? And how long will they keep on trying to defend him in public when their efforts are so transparently risible to everyone else?
The Conservative Party needs new leadership, because things are only going to get worse as trust continues to decompose. And the next election is only getting closer. Many in the party believe that Boris is a proven election winner and that it would be madness to come over all January 1649 right now and, as it were, do the Puritans job for them. But the leader of the Cavillers has now been found out and swift action is necessary.
The Tory Party has a ruthless genius for re-invention. Now is the time to cut out the lies and find some honourable new leadership. Boris has served his purpose. So it should act soon to get ahead of a downward curve. Sell, sell, sell. Certainly, it will be more lucrative to do so now than in a year or so.
At Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, Keir Starmer was right to remind us of that photograph of the Queen sitting alone at the end of a pew at her husband’s funeral in Windsor. That is what leadership looks like: to share in the situation of the people that you seek to lead.
That, by the way, is the reason for the incarnation, for Christmas. God shares in the human condition — however hard, whatever the suffering. That is what a Christmas party should be celebrating. The Queen gives us servant-hearted leadership. But for Boris, leadership is entitlement. It’s time for him to go.
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SubscribeI appreciate that the article focussed more on the methodology rather than the underlying political position, but there is no getting away from the fact that Fabianism is, at heart, Socialism.
Does depend what one means by Socialism. Like Capitalism, Socialism is a spectrum.
The use of both phrases probably too manichean. It’s much more nuanced.
I guess that is true. I would say that the positions espoused by Jeremy Corbyn are Socialist. There was a time I would have said the same about Ed Miliband.
Fabianism is first and foremost dishonest. It isn’t called Fabianism because of pragmatism but because the Webbs intended to use Fabius-like tactics of distraction, delay, and attrition to deliver socialism rather than directly fighting and winning the battle of ideas and votes. It’s founding action was the disguised permeation of socialism through universities and institutions. A socialism managed by upper middle class types who considered themselves intellectual superiors. It is exactly that dishonesty and managerialism that is the cause of our division and debilitation today. It is the spread of Fabianist action throughout universities and institutions that has delivered their disfunction and slow collapse.
The author writes the “original Fabians found themselves in a fraught political climate. Faced with a complacent establishment that despised socialism” but neglects to mention socialism was despised by a majority of all classes and was never going to win at the ballot box. The innovation Fabianism offered was that instead of socialism by bullet they’d deliver it by gradualist stealth.
The author does acknowledge the gradualism of Fabian action but fails to extrapolate what this means: any current political moderation is a pretence, merely the next small but necessary gradual step on the road to socialism. By very many small steps they march through the institutions… Most who live in the UK will recognise the universities, civil service, and judiciary are now saturated with left wing politics exactly as the Fabians set out to do. This leads directly to our biggest crisis: a Fabian managerial class governing for all of us without any mandate and beyond accountability. I don’t totally doubt their well meaning sincerity, but a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim is still a tyranny.
As a footnote, the Webbs went on to write the very influential book Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation? It was an entirely uncritical review of Stalin’s farming collectivisation, his creation of the gulags, and the purges of the 1930s. It was pure Soviet propaganda justifying mass murder written by two unapologetic socialists who just happened to be the founders of Fabianism. The Webbs and the motives of Fabians should be talked about in the same way we talk about National Socialists. There is never, ever any good in the greater good.
Indeed. The level of naivety in the article is disturbing. The author purports to advocate “sensible” policies (who doesn’t!) but there’s a dissonance between his interpretation of Fabianism and the authoritarian mindset that currently prevails.
What this suggests is that our so-called “intellectuals” are unable to free themselves from the very groupthink which they purport to be seeking to critique.
One of the ‘signifiers’ is the frequent use if the word “even”. If an author uses this word as a device to seek to elucidate their argument, i think of the term “special pleading”. I lost count of the number of times it occurs in this article.
‘What this suggests is that our so-called “intellectuals” are unable to free themselves from the very groupthink which they purport to be seeking to critique.’
I find this very true of the BBC. People like Andrew Marr seem utterly convinced of the self-evident nature of their position on any particular topic, to the extent that you get the impression he is oblivious to the concept that his position is necessarily a partial one and is reflective of a particular time, place and class.
Any deviation from the narrative (see John Lydon on his show recently) is seen as merely a lack of accurate information and perspective, benevolently bestowed upon us by people like Andrew.
Plus, you didn’t win. She had questions in advance. With the cat meme, it looks like the debate is working against Harris . And if Starmer’s moderation won, it seems to have been a pyrrhic victory. Joel is normally much better than this. The Fabians, Starmer and Harris are all extremists. Trump is much more of a centrist than any of them. A narcissistic celebrity for sure. But basically a centrist.
So true. There is never any good in the greater good.
As a Christian I firmly believe the fabian society along with most similar organisations and think tanks are bad at best and probably Satanically inspired.
Correct me if I’m wrong but the fabian society emblem is straight out the Bible… a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
They are a link in a chain in a movement to totalitarian control over humanity.
Whether they’re aware of it or not they are pawns of Satan.
For similar reasons Islam specifically hates Jews and Christians.
Anthony Hutton wrote well about part of this movement in his Skull and Bones book.
Marx was in to the occult I believe.
Yes, the Fabian Society coat of arms is a wolf in a sheep’s clothing. An odd choice for an organisation claiming not to have any ulterior motives… I’m reminded of That Mitchell and Webb Look comedy sketch where two SS soldiers ponder if they’re actually not the good guys because they have a skull and crossbones on their caps.
“our biggest crisis: a Fabian managerial class governing for all of us without any mandate and beyond accountability”.
True enough but when has the managerial class ever had any mandate or been accountable? I mean anywhere, ever, from modern Britain to ancient China? Sounds like hankering for a time when the ruling class shared your worldview rather than a memory of a golden age when mandarins implemented the will of the people and were held to account when they failed.
I didn’t think the author really understood what Fabianism is at all. I hope he reads your excellent comment.
Pretty first-rate analysis.
How did they manage this practice? In a word: moderation.
There’s something bland and weak about this as a way forward. I can’t think of any part of anyone’s history that’s taken a successful leap with moderation. Moderation feels like a watered down version of life itself. It just doesn’t feel likely that human progress has been the result of moderation. Circumstances may force upon us, without us choosing, something in between as the road forward (which may look like moderation in retrospect) but only because the two extremes confronted each other. Choosing moderation seems to me a weak foundation for leaping into the future.
And yet it’s the essence of Britishness and has been for some centuries.
And look at the state of the country.
Not true.
The British Empire wasn’t acquired by moderation !
In those days we executed Admiral Byng for not fighting at Menorca. His moderation may have been reasonable, but it certainly wasn’t acceptable in those days.
Of course, these days someone like Gareth Southgate will doubtless be getting a knighthood for his exemplary moderation in not taking the risk of winning at football.
One could argue even the British Empire was more moderate than some without entire rose tinted specs.
The point more that our politics has emerged through evolution and not revolution. You have to go back to 1640s for a revolution, and even then we reverted back within a decade or so to a much more organic development. Whilst Europe has history of convulsions we are much more often moderate and tolerant
1688
Common sense, moderation, practical solutions and less performative rhetoric. Fairly radical stuff at the moment.
Not going to play well of course with the Unherd base.
You could of course tell us why, rather than stating it as fact. There’s a laughable op-ed written by Gordon Brown in today’s Guardian… that right JW, The Guardian. Those ghastly proles not voting the right way again.
I suppose we can give the Fabians a break when they were formed but it’s been proved time and time again that ideologies fail and utopia cannot exist because of paradox. It’s funny how utopia always requires coercion then authoritarianism, which leads to corruption and collapse. You’d thought “enlightened” people would know this.
And not very Fabian.
If you think that’s Fabianism you desperately need to read some history.
This article meanders all over the place and is in places, downright silly. We are meant to agree with a lot of the proposed ideas because they seem calm and quiet and sensible. It forgets one very important point: vested interests.
I agree with the author that the climate change lobby has run out of steam but Ed isn’t going to turn around and say, “Let’s slow things down a bit”, because he would then lose control and lose status. The same is true of the scientists who advise him. The feeling of power, of control, gets in the way of all of these cosy ideas. In London the mayor is using his power to control people, to make them do stupid things, to have power over them. He will not give that up. Nor would his successors (if he would ever allow a successor).
Fabianism, or Communism, has failed everywhere because people want power over other people.
The vast majority of the public understand that you cannot stop immigration altogether. Not without addressing a multiplicity of issues over generations.
I know the author is using it to present a balanced pro-Fabian argument, whilst having a swipe at the proles. But it’s a malicious lie.
Freddie, please don’t let this lazy stuff through.
Immigration whilst maintaining a national culture and a sustainable welfare state should not be beyond the wit of our political class, Tory, Labour or Fabian, when we have 70 years experience of what works and what doesn’t.
Why they ignore that unrivalled experience, in favour of untested treaties and international compacts to signal a nation’s virtue, is a mystery to everyone. Maybe let’s have an article on that.
You think Britain is a racist country? Name one country with a welfare state and a better track record that we could learn from. Without including those in the EU that have now erected manned borders and commenced deportations.
The Webbs famously espoused eugenics and selective breeding programmes. Doesn’t scream ‘moderate’ to me.
Yes. Time someone pointed that out. They were also massive fans of Stalin who conspired to keep news of the holomodor out of the media.
Their worst crime though, both then and now, was to hijack the Labour Party and turn it into a vehicle for middle class busybodying. We’re still living with the consequences.
All the progressives were. Global warming policies will be viewed in the same way 100 years from now.
Fabianism as our way foreward?….I hope not. Fabianism was not really “pragmatic”; it was just a bit less frenzied than more recent iterations of the ideology of “Progress”….(ie progress brought about by political means rather than as a by-product of technology and enterprise). And the Bloomsbury set were brimful of vanity and sentimentality. A much better pointer to what we need would be Edmund Burke. “Edmund Burke – father of modern conservatism – expressed this caution in this axiom: “frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.” Few people are outright opposed to political change but Progressives seem permanently hungry for it and believe that politics is the way to make it happen. Recent history suggests that they are right in this belief but paradoxically are unlikely to actually be all that happy with the changes they have helped bring about.” https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/mrs-thatcher-and-the-good-life
lol at the USA having a ‘lively welfare state’
Moderate Communists. But immoderate eugenicists.
“and Kamala Harris proved in her debate with Donald Trump — remaining level-headed wins debates and often elections.”
Are you referring to that ABC inspired hit job debate, fact checking Trump, while letting Kamala coast? Might want to check out her recent solo interview by an ABC affiliate in Philadelphia for another take!
As Keir Starmer has shown — and Kamala Harris proved in her debate with Donald Trump — remaining level-headed wins debates and often elections.
It was at this point that I scrolled to the comments. Did I miss anything of value between that line and here?
Not much.
Kotkin uses “Fabianism” as a synonym for – variously – gradualism, pragmatism and realism. This is not the historical or, for those who carry it on, current meaning of Fabianism, which is a centrist branch of socialism with specific political aims.
You could equally well have a gradualist right wing group or a pragmatic anti-authoritarian movement, but they wouldn’t be Fabians.
Perhaps Kotkin would be better using the term “Fabius-ism” but really I think he’s trying to lump too many concepts together.
While I acknowledge and share the rejection of Fabianism and its founders, the article brings up good points that are hard to reject. To what degree are those ideas Fabianist? I guess avoiding to mention the Fabians alltogether would have spared the author most of the flak he attracted. He must have had a different idea when he wrote the piece. But which?
Most of the Commenters miss a very important point.
Here in the US, Franklin Delano Roosevelt used Socialism (lite) to save Capitalism (viscous) from its own excesses. Most of his programs failed or never got through Congress. But enough of them stuck that we went on to help win a very serious war and then had the best decades of our existence. Social Security, a sharply graduated income tax, fair labor laws, farm security, industrial recovery, banking regulation and deposit insurance, etc; without FDR we would be unrecognizable.
(Unfortunately, in the 80s and 90s various “leaders” came along and hobbled most of it. Then we got globalization. And here we are, barely limping along.)
The “New Deal” might have been necessary given the conditions that prevailed in the 1930s, but the US fortunately moved in a rather more capitalist direction thereafter.
“And here we are, barely limping along.”
Whatever issues we face, Socialism isn’t the answer.
Indeed. It was especially the renewed New Deal policies and the sound agreements of Bretton Woods after the war that brought the most stable period in recent history. Trade was facilitated, innovation was very high but capital and speculation was restrained. The backlash in the 80s against this system has been explained as simple class warfare by many scholars. The Rand corporation estimated that about 50 trillion was transferred from the lower classes to the upper class in the first waves of neoliberalisation.
“Centrist socialists”….so the Fabians incrementally screw up everything, and destroy their society slowly and respectfully…no thanks.
When one considers the leadership imposed damage being inglicted on the West we are apparently already led by wolves in sheep’s clothing, the symbol of the Fabians
If anything I think that there is actually way too little radical change in the face of a system that essentially already collapsed after 2008. Yes, there is a lot of radial rhetoric – especially since that 2008 crisis – but it mostly just remains rhetoric. The extreme center, first and foremost, aims to protect the status quo as it was established in the 80s. It seems they rather drag everyone down with them than allowing serious reforms.
The problem with planning to be in the middle is that the extremes tell you where it’s at.
I think this article portrays the Fabians as benign and enlightening. But if one delves into the research, their legacy becomes rather more pernicious.
last thing we need if the Fabians, David Lammy say he is one and I would not trust him as far as I could throw him, Zionist rat.
Fabian scientic rationalism and gradulist socialism has included advocacy of euthanasia, colonial imperialism and some nasty racist attitudes, while its influence on the British Labour has not always been beneficent.