March 21, 2021 - 7:00am
What is the job of society? There is a modern delusion that we are born pure, and then corrupted by an unfair world. But surely the plain truth is that we are born greedy, narcissistic and violent. That’s why laissez-faire doesn’t work any more than big government. Left entirely to ourselves, individuals will exploit, slack off, rent-seek, and cheat.
The job of society is to teach us to temper these impulses and to train us in a different set of habits. What habits are these? The old times called them the virtues: the practices that human beings are uniquely good at, like courage, temperance, fortitude, creativity, compassion and shrewdness. The virtues make us happy and great, and make life better for everyone else. They are, in Edward Skidelsky’s great phrase, ‘the excellences of the species, as strength is to the lion, or speed to the horse.’ But unlike natural animal power, human virtues need deliberate inculcation.
Government can’t make better people. What can are the associations we belong to, the connections that give us our identity and sense of self. Most simply, these associations are the family, the community and the nation. These are the schools of virtue.
The purpose of politics is to strengthen the family, the community and the nation so they can exercise their beneficent influence on individuals. How do we do that?
To strengthen the family we need to recover the traditional concept of the oikos, the household economy. Men and women both need the opportunity for a more integrated life. We need more flexible work, closer to home, and a tax system that helps couples. We need childcare and social care subsidies that reflect most people’s desire to keep their children and their elderly parents at home as much as possible. We need to give marriage its proper due, not as a statement of romantic attachment but as a commitment to bring up children together.
To strengthen communities we need a great democratisation of power, to let people take back control of the places they live in. The pandemic has encouraged a more local, more sustainable life, and we must build on this. We need a transformation of public services to create more community-led, more mutual, more human systems for health and welfare and social care. We need tax and planning policy to breathe life into high streets and public spaces, and restore the pub and library and youth club. We need a new ‘economics of place’, including a revived idea of the private business as a force for public good.
To strengthen the nation we need to build on Brexit and exercise the muscles of independence, setting new immigration and trade policies to become, once more, a high-skilled exporting nation.
Independence is not isolation, and ‘sovereignty’ need not mean unilateralism. We have the opportunity to convene partnerships around the great goals of the democratic world, of which reducing climate change is the main one. Yet here nationalism is, paradoxically, most useful. Conservative estimates suggest that by 2050, 50 million Africans could be displaced by rising sea levels. Their own countries will be chronically destabilised, and many people will head north for Europe. Climate change is an ecological tragedy but more immediately it is a threat to the security of nations.
The real ‘green deal’ we need is between Left and Right: to save the planet in return for saving the nation. We need to reduce climate change and engage constructively (and expensively) with the developing world, in order to reduce war, terrorism and mass migration.
The immediate challenge for our nation is of course its constitutional settlement, including the relations of the four nations to the Union. Any referendum on Scottish independence must be deferred until Brexit has settled, Covid is over, and we have the chance for a proper conversation about the distribution of power in these islands.
England, despite being the oldest coherent country in Europe, has no government of its own. Surely this is one reason for our unstable Union, and any constitutional process must consider how to give meaningful expression to English identity.
The job of government is to create the conditions for virtue. It has its work cut out: a new constitutional settlement at home and a new doctrine of ‘environmental nationalism’ abroad; public service reform and a new ‘economics of place’; and a new focus on the household economy, on care, and on family relationships.
All these themes come together in what I call a ‘new social covenant’. We don’t need a ‘social contract’, a transactional arrangement between individuals and the state. A ‘covenant’ is an enduring commitment, extending backwards and forwards in time, which enfranchises our ancestors and endows our heirs. It is founded in a set of understandings about how human beings work, of which the primary one is the simple fact of our relatedness.
Miriam Cates MP and I are launching today the New Social Covenant Unit, which aims to put meat on these bones and nudge our colleagues towards the politics of family, community and nation. You can read a much fuller account of what we mean on our website here, and also sign up to register your support and keep in touch.
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Subscribe“The purpose of politics is to strengthen the family, the community and the nation so they can exercise their beneficent influence on individuals. How do we do that?”
Is it? Why has pretty much every government during my lifetime continually undermined families, communities and (apart from one or two) the nation? The destruction of families & the nation & some communities is explicit policy of most of the left and others.
The unwritten covenant between the ruled and their rulers was shattered in the catastrophe of 1914-18, and has yet to be adequately repaired.
Perhaps it never will.
In a way, maybe. What happened was the Commies in that era. That pernicious system was established in Russia, and if you do not know what Communists at that time were thinking it is not the sanitized version today represented by Hard-Lefty/Liberalism, the smiling face mask covering the cruel face.
The whole academia was swept with a pro-Marxism, the Unions, their mission began of destroying the Capitalist system, and thus the British.
Most people in the West came out of WWI with increased patriotism, a wish to make the system they saved become better – but those enemies within the gates, 5th column, commies began their gnawing at the hull of what made the West great, and now have gotten to the point water is spraying into the hull of State. You want a cause of it all? Communism being taken up by Academia.
Orwell was a strong socialist but saw this. He gave powerful warnings of the University commies, he used 1984 to show how it worked, and the destruction of the family was the CORE, and destruction of the community, destruction of Religion, destruction of all which was decent.
It’s hard to tell what you may have meant by this:
but it seems to be dual claim that there was a great deal of communist influence in academia in the immediate post-revolution period (which is arguably true), and that the aim of Unions was to destroy “the capitalist system and thus the British” which is pretty much rubbish.
Unions were about protecting the interests of workers against exploitative employers. Arguably, preventing exploitation, and building fairer workplaces, strengthened British society.
While there would have been union members and organisers who drew inspiration from some (admittedly noble) goals of revolutionary communism, particularly before their blood-soaked tyranny became apparent, most were patriotic British citizens with no desire to destroy the country or its people. In fact, the Union movement was particularly strong in the chapels of Welsh Methodism (who were hardly all rabid communists).
Not sure why you feel the need to demonise those who fought against injustice. It it something in your own political position?
“some union members and organissers who drew inspiration from” Communism understates the case. There were plenty of unions significantly under the sway, overt or covert of revolutionalry commnuists. Back when revolutionary commuism was real and not a chic affectation for students.
And yes plenty of patriotic British socialists fought hard against them. The loathing of these people was still visible in for example, Kinncok’s Liverpool speech.
Agreed, but that doesn’t of course negate Danny K’s thesis. As suggested by Alison H below, this sounds like the great reset according to Roger Scruton and Prince Charles – which to my mind is No Bad Thing.
It doesn’t negate his ideas/aims – which generally seem good. But it’s not very clear whether that’s his view of what politics is, or what it should be about.
It’s no wonder conservatives keep getting out maneuvered by the ‘progressives’ if they think everyone’s out with honest intention of making things better for us all.
I agree Danny Ks article is not really anything but a wish list of platitudes. It needs the morality underneath stated, the Why, and Where it goes, ie it needs its political ideology, or as it was one day, its religious or moral/ethical point.
In the Deep South of USA, back a century ago, the Political hacks running for office would sweep in to give their stump speech to the locals, and the political cliche was that what they would say is that they were: ‘For Motherhood, And Against The Bole Weevil’! (the bole weevil attacked cotton, and thus the economy) I find the speech/article above along that line, as who is not for what they say?
Look no further than the empty Churches to find the cause of the sickness the writer talks of above. Once morality has been replaced by relative morality, and ethics by situational ethics as there is no ultimate right and wrong, as Secular Humanism has taken over and preaches, society is doomed.
Yes, and from a capitalist perspective it makes sense to have multiple households buying multiple fridges, TVs etc. Fragmented families and communities are also easier to control and you also have the added advantage of being able to play one community off against another. A poor black man, a poor white man, and a poor white woman, for example, have more in common than the bourgeois MSM have everyone believe.
It’s certainly true that cynical capitalist/old fashioned elites would benefit playing groups off against one another.
The question is why are the left eagerly playing along, whilst 90% of the ‘right wing’ aren’t?
I sincerely believe that the further up the food chain of the political left and right (labour and conservative) you go today, the distinction between left and right disappears. Sometimes I think politics is a game to manage the population and keep us occupied whilst the elite profit and divide the spoils amongst themselves. My grandparents were labour supporters but socially conservative believing in family and hard work. They, and my parents, lived in a fairly new housing estate populated by those left homeless by wartime bombing. In those days the labour party in the South (not London) was supported by working men and women veterans of the second world war. When I dabbled with labour in the nineties most of those labour supporters came from middle class families. They were no longer interested the workers. Labour had become dominated by those seeking social and economic liberalism with a streak of political conservatism – hence Blair. Blair is where the the distinction between labour and conservatives disappeared. It was at this point the labour party in the South of England disappeared losing all credibility with traditional labour voters in the South. Labour have been trying to reinvent themselves ever since through identity politics hitching a ride with whatever comes from the US. The last labour politician who had any credibility with traditional non-London labour voters was Tony Ben.
There’s some interesting research that shows that Labour and Conservative their voters are on aggregate economically left of the MPs and far more socially conservative.
We generally think that the likes of Amazon should pay fair tax, but we’re also not comfortable with crazy benefits.
The right berate us by pretending that paying the intended tax rates, or a living wage will stop large retail companies from ‘investing’ which is disingenuous gibberish . The left claim that every single benefit claimant is not just honest, but desperate to work hard, despite the ‘lived experience’ of many of us knowing there’s a hardcore who see it as a way of life.
You may be right about the party leaderships (on both sides) taking positions rather further to the right than their members.
But it’s a long time since we had crazily generous benefits (if we ever did). The current system is at best niggardly, and at worst puntive and damaging – if you can lose your benefit for failing to attend a jobcentre interview due to sickness (which is far from unknown), there is something wrong.
Nobody thinks that “every single benefit claimant is not just honest, but desperate to work hard.” But it is dishonest to use the 1.2% of benefit fraud to argue against a social safety net that actually works (not saying you’re doing that – but some clearly do).
I agree with all of that apart from your final few words. In my opinion, Corbyn fitted the criteria you mention. It’s a disgrace that he was ousted by his own party.
Too many “progressive” idiots in Parliament
‘Get on your bike’ to find work, destruction of entire industries and associated communities (UK Mining, 1980s), removal of universal child benefit, anti-Union legislation to prevent democratic communal organisation – none of the above policies damaging to communities and families were from the left.
Travelling by bike is very green these days. Tebbit was ahead of his time. And you’ll have to explain why you think work should come to you, rather than the other way round.
Wilson closed more pits than Thatcher, as you very well know. And Thatcher’s personal involvement in bringing Honda and Nissan to the UK laid the foundations for a renaissance in high-tec manufacturing and two decades of economic growth.
I don’t think it’s that radical to suggest work should be designed around families and communities rather than the other way round.
Wilson did close more pits than Thatcher, and closed more than MacMillan. During the 1960s the number of miners in UK more than halved – some of that was under Wilson. In the 1980s the workforce fell by 80% – all under Thatcher.
What was cruel was the deliberate destruction of livelihoods, families and communities purely because they did not vote for Thatcher and because the Trade Unions representing those workers chose to help fund Thatcher’s political opponents.
For four out of ten years UK economic growth was negative under Thatcher.
“The destruction of families is a policy of the left”
Bojo is hardly a family preserver – I didn’t know he was a leftie!! Now retired the polotical sex scandals always involved Tories not Labourites!
I’m fairly forgiving of “sex scandals” involving consenting adults, which do occur on the Left too – Keith Vaz, Rosie Duffield, Ron Davies, to name but a few. I’m less forgiving of sexual harassment scandals, which seem more prevalent in the Left – Mike Hill, Derek Mackay, Kelvin Hopkins, Ivan Lewis.
Meanwhile, Boris seems very much in favour of the family, personally creating as many as possible.
If “saving the planet” means funneling yet more cash to wind farms and solar panels, then I’m out already.
As James Lovelock, (101),former High Priest of the Global Green Mystery Cult, and the author of the revered Gaia Hypothesis, said “the future is Nuclear”
Along with C-19, this ‘Green’ nonsense is the greatest confidence trick ever perpetrated on humanity since the Resurrection.
Until the Greens drop their seemingly genetic (and idiotic) obsession with being anti-nuclear, no one should take them seriously on climate change.
If that is all you find is crazy about the ‘Green’ Party then you have not seen much of their platform.
Uranium! But then I see the coming of the Great Crash, although it seems endless QE is now viable according to all the experts, but being a carpenter and can not build as Lumber went from March 2020, a 8 ft 2X4 was $3.39, now is $9.19, Tripled in one year!!!!! Plumbing pipe tripled, wiring doubled!!! What is up I can not understand. Some say it is 2.5% mortgages with 5% inflation means you are being paid 2.5% to just take the free money! So building is at mad levels, the mills working at 100% capacity so no shortage!
Anyway I took my pension saved (IRA) and made it self controlled (Via a Charles Schwab self directed IRA, the guy who said ‘You will own nothing and you will be happy’ at the World Economic Forum!) and I bought below: (if anyone can comment on If I am just going to lose it all) I see Nuke for baseline electricity (all ready is 20% USA electricity, and 10% global) and photovoltaic and batteries mad growth.
PKX (Korean steel) NHYDY (Norwegian aluminum) URA, HURA, CCJ, URG, DNN (uranium mines), OIH (oil), KHC (Kraft/Heinz) REMX, (battery metals), DHT (oil/gas), WIRE, (wire), GBXJ (gold mine) PALL (palladium), and AG, (silver)
I see the Fiat currency crashing – but then I always was a loon and having it in high growth Tech and bitcoin will likely triple and commodities half. But you can see, the above is all about the renewable energy materials. I listen to the mad ‘Peter Schiff and Harry Dent’ sort of end of the world people on youtube. ‘The End Is Nigh’.
I’m very glad to hear it!
Some of those price rises are due to speculation in commodities (like copper). Much of the finance sector has become parasitic on industry, rather than enabling it as it used to do.
The Great Reset according to Roger Scruton and Prince Charles, in other words. Which means the Govt. might seem to take it up, in order to appeal to us old fashioned, actual conservatives, only to drop the Roger Scruton bit, once we’re all on board but stick with the climate change cr*p nobody with any sense cares about.
Nice try Danny!
Allison, try https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEQcyIGH_vQ for JP Sears on the Charls Schwab ‘You will own nothing and be happy.’ A light and funny, and scary, commentary on the Great Reset.
You’re confusing Charles Schwab with the ghastly quasi-fascist Klaus Schwab. It is Klaus who wishes to destroy capitalism and democracy and install a system in line with the Chinese to control people throughout the world. And one of his strongest supporters in our future monarch. He really is a clueless fool if he doesn’t realise what he’s doing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeykREAlYSg&feature=youtu.be
I was agreeing with all that until it strayed into the great racket that is climate change.
The population of Africa is 1.35B. In the unlikely event that 50M are displaced by a few miles by rising sea levels, I’m sure Africa will cope.
Sea level has risen 120m over the past 20,000 years and we seem to have managed.
hhmmm.. is this what he means.. they mean?.. I am afraid that is the main excuse they are toying to bring as many immigrants in our countries.. to destroy us and replace us all.. We are the obstacle, we are free.. Look around.. communism, radical Islam, poverty, unemployment, women and children are slaves.. drug cartels, mafia everywhere… we are what is left free, and they are rushing to finish with us..
Obama said ‘Vote for me and I’ll stop sea levels rising!’ Well he must have been successful as if not he would not have been so stupid as to buy a mansion on the New England coast only 1.5 m above the waves.
And the people of the Maldives must have been overjoyed as despite dire warnings that they would disappear beneath the sea in 30 years here we are 35 years later and they aren’t even wearing wellies!
The only Great Reset I want to see is dialling back government and corporate bureaucratic power to interfere with individuals and their enterprises.
But it seems instead Big Gov have been using the pandemic to accumulate power and crush individuals while funnelling cash to their own pet schemes. And every one of us net taxpayers knows we’re gonna be hardest hit so they can pay for it all.
You miss entirely what Big Government is up to. Social Engineering is the main purpose. Pay the unemployable to have lots of children wile making it too expensive by taxation for Middle Class to have even enough children to replace themselves. Open borders to unskilled of very different culture to divide and conquer the population wile taking the work from the domestic low skilled, making them welfare clients of the state. Make all groups against all the others, It is the Great Reset. Also to destroy community and Western morality and ethics, as that is the best way to stop cohesive society. It is all in the ‘Frankfurt School 11 Points’ if you care to look.
‘But surely the plain truth is that we are born greedy, narcissistic and violent….Left entirely to ourselves, individuals will exploit, slack off, rent-seek, and cheat.’
That’s not ‘surely the plain truth’. That’s the plain truth of those who believe humanity is inherently nasty and our baser instincts are only kept in check with a good dose of patriotic duty and old fashioned C of E morality rather than addressing the reasons why our society actively promotes and rewards the exploiters, rent-seekers and cheats.
Some interesting thoughts although (unless I am being dim – it happens) Danny is conflating ‘society’ with ‘government’.
Is the purpose of politics to ‘strengthen the family’? I am unconvinced. I thought the purpose of politics was, at its most fundamental, to win elections and then decide where to spend/invest money.
At its core the proposals all sound a bit Blair/Cameron for my tastes. I want politicians to stay out of my life as much as possible not to give me lessons in ‘society’ or the ‘family’. Fine they can tax me (and I will base my vote on what I think my taxes should be spent on) but, having known a lot of politicians over the years, I am not interested in taking lessons from them about the rights and wrongs of how society should function.
This sounds exactly whats needed.
Unfortunately, I expect the same MPs who made BREXIT difficult will also make this difficult.
And many voters will complain that “Real” Conservative policies such as small-state and low taxes arent being followed.
Whereas I, thinking that Margaret Thatcher was fantastic, keep pointing out that the political party should conform to it’s name of conservative!
I’ve seen this coming a long time ago.. I walk into a shop and the radio plays: about vaccines and that they are made here in Oxford, they are safe.. And then I read, about the war between Uk and Eu.. and the incompetence of the Eu to vaccinate the citizenry… Can you see how they do it? This is how the patriots are being exploited and being sacrificed, they are the problem anyway.. Those seeking the new world order.. new normal.. great reset and the like.. they will do all it takes to seize everyone For their agenda. Nationalism and patriotism, ethics and a bit of the old world.. are being exploited for appealing to the toughest guy .. the honest and hardworking, those with intuition and forethought combined with good observation, logic, and analytical skills. Because of authorship and ownership of everything they decide and live. The attempt of new social covenant is a combination of politics, religion and ethics to make space for those do not fit to the world they are planning.. and give them the illusion that they are wanted .. then again whether it is the old or the new world/normal.. it has never been Our world… for a very long time.. There are agendas, built one upon the other, they only take a few turns until they iron out all resistance and eradicate free will. And although, every now and there, they are talking about something New.. well, their plan is very, very old.. and the End is One. They keep repeating the same methods though.. and I am tired and bored of their dishonesty and disrespect to everyone human. Then ideologies were made aiming to the total demolition of all we have been creating. We have a massive opportunity to Create Again. Get rid of all their fakeness. They want one thing: to win all positions, all arguments and from every single point of view. For example, when they need to push the buttons of the patriots then ..the Oxford vaccine is good because we make it !..thus, patriots run to the vaccination center to sacrifice your health, life.. for your country… Then Patriotism is not good enough any longer because vaccine nationalism is bad.. and we the patriots must feel guilty for once more. It is rather the time that we make decisions: 1. How rich can someone be? 2. Do their fortunes really belong to them? 3. The conflict of interests of the so called super-rich, when they are being involved in politics, charities etc.. Can they? 4. It is time that we scrutinize every single transnational organization such as World Economic Forum, WHO, EU, IMF, even Unite Nations.. Is the harm they are making more than the good? By the way.. Africa is massive.. why they need to come in here? And what is gone happen to those vast areas of land?.. will they remain empty?.. or are they planning something else will be happening in those area?
This pretty much describes what the SDP is all about in a nutshell. Family. Community. Nation.
This sounds like the usual communitarian cakeism – people chose to value things which do not maximise their economic benefit, so those who make other choices have to pay for it. You may well decide that staying in the area you were born is important to you, but that does not make it incumbent on Goldman Sachs to open an office there so you can be an investment banker. Life involves choices and no amount of Prince Charles-style neo-feudalist hand wringing can change that. Politics needs to deal with the world and people as they are, not try to impose some sort of de haut en bas cookie cutter merely because its authors think that is how people lived in an imaginary past or because they are arrogant enough to think they have worked out what a good life looks like at the scale of a population. The best way for government to make better people is to get out of the way and let them do it themselves in the manner they wish.
To strengthen the family……a more integrated life…..We need more flexible work……We need to give marriage its proper due.
All of the above sound like they are coming from a person who is looking back and thinking “This is how it used to be and it was great.”
It completely misses the point that politics over the last 70 years has been about the notion of ‘equality’. Now ‘equality’ can mean – ‘Nobody is telling me what to do’, ‘I don’t feel like getting married, why should I’, ‘Who are they to tell me what to do’, ‘If I want to take drugs, why shouldn’t I ?’…. In fact, Anarchy, and this takes us to another thread today.
Interesting. However, like other animals, we relate to other biological organisms, including humans, through the interspecific interactions. The main types of interspecific interactions include competition (-/-), predation (+/-), mutualism, (+/+), commensalism (+/0), and parasitism (+/-).
https://www.khanacademy.org/science/ap-biology/ecology-ap/community-ecology/a/interactions-in-communities
In this respect, any ecologically coherent social covenant will need to take this interactions into consideration.
Look forward to hearing more.
I was with you until you started parroting all the silly lies about ‘climate change’.