I’ve read a fair bit of Sean Gabb’s work and usually find myself nodding in agreement. His post mortem of his appearance on 18 Doughty Street makes fascinating reading.
I knew this would be bad television from the moment the cameras were switched on. I found myself trapped on a couch with some loud woman from the BBC, with a toad in a suit who was something in the Greater London Conservative Policy, and with a Labour apparatchik who had cycled up from Rotherhithe. I never caught their names, and do not feel inclined to look them up on the Doughty Street website. These struck up a detailed and generally approving examination of the new Cabinet Ministers appointed by Gordon Brown. With growing disquiet, I sat listening to the flow of knowing, self-referential chatter. The other guests seemed to be competing on who could claim to know more of the new Ministers and who could pass the most flattering comments on their ability.
I haven’t seen the programme myself, but there’s a familiarness about that scene. The talking heads set-up. Like Orwell’s pigs and humans in Animal Farm, it can be difficult to tell them apart sometimes.
Gabb then sets to work with a stiletto…
Suddenly, Iain Dale turned to me and asked if I thought the Conservatives might have trouble finding people of sufficient quality to shadow the new Ministers.
Yes, I answered wearily, the Conservatives would have trouble matching the quality of these new Ministers—but only because they were themselves even more useless and morally corrupt than Labour. I added that a better government than the new one could easily be formed by choosing two dozen people at random from the catering staff at the Palace of Westminster.
Ouch! But, he is probably right. Those random two dozen people likely as not have more common sense than the whole of the elected assembly. They, at least, experience the real world rather than the heady self-congratulatory, rarefied atmosphere of the political debating chamber.
That started a flood of denunciation. The Loud Woman asked grandly who I thought I was to speak so slightingly of our masters.
Our masters?!?! For fuck’s sake, who is this woman? Oh, yeah, that’s right, she’s from the BBC, so in her case that’s probably an accurate comment. As for the rest of us, these self-serving jackanapes are our servants not our masters. Gabb’s reply was spot on:
I answered that every politician I had ever met was human trash—the better ones were in the game for the money and sex; the rest were plodding control freaks.
So there you have it; politicians in a nutshell; money, sex and control freakery. All too frequently the truism in that comment is exposed by the bastards behaving precisely as Gabb describes them.
Now, I have been accused, because of my recent postings, of political nihilism. My accusers have a point. But what is wrong with nihilism?
Good question. Not least because I find myself in much the same position. I despise all of them with a vengeance. They lie and they deceive, and they lack the moral authority to lead. It doesn’t matter what colour the rosette, the stench of corruption and self-interest is identical. So, why should I support any of them?
Suppose you are taken into a restaurant, where everything offered is some preparation of stinking fish. Do you placidly go ahead with your order? Or do you throw the menu aside and comment on the smell?
I comment on the smell.
And suppose the other guests—who all seem to have a connection with the management—strike up a debate on the merits of poached as against grilled stinking fish. Do you join in? Or do you head for the door?
I head for the door. And to those who say “but you should try to change things from within,” I say, “dream on”.
And—to complete the analogy—suppose you find yourself chained to the table with a feeding tube shoved down your throat. Is it reasonable to do other than wish for the waiters and the unseen kitchen staff to be taken out and shot?
Indeed, though I would wish for something more painful and humiliating than merely shooting. Sharp pointy things in unmentionable places would be my preference.
That describes the politics of this country at the moment. And if saying so is nihilism, I am a nihilist.
So, too am I, then.
Update: Having caught up with the programme, I suggest that Sean Gabb sticks to writing rather than speaking. He had good things to say, but they didn’t come across too well.