Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons From Modern Life

by David Mitchell

  The current government has undergone a horrendous series of crises: sudden and massive financial meltdown just as the man who was associated with the country’s finances became prime minister; an expenses scandal discrediting the whole House of Commons at a time when most of its members were Labour; the war in Afghanistan becoming ever bloodier and more intractable; and finally the mass grounding of aircraft caused by an act of God that must have finally convinced Gordon Brown that there isn’t one.

  This last was an emergency which no governing party could have negotiated unscathed: either there are no plane crashes, so the ash was harmless and you’ve overreacted, or there are more than no plane crashes, which, to the non-statistically minded as well as those on board, always seems too many. These, then, were choppy waters indeed (like the stream beside the abattoir after the wrong sluice was opened) and Brown hasn’t been much better at metaphorical canoeing than I imagine he would be at actual canoeing.

  But I grudgingly admit that Cameron’s failure to capitalise on this situation cannot be attributed to his deficiencies as a party leader. He may have refused to make more than the bare minimum of policy commitments; his rhetoric of change, optimism and social responsibility may have been as empty as Ann Widdecombe’s little black book; and the fact that his core team is just a bunch of university mates with a towering sense of entitlement may have been ludicrously ill concealed; but, historically, none of these shortcomings would have stood in the way of his confidently assuming power under circumstances such as these.

  “You’re sick of the government, aren’t you? So vote for me!” is how British opposition leaders have always addressed the electorate. It’s usually enough. “Why commit to policies in advance when I can win just by not being Gordon Brown?” Cameron must have thought. It doesn’t exactly make him a statesman, but it doesn’t mean he’s an idiot either. He analysed his strategic objective and, in time-honoured fashion, organised a perfectly competent cavalry charge. It had always worked in the past. And then history opened up on him with a machine gun.

  It feels like something may be changing, and this could be real change rather than the mere alternative that Cameron offers. The apathy and disillusionment of the electorate may be turning into something more constructive than moaning about politicians being the same, not bothering to vote or telling ourselves that Ukip isn’t racist. Instead, people are beginning seriously to question the two-party system. That’s why Cameron’s strategy, to everyone’s surprise, isn’t working.

  The public’s reasoning may have gone like this: “The Tories represent change, in that electing them would result in a change of government. But somehow I’m not sure they’d be a better government, just a different one. And, in fact, there’s something eerily familiar about them. Big business seems to back them. Does that mean they’re nice? Hmm.

  “Oh, it doesn’t make any difference who you vote for, does it? They all use the same platitudes. I wish they could all lose. I suppose that means I want a hung parliament? People seem to think that could happen. And everyone says Nick Clegg won the first leadership debate. I only saw a bit of it myself, but I’m quite glad – he was the underdog. Maybe I’ll vote for him? That might give the Lib Dems a bit more influence if there’s a hung parliament. Also, it might keep the Labour/Tory [delete as applicable] candidate out in my constituency.

  “Actually, wait a minute! I feel quite good about Nick Clegg now! Nick Clegg and a hung parliament! And the Lib Dems want proportional representation, which would mean there’d always be a hung parliament. Would that matter? It seems interesting.”

  I hope people have been thinking along those lines because I believe that that’s the sort of typically British, ponderous and cynical reasoning that could bring about proper reform. Historically, we don’t change things out of ideological zeal, we change them when enough is enough. We’re sick of a system where all a party leader needs to do to win power is convince us that he’s not as bad as his rival. In a proportionally representative hung parliament, politicians may have to win arguments and talk about all their policies, not just scaremonger about the taxes or cuts that they claim their opponents are planning.

  I’m speaking too soon but all this makes me optimistic. The savage and irresponsible response from the Tories and the rightwing press to Clegg’s popularity boost reinforces my belief that something might be happening. Otherwise the Tory papers wouldn’t be using words like “Nazi” and even more damaging ones like “donations”. And senior Conservatives wouldn’t imply that a hung parliament would usher in a sort of governmental apocalypse.

  The truth is, for them it might. No party has done better under the old system than the Conservatives – they’ve enjoyed decades in office. But a hung parliament resulting in electoral reform could mean they never form a majority government again. They’re feeling the hand of history where it hurts.

  Like I said, it didn’t really work out that way.

  Part 2: After the Election

  Nick Clegg gets a lot of stick these days. I’ve certainly slagged him off several times, and I feel guilty. It says a lot more about me than it does about him – I’m just cross with myself for voting for his party. If I hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t mind him at all. But when you vote Lib Dem, the last thing you expect is to end up complicit in what a government is doing. You expect to be merrily carping on the sidelines at the thoughtlessness of those corrupted by power. It’s an almost monastic act, a renunciation of worldly power in the name of self-righteousness.

  When you’re trying to wash your hands of politics, it’s disconcerting to discover you’ve just rinsed them in the blood of your countrymen, to have to explain yourself to Labour-voting friends: “I’m sorry, I got overexcited about electoral reform”; “I became intimidated by the size of Gordon Brown’s head”; “It was annoying not to be able to feel smug about Iraq.” You can’t say: “Well, I never expected them to get into office – that was the key to their appeal.” At worst, they were supposed to mitigate New Labour, not connive with the Tories.

  If it’s been a nasty shock for me, how much worse must it have been for Clegg? A member of the Lib Dems said to me in early 2010 that a hung parliament would be a disastrous election result for them. I didn’t really understand. To me, it seemed like their best realistic outcome. I now realise we were both right. Clegg must have had a horrible time under a barrage of abuse and, as the anniversary of the election approached, it started to show. He began to look jowly and sad. One thought of him sitting through cabinet meetings, shaking his head and glumly eating crisps.

  Well, there’s only so much criticism a man can take before he’s forced to react, and it seems Clegg has finally snapped. But instead of resigning and returning to his manifesto pledges, he’s just got himself a rowing machine. Obviously he didn’t mind people calling him a hypocrite nearly as much as them saying he had a paunch. To be fair, he’s only going along with our whole society’s priorities there.

  Apparently the machine allows Clegg to work out between, and sometimes even during, meetings. Presumably this way he can intimidate advisers with his physicality: panting and dripping with perspiration, he can draw them into his circle of trust, closer to the heart of power, like the noblemen privileged to witness Louis XIV’s levee. Or indeed like Winston Churchill, who often conducted business from his bed or the bath, a glass of champagne in one hand and a cigar in the other. I can’t really imagine Churchill heaving away at an exercise machine, though – getting out of breath while Halifax burbled on about appeasement. The blood, toil, tears and sweat he offered members of his government were largely metaphorical.

  There’ll be no victory cigar for Clegg because he’s given up smoking. This is a shame as it was one of the few things I still liked about him. I’m not saying it’s good to smoke, but it was an engaging reminder of his humanity, his frailty – it helped me believe that he was acting more out of weakness than malice. Although an aide said that Clegg “hasn’t needed gum or hypnosis or anythi
ng like that. Willpower alone has done the trick.” A fine time to suddenly find some of that.

  The main reason I’m disappointed by Clegg’s health drive is that it means he’ll stay looking exactly like all our other neat, slightly boyish politicians: Cameron, Osborne, several Milibands, Andy Burnham. Brown hair, black suit, white face, plausible smile – that’s what you’ve got to look like, conventional wisdom tells us, if you aspire to the front rank of power. Forgettable, identical, cast in the image of Blair. Clegg’s ageing and broadening features had begun to make him look like a recognisably different person – not quite as noticeable as Eric Pickles, but it was something. But now, with exercise and a diet, he’s squeezing himself back into the mould.

  Well, I think it’s about time someone broke it. People are always claiming that a bald man can never be prime minister in the television age. But what about John Major? I know, technically, he had a full head of hair but, if they’re saying that baldness makes you seem ineffectual, then Major was metaphorically worthy of a coot simile. He exuded the air of the loser, the underdog, the submissive, and yet no prime minister’s government, in all of British history, has polled more votes than Major’s did in 1992. Maybe it was because the country, after a decade’s cruelty at the hands of a savage dominatrix, wanted to get fucked normally for a bit. But still, it’s a sign that our leaders don’t necessarily all have to look the same.

  Not many of our top politicians from any of the main parties would declare themselves fans of Blair, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. It would have been difficult to believe postwar Germany’s rejection of fascism if its leaders had taken to growing little moustaches. It’s depressing that Blair’s rise to power is the only sort our politicians have the imagination to believe possible. Surely the electorate must be sick of that style of politics?

  In television, for all that people talk of creativity, the percentage game is in being deftly derivative. Don’t have the big, risky, original idea, be the first to copy it. The steady money is in remakes, reworkings, shows you can signal to an audience as being similar to something they’ve enjoyed before. These programmes don’t change the world, but they pay the rent.

  It seems that politics is the same: everyone’s still aping Blair. But the world is changing fast (just because people always say that doesn’t mean it isn’t currently true). Our next important leader is unlikely to obey the same rules as the last. Maybe the time has come for someone bald, or old, or obese, or disabled – or just less slick. It never looked likely that it would be Nick Clegg. Now he’s dutifully pumping iron to make sure.

  *

  When did rebranding start? Pretty shortly after branding, I imagine. It must have been an uncomfortable feeling for those early cattle, still smarting from having the first mark seared into their hides, to notice the iron-age farmer firing up the furnace again on the advice of a trendy neighbour:

  “Two straight lines is all very well, man, but I think if you added another one and a squiggle, you’d be projecting a much more powerful image.”

  “Would people think my cattle were more modern?”

  “Totally.”

  “I like that bone you’ve got through your nose.”

  “Thanks – it’s the new ‘scourge of my enemies’ chic. Makes you look like you’ve killed a chieftain, although in fact it’s a badger’s tibia.”

  I suppose there was a rebranding explosion when Europe Christianised: loads of mosaics having to be relaid, crosses nailed on to temples, altars altered. Plenty of lucrative work for artists who specialised in making Jupiter look like Jesus; and then, when the Vikings came, look like Odin; and then, when the Vikings converted, look like Jesus again. There can’t have been a bigger payday for the rebranding industries until British Rail was smashed up into a dozen new made-up companies. That probably added more to the GDP through business-card printing than Brunel ever managed by building viaducts.

  The first rebranding I was aware of was when Marathon became Snickers. It was a profoundly unsettling moment. The manufacturers were trying to mess with something inside our heads: the noise we associated with a certain object.

  It’s like when you start worrying that blue looks yellow to everyone else and that when they say “blue”, they’re thinking of yellow, and vice versa. How can you check? How do you describe blue? The mournful one? Aqua-brown? Red’s old sparring partner? Ultimately it’s just “the same colour as all the other things that are blue” – which, as I say, might look yellow to everyone else. When Marathon became Snickers, blue became yellow and words suddenly looked as flimsy as capital in the credit crunch. We’re only two confidence tricks away from grunting and barter.

  So I’m suspicious of rebranding. The recent abolition of antisocial behaviour orders, asbos, and their replacement with, among other things, criminal behaviour orders was dismissed by Bob Reitemeier, chief executive of the Children’s Society, as “more of a rebranding exercise than anything else”. Well, unusually, it’s a rebranding exercise I’m in favour of because, unlike Jif becoming Cif, it actually means something.

  Antisocial behaviour is not necessarily illegal. There are no laws against farting in a lift, smoking at an asthmatic’s housewarming, browsing ringtones while travelling on public transport or picking your nose over dinner, and nor should there be. Taking crack is illegal; neglecting to offer some to other people when taking it in company – an act as antisocial, I’d have thought, as failing to get your round in – is not. “Antisocial” is a word for the general public to use when making informal judgments about each other. It should be outside the province of lawyers, politicians and police.

  So I welcome the removal of the name “asbo” and all its rhetorical implications. To me, it always suggested that the authorities were punishing behaviour of which they disapproved, when disapproval is an entirely inappropriate, indeed insolent, emotion for public servants, acting in their professional capacity, to feel. If people break the law, the authorities must dispassionately intervene. Otherwise, the less they opine, the better.

  That’s why I hugely prefer the term “criminal behaviour orders”, even if it comes to refer to the same ineffectual fudge (now Kraft fudge, I think). Criminal behaviour is within the state’s area of legitimate concern. CBOs, unlike asbos, don’t suggest that we’re one step away from the introduction of Get-Your-Hands-Out-of-Your-Pockets-and-Stand-Up-Straight Orders.

  I can’t remember the last time I approved of a politically motivated rebranding. Throughout the New Labour years, I was maddened by the frequent renaming of government departments. What was once the Department of Education and Science, for example, has changed its name five times since the early 1990s. It’s been the Department for Education twice (both at time of writing and from 1992–5), but has also at various times been “for” Employment, Skills, Children, Schools and Families. Every change cost us money and gained us nothing.

  It makes me want to scream: “Listen, you’re in government. Shut up and get on with it. We’ll listen to the opposition because words are all they’ve got. You get to be judged on what you do!” Being “for” education, rather than “of” it; proclaiming your belief in a “big society” of kindly volunteers; and indeed, as has been mooted, moving the May Day bank holiday to October to become a “UK Day” on which we can all preen about how great our country is (which, in my view, is the kind of vulgar thing foreigners do) – this is all window dressing. It’s a waste of everyone’s time and we should be firm in making it clear to our elected leaders that we consider it outside their brief.

  I’m not against a society with shared values, “truths we hold to be self-evident” etc, but I hate it when politicians try to determine what those values are. It’s not a job we can trust them to do because they will instinctively use it to appeal for votes. Our elected representatives are there to decide how much money the government should collect, where it should collect it from, and how it should be spent. Their chances of re-election should be determined sole
ly on how effectively, and equitably, they perform those roles. Politicians should make laws and ensure their enforcement by funding and protecting the independence of our judiciary. They absolutely should not sit in crowd-pleasing judgment themselves.

  What our values are, what our civilisation stands for, what it means to be British – these are issues on which they are less qualified than the average citizen to take a view, because they have too big an incentive to be dishonest. We can’t trust them, when discussing such subjects, not to descend to self-serving demagogy.

  Renaming is a great tool for the demagogue or propagandist. I approve of the asbo/CBO rebrand because the new name is plainer and more accurate. But, in general, we should avoid changing the names of aspects of the state or government because politicians’ tendency will always be to make the new names more emotive, more like adverts. And the government has nothing to sell us that we don’t already own.

  *

  A senior member of the judiciary has got himself into terrible trouble for not being sufficiently judgmental. When sentencing a burglar, Judge Peter Bowers said that burglary took “a huge amount of courage”. “I wouldn’t have the nerve,” he added, before letting the guy off with a suspended sentence.

  As a result of these remarks, Bowers was formally reprimanded by the Office for Judicial Complaints, which must have come as a relief to him because, at the time he made them, he expressed concern that he “might be pilloried”. If he thought that, he should probably go on a refresher course before he sends some poor hoodie down for a keelhauling instead of community service. Maybe he feared that if he didn’t let the burglar off, the guy would get hanged. Or maybe that’s what he wanted – maybe he thought that’s what “suspended sentence” means.

  The judge’s comments drew complaints from all sides – and by “all sides” I mean the prime minister, the chairman of the National Victims’ Association (don’t miss their Christmas party if you like a passive-aggressive ambience) and LBC’s Nick Ferrari. David Cameron said that burglars weren’t brave at all but were “cowards”. I don’t know how he knows that but it’s a good job because presumably, if they were braver, they’d break into loads more places. “Thank the Lord for the comparative cowardice of these dishonest people,” he must be saying.