There is, this morning, a particularly absurd piece in the Times by Jim Murphy and James Purnell (both ministers at the DWP). Besides it being one of those "Blairites for Brown" type pieces it argues that the key battle in the near political future is between conservation and aspiration.
On the one hand they claim we have Cameron who wishes to conserve and maintain the status quo, for he is, they charge, not only a Conservative but a conservative too. And on the other we have, presumably them, who are all about encouraging aspiration and change.
The absurdity occurs in this piece on multiple levels, not only philosophical, but practically. Firstly, the position in which they paint David Cameron and the Tory Party is fundamentally flawed. They claim that all Cameron wishes to do is conserve the state as it is today, to take a "steady as she goes" approach and not improve things.
If we humour that position for a moment, then the implication is that Murphy and Purnell are condemning their own policies and Government. They are essentially arguing that the current situation is bad (which as a matter of fact it is) and that anyone who wants to conserve it, as they claim Cameron does, is on the wrong side of the argument. It is a spectacular display of doublethink.
Meanwhile, whilst they attack their own policies, they also fail to understand what conservatism really is. Small "c "conservatism does not mean "no change at all", it does not mean that you cannot, for want of a better term, progress to a better position. It simply means that you do not believe in change for changes sake on all matters. Nor do you beleive in rapid change without allowing changes you do make to take effect over time.
If you listen, for example, to David Cameron's speech to the Tory Conference last year you find that his conservatism is about taking a cautious approach to change. You do this by avoiding the big narrative theories about how society works. You shed the platonic view that the world is an homogeneous entity to be directed to known outcomes based on grand narratives. Instead you acknowledge the world's complexity, the law of unintended consequence, and thus avoid the trap of compartmentalising your position around a rigid ideology.
The ministers go on to argue that they represent a position which rejects the status quo (and their own policies) and instead concerns itself with aspiration. Interestingly they do not however put forward plans from their own portfolios to, for example, reform the anti-aspirational tax credit system which locks the lower paid into welfare dependency, punishes saving and discourages self-empowerment through the pernicious rate at which credits are reduces when you work more.
The result of their argument is therefore to effectively damn the policies they are responsible for whilst simultaneously supporting them, and then deliberately describe conservatism as a belief that will lock us into the failed policies that they themselves wish to continue. The pinnacle of this intellectual vapidity and doublethink comes when the two minister charge Cameron and the Conservative Party of wishing to maintain the status quo of elitism.
They always say that those in positions of power have a tendency toward myopic views of their own positions, but in this case they seem to be totally blind to what they have just said about themselves.
1 comment:
Good post Dizzy.
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