CAMERON'S FEAR FACTOR

Conservative Conference and the Rise of Britain’s Darwinian Knight 

THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES

One of the most memorable and thought provoking documentaries of my teens was Adam Curtis’ ‘The Power of Nightmares’. It starts with the following lines:

“in the past politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this but their power and authority came form the optimistic visions they offered their people. Those dreams failed and people have lost faith in ideologies. Today politicians are simply seen as bank managers of public life. But now they have discovered a new role that restores their power and authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares”.

That analysis was made eight years ago with regard to the rise of America’s Neo-Con blood lust. For Bush – and Blair – the narrative of unseen, internationally-present, malign forces, too complex for the Average Joe to fully understand, allowed them to get away with murder – politically speaking, if not also legally. Meanwhile, sadly for us, they forgot to play at being bank-managers.

Now, Cameron, in his speech to conference 2012, is also evoking the presence of unseen, internationally present, malign forces, too complex for the Average Miliband to understand. The opening lines sound like the intro to a Schwazenegger movie;

“We Knew then that it was not just the ordinary duties of office that we were assuming. We were entering into government at a grave moment in the modern history of Britain. At a time when people felt uncertainty, even fear... Two and a half years later of course I can’t tell you that all is well”.

In a speech with so much to like why was I left feeling so angry?

US AGAINST THE WORLD? 

The most chilling line of all was this: ‘The Truth is this: We are in a Global Race today. And that means an hour of reckoning for countries like ours’”. The ‘Truth’?! Is this the definition of ‘Truth’ that Cameron will swear by in a court of law? That he will promise to tell and nothing but? Because if so, it is a dark, and divisive and Darwinian one. If Britain is to stay ‘rising’, who exactly is to fall? - Greece? Syria? Congo? The environment? The future? If Britain is the good guy who wins, who’s the bad guy that loses?

Everyone loves a race. And Cameron was right to celebrate the Olympics as an example of the ambition, dedication and hard work we need to do well in a global economy. But he overlooked the fact that, at the Olympics, each participating player, once there, races on a level playing field. The race is a fair one and the real joy of the Olympics is not just seeing Britain come together, but seeing the world act as one.

An international solution to the international economic crisis, however, or even a European one, doesn’t seem to be what Cameron wants. His tactic is to trump the division between the haves and have-nots in this country by highlighting the one between us and less fortunately places in the world. This division is apparently a Darwinian fight to the death, or ‘decline’ as he would more elegantly put it. But whatever the phrase used, it’s pure gang culture government. Even if you don’t like the fact that ‘we’ (the Tory leadership) obviously have more money and more clout than ‘you’ (the average voter), get with us, or get bashed by the other gangs. Ugh.

When will we have a politics of co-operation? Of interdependence? It was great to hear the speech celebrate British industry for starting the world’s first green investment bank, and being ‘number one’ in the world for tidal  and offshore wind. However, here it is again, this politics of winners and losers. As if we have topped the medal table at school. Of all subjects, clean energy production isn’t a ‘number one’ type issue. What’s good for Britain here is good for all – we havn’t arrived first in the race, we’re simply – and proudly – leading the way.

I’m not anti success or aspiration as Cameron would probably like to paint me. And I’m not naïve enough to think that the world economy operates without a certain Darwinian, competitive, flair. But more contemporary scientists than Darwin have also shown that the species that succeed most in the evolutionary narrative are also the ones that embrace the skills of co-operation. In fact the foundation of every ecosystem on which our lives are based is built on the premise of interdependence. Sadly independence (from the state and other countries) seems to be as far as Cameron’s understanding of evolutionary science goes.

TRUE GEEKS DON’T WEAR SUITS

Finally, as an admirer of geeks, I genuinely appreciate Cameron’s mandates for schools: ‘where discipline is strict, expectations are high and no excuses are accepted for failure’. I can see what he’s doing – and as someone who only relatively recently graduated from the comprehensive school system I definitely think we need schools in which expectations are as high as possible – and that everyone is pushed to achieve as hard as possible. But I also think the last things schools – both kids and teachers – need is rules for rules sake, strictness and suits and uniforms for the sake of strictness and suits and a potentially very narrow definition of ‘success’.

Yes, we want Britain to continue to ‘rise’ as the entrepreneurial, innovative, creative, even quirky, country that Danny Boyle celebrated. But my question to Cameron is this: did Steve Jobs wear a suit?