Political Cynic’s attempt at ‘Rhetorical Mapping’.
Headline: Historians will look back on 14 years of lost opportunities. Since 2010, five Conservative prime ministers have notched up some modest successes. But measured against four other periods of one-party dominance, the record is distinctly underwhelming, argues Anthony Seldon
Editor : the final paragraphs of this Times assessment of 14 years of Tory rule offer:
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Furious Tories turned their sights on the blob, as it was termed, to blame for the poor performance. Never have the Conservatives attacked in such a consistent way the civil service, the judiciary, the Bank of England, the BBC and universities. Denunciation without reform generates poor morale and confusion, which is what happened. The centre of government was in need of dramatic reform for sure, and grievously missed the departure of cabinet secretary Jeremy Heywood who died in 2018, aged 56. The office of the prime minister, and its relations with the Treasury, need attention, and the centre of government needs slimming down and strengthening, as the Institute for Government report Power with Purpose argued this year. It didn’t deserve aimless trashing.
External shocks did not help any of the five prime ministers, including the legacy of the global financial crisis, Covid and the invasion of Ukraine with its devastating impact on fuel prices. But the earlier governments had shocks too, including the Suez crisis of 1956, adroitly calmed by the incoming prime minister Harold Macmillan. Thatcher’s handling of the Falklands conflict and end of the Cold War and Major’s resetting of economic policy with the chancellor Norman Lamont after Black Wednesday in 1992, when Britain was ejected from the European exchange rate mechanism, were confidently handled. The biggest shock of all in 2010-24 was entirely self-imposed: Brexit. The criticism of historians is likely to focus less on the decisions that led to it than on the lack of leadership that followed and the failure to capitalise on the opportunities that Brexit presented. Every disruption, as every great leader knows, creates unprecedented opportunities. The Conservatives had not only Brexit but also Covid, but such moments have to be channelled, and they conspicuously were not.
The 14 years of Conservative rule have not been altogether wasted. There were plenty of examples of effective and high-quality leadership, rarely more so than at the Queen’s funeral, masterminded indicatively not by the nation’s politicians but by its much-criticised civil servants. But with the long lens of history, these 14 years will be seen as a time when opportunities for national renewal, cohesion and purpose were lost. So not wasted, but prodigal. Whether Labour, if they win, will be able to provide the quality of leadership demanded is the question. The country still has not found a settled place domestically or in the world at large this century. Starmer will need to emulate the ambition and achievement of Attlee — or of Wilson, Blair and Brown at their best — if he is to provide the strategic leadership needed.
Editor: The Reader might look to The Financial Times’ Janan Ganesh’s last two essays, that seem to be dislocated from the imperatives of the Times’ hired political experts, Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton!
After this May 17, 2024 opening paragraph:
When I was two or three, I went walkabout and wasn’t found until some time later at a local mall. What a close brush with disaster, readers will think. What a potential loss to English letters and the Clerkenwell restaurant trade. Relax. This happened in one of the safest countries on Earth. I got my infant meanderings out of the way in Singapore.
And it’s successors:
A point gets lost in all the coverage of the island state as it changes leadership this month. Economic enrichment is Singapore’s other achievement. It comes below, and wouldn’t have happened without, the creation of order and cohesion where there had been communal strife. To quote its per capita income, which now tops that of the US, is to understate what has happened in a once-fractious Chinese-Malay-Indian society.
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The press is full of “Whither Singapore?” articles this month, and fair enough. The country has to navigate the US-China rift without the helpful scale of other Asean nations. It flourished in a world order that is decomposing. (LKY’s all-too-prescient speech to Congress urged America to uphold free trade.) But the island’s ultimate advantage, and example to the world, was always inside the head. That rational incoherence isn’t so easily lost.
https://www.ft.com/content/6f59d545-8201-4fe6-b280-3e96cc245dc4
Reader, that was just the amuse bouche: Let me segue to Ganesh’s May 21, 2024 essay:
Headline’; The lesson of the great American boom
Sub-headline: Maybe politics, which for decades has been dysfunctional in the US, doesn’t matter that much
https://www.ft.com/content/4effcabc-8b5b-4cd4-a3e7-b5a38f487863
In Europe, the three signs of spring have arrived: the bright flora, the endless days and the ambient sound of American voices. All are welcome. But the last is also an annual reminder of the spending power of US tourists. That their economy has outperformed the continent’s this past decade or two can be felt, not just measured.
The material success of the US is discussed in all quarters. What isn’t said enough is that it has happened amid political bedlam. America has roared ahead in the era of the Tea Party, Donald Trump, “forever wars” abroad and culture wars at home. There have been more presidential impeachments in the past generation than in the previous two centuries of the republic. At the turn of the millennium, 44 per cent of Americans trusted the federal government. Now 16 per cent do. The US failed to achieve even a peaceful transfer of power at its last election. (Unlike, say, Senegal.) The civic rot is so deep that well-adjusted citizens find themselves taking an interest in the health of Supreme Court justices, lest one die under a president of the opposing side.
So much political turmoil, so little economic consequence. Why?
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In liberal thought, stable political institutions are held to be a precondition for affluence, which in turn increases public support for those institutions, until the circle of logic is closed. In America we are seeing, if not the first ever challenge to this notion, then perhaps the one on the largest historical scale. It is hard to know what to feel: relief at the resilience of America’s wealth creators, or dread that its voters lack a material incentive to fix politics.
https://www.ft.com/content/4effcabc-8b5b-4cd4-a3e7-b5a38f487863
Editor: Ganesh favorite guise is that of the boulevardier! How might the regular Reader of Ganesh interpret these essays, and their function illuminating the looming British Election? If at all?
Political Cynic
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