Powerful People

We visit an archaeological site, and collect a few shards.

What, after all, is the point of Johnson, if he can’t dismiss his opponents with a clever turn of phrase? What, indeed, is the point of the Oxford Union, if one of its most celebrated presidents can’t win a debate against an Islington hippy? The proroguing of Parliament couldn’t come soon enough for Johnson.

After the debacle we gloat on a pundit’s prophetic errors. In this I am not interested. Though the history needs to be noted. Before the election campaign I was in South Wales. Talking to lifelong Labour voters it was obvious to me Corbyn was going to lose. In surrendering to the fanatic Remainers he had turned the election into a partial referendum, where more people didn't want Corbyn - seen as too extreme - than wanted to fight it out again over the European Union. Not his fault, of course, it was the Remain hardcore who demanded he come down from that razored-glass wall separating the two sides. As they hugged him in their own garden they refused to see the resentment and hurt of their neighbours. Maybe they even gloated. After all, there was nothing these poor people could do; they had no choice, they had to vote Labour, the only party for the dispossessed. And they could pride themselves on their own acuity and gain false confidence from it. After all, for our neighbours politics is habit, it runs down the families; not like us, who think about these things and sometimes change our minds. Victory was assured. Silly-billies. It was already lost.

I more interested in the assumptions behind this paragraph. The article itself is very good. I particularly like William Davies’s argument that the fragmentation of the political class is embodied in Cummings, Corbyn and Johnson. The typical politician has been broken down, and like some sci-fi film now walks about as three separate people: the technocrat, the idealist and the opportunist. This is excellent.

Davies argues that Johnson and Corbyn come from radically different backgrounds. Oh dear. Both belong to the educated bourgeoisie, though Johnson occupies a larger house, which is situated on a higher hill, than Corbyn’s. Both live on the Chilterns, the rest of us occupying the plain. This has strange effects on the common people. Most working class voters I know - and I know a few - prefer the ‘higher’ Johnson to the ‘lower’ Corbyn. Why?

Both have constructed political personas, but somehow Johnson’s feels more real. The bon vivant -  it is the sensuality of the aristocrat - feels closer than the ascetic bureaucrat or pious preacher. The professional bourgeois is more alien to the ‘ordinary’ person than a man like Johnson. Then, few of us ever meet an aristocrat. We see them at a distance in their expensive cars and with their more expensive wives. Too far away for jealousy, they stimulate our fantasy life.

Corbyn, in contrast, is very near to us. When we go to the Job Centre, visit the Council Offices or apply for a passport we meet the well-meaning but narrow clerk who not only doesn't understand us, but forces us to follow his rules. Corbyn embodies the petty power of the petty official that governs too much of our lives. Oh, he is well-meaning. But most people want respect and justice, not charity, especially when that charity comes at a cost of one’s own honour and freedom. The Tall Men by William Faulkner a stunning portrayal of the ignorance of the government official who hasn’t grasped the natural aristocracy of the working man.

Corbyn’s persona feels fake. In many ways it is more genuine - this man believes in what he is doing. But this is the problem. Most people don’t live by idea and ideal. They get by, do the daily things; enjoy their own greed and self interest; ideas and politics the background noise that is occasionally foregrounded - Brexit. He actually believes in ideas? This seems unreal. And alienates many. Thus, whereas Johnson’s poshness seems to bring him closer to the people, Corbyn’s demotic takes him further away from them. They do not understand this man and therefore do not trust him. His u-turn over the second referendum confirmed this mistrust. Behaving like a typical politician he was condemned as one. Worse. He was resented as a representative of the local oligarchies: the councils and the regional offices of the Welfare State. It is power on one’s doorstep that we find the most oppressive.

In addition to downgrading Corbyn’s class status Davies misunderstands not only Johnson’s political strategy but the nature of modern politics. Under Theresa May we discovered that it is ok is to lose debates in the House of Commons. We had returned to an older more democratic Westminster, when the House - the MPs themselves not the party leader - decides who wins. Johnson and Cummings would have noticed this, and learnt their own lessons. By forcing the Commons to vote against them they delegitimised their opponents. Each defeat an advert selling themselves to the electorate. Losing in Parliament Johnson confirmed its ‘corruption’ and was winning in the country. To lose these debates the necessary prologue to the prorogue. Davies, who belongs to the professional class, misses what is obvious to any outsider.

Mr Davies doesn’t understand politics. Long gone are the days when politicians made a name for themselves as debaters in the chamber. Oh, they might get excited, but what happens on the floor of the House of Commons is largely irrelevant these days. Brexit is the one exception, and even that could not last. Policy is decided outside the House, in the leader’s private room. And elections…they are won on the TV screen, where Corbyn is dismissed with a joke.