The dangerous cult of change | thearticle

Up until the mid-2010s, one of the main gripes of Europeans and Americans was that their politicians were too similar. How easy was it to lambast the Labour and Tory front benches for being

indistinguishable, with their matching suits, accents, policies and Oxbridge backgrounds, or to rebuke Democrats and Republicans in the US as really being members of a “One America Party”

which possessed a conservative wing and a very conservative wing? Even the PS and the UMP in France, or CDU and SPD in Germany, were thought to be the same side of the same coin. How

different the situation is now. France is divided between a presidential liberal reformer, who wants to tear up much of the country’s expensive welfare model but is frustrated by almost

weekly riots, and his main challenger, a clever and protean ethno-nationalist. Unless Joe Biden wins the Democratic nomination, we are about to see Trump play off against the hard-left next

year, and a change of president will likely see politics oscillate between the hard-left and hard-right for at least the next decade. Recent European elections saw victories for the Greens

and nationalist right at the expense of the establishment parties. It goes without saying how Britain’s political canvas is being stretched and torn in the middle. That the respectable-right

and soft-left across the world are losing ground is obvious. The pyre for social democracy burns ever-higher election after election, while traditional centre-right parties are sprinting

rightwards. The speed at which historic establishment parties are crumbling in Europe and America can be exaggerated but not denied. And it is unlikely to be reversed soon. Nick Cohen,

writing last year in his _Observer_ column, long before the general election, was spot on. “The energy and the votes appear to lie with radical rather than ‘respectable’ conservatives,” he

noted. “The future is extreme, and, like prostitutes turning a trick, conservatives would rather lose their respectability than their chance of staying in the game.” But a more fundamental

shift is also taking place. Even before Brexit or Trump it was obvious that the policies separating the political left and right were changing. In the 1990s it was possible to say (and with

the rise of New Labour, be believed) that the right had won the “economic war” and the left the “cultural war”, and both sides adjusted accordingly. By the mid-2000s, nobody was winning the

economic war (and the party of business has now been taken over by someone who is happy to exclaim, “f**k business”). Meanwhile both sides are scrapping it out over new cultural wars,

securing pyrrhic victories in their own ways. But the underlying motives that separated the old left and right are also fading. Quintin Hogg, a would-be Tory leader from the last century,

rightly noted that “conservatism is not so much a philosophy as an attitude”. The same could be said of the non-Marxist left. Traditionally, that attitude of conservatives and the right was

to preserve the hierarchies of the day, either the hierarchies of political and economic institutions or the hierarchies of ideas. The attitude of liberals and the left, on the other hand,

was to speak for the people who found themselves at the bottom of those hierarchies. In a low-resolution image, the right was about protecting existing institutions and the left was about

reforming them. A healthy political environment needs both attitudes. The left makes sure that hierarchies don’t become too corrupted (as they tend to do when left unchecked) and to ensure

that those at the bottom get a voice. This is as true for the financially poor at the bottom of economic hierarchies as for religious, ethnic or sexual minorities at the bottom of the

hierarchy of opinions. The right stops the left from chipping away at the hierarchies so much that they collapse altogether, bringing the state structure toppling down with them. Such a

division is becoming unrecognisable. Responsibility for the political mise en scène has been taken over by anti-establishment and anti-elitist figures on both sides, who are demanding their

own revolt against the status quo. Our current-day politics isn’t only more tribal, it’s also more demanding. A politician who has no radical set of plans for how to change every aspect of

politics (whether they need changing or not) isn’t going to become that popular on social media or rolling news, or considered electable by their party. The Tory leadership election of last

year made that clear — and the general election seconded it. The likely election of another Corbyn-esque leader of the Labour Party assures this for the left, too. Meanwhile, the retreat

into near silence of those who fought against Brexit, and supported a second referendum, has ended a short spell when some politicians were at least willing to tell people that what they

voted for might not have been what they thought or wanted. Populism is better described as “anti-elitism”, but a further question is worth asking: which British politician is going to

publicly call themselves an “elitist” nowadays? Probably not one who wants to be favoured by the electorate. Who is going to say that what actually matters most is better management of

existing institutions, not their radical overhaul? Or have the bravery to say that, yes, the “establishment” let the people down, but what taxpayers lost in the MP’s expenses scandal, for

instance, is trifling compared to what they’ll lose because of the populist policies? Who is going to say they are not the noble rebel or the prancing outsider, but rather the comfortable

insider who will do the boring work competently and, perhaps, actually does know what is best for the public, regardless of whether they want to hear it or not?