Westminstenders: Social Conservativism

[RedToothBrush]

The post election autopsy is starting to show something up. Finally. Brexit is part of wider political issues and fractures. This isn't exactly rocket science but it's an inconvenient truth that has been ignored.

We have something of a conflict going on between economic conservatism and social conservatism.

The Tories as the party of business were economically conservative and put this ahead of other issues. "It's the economy stupid."

But as this has continued this has opened up social division and the gap between rich and poor has laid bare social issues.

This is where Labour and the LDs are now becoming something of a cropper. In Brexit they continued the idea that the economy was the most important this and in doing so has fuelled the idea that they don't care about social issues. They are perceived to be putting the interests of businesses as more important than those people.

Of course it's not as straightforward as this. To fund ways to stop social issues you need good economics.

Add to this the progressive movement which has become authoritarian and has lost sight of certain social issues in favour of identity politics and you start to have a real issue. One that the EU as an identity has become caught up in in this country. The wedge to drive in the cracks.

Issues haven't been tackled because identity is more important and was prioritised. And we've had scandals arising out of this.

Instead we've had the increasing demonisation of social conservativism and the idea that if you question certain things you are backward or bigoted as a means to silence people. And now we've had a massive backlash against that generalisation and lack of nuance. And not seeing what was happening and having a self awareness of how this read to more socially conservative types.

That's not to say there aren't massive issues in social conservatism which can be indeed racist, homophobic, sexist and yes very bigoted in nature. The trouble is that the failure to be able to tackle nuance which identity politics forced and a failure to understand that the pace of change needs to be set by public consensus rather than top down authoritarianism has lead us to where we are now.

Rights set up to protect certain groups have failed in practice even if they exist in law. And those who professed to stand for the interests of certain groups forgot the origins of rights.

Thus undermining the entire centre left project, which in some respects the EU embodies.

We now find ourselves in a divided and ruled scenario where those who should have benefitted most from rights can be exploited by an elite who have successfully seen an opportunity to step into the void that identity politics created.

And now the left and liberals have to wake up to this reality and come up with a solution to it.

There is a lot of uncomfortable and difficult decisions to be made here.

The solution to the culture war isn't to push back harder and to become more authoritarian in tone about the right of 'right and wrong'.

It's to address why identity politics caused the left and liberals to forget their origins and purpose and why they established certain ideals in the first place.

Meanwhile whilst they figure out just how they lost their way and were blinkered by their own self righteousness, everything that the centre left project established will be gradually unpicked. Or if Johnson can do it, without being challenged, at some considerable pace.

It comes down to remembering your roots and having a solid connection with the reality of people's lives rather than high minded idealism and a sense of superiority. This is what people saw regardless of the noble intent of Labour and the Lib Dems.

'Social conservatism' were dirty words. Now they are the reality of the present. Whether we like it or not.

Economic stability has become secondary to this desire for social conservatism.

Labour and the Lib Dems have to adapt to this and will have to offer something to those with more socially conservative views to move forward now. The alternative is a very long wait outside in the cold of politics.

Liberal democracy is about balancing needs. You have to identify needs and you have to understand how to balance them for liberal democracy to thrive. Failure to do the former means the latter fails.

And here we are.

2020 beckons.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New to all.

squid look after yourself - your own oxygen mask and all that. please take care, you people are very precious.

squid4 💐
Try not to think about the hospital any more; just concentrate on relaxing and getting well again
Your own oxygen mask first

At least the dream that Ofsted are coming and I have lost my planning file and/ or I am teaching year 6 for the first time on supply with no work prepared

Oops fat fingers

.... That dream does not end in anyone's death.

Take care squid. Get well soon.

I feel the same, sqid.

I think two days ago was the first time I managed to go 24 hours without crying. (I don't cry a lot - just a brief burst of something triggering me to breathlessness and tearing up.)

I've accepted that my job (teaching) is going to become - in some sense - un-doable over the next few years, and I'm now thinking about exit plans.

I mean, of course, I could still 'do' it. But it's going to be more stressful, with a higher rate of 'failure' - and I've accepted that I can't carry that, personally.

I had a very, very grim experience just before Christmas that just drove home what things will be like in the coming years. And I just thought, 'No.'

And that's teaching. Not the NHS.

So ... sympathy to you.

All the leftists need to read Rod Liddell in yesterday’s Sunday Times. Labour won’t listen to ordinary people and those people don’t like being lectured to

There needs to be an investigation of the currently university set up, building flat for foreigns students in towns with no provision for non-students, pointless degrees that don’t lead to good jobs, but massive debts, the on going obsession with colonialism (ordinary people couldn’t) give a stuff, etc

Yes, completely second what BlackeyedSusan said.

But what I struggle with is the question about the line between struggling on & doing the best in awful circumstances versus enabling.

And what you're enabling is not so much the perpetuation and furtherance of a right wing project but the enabling of rendering the unacceptable acceptable - and rendering the unacceptability invisible and unnameable. So my 'doing my best in awful conditions' becomes a type of legitimisation.

It's made worse by the fact that there are real impediments to breaking the silence. I take safeguarding very seriously, for a start, along with the ethical rights of children, and it really stops you from talking about what is happening in many schools.

And it is the cutbacks that are causing it.

And it's absolutely (& I mean 'absolutely' - it's at a base, non-negotiable level) unacceptable.

But we are accepting it.

I just find it very hard: on a day to day level of managing and at a philosophical level.

Sure, leckford.

But that really isn't going to do shit for me as I look for a new job. Or the many children (& their parents) who are going to suffer in an under-funded state education system.

I think people also need to look a little harder at what they've voted for.

And the right wing press isn't going to tell them.

So there has to be a bit of honesty there.

It's a 2-way Street.

Sure, Leftists can listen. I know I do.

But I'm no seeing that all the Left-blaming is working as blame-shifting & responsibility-shifting.

It has to go both ways, or we hurtle towards the willed childishness and refusal of responsibility that is populism.

So ... everyone needs to do a little serious self-analysis - and grow up.

Because I think I'm walking away from trying to make things work in impossible circumstances out of some sense of duty.

Sorry But I cannot stand that pointless degrees not leading to a good job rhetoric. Drives me barmy. Whatever happened to love of learning and the pursuit of intellectual study? Or should that only be available to the social elite like the olden days? Utilitarianism is a massive threat to education. I don't think anyone can define 'good job' or 'pointless degree'.

I read the Rod Liddell myself but I have no time for the man's views.

And cat, I hear you! It's going to be a rough ride.

I really dislike the moaning about the widening of university access - which is what all that is.

I'd like to see it widened to the point anyone can access higher education, at any point in their lives.

Why should higher education be an advantage conferred on the few?

I'm already so sick of the mendacious right, cozening people to give up hard-win rights that the young are now, finally, accessing.

So much of my life has been terrible - frankly. What kept me going was the hope it would be better for the generations after me.

It's beyond depressing watching people voluntarily extinguish that hope.

It's extraordinary, really.

And it leaves me with a life that is a pile of ash - and is meaningless and unredeemed by the promise of a better future.

It's a terrible thing to come to terms with.

It feels personal - even though it isn't. And kind of like being made a living ghost, even as I materially exist.

yy, but also the degrees deemed pointless are often those sneered at by the right wing anyway (media !) where , ironically very old degrees , such as classics, art history which , on the face of it, might seem to not lead to a good job are deemed OK because posh people do them

Don't know what you teach cat but I am finding increasingly that anything outside STEM (and even then not all STETM) is declared pointless. As an English graduate , I find that deeply galling.

I keep on thinking about Owen Jones' ridiculous 'right side of history' thing. And how that came from a place of not truly having experienced the living death of being really, actually 'ghosted' by mainstream culture.

I know he thinks he is a voice for the oppressed - but there is such a crucial difference between speaking for the oppressed and marginalised and the experience of marginalised voiceless was.

Ultimately, when he uttered that line he spoke from a position of not having, truly, experienced the devastating reality of being voiceless in history, the present, and knowing that future history would make you silent; of knowing the experience of political failure - the failure of political projects to remake the future and thus future histories.

Bizarrely, for an activist, he didn't know struggle - and that struggle does, more often than not, end in failure - and that failure exacts a terrible cost in the lives of those that fail.

I'm honestly just talking about my problems with his statement, and what it feels like to live with failure - I'm not doing the (somewhat silly) thing of blaming him.

It's more that I am struck, forcibly, by the fact there is an entire generation of progressives missing from this weird - perhaps inter-generational - culture war.

And we really do know that you can fail. And failure is devastating.

It's something people just don't seem ready to talk about - or learn from.

Agree, Piggy. Bad times & an ocean of awful to wade through. 🤷‍♀️

As for pointless degrees - usually ones like Golf Course Management get cited here, yet anyone getting a job in this field can have a well paid career ahead. By contrast, no-one has ever said that our PM's degree is in a pointless subject, but it's not one which qualifies for many jobs except teaching the subject or academic research. It certainly hasn't qualified our PM to do any jobs he's held so far.

However, Labour can share some of the blame. There was a very good report about 14-19 education back around 2004, called the Tomlinson report. Blair dismissed this because he wanted to retain the Gold Standard of A Levels... Know what though? Blair left office more than a decade ago. I didn't see Cameron or May dusting off this report to see if it could still be implemented.

Well, you know, golf course management is quite probably industry linked and has a job at the end of it.

As one of my friends (a scientist once said) the whole utilitarian argument falls apart when you look at Astro-physics.

Though we did get Teflon and angel delight out of the space programme ...

I have a high-status degree, mainly because I went to Cambridge - so it kind of doesn't matter what the fuck it was in.

I just don't feel I want to protect my privilege by stamping on the hands of other people wanting to acquire the prestige and benefits of a degree. 🤷‍♀️

I think the left need to consider the tone of what they say.

Less "if you voted Tory then you are an evil bigot" or "if you voted Tory then you were a turkey who voted for Christmas" or every variation under the sun thereof.

There very much has been a tone problem on twitter and on some broadcast journalism and this was definitely deliberately used by the right to gain votes by using it as a divide and conquer strategy along class and educational lines.

The "but your a bigot" approach was definitely counter productive as it has the effect of closing down debate which in a democracy fundamentally undermines democracy. I am well aware that this is often well intentioned but ultimately the way the left and liberals survive is by reconnecting with the values that undermine liberal democracy.

'Progressives' becoming arrogant and impatient for change and using authoritarian methods to drive change has had massive unintended consequences. Its undermined trust in the system by making people feel they don't have a voice and a stake in it and over ridden safeguarding which protects less well off and less privileged groups. This is where Rights sit.

Rights are designed to protect us all but for many this now is not the case on a practical level. Austerity has ripped the functioning heart of the justice system out and created massive inequality of justice along economic and social class levels. It's an area that has been deeply overlooked by the left and liberals in favour of the fluffiness of the NHS in political terms. No one has been arguing about how rights underpin the whole entire damn system. And this is why we've seen a rise on the right in a desire for a more punitive and punishing criminal justice system. Which plays neatly to the desire to exit the ECHR, smash the Human Rights Act and bring in elected judges.

The left and liberals are way off the mark on this and still aren't recognising the danger. Despite Dominic Cummings more or less spelling it out in the past.

Trying to use the law and to forcefully shame people to change behaviour rather than bringing people along by demonstrating the benefits of change to all (and this is where if social change has been negative this plays so badly because it looks like there is no benefit thus the left and liberals have no argument looks so bad - hence red councils and red MPs fairing so badly).

Accusations of being out of touch with real lives does stick for this reason.

In reality no one argued for the principles of rights for the EU. Instead they argued that if you don't vote for rights you are thick and a turkey. That's a laziness and a lack of understanding of democratic process and how the system works. It demonstrates a lack of critical thinking by being unable to explain to merits of something in simple terms. It's very much an example of learning by rote where you are taught this is good and this is bad but not ever really taught how and why the system works, how it's a balancing act and there are shades of grey and why we should tolerate shades of grey for the benefit of the bigger picture. This does ask questions of the education system and how children are taught.

I do think it's worth considering not just economic change in this context but also the way education is taught and how its standards are measures for this reason. I am 41 and I was the very first year to do the national curriculum. That's important because the political fracture point occurs around my age. Not every school is guilty of it and it is to do with resources, but there two types of schools now - those who teach primarily to get kids to get grades and pass exams and those who teach to enable proper understanding to get those grades. The emphasis is very different between the two. This hasn't gone unnoticed by the wider public. It begs questions of levels of literacy and wider understanding of principles particularly where funding has been put first out of necessity. Of course this has been driven by austerity and plays to the right best. And the university student politics bullshit has inflamed this. If you have been paying attention talk of completely overhauling and scrapping ofsted is on the cards. I personally don't think ofsted itself is the issue - it's the emphasis of almost trying to 'cheat the system' to make your grades look better than the understanding kids have that being so black and white target based has created. The tick box culture is fundamentally missing something and that's what the left and liberals should be looking at and focusing on rather than shouting about how education is great and we should all be getting as much of it for as long as possible. It's about addressing those that have fallen through the cracks and why a culture that demands a degree for access to any level of responsibility or social status is a problem and isn't in the best interests of the country. Not least because it creates a situation where everyone in authority thinks in the 'correct' way rather than employing critical thinking to a problem from a variety of angles and perspectives. It helps to create a culture where recruitment is only done in the image of those who already work somewhere and an algorithm of those who fit and those who don't. The solution that the left and liberals have come up with in the form of identity politics simply isn't fit for purpose and in reality only reinforces class divisions and this emphasis on academic achievement.

Education = good isn't as simple and correct as made out. The reality is a lack of plurality of achievable routes to success. The left and liberals are not grasping this and their solution seems to be even more identity politics. Again this is a target area for Dominic Cummings.

I have to say that the scorn for Cummings and the whole 'classic dom' thing does embody the problem in many respects. Cummings has spelt out the problems and targets and failings of the left and liberals but it's been rather arrogantly dismissed rather than critically examined.

I don't agree with Cummings solutions on many things, but he is doing the first step of good management in being better at identifying the heart and true nature of problems better than the left and liberals. In doing so he gives the right a huge head start and tactical advantage in shaping the future and the narrative of which way the country as a whole should head.

Owen Jones exemplifies the shallowness and lack of depth to leftist thinking.

He does not understand issues at a level below 'the right side of history' aka 'demonstrating you can show you have the right values you were taught to be correct rather than explaining the benefit and why your values work for society as a whole'.

The former is authoritarian the latter liberal.

I agree with many of your points, Red.

Left Twitter is fascinating ... and awful.

I wrote a dissertation on data-driven audit culture in schools and its effects. There's a thesis waiting to be written on the subject. And I mean 'waiting' - because the existing research is in the form of articles, not theses, about higher education (and from the perspective of lecturers and tutors, too). All of which made me smile, wryly.

My guess: Analysis of 'whither the Left?' is going to be severely limited by the present fractures within the Left.

And by the process of grief, I think. People underestimate the impact of emotion on supposedly rational processes, such as praxis.

I feel a visceral horror at the prospect of handing my children over to a future that emerges from the dreams, wishes and analyses of Cummings and his ilk.

So, yes, there is an urgency to the question of alternative discourses. But also, I think, a terrifying powerlessness.

(The national curriculum has positives and negatives. Don't forget it was brought about partly because some children - as in, whole classes, from some schools - were leaving primary schools unable to read or write. Which was a scandal. I'm not a fan of the NC but it's only fair to add in a bit of nuance.)

I've spent a few days thinking about Left Twitter.

That 'shallowness' and authoritarianism (& it really is authoritarian) is so strange.

It's a hard-baked feature. And the oddest thing is that it is, by and large, being done by highly-educated, highly-intelligent people, who have been trained in nuance and have access to spaces of nuance.

It's a stylistic choice.

And it does (in my opinion) contribute to the diminution of public political discourse.

I find it fascinating - I go back again and again to the fact of this.

Pointless degrees not leading to a good job

Such as...?

(Go on, say media, you know you want to, and never mind if it's the most vocationally correlated degree subject of all.)

Or how about the most derided degree in the land, Plymouth University's Surf Science & Technology FdSc, a standard sports management course good for any form of consumer-facing business management post.

Theresa May has a Geography degree. Perhaps the least vocational degree of all. Or how about Classics like BJ, that vocational enough for you?

...And Rod Liddle read social psychology, which is to sociology and psychology what History of Art is to history and art, i.e, for people who know nothing about either.

Generally I agree that education is a good in itself regardless of its "usefulness".

However many see never ending education as a burden rather than a privilege. Not everyone wants to spend 5 years thinking great thoughts. In reality the majority of "skilled jobs" do not need knowledge beyond GCSE level which could not be obtained via experience.

Yet "access" to education has created a society where employers demand A level qualifications for NMW jobs.

Never ending formal education has the added effect Red alludes to of leading to societal "right think" and crowding out informal self-education.

I agree with much of your post Red but I am not sure the adverse
consequences of progressive politics are "unintended".

In terms of #classicdom I don't think it much matters whether the solutions are delivered by the Tories or Labour. A canter through the new Tory MP intake demonstrates that many of them would traditionally have stood for Labour. The Matthew Goodwin interview I posted earlier has him pointing out that his research on voter dislocation was first presented to Ed Milliband and his team. They chose to dismiss rather than engage with it. So far there is not much evidence of engagement from Labour even now.