Thoughts on Charles Clarke's speech.

[chickenfeet2003]

Charles Clarke's contribution to today's Guardian is very interesting. On the one hand it's an uncommonly open presentation of the the "New Authoritarianism", on the other it's a series of very obvious and clumsy rhetorical devices

Comments

[gillo]

It seems to me that in Britain at least any government with a huge majority has tended to assume de facto Divine Right. Blair's government might be accused of "going emeritus", to steal Pratchett's wonderfully evocative phrase, except that these aithoritarian trends were discernable from the start, in Blunkett's time at Education, for example. A top-down model of organisation of education, law and order, health, justice etc suits those at the top, and the Sir Humphreys of the world are no more going to argue against it than they did against very similar instincts during Maggie's reign. We will all love Big Brother once we recognise he has our best interests at heart.

[chickenfeet2003]

I agree the seeds have been there a long time. Britain is a very authoritarian country by instinct. What was new in Clarke's spiel, I think, was his attempt to define (or at least claim) a "new" class of human rights and somehow, in a Fukayamaesque way to link that to the "Triumph of Democracy". The rhetoric is really quite odd.

[gillo]

Charles Clarke is really quite odd. A Blunkett wannabe without quite the same brutality.

The tragic thing is that none of this bunch actually comprehend why ordinary, decent people are worried by their plans. Or even that they do. They are fixed into the mindset than anyone who opposes them must have evil motives.

Conviction politics. Yech.

[chickenfeet2003]

I think they have constructed an idea of what an "ordinary person" and then persuaded themselves that "ordinary people" agree with them. The irony is that this is a Cabinet most of the members of which are as far removed from ordinary people and their experiences as Lord Salisbury. The difference is he knew that. I shake my head when I hear someone with a household income of 500,000/year claiming to empathise with the plight of people on sink estates.

[gillo]

Yes. Blair represents Sedgefield and assumes that makes him "ordinary".

A lot of the concerns of New Labour are those of the London lower-middle classes, really. All the stuff about schools, for instance, is pretty irrelevant if you live up Weardale and have a ten-mile journey to your one possible comp. They alsotry to please too many people at once - only look at the very garbled mixed messages they send out about drinking - all-night licences but keep yobs off streets....