On Poster Politicians

It is a regular theme and tool of mine to compare sports and politics, comparing our representatives from arguably our two most prevalent social arenas. I'd like to take this opportunity to make it clear that I’m not writing footballers into gubernatorial likenesses from some unfortunate misguided idolatry; I can assure you I deplore as much as anyone what the lucky anointed have done to our fair game, but the similarities with politics don't stop there. To borrow from von Clausewitz, sport is certainly a continuation of politics by other means.

My current simile is to look at the fate of our poor stricken David Beckham. Now I won't wax lyrical on the man but there is much to be learned from him. For all his distractions and detractors, it must be remembered that he has been a loyal, dedicated and fervent servant of his country in the best way he knows how. Not for him the sulky retirement from international duty with the onset of proud age, he wants to serve until the end, as this may well prove to be.

Now yes, he's vastly rewarded for it and yes, we expect nothing less. But as I watched innocuous images of his campaign-thwarting injury, I wondered what it is that we nowadays expect from our politicians. Let us compare our current self-fancying political poster boy, David Cameron. Now, with all the myriad unanswered questions about policy, purpose and portent from the public, there is validity in asking whether he actually has a clear idea himself of what we want from him in the first place, of why we want substance, of what we as a crowd in the stands expect from our players on the field. Is there a plan and a formation? Is there a focus on what the electorate wants and a sight as to how to deliver it? Or is it all just as vapid and self-aggrandising as that poster?

In the US as a political student, when studying the patterns and science of elections we learned very quickly that one of the cardinal rules is to get your name known. It's why home-window support posters there carry candidate names as opposed to the party allegiances shown here; the simple logic being that people can't vote for someone if they don't know their name and that if all else fails and is proved pointless and unmemorable, the plebeians will at least be able to recall a moniker. Is that what Cameron's hoping for, that we’ll simply go with the face we prefer or see more often? Have all the forces of a party attempting to claim rule of the land been centred on the blank visage of their leader figurine? The policy statement attempted on the poster has been thoroughly ignored in the mainstream and replaced with jovial and mocking arguments as to the extent of the airbrush applied to his features.

Beckham's image is undoubtedly a cosmic force of nature and pulls in much of the support he enjoys with jovian gravity. But Cameron would do well to note that Beckham earned that privilege through having his efforts and motives scrutinised beyond reason and coming out the other side. The substance came first; he didn’t just whack his face on a flag. Where is Cameron's line in the sand, his purposeful statement pointing to a brighter future? Beckham gives the people what they want. To give the people what they want and expect of you, you must first know what that is. Unfortunately for Cameron, his face is not the answer and the more pointless and patronising prods he makes like this at our collective consciousness, the more he reminds the majority that perhaps the reason he doesn't have an answer is that (again unlike Beckham) he isn't from quite the same Britain as most of us see. Gone are the days when politicians could just utter vague words and command votes, too much has happened to batter our confidence in them and he needs to show understanding of this to tie himself back to our reality. Going the other way and trying to tie himself to reality media is not going to survive any real scrutiny; the danger again is that we begin to think he doesn’t want that scrutiny at all.

The right image is entirely priceless. This has been true since record of gargantuan greatness began, from Achilles to Best to Oprah. But it must be earned by great deeds and Cameron has to earn the right to promote himself via his visage by showing us his true colours. Images and faces must stand for something other than themselves. You garner a camp by dividing the masses, not by waving a feather under the feet of the populace and offering a vague tickle for all and then slapping your mug up on a wall to be revered. If Cameron wants to earn the right to legitimate poster boy status he has to act and could do worse than trying to know what we want and at the very least trying to play to it to show some incite. This poster attempts that but an overplayed line on the budget that extracts little more than a ubiquitous “how?” from all readers is a poor attempt. We want the substance, the meat in the sandwich, not just the air in the balloon. To make so massive an image-based statement without tied to an image-based announcement of political intent suggests that after these many, many months of speculation, the reality may well be the lack of actual substance that we fear.

(And ok, this has been something of a lauding of Mr Beckham; I did wax lyrical a little bit. But I’m in good company in that regard.)

On Cameron's Dark Ties

I like to allow myself to think that on occasion I have the capacity to be a reasonably astute analyst of situations. But there are times when despite my sometime insights, the wonders and mystiques of the decisions of others throw me into total wondrous mystery, like some kind of Carrollian land of bafflement where trees grow with question mark leaves and little Tumnus-types trot around scratching their heads permanently nonplussed.

Arsène Wenger deciding he didn't need a colossus, Tom Cruise deciding he didn't need his marbles and John Redwood deciding he didn't need the words are all recent, memorable additions to the “WHAT were they thinking?” list. However, altogether more serious and therefore more bewildering are the ties chosen by David Cameron with foreign political parties with apparent disregard to the connotations and consequences.

These are not particularly well publicised ties, so if you enjoy the simple privileges of blinking and scratching, you may well have missed them. Political parties need foreign allies, of course, but not like this. Their rather backstage nature is so dichotomous with Cameron's usual image-is-all politics that it would seem to suggest an unacknowledged awareness that these ties may actually not be popular enough for public consumption. And as don’t seem to have any functional political benefit either, they beg – and I really do mean beg – the question; why?

HM Government needs to be better than that. Groups marching for the SS don't just march for the SS (as if that were not enough); their raison d'être is not to meet once a year, unfurl some flags, drudge quietly down the cobbles and disband for another annum. They have agendas, plans, ideas and ideals. Behind their own doors there will be other unsavoury and unseemly agendas being discussed, entirely unsuitable for links with any government of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

To align with them is to align with what they stand for. Now even in our time of charlatan politics there won't be many cynical enough to extrapolate this link too far into Cameron’s policies, but the old adage about laying down with dogs never implied you would then get up a dog yourself, just that when you're least expecting or desiring it, a bloated flea would pop out from your cuff at a dinner party or from your hair on a lover's pillow. Surely for all his misguided attempts at politics he has enough simple intelligence see that this is folly?

Now sometimes there are benefits and reasons. It would be remiss to not mention the Iraq war here and our endless support of global US-lead incursions. But it has to be noted that there is a difference between acting for better or worse in support of an alliance aged over generations, and the confusing fishing that Cameron is doing.

This difference is highlighted even more when the question is asked; what does he think he has to gain? It really is hard to get an insight into what he could possibly fathom the positive outcomes of these allegiances might be, leading to the conclusion that like so much of his work, it’s all gloss on the surface with no substance underneath. Or is he planning on using these people when in power? Rolling out the red carpet to Number 10 for the dark luminaries of the Law and Justice Party? Either way our Government is more than that; it should be and it must be more.

When George Bush dusts off the grey cells and creeps from the shadows to lend you foreign policy advice, it's time to have a long look in the mirror and ask yourself what you're doing. Sometimes it's better to stand alone than with the entirely wrong company.

This is a lesson that British Government used to ladle out to the world in heaped steaming portions. Our might not being what it once was we can no longer exemplify this and massive decisions on allegiance must now be faced instead of just being wafted off as some irritant from some paltry government from some place off these isles. But these ties are not difficult decisions; they seem too simple to even be called decisions in such an important arena and yet Cameron has surely, surely gotten them entirely wrong.

To sacrifice judgment and pick a side just because there is one there to be chosen? These are staggering choices Cameron is making that only become more confusing and concerning the more they are analysed. There is a pattern.

On the Atlantic Fence

Britons and Americans, squabbling cousins for generations gone and to come; learning and stealing from each other, leaning and depending on each other. The record of time will show that as nations we’ve loved and hated with equal fervour and fanfare but like true family we know and accept that our destinies cannot be separated by choice. Reluctantly, inadvisably, even illegally our governments have (eventually) stood by each other and it would seemingly take a truly cataclysmic event to batter the bond beyond malleable repair.

And so as our leaders have shaken hands under flags and fireworks, through Washington sun and London rain, us citizens have gripped and peered over the fence, watching what life is like on the other side, wondering how they preen their roses over there and discipline their children. On occasion we’ve even (when we’ve not thought they’ve been looking) hopped the fence to reclaim that errant football and feel what their green, green grass is like under our naughty toes, slinking back to the comfort of our side once the thrill has been tasted.

As empires go, ours have both been equally ubiquitous, both prevalent and surreptitious, fingering each corner of the global pie with the combined might of military might and cultural corruption. What is interesting is how we now, as the deposed emperors sitting back in our tattered Redcoats, take to the pervasive nature of their cultural conquest, played to a tune of shiny starred quavers on a stave of red and white ribbons.

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On Leadership

Now hopefully this will be the only time that anyone who considers themselves remotely attached to fairness and reasonability will make this comparison, but the shoes of John Terry and those of the Prime Minister have not fit altogether too differently recently. John Terry deposed and vilified for his philandering; Gordon Brown attacked for his attacking, the bully exposed. Both matters call into question the role of the leader in their respective arena.

I won’t exhaust the Terry mess any more than has already been done, but to summarise, the issue revolves around the question of whether or not his extramaritals affect his ability to captain his country. Similarly it is being asked of Mr Brown whether or not his alleged “bullying” renders him suitable for leadership of the nation.

My sympathies could not be further divided.

The leadership of your country is an enormous honour. Individuals are given the opportunity to walk out ahead of the shining lights of what my shores had to offer the rest of the world, as their leader. Captains, especially national captains, are no longer just “one of the lads”; they must be that and more. They are exemplars. Leaders of nations are supposed to be the best of us, the archetypal citizen, the brother, sister, mother and father. They must simultaneously walk two paths, the one that took them to the captaincy and the one that goes from there. It’s not a case of cutting out the gristle and bark, but one of adding to the prime meat and glossy varnish, because undeniably, far more than with any other member of the team, the captain has both a private and public role.

So in Terry’s case there is a widespread argument that he should be able to do whatsoever he wants off the field as long as he still leads once he jogs out of the tunnel. Conversely Mr Brown is being asked to strip away the heat and brimstone that propels him to lead and become just the media shell in which he is encased on leaving the black door of No. 10.

I would suggest that I would prefer my eventual progeny to take from Mr Brown’s column in this instance, not from Terry’s. Cheating on your wife and best friend is fairly black and white, whereas one man’s bullying is another man’s anger or frustration or geeing up. Bullying? It hardly seems likely that a man who reportedly sleeps little more than three hours a night would have the time or inclination to single out particular staff members in order to subject them to regular torrents of abuse from on high.

None of this is to say that I think either of them should necessarily be in leadership in the first place and, yes, more than ever, general elections mean camps are divided and lines drawn. But surely this is one of those rare times we could all see fit to give the beleaguered man at Downing Street a fair break.

On Health & Safety

A friend of mine once said “if you can’t pull it, you can’t pull it” – may not seem like much, but it’s succinct and entirely intrinsically true; if you’re not capable, you’re not capable. Note that equally true is the inverse; if you are capable, you are capable. Substitute capability with, say, culpability or liability and we come to the realms of accountability via the long and broad road of common sense. It is this road that our government seems to be finding it increasingly hard to navigate and in this particular situation, I put this solidly down to a case of peeking over the Atlantic fence and finding that in that field of infinitely greener, American grass, accountability can be shuffled off down some long, endless avenue of passed bucks and dodged bullets.

Now, I’m not entirely against government intervention. There are situations wherein the hand of Big Brother is a welcome and reassuring presence. Most memorably written into solid law in my lifetime have been seatbelts, the drink driving limit, the smoking ban, all-seater stadiums, firework regulation; items of good, hardy British government that improve safety and save lives. Where these items work on levels of tolerance, acquiescence and compliance is that they are ways of protecting us from the decisions of others. JS Mill himself would hopefully have allowed these to stand even the rigours of the harm principle. Ok, he may have been shaky on the smoking-ban, but had he wanted to label that despotism, it would definitely have to be agreed that the despot had the best interests of the people at heart.

However, following the (insert affable red, white, blue, stars, stripes metaphor) avenue of ambiguous accountability, we are entering an era of laws being pushed onto us to protect us from ourselves, hauled over our sensibilities like the onset of night. We face libertine darkness brought upon us as the Health & Safety Deathstar blots out the sun over the empire.

It is worth again referring to Mill’s view on despotism here. If people cannot be self-governed, let the government reign by all means. But he meant young children and those in “backward states of society” and I think that while we have our problems as a nation, we’re a long way from the pygmies under palm trees that he probably meant us to consider.

There are ways to go about this. Remember when all of a sudden, pen tops and plastic carrier bags had holes in them? I didn’t ask for it, but I hold my hands up; it’s useful. But when the government decides that I can’t manage even the simplest tasks for myself, I face daily patronisation and subsequent frustration.

We all have horror stories of the onset of this era, from being taken on courses where we’re taught how properly to carry hot coffee, to being denied foam guns in the office lest some poor unfortunate lose an eye. I used to coach a group of teenagers at Paddington Rec. In the height of summer we would traipse through the rolling green to the track and under the beating heat, run, run, drink and look forward to the luxury of the hard, cool, plastic seats erected by the fence. Maybe we’d even watch the footballers bounding around thirstily. Then one week we showed up and were relegated to sitting in the dust as the seats had been closed for “health and safety reasons”. Turns out some poor sop had fallen over on the seats and twisted their ankle. Now since when did it mean that because some kid was larking around that everyone thereafter had to munch dust? Why am I being told that I can’t govern myself even enough to decide if I want to take the risk of sitting on the Seats of Doom? At that moment in my life I could have gone bungee jumping, leapt from a plane, signed up as a paramedic or a fireman or an infantryman. I could have climbed a mountain in the fog, run with tigers or swam with sharks. But I could not have sat on those seats.

Have we really gone so far from the road of common sense? Surely, we can go back, after all it is called common sense, because, well, it’s common? Unfortunately we all have the feeling that this is just the beginning; that it can only deteriorate from here. I have seen signs in supermarkets warning me that melons are heavy. Why? Is it because if that sign isn’t there and I sprain a finger lifting a melon, the supermarket is somehow at fault for not warning me? Isn’t this then a self-fulfilling prophesy? Won’t the supermarket who decides that, hey, some things you should just know for yourself, be the odd one out that does take the hammer to fall? And from then, as the communal barriers our larger institutions form against the flood erode, as bans and limits and fines are levied progressively on the consumption of alcohol, chocolate and sugar, we will eventually be left as individuals against the government in the truest sense of the tyrannical model. Mill would turn in his grave. But there’s a probably a Health & Safety issue with that.