Depression over Derbyshire

At the moment I’m reading a book mentioned by erudite commenter Sam Vega - Tom Bower's book - Broken Vows: Tony Blair The Tragedy of Power.

When Tony Blair became prime minister in 1997, he was, at forty-three, the youngest to hold that office since 1812. With a landslide majority, his approval rating was 93 per cent and he went on to become Labour's longest-serving premier. So what went wrong?

With unprecedented access to more than 180 Whitehall officials, military officers and politicians, Tom Bower has uncovered the full story of Blair's decade in power. He has followed Blair's trail from his resignation, since which he has built a remarkable empire advising tycoons and tyrants. The result is the political thriller of the year, illuminating the mystery of an extraordinary politician who continues to fascinate to this day.

This post isn’t a book review because I haven’t finished it yet, but early impressions are depressing. The book itself is excellent and well worth reading unless you are a Blair fan, but neither of those is likely to read it anyway. However, as a reminder of the Blair years it raises neither the spirit nor my already decrepit faith in democracy.

Anyone over a certain age will remember the Blair years and so far Bower's book is a highly concentrated reminder of just how dire they were. The shallowness, the absurd expectations, the dishonesty and the manipulated narratives - it pours from the pages in an unrelenting torrent of ghastliness. 

What about the Blair lessons though? Don't elect a crazy prime minister is the obvious one but there are many others. For example we might conclude that democratic party politics is broken and Blair is all the evidence we need. Our expectations are far too high and we voters are not doing enough to raise political standards by electing people rather than parties. That is an obvious starter but one could still go on forever about lessons the Blair years should have taught us but probably haven't.

Yet maybe we should put the more obvious mess to one side and ask - how deliberate is political failure? Are we subtle enough to nudge situations towards failure when we benefit from it? Suppose we recast the question into another obvious one – does political failure tend to suit the establishment? Additionally, why do so many major political actors survive their obvious inadequacies and prosper for decades both inside and outside politics?

In a broad sense, government failures create more bureaucratic and political business because sooner or later damaging situations have to be corrected. We see it whenever governments have to rebuild confidence after yet another debacle. Each rebuild leads to more bureaucratic business and more roles for those political actors who survive - and many do survive the most abject debacles. The narrative moves on as it must - all actors know the show must go on.

Under the protective umbrella of government, those who fail often make new roles for themselves in spite of failing in the old role, especially if they exert significant control over mainstream narratives. This was characteristic of the Blair years where failed initiatives were pushed into the background by new initiatives and they in turn were supplanted by even newer initiatives.

Behind the headlines, government is mostly business as usual. Political initiatives tend to fail when they interfere with the machine because government bureaucracy has to make sure they fail in order to protect the machine. When we have hyperactive political actors intent on reform, then failures occur on a grander scale and it is up to the narrative spinners to make the best of it. Eventually it all becomes too obvious and even the spinners are overwhelmed. Such were the Blair years.

Depressing but possibly not the nadir of British politics. Corbyn will probably be worse.