I was reading this piece by the philosopher/public intellectual A.C.Grayling on Brexit https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/ac-grayling-on-brexit-1-6322238

I sympathise but there’s an awful lot of wrong in there and while I agree with the general thrust of his argument, I think there are deep flaws that need highlighting.

Naturally, I’ve no particular complaints about the sections which describe how uniformly awful Tory policy and internal politics have been prior to and throughout the Brexit debate. Manifestly, Cameron’s austerity policies deepened divisions, insecurity and unrest in Britain. Equally manifest was the cynical use of a referendum to resolve internal Tory tensions on Europe not only spectacularly backfired in terms party unity but also led to what was an internal toxic debate within conservatism become a national toxic debate. It was the equivalent of picking at a zit an causing a massive facial infection that runs the risk of spreading to the brain. On these points Grayling is correct but also they are (or rather should be) unremarkable.

I do have issues with some other matters though. The first has to do with the Labour Party:

“Miliband’s mistake was to change the rules for Labour Party membership and for election of the leader in such a way as to make the party hostage to the least electable – and as it has proved, least effective – leadership since Foot. His changes led to an influx of entryists from the left and their choice, with the artificial power of the block vote of Len McCluskey’s Unite union, of Corbyn as leader. This has proved one of the biggest helps to the Tory Eurosceptics on the far right of politics, because Corbyn, who has learned nothing and not moved on from his apprenticeship at the feet of Peter Shore and Tony Benn half a century ago, is a Brexiter and has abetted the Brexit cause mightily, only very lately being moved – with a sound of screeching dug-in heels – by the massively Remain Labour members and voters to less of a fudge on the issue. “

Grayling sees this very simplistically but I’d contend he is largely wrong and right only by evading key aspects. I have always been doubtful about Corbyn’s capacity to lead the Labour Party and there is a factual element to Grayling’s point about Corbyn’s electability. However, Grayling treats this just as a matter of fact about Corbyn, as if ‘least electable’ was some intrinsic property of the man. Corbyn has his flaws but his views are neither as extreme as his detractors make out and his abilities as politician and thinker are not particularly poor – indeed compared to the man who is the actual Prime Minister, Corbyn is a model of careful thought and wise leadership. Corbyn has made missteps but nothing anywhere near as appalling as David Cameron’s error — a politician that prior to Brexit was held up as an epitome of moderate, sensible leadership.

The truth about Corbyn is that he is unexceptional except in one regard: he is to the left of the Labour Party. Otherwise, he is unremarkable in his qualities as a Labour leader. Even his approach to Brexit has been typical of Labour leaders with major issues of the day: try to manage a principle compromise and avoid taking a strong ideological stand. On nearly any other issue other than Brexit, the pressure on the Labour leader to the square the circle on divisive matters would be the norm. It is Brexit that is exceptional in that it is an issue in which the centre and self-perceived moderates of British politics feel a strong and full commitment to the EU is needed. They have a point but it is a point the left has made to plethora of Labour leaders in the past: take a strong stance on a issue and you will bring voters along but vacillate and you concede ground to the right.

The electability (or otherwise) of Corbyn is no mystery either. The Labour Party is a coalition of political movements and ideologies. All mass political parties with hope of forming a majority in government are coalitions of this kind. However, that coalition within Labour has been built on a premise that the right of the Labour Party will not concede to the left and the left must always concede to right. For Corbyn to succeed he would have needed to have been an exceptionally adept and probably far more ruthless politician. Milliband’s “mistake” was that rank and file support for a Labour leader would not necessarily transform into support from Labour MPs. However, party political reform is never easy nor swift. Labour wouldn’t transform into (or back into) a more participatory mass movement party overnight. At a different period of history this would have been just another chapter in the evolving nature of the British labour movement. The ‘mistake’ was that this coincided with the absurdity of Brexit.

“That moderated, with a more temperate tone entering politics in the period between the end of Thatcher and the post-2010 coalition. But as a result, politics became somewhat less attractive to energetic, clever and ambitious people, with the result that – with some extremely honourable exceptions – the general quality of MPs is not nearly what it was.”

I don’t know if this is true one way or another. I suspect it isn’t but more to the point Grayling skips over how this argument is actually a strong argument for Corbyn. Grayling is also skipping over a deep and obvious political divide in the UK during those years that is directly relevant: the Iraq War.

In both the UK and the US the ostensible left-of-centre political parties supported the pointless, globally destabilizing, incompetently run, morally compromised and politically deceptive war in Iraq. The difference in the UK was that the party in power was that very left-of-centre political party. Britain’s support for the US war in Iraq was a terrible decision on multiple levels but if we focus just on how it shaped future party politics, it led to whole swathes of Labour politicians being essentially compromised by their support for a monumentally bad policy. Tony Blair’s support for Bush’s war created a deep chasm of distrust within the Labour Party and between Labour and it’s electorate in general. The Global Financial Crisis was less a creation of Labour’s but being in power when the GFC also helped deepen the mistrust between Labour and the wider population.

On other matters were Grayling is not wrong but not entirely right either consider:

“And finally on this fourth point, we need to recall that our hopelessly undemocratic first past the post electoral system lies at the rotten core of these arrangements. It disenfranchises the majority of voters, turning them off politics. It puts majorities into the House of Commons on minorities of the popular vote. It entrenches two-party politics, in which elections produce one-party government by turns – with the foregoing ‘elective tyranny’ resulting. It is a mess, and reform is urgently needed.”

This is true but I suspect secondary to the core issue. Once Brexit became a national topic of debate, it would only be properly resolved with a substantial majority one way another. A more proportional parliament might have a different spread of political parties but it is not clear that it would have a majority of MPs in favour of Remain. Yes, more proportional voting or voting that doesn’t penalise smaller parties (as in Australia) may have eased divisions with the Tory party *if* the system had been running for years but only by making it easier for Eurosceptics to gain electoral success outside of the Tory party. Indeed, that is what happened with UKIP gaining votes in the more proportional European Parliament elections.

Which takes me to what Grayling is avoiding: why support for the EU is less strong than it needs to be to defeat the nationalistic Brexit supporters. Yes, the right wing press in the UK has been running anti-EU propaganda for decades and the Brexit campaign during the referendum used lies, nationalism and xenophobia to drum up support. However, Grayling is complaining about the far-left being insufficiently in support of Remain. Yet he doesn’t take time to consider why people who otherwise don’t buy into either Boris Johnson’s pathological lies or Nigel Farage’s racism, may still be less than 100% in favour of the EU. Without that understanding Grayling makes the same common error that runs through all of this: politics is about building coalitions of people with divergent views.

The European single currency placed those countries participating into an inflexible monetary policy. The impact of this in the light of the Global Financial Crisis was severe economic policies placed on a number of countries such as Greece, that would still have suffered economic hardship but which could have managed better if they had had more control over their own monetary policy. The UK wasn’t Greece and wasn’t part of the single currency, but in the years leading up to Brexit, the EU took on some o the worst features of the EU as a project i.e smaller states having to buckle under pressure from the bigger economies. I personally don’t think that invalidates the EU as an entity, anymore than bad government policy by a given government invalidates the idea of the nation it is governing. However, without acknowledging the flaws in the EU, Grayling’s analysis is clearly incomplete. There is left-wing scepticism of the EU for a reason.

I do think Britain should Remain and even a less traumatic Brexit than the possible No-Deal Brexit will cause untold harm. However, either stay focused on the specific issue of Boris Johnson and the failed conservative government or look at all the issues underlying the divisions.

A sequel of sorts to this post about the issue of criticising the government of a country versus criticising the country and it’s peoples.

Events in Hong Kong have quite rightly led to disquiet and anger at the Chinese government. The Chinese government would prefer it if people treated the anti-protest crackdown as a private matter between it and the citizens of Hong Kong. The citizens of Hong Kong (or at least some of them) disagree sharply on that point.

I actually don’t personally know anybody who thinks the anti-protest measures are a good thing or who doesn’t sympathise with the protesters in general. So it is easy to see any voice of support for the protestors as being unambiguously good. But let’s say, for sake of argument, that there was more nuance here, more complexity, etc then “anti-protest measures” are something we should ALWAYS eye sceptically not because all protestors are right but because we should always worry when the police get new powers and when ordinary people get hurt. There is a parallel with war and military action as a government policy — sure we can think of wars that were necessary or even morally imperative but as one of the most extreme things a government can do they should always been critically examined. There are some policies/actions that any and every government should expect significant public pushback against.

Which in a roundabout way takes us to video-games:

“Professional Hearthstone player and Grandmasters tournament competitor Chung “blitzchung” Ng Wai gave an interview this week. At the end of it, Chung expressed support for the ongoing protests in Hong Kong, reciting a protest slogan and wearing a mask associated with the activists who have taken to the streets. His words set off a chain reaction that led to his year-long suspension from Hearthstone competitive play. It has also led to a sudden incursion of political debate in a space that — to its detriment — often works hard to be anything but political. “

https://www.kotaku.com.au/2019/10/blizzards-hong-kong-missteps-prove-video-games-arent-neutral/

Blizzard have suffered a righteous pushback against this with many people boycotting their games. In turn Blizzard have opened up another chapter in the annals of corporations attempting to control or limit what people say.

Blizzard had attempted to push a values-free approach of “no controversy”, a line akin to the idea of “no politics”. It’s a familiar line and the twin to the other values-free stance of absolute free-speech. I find it fascinating that BOTH positions are things that I associate with the modern-right and approaches I have seen people on the right have demanded for science-fiction. We’ve also seen how neither are viable.

• Absolute free-speech enables bullying and perversely ensures that speech of some people is shut down, marginalised or bullied into silence from hostile and toxic environments.
• “Politics free” enables the powerful to go unchecked, it allows toxic behaviour to go unchallenged and (surprise, surprise) ensures that speech of some people is shut down, marginalised or bullied into silence from hostile and toxic environments.

The two positions are genuinely polar opposites but play a similar role and have similar consequences. Absolute free-speech enables the loudest voices and “politics free” enables the voices of the most powerfully entrenched.

Sure, it would be great to have a position on free-speech that could be separated from the CONTENT of what is being said but such a thing is a fantasy. It is a fantasy precisely because speech is powerful and hence can cause harm. If speech was not powerful then free-speech wouldn’t be important!

There was a way out for Blizzard, a way for them to retain the idea that they could enforce “no controversy” but it wouldn’t be easy. The way out would be simply to have no involvement with the Chinese government in a way. In such circumstance, statements about Hong Kong would be effectively neutral to them rather than “controversial”. Of course, that is in no way feasible in a global economy where China as a country is an important part but it highlights how ideas like “politics free” is itself not a neutral idea but one that requires somebody to draw a line between what is politics & what is not and between what is controversial and what is not.

Nationalism in particular politicises everything. Governments that conflate criticism of themselves with criticism of the nation they govern and the people within their nation (or even people of connected ethnicities beyond their borders) set out to make criticism controversial and even more adversarial. It is the mirror of bigots who use the behaviour of a government as a basis for attacking people based on ethnicity. That was the theme of my earlier post, highlighting how nationalists with opposing sympathies openly shape their rhetoric to make the argument about ordinary people rather than the actions of governments.

It would be remiss of me not to mention Israel as an example here. It is paradigmatic of the problem, where far-right nationalist governments in Israel conflate criticism of government policy with anti-semitism and where far-right anti-semites internationally use Israel government policy as a basis for justifying their anti-semitism. The net effect is to poison discourse and to create a kind of emotional or discursive tax on discussion. I’ve mentioned a similar dynamic in Australia where criticism of the Chinese government can be exploited by nationalist elements in Australia and tap into a deep vein of anti-Chinese racism within Australia.

There is no easy way out. There are matters that we should speak loudly about and the multiple nationalist crackdowns worldwide can’t be ignored. However, we also need to speak with both care and compassion. We should avoid metonymic references to “China” when we mean specifically the Chinese *government*. We should avoid ethnic stereotyping always. We should avoid implying that individuals have dual loyalties. We should avoid falling back on lazy nationalistic or conspiratorial tropes of the past.

I’d like to finish on the question of boycotts versus avoidance. The question of whether a group or a business can do business with or have a commercial relationship with a country with an authoritarian government is a fraught one. There is a positive argument that economic or cultural engagement can help a country. However, like speech, such involvement can never be values-free. It means that you are in a position where politics and controversy are things that can happen to you as a consequence. Even if nobody is calling for a boycott of Country-A currently, if you are doing business with/in Country-A and events or government policy shifts then you aren’t going to be in a position of being blissfully neutral about that. That doesn’t mean that if you do business with Country-A then you are endorsing all the policies of its government but it does mean you are saying that it is politically better at that time to engage with them rather than not engage – and that is a political statement.

“No politics” is not an option.