Genius!

Well it had to happen- a management consultancy has come up with a list of geniuses for us to marvel at. Save of course, once you examine their methodology more critically what they seem to have done is to have worked out who were the most famous clever people in the world and come up with a list of them and then given them points on an arbitrary list and come up up with a list of the world's top geniuses. There is something slightly imperfect about this- a hole that gapes open before the idiots who did this survey- and that is quite simple. Knowledge has become so specialised that it is hard even for those who have completed undergraduate studies in an area to be accurately aware of the merits of work done by their academics or by specialists. As a historian moving from undergraduate to graduate work I observed this. And furthermore in subjects that I know little about- mathematics or physics I have no clue about how to compare the intelligence say of a Feynman and a Bohr or even whether they would play in the same league! This list furthermore is a disaster when it comes to art- many of the great artists of a particular period only acquire recognition later. Judging the world's literature and say putting Dario Fo in the top ten, when you don't have a panel that can read all the world's languages and tell us about them seems equally foolish. To publish a list like this furthermore implies that you only need to engage with ten people to engage with the whole world, like lists of the greatest novels or the greatest music, this is intellectual suburbanisation- if you only tackle this and this you have become learned. Sorry that's not true- lets put this list with all the others on a pyre and let the smoke carry a signal out that learning doesn't stop at the margins of a list, but begins with a canon and heads through canon after canon, on an everlasting quest for an eternally unreachable comprehension of everything of worth ever done or discovered.

Best Tabloid Headline

I have been memed again! [Expletive Deleted] Dave Cole (whose fantastic blog has a new address by the way now) decided to give me this virus, anyway the idea is to come up with the dream tabloid headline, so here's mine:

Asylum-seeker, Diana's ghost and Britney Spears in Threesome: House Prices Forecast to Fall!

I'm sure that there are many of you that could come up with a better- so why don't you go for it Thunder Dragon, James, Mutley and anyone else who fancies their hand at crafting something worthy of the Sun.

Incidentally another thought for the last couple of days- which links to an article I wrote at Bits about it (guess the story before you click the link), anyway here is the headline,

Who's Jorry now: Martin's a Smartin at Spurs!

Right now before I lose all my respect for myself and others- I must leave the banks of the fetid swamp- to all you readers who have blogs, have a go yourselves at this, its quite fun!

LATER Ok I've got the bug, but this is worth it, what about

Princess Diana ate my Hamster

Wonderful definition of the Abortion Debate

by Jon Stewart here about half way through,

Do you condone what some would consider rape to prevent what some would consider murder?

Alex Salmond goes Ballistic

Alex Salmond is no stranger to publicity. He has just returned to lead the Scottish Nationalists and in the last Scottish elections took them into a majority in the Scottish Parliament. But neither is he a fool. His recent letter to the 189 leaders of the signatory nations to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty asking for Scotland to have observer status at their meetings blatantly controvenes the spirit of the leglislation that set up the Scottish Parliament. The Parliament has various competencies- most of which are to do with Scottish domestic policy- but has absolutely no powers to deal with the defence policy of the UK- which is a matter for Westminster. Alex Salmond knows that as much as anyone does- and he does this conscious of this knowledge. He might be able to have an observer there- but the observer could have no more powers than any other observer.

He doesn't seriously expect to be at the nuclear proliferation talks in any capacity- British allies around the world and there are lots of them will pay no attention to his declaration- well apart from a mildly amused grin or an exasperated sigh at yet another piece of paperwork going through a busy bureacratic machine. Mr Mugabe and some more of his ilk may choose to grandstand about the dealings of an 'independent Scotland' but it will make little difference to their standings internationally or internally. This is not an important international issue- but it might just be important domestically- and that's the debate that Mr Salmond is trying to influence.

Mr Salmond makes no secret of his real desire- Scottish independence. That's been his desire all along- and the desire of the SNP themselves. The Scottish Parliament was designed all along to assuage that concern. The Labour party wanted to indicate that it was sympathetic to the concerns of Scots who wanted independence, and so it designed a commitment to devolution. It also wanted to appeal to Scots who believed in a federal constitution- and to English and Welsh people who were less attached to the idea. Labour thus brought in assymetric devolution- creating real constitutional problems, Scottish MPs for instance can vote on English issues whereas their English counterparts can't vote on the same Scottish issues, but they also never faced up to another central problem. But there was another problem that no Labour politician ever addressed in the relationship between the Parliaments.

Mr Salmond at present stands up as leader of the Scottish Parliament- not of a Scottish party. He stands as the representative of Scotland and to be honest the election at which he came to power is more recent than the election which brought in the British government. So Mr Salmond can justifiably claim to be more representative of current Scottish opinion than the Labour Party led by Gordon Brown. Previously when he sought to make points about Scottish constitutional independence he did so as the leader of a party, now he does so as the representative of the Scottish nation- indeed he does so with the dignity and majesty of his office. This makes Mr Salmond's intervention more important in UK Politics.

His reasons for making the intervention are also entirely predictable- as predictable as his increased power. He makes the intervention in part to get away from domestic politics. Domestic politics is always difficult for politicians- battling Westminster particularly over nuclear weapons enables a politician to look strong and brave. Dealing with the latest crisis in the health service is much more difficult- especially when like Mr Salmond you don't have a majority in your own Parliament- Mr Salmond is running a minority government in Scotland and in a minority government posturing is easier than policy. Mr Salmond has the political inclination to do this- as a nationalist- but he also has the interest to do it- it leaves him looking noble, fighting for Scotland against Westminster without having to take an unpopular decision. It risks him looking like a comedy figure, too interested in his own ego, but at the moment with Mr Brown's government an unpopular one, Mr Salmond can probably afford the political gamble.

I expect this gamble to be repeated again and again. Bashing Westminster is in the self interest of any Scottish government as is bashing England. Jack McConnell (Salmond's Labour predecessor) did it last year when he told the tabloids that he wouldn't support England in a world cup. The issue that the Labour party never explained was how these neccessary tensions between the two Parliaments would not lead to opinion on either side of the border growing more and more divided. Scots defining themselves away from England and asking why their Parliament didn't have powers over nuclear weapons or the war in Iraq or whatever other cause becomes the flavour of the month. The simple politics, as Sir John Major argued in 1997, propel a devolved assembly into combat with the central Parliament and eventual independence. That is even more true when the structure is left uncomplete and incomprehensible by the adhoc opportunists of Millbank.

In 1997, Labour came to the country with a constitutional agenda that was shoddily drawn up and incompetently executed. You could back federalism and House of Lords reform and still think that incidentally (I am close to that position myself). The problem is that Labour left too many threads dangling and didn't think through much of what they did- most of it was done on the spur of the moment and the future left to sort itself out. The success of that approach was that whilst things went well there were no problems. But perhaps as Labour begins to suffer in the polls and lose its majority in the devolved assemblies- or even regain that majority and lose in the Westminster Parliament- they and we might regret Tony Blair's shoddy workmanship. The major three parties are unionist now- though they all mumble about increased devolution- but that might change. Such disatisfactions may lead to more radical constitutional reform than Labour ever intended.

Tony Blair famously felt the hand of history on his shoulder- I wonder if he ever considered where it might be pointing!

Stephen Colbert for President!

Were Guiliani and Clinton the candidates it appears Mr Colbert would get over 30% of the votes from people aged 18-29! The source is here.

Forum

Guys- just thought I'd note that Ashok of In rethinking and Sharon of La Philosophe and me have just started a forum together. Basically the idea is to kick around the odd thought about all sorts of things. Anyway if you are interested in it- here is the forum.

The Argument about Abortion

Reading Unity's excellent fisk of Nadine Dorries and Sunny's most recent post on abortion and the comments under it, something suddenly struck me. If you look carefully at both posts and the comments under Sunny's various people consider the issue of abortion. However there is something rather interesting that had never struck me before about the way that they discuss the issue. The pro-life camp discuss the issue from the point of view of the rights of the unborn child, but rather than trying to defend or sustain those rights as a philosophical project, they jump straight to images or ideas about the dead foetus, using words like murder. The pro-choice side don't really attempt to deny the images of the pro-life side- they immediatly jump to discussions about abortion clinics in back streets and the fight of women for equality down the century as well as the pain of childbirth.

I don't want to get involved on either side of the debate, however there is something rather intriguing in thinking about the way these arguments are being made. Unity is a great blogger and one of the most impressive thinkers on the net- but I think when he says that the abortion debate is about a contest of rights, he is actually wrong. He misplaces the moral language that the argument is being had in. Actually this is about a contest of empathies- the question is who do you empathise with- the unborn embryo or the mother. Consider a website like the US Pro-Life Alliance- the website entrance contains pictures of smiling babies and the statement that 'abortion stops a beating heart'- this isn't an argument being made to your concept of an abstract right to life but an argument being made to your capacity to sympathise with another human being. Rights are used as a way of trumping the other empathetic understanding- but this is morality based upon empathy not upon an understanding of right. The word 'right' is called into service here as a trump card- because the recognition of human rights is (rightly or wrongly) deemed an absolute within our culture.

Looking at the abortion debate, the most interesting thing about it is that it denotes I think the basis for most modern moral judgements. The basis for most people's morality it seems to me from this and other debates is concepts of empathy. In this sense Adam Smith was right- in that he predicted that the marketisation of society would lead to more empathetic understandings of morality. Whether you are a Christian pro-lifer or a feminist pro-choicer the basic vocabulary with which you talk about religion is exactly the same- its about the sympathy that a particular object should receive. Phrasing it in terms of rights is a mere rhetorical choice. This also explains to me the presiding causes of our time- the way that pictures of African orphans or victims of the Tsunami can become cause celebre and evoke millions of charitable donations. One of the interesting things about abortion is that it is an issue where empathy can justifiably be evoked on both sides- both the mother and the embryo can be said to deserve our understanding- that makes it a difficult and controversial issue within an age where the dominant moral climate is partly an empathetic one.

Of course there are more principles involved within our moral climate- but I think the abortion debate reveals something very interesting about the way that we think about right and wrong. It reveals how important empathy is in our decision as to which way to go on an issue- that is the way that both sides make their arguments. And it also reveals the way that the language of rights, is in this case at least, more of a trump card than an actual argument.

Great Political Misjudgements

Paul Linford has put a list of great political misjudgements up here- they are all from British politics during the last thirty to forty years. Its a pretty good list and I'd reccomend having a look. His list reinforces to me though some of the conclusions of earlier posts on this blog- politics is ultimately about how you confront issues. Whether its Harold Wilson not devaluing the pound in 1964 or John Major forcing Thatcher into the ERM in 1990, the arguments mattered but it was the caution or inventiveness or decisiveness of politicians that really counted. Timing is crucial. For example bad timing cost the Tories in 1974 and Labour in 1979. Counter factual is always difficult to do in history- but it reinforces something that Matt Sinclair said recently about the way that causation in politics doesn't have a simple pattern, but relies upon the chaotic movement of individual choice and disposition. Its always worth remembering that- and the effect of political misjudgements- because it demonstrates to me that very few of the trends in human society are inevitable.

(The picture is for non-UK readers of Jim Callaghan, the then Prime Minister, telling the Trade Union Congress that there wouldn't be an election in 1978- a year later Margerat Thatcher was Prime Minister and Callaghan's party preparing for 18 years of opposition- 18 years which changed the Labour party completely.)

Khufu's Wisdom: Pharonic Follies

Naguib Mahfouz seems to be equally able to write about ancient and modern Egypt. His novels about Ancient Egypt concern themselves with an analysis of high politics, often through using mythic stories to indicate political concerns. So for example, his novel about Akhenaten, the ancient Pharoah focuses on the links between faith and politics and questions about how far religious motivations can justify political actions. Khufu's Wisdom, his novel about the Pharoah Khufu (also known as Cheops) focuses on similar issues. Mahfouz is fascinated by the way that the personality of the ruler effects his power to control and rule his nation. Khufu's Wisdom concerns the succession to Cheops, from the beggining of the novel the scent of death rests over the realm, after ten years the Great Pyramid is still unfinished. The real story though concerns Khufu's effort to avoid a prophesy that says Djedjef, son of the priest of Ra, will succeed him and not his own sons. The novel shows us the way that despite Khufu's best efforts, Djedjef does come to succeed him, ultimately through the Pharoah's own intercession.

Statecraft is central to this novel. Khufu's actions rest upon the fact that as Pharoah his interests and the people's interests are presumed to be exactly aligned. Throughout the tale though two concepts of the Pharoah's power debate each other- we might to borrow Walter Ullman's language call them the ascending and descending views of Khufu's power. On the one hand we have the idea expressed by vizier, Hemiunu,

Why differentiate your lofty self from the people of Egypt, as one would the head from the heart or the soul from the body? You are my Lord the token of their honor, the mark of their eminence, the citadel of their strength and the inspiration of their power. You have endowed them with life, glory, might and happiness. In their affection there is neither humiliation nor enslavement but rather a beautiful loyalty and venerable love for you and for their homeland.

Notice that Hemiunu makes the Pharoah's power conditional upon the fact that he is a symbol for his subjects- it is through his subject's support and their identification of him as the symbol of the nation that he receives legitimation. They do that because he is a good ruler. In that sense power ascends from them to him. Khufu himself says that he agrees with this interpretation- he says that he is no mere king- he is Pharoah of Egypt- the stress is on the last word, it is the people that endows the authority. And in that context Khufu stresses the fact that the individual- himself or any in the room with him matters little besides the majesty of the nation in the thought of the statesman.

His son, Khafra, who throughout is offered as a counterpoint of folly to Khufu's wisdom, has a different view. After Hemeinu has spoken, Khafra gives a descending view of authority. He tells his father that

You rule according to the wish of the Gods not by the will of men. It is up to you to govern the people as you desire, not to ask yourself what you should do when they ask you!

For Khafra authority descends from God to the Pharoah and then to men- the Pharoah is not the King of Egypt but is King by Ra's authority and is entitled to rule for his own individual purposes. And despite what he says above, Khufu is not wise enough to follow his own advice. During the course of the novel he does act in the interests of himself and not in the interests of Egypt. By attempting to kill the young Djedjef in his cradle, the Pharoah attempts to commit a horrendous crime and use the soldiers of Egypt to do it and furthermore he attempts to put his son Khafra on the throne- a young man who would use Egypt as his chattel slave domain. The Pharoah's retirement into his study to write down his wisdom is a way of attoning for this crime- Khafra presses him to use Egypt's military power- at a cost to soldiers that Khafra cares little about- but Khufu wisely restrains his son from committing the further crime of killing the innocent troops in the cause of a useless war.

In the end Khufu yields to his son. We get the impression that Khufu by this point has grown old and more easily swayed by those around him. But he unlike the Prince still recognises the underlying sadness of war, that he betrays his trust towards the 100 Egyptians who die. Interestingly the war is also the instrument which brings about the change of dynasty- for Djedjef is promoted to be the commander of the armies which victoriously destroy the tribes of the Sinai. However Djedjef like Khufu reveals himself to be a great ruler- as opposed to a ruler who rules in his own interest not the interests of his community- he has compassion for the soldiers who have died in the war and also before admiring his own triumph attends to the captives of the Sinai tribes. In that way he too recognises that ultimately the justification of Egyptian power ascends from the people to those in power, it does not descend from the Gods to the Pharoah. The Pharoah is ruler of Egypt, not just a ruler by the grace of God. Djedjef therefore proves himself a more worthy successor to Khufu than Khafra ever did. In the last scene of the novel, Khufu himself is led to recognise this. Having spent his last years, writing a book of wisdom, the old Pharoah finally realises that his family's good and that of the state are separate and recognises Djedjef as his heir and the husband of his daughter.

It is not the Pharoah alone but minor characters too are called upon to make similar sacrafices. Bisharu is Djedjef's adoptive father and at one point has to consider the merits of his adopted son against that of the state- or the Pharoah's will- he argues within himself:

Now which of the two do you think will be first to be sold? Duty or the avoidance of doing harm. A pupil in the primary school at Memphis could answer this question immediatly: Bisharu will not end his life with an act of treachery. No he will never sell out his sire: Pharoah is first, Djedjef comes second.

Notice that for Bisharu it doesn't matter ultimately whether the Pharoah is Pharoah by order of the Gods or for the good of Egypt- duty would lead in the same direction. But one wonders whether the certainty with which Bisharu comes to his view at that moment would be the same- Khufu's status as the servant as well as the master of Egypt leads Bisharu to a desperate certainty that he must betray his actual son for the good of his country. Bisharu in this case acts in a better way than Khufu who when offered that choice decided the wrong way.

Ultimately though this novel is not about subjects but about sovereigns and the argument it makes is on behalf of what Ullman called the ascending theory of government. That government exists primarily to serve its people. The descending theory that government exists to serve an external force and the people must obey it is implicitly left dead on the floor with the Prince Khafra- the longterm good of Egypt is the same as the interests of the fates in this novel, it is a plan that the wise Pharoah ultimately has to carry out. Furthermore the rise of Djedjef is the rise of a sovereign who truly serves his people, whose power flows from acts of loyalty like those of his father, acts of loyalty which stem from the fact that a good subject, faced with the same dilemma as a good King, acts more virtuously, sacraficing his son where a King would not. This issue of political engagement as a form of service is something that recurs right up to the present day- Rousseau is one modern political philosopher who explores it- the general will is another way of discussing the idea that we ought to centre sovereignty on the good of the whole public not the interests of our own part of the public. Ullman's notion of descending and ascending views of authority is an interesting one- and it still applies though in a democracy we are of course all in the position of Khufu- the interesting issue is whether we beleive that we have a responsibility when we exercise authority to look to the good of the people or whether we are endowed with authority to arbitrarily act in our own interests.

Khufu's Wisdom is a fascinating novel- and this isn't the only issue it explores- the subtle way with which Mahfouz interweaves ancient politics and myth with modern political philosophy is fascinating but there are other interesting questions in here- particularly about motherhood that this review hasn't scanned. Ultimately though one of the most interesting questions that arises out of the novel is a further insight- when we talk about the wisdom of Khufu are we talking about a faculty or an inclination. Khufu's last piece of wisdom is his renounciation of his own family in favour of the state- is that something he is wise because he knows or in this case is it that wisdom is the right emotional inclination- is the wisdom of Khufu actually not wisdom but political virtue?

Crossposted at Bits of News- from whom I nicked the rather nice image as well!

The Counterfeiters

The Counterfeiters is a film all about suffering and guilt. Its central character is one of those people caught up in the terrors of the twentieth century- having lost his family in the awful aftermath of the Russian Revolution, he himself is caught up in the terrors of Hitler's dictatorship. Salomon Sorowitsch was a counterfeiter of bank notes in the 1930s in Berlin, we see him operating in a club which reminds one of the great cultural landscape of Weimer Germany and also of its tensions (one of his customers on learning that Sally stands for Salomon turns away in disgust at meeting a Jew). Having been arrested, he is taken to the camps as a criminal and forced into a harsh, horrible environment- into which he is joined by his fellow Jews gradually, as the screws of the final solution were turned up and up. Sorowitsch manages to make the whole experience less terrible by catering to the vanity of his commanders, painting their pictures and sketching them to be noble Aryan warriors. Escaping the Holocaust by prostituting his talents.

The focus of the film though lies not so much in those events- Sorowitsch and others with the requisite skills are taken out of the camps and sent to a special unit. Sorowitsch as a counterfeiter is taken to this unit and put in charge of counterfeiting the pound. Alongside him are bankers, printers and photographers, all at work inside the camp but with better conditions than the normal prisoners. They sleep on comfortable beds, they have a ping pong table to play games on, they get weekends off and receive cigarrettes from the guards as a reward for their acheivements. Of course, as they realise the notes that they are forging will go to support the Nazi war effort and undermine those who seek to rescue them from what is still an undignified and horrible situation. You realise that when a German soldier pisses down Sorowitsch's neck and also when a Jew with TB is just shot without ceremony. The indignity of bankers working alongside counterfeiters, both for those that want to kill them, is captured with wonderful acuteness. They know as well that as soon as their work is finished they will be killed, the better to conceal the operation and also as part of the final solution that Hitler envisaged for the Jews.

So the dilemma facing Sorowitsch and his comrades is about what to do in those circumstances- save yourself and kill your cause, or kill yourself and save your cause. Throughout the film several of the characters make reference to the fact that their only obligation is to save themselves. From Nazi officers who say that they only served Hitler to save themselves, to the Jews in the camps saying they counterfeit to save themselves- they all repeat this nostrum as much as they find it difficult to beleive it. Burger one of the Jews keeps making the ideological argument for sabotage- in the end Sorowitsch is forced to sabotage the sabotage in order to save the rest of the Jews from being killed one by one. But that tension remains throughout- Sorowitsch knows that it exists as does everyone of his comrades- they also all can hear the sounds of the normal life in the camp going on outside, the screams, the deaths, the trudge of prisoners being walked until they collapse- all these things remind them of their privilege inside the walls.

The moral dilemma here is a difficult one. Imagining yourself standing where Sorowitsh stood during the war, you don't know how you would have chosen faced with such an agonising hell on the other side of the wall- a hell to which you could easily return. Though equally at the end of the film, when confronted by the prisoners from outside, what can those inside the cushioned world of the forgers say to the gaunt figures and faces emerging from the actual camp. The prisoners inside the unit are always trapped between these two things- between the horror of what they are going through, and the guilt that they aren't going through more. Karl Markovics captures the essense of Sorowitsch's angst brilliantly- he gets the sense of suavity that enables Sally to survive and also gives him an increasingly haunted melancholy as the film continues. The other characters are varied but all the performances range from the good to the competent- it is Markovics's performance though that is really extraordinary and gives the film life.

There is a nihilism at the bottom of this experience that Sorowitsh goes through- a nihilism that is created by living solely to survive for so many years. Sorowitsh's haunting eyes are after the war emptied of anything- as he goes to casinos trying to lose money and sleep with women that he is sure care nothing for him. The scars of the Holocaust are such that they have destroyed meaning for him, they have made him see beauty as barbaric (as Theodore Adorno said the Holocaust made poetry barbaric)- there is something terrifying about the mechanical nature of Markovics's performance as Sorowitsch after the war compared to his performance as Sorowitsh before the war- the sorrow is reflected in the emptiness of his face in the later scenes replacing the open joy of the earlier scenes. We see this most evidently because of the way that the scenes after the war come directly before in the film the scenes before the war- the director wants us to see how the first Sorowitsch (historically later) developed from the second earlier Sorowitsch.

Guilt, sadness, horror and betrayel- all these emotions are bound up in this film. A film in which the passport out of moral complicity is to assert that one too has suffered greatly- the German commandant tries to tell Sorowitsch that he too has suffered and more plausibly the prisoners in the unit rescue themselves from the wrath of their fellows outside the walls by pointing to their own catalogue numbers from the concentration camps. It is difficult to come to any sense of what you or I might do trapped in that terrible situation- with the screams coming from outside to motivate working for the oppressor. This film offers no easy answers to the moral dilemma embedded within it. It only offers questions but they are questions worth thinking about and pondering over.

Crossposted at BitsofNews.

Isolation and the Executive

President Bush has now spent six years in the White House, by the time he leaves the place in January 2009 he will have completed his eighth year in the seat of US government and have left a momentous legacy. Bush has attracted hatred and praise in ways that few US Presidents have in the last fifty years- he has been compared both to Sir Winston Churchill and Harry Truman and to Adolf Hitler. What hasn't been addressed though are some of the real lessons from Bush's time in the White House and those of his predecessors. When the Americans elect a President, they elect a man or perhaps a woman who then serves at the apex of their government for the next four or possibly eight years. One of the most interesting facets of that service is the ways that it effects the person in control- it is their whim that ultimately decides and has to decide great questions of policy and the pulpit that the White House is afforded is still the most powerful in the World, so the question of how the office shapes its holders is a vital and important one.

Bush's Presidency is the first War on Terror Presidency. But his Presidency reflects trends that have been present for a long time- at least since the second world war and which are present as well in other democracies- the UK for example. As this fascinating article from Todd Purdum (husband of Dee Dee Myers an official in the Clinton White House) makes clear the US President is an increasingly isolated figure. Its part of the nature of the office that the President is surrounded by security and occupied by the business of a vast bureacracy. In the early Republic men like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were connected to their fellow countrymen through the exchange of vast volumes of correspondence. The fears of anthrax mean that the present President is unlikely to receive directly a single letter from an ordinary voter. Bush dined outside the White House three times in the last six months- his contact with the outside world, even with longterm friends is mediated always by the vast military machine surrounding him. There can be and are almost no spontaneous social contacts with non-employees available to him, there are very few moments when his every interraction isn't planned for and leglislated long in advance.

President Clinton and other former Presidents have spoken about how this strange position effected them. Clinton used apparantly to walk past the lines of tourists and chat to them whilst going in to work in the morning, he found this gave him human interraction. President Reagen rang up charity phone lines to give money and had to convince the rather terrified interlocutor on the other end that he was indeed the President of the United States. We don't know about life inside the Bush White House yet- and probably won't until the term of the current President ends though Mr Purdum has gathered lots of information. What instantly strikes me though about the kinds of lives led by Presidents and Prime Ministers is that increasingly they are veiled from outside sources of information- they are by the nature of their office out of touch with people's lives. Whether that matters or not is another matter. I think it does partly because it makes the President into an icon not a personality- the trappings office must change a personality especially over such a long time and give that personality an exaggerated sense both of its own importance and also of its own omniscience.

The most worrying part of the Bush administration's rhetoric to me is often the way it sites their man within history. Mr Blair, the former Prime Minister, has the same rhetorical preoccupation and Mr Brown his successor shares it. David Owen, the ex British foreign secretary and neurologist recently argued that there is a condition of hubris into which politicians whilst in office descend. One wonders whether their unique position means that they think they are uniquely placed to anticipate the verdicts of historians long into the future. President Bush for example recently reminded visitors to his White House of the experience of President Lincoln in 1864 when he was deeply unpopular- of course he is right to remember that unpopularity isn't neccessarily a mark that one is wrong, but nor is it a mark that one is right. Mr Bush lives in the White House, burned during the war of 1812, a war which few now consider a success either for Mr Maddison or for his British counterpart the Earl of Liverpool. Isolation though breeds that sense of superiority- of communion not with your peers but with a long line of historical predecessors and successors.

Of course, isolation is a fact about modern political lives- the recent events in Pakistan demonstrate why. And Presidents and Prime Ministers from Spencer Perceval to John F. Kennedy have paid with their lives for the access their public gets to them (fortunately that list neither in the UK nor the US extends no further, though President Reagen was almost another victim in the early 1980s). But it isn't a good thing- it perpetuates the distance that supreme power creates by surrounding it with a barricade of security. Still more, the President and Prime Minister surround themselves with attempts to avoid scrutiny, a careless comment can kick up a controversy and the way that President Bush for example can't make a self deprecating joke without Michael Moore putting it in a film demonstrates the unreality of the office and the difficulty of living with it. Isolation may be a fact of life for these people, but it isn't a good thing. Casual interraction, the battering of meeting with equals and friends, all these things are crucial to living a real and a full life. Its one reason why wives and husbands are so crucial to political life- as Peter Hennessy commented recently in an interview with Iain Dale, its crucial to have a wife or husband that takes you down at the end of the day to normality. One can see in Oliver Stone's film about Nixon that Nixon loses contact with reality when he can't even talk to Pat Nixon about his life in the office: he can only talk to Haldeman and Ehrlichman.

Isolation encourages madness, hubris and mistakes. It is one of the worst and most neccessary elements of modern political life- and its one that modern politicians have to strive to find their way to break through. In the end politics remains as it always has been an intoxicating brew- but once you lose your soul, the point is that you are on the way to losing the world.

Iran

This is a very interesting article by Seymour Hersh on the current status of American and European relations with Iran. What emerges from it for me about the situation is the difficulty of knowing much about what is going on at all. Take for example the issue of whether Iranians are smuggling weapons into Iraq, David Kay the former chief weapons inspector for President Bush in Iraq believes that quite a few of those weapons came in earlier when the Iranians were arming the opposition to Saddam or are going around a vast black market in ammunitions inside Iraq. The article is worth reading at any rate just to get a sense of how complicated the issues in the Middle East are at the moment.

L'Argent: Robert Bresson in a Sinful World

L'Argent was the last film made by the famous French director Robert Bresson. Bresson was a highly individualistic director who drew deeply upon both his Catholic faith and his experience as a prisoner of war in world war two. He was conceptually innovative: he used his actors or models as blank sheets upon which the mind of the viewer and the director imprinted images. Consequently a Bresson film is difficult to approach because the actors don't seem at times to be acting, but merely saying or speaking the lines. Their faces become enhanced with emotion but they are not themselves the providers of emotion. Bresson believed that actors can get in the way of their characters- he endeavoured not to allow that to happen in his film. He was also a film maker who refused to provide explanation- his films move swiftly along a set of sentences, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened. He was an economist of the screen and consequently when you see a Bresson film, it is your mind that fills in much of the detail and the psychological realism behind the story.

Nowhere is this more true than in L'Argent. L'Argent was one of Bresson's more difficult and interesting films. Even by his standards the motivations which lead the leading character, Yvon, down to committing a horrific mass murder are opaque and hard to understand. The basic story was taken from a Tolstoy short story- The Forged Coupon- and concerns a man who is prosecuted for a crime that he did not commit. He ends up handing over fake money to the owner of a cafe, the police investigate him as a distributor of counterfeit notes and because the store owner that gave him the notes commits perjury, Yvon ends up in jail. Various other things follow as well from that moment. The store owner's assistant becomes a criminal as well having seen that criminality forms the basis for such a respectable bourgeois business and the original criminals, the young counterfeiters, escape without a bruise to their reputations. But the story in its way is insignificant besides the real drama which is interior to the characters.

Bresson's camera never takes you into places that you cannot see. He never exposes the motivation of his characters and yet you can at times get something of a sense of it through comparison and thought. Through analysing the action, contemplating the play of images upon the screen, you can see some kind of sense emerging. In that way, Bresson's camera manages to tell you less and more about his characters- less obviously but more implicitly. L'Argent is a film about guilt indeed- and the bills of paper are the inspiration for the evil acts that take place. But Bresson undermines his own McGuffin, he teaches us in this film that crime proceeds not from an act of want but from an act of will. Various of the criminals, including Yvon, that we see populate the screen have moments of desperation where their crimes are motivated by 'l'argent' but ultimately the greatest crimes are committed out of a vicarious and Nietzschean sense of will. Bresson was fascinated by the whole idea, explored by Dostoevsky of crime as a willed act, he remade in the 1960s the Russian master's novel Crime and Punishment as Pickpocket. L'Argent picks up on that theme of willed crime to a greater extent than its deceptive title might warrant.

Yvon may be propelled into crime by the unjust episode involving money- but it is clear to Bresson the Christian and to his audience that Yvon should resign himself to the event and rebuild his life. He doesn't. We know that Yvon's wife thinks that way, she wants him to explain himself and the reasons why things have gone wrong to his firm. Yvon's pagan sense of pride and manliness couldn't cope with such an explanation and in a terse one liner (so typical of the film) he turns down that option. Rather he goes into jail as the accessory to another crime, the story continues with Yvon continuing in his search to reemerge as a civilised man, to reshape the world by his will and undo the past injustice. His first effort, to use contacts in the criminal world to make money, fails. He is offered redemption again through the agency of a family that he lives with, but again he wants to will the act that will emancipate him. He steals and asks right at the end of the film, where is the money. The point is that Yvon never ceases to try and will the money's existence- the forged note has taken away his respectability- and he tries to recreate that respectability through remaking the world and not accepting it as it is.

There is an undoubted pessimism to this film. Contact with the modern world through money is shown as an unambiguous ill. Bresson leaves us in no doubt that it is the Marian dedication of an old woman on a farm who works for nothing that we should admire. She is connected to rural life and sacrafice in a way that none of the other characters are. She does not will but merely accepts her place in the God's scheme and his providential and unjustified pattern of existance. If there is a mirror text to L'Argent, then it is the Book of Job. Suffering comes through the very nature of living in a fallen world, through the fact that Satan holds dominion down here and inhabits the specie that we pass between each other. One strategy is to attempt to will onesself out of that situation, a strategy that in Bresson's terms leads to spiritual suicide. Another is to merely accept the grinding injustice and terror of life- to live through it, placing onesself always upon another cross, always in the position of Christ before Pilate.

For this is a work that is deeply anti-establishment and quietist. The French authorities are never shown as anything other than ceremonially dressed incompetents. As in Le Procès de Jeanne d'Arc, the judges of the case are judged and found guilty in Bresson. In the first trial, they manage to convict Yvon of a crime he never committed and hand down a harsh sentence. During the second trial, they convict Lucien, the shop assistant turned idealistic burglar, of thefts that he has committed. But Lucien commits those thefts to reveal the pomposity of the system and to give to charity. His act is an act of will and spiritual pride- but in rebuking him for it the judges merely reveal their inability to see further than their own natures. One thinks of Proust's story about the dinner party where the guests demurely tell each other how much they disagree with anarchism, whilst they each earn over 100,000 francs a person. So with Bresson attacking the system may be ridiculous, but defending it is worse.

Getting to the bottom of this complex and interesting story is a never ending journey. Bresson made his films in the way that he did to reflect the fact that life itself is something which you cannot get to the bottom of with a glib phrase from a superstar. He wanted his audiences to look deeply into the midst of his films and notice the subtle economy of his script, to take every line, every action and consider it as a semiotic revelation from the soul. When Bresson shows a car chase, he shows the foot going down on the accelerator, the policeman's hand on the steering wheel, cuts between them and that is it. When he shows a spiritual drama he leaves his viewer with the opportunity to try and wrestle with the issues provoked by his intelligent and economic direction. Ultimately just as the recitation of a life-story is easy, so is the recitation of the script of this film, but as with a life-story it is everything beyond and above the obvious facts that is hard to ascertain. For Bresson film was meant to reflect reality and reality was hard.

L'Argent therefore has like many Bresson films a double mission. In both senses it incarnates a sceptical Catholicism. Bresson wanted to remind us that telling stories was the easy part of life, working out what they meant and where each of the characters stood was harder and at the centre of that question for him lay the omnipotent deity. If Bresson's tactic was to evoke the mystery of life, then his subject in L'Argent is bad luck and its effects. Luck is symbolised through money. Machiavelli told us that we had to master or even rape fortune in order to have success. Bresson tells us that that option does not exist. Yvon tries to control his fate, he fails. Lucien tries to rescue mankind, he fails. The beneficiaries of the system, kids who have rich parents, judges who have red robes, always win. The point though is as the old woman does to struggle on, to exist and to make a sacrifice of your own ego in the service of devotion.

Bresson's film has often been called pessimistic. It isn't. Bresson himself said that L'Argent was his most lucid statement- it is and it is one of the most lucid statements of a quietist faith that I have seen on screen or anywhere else. Whether Bresson was right or not is of course another issue- but you cannot critique the power with which the message is delivered.

Iraq: The Post Mortem

British troops are slowly leaving Iraq, and in the States the American Presidential election will offer voters a choice between a Republican probably offering a new strategy and a Democrat offering some kind of withdrawel. In both countries and throughout the West, the popularity of the war is lower now than it ever was before- a considerable acheivement given the divisive nature of the invasion in the first place. Much attention has therefore focused on the ideas and judgements that took the UK and United States into war in the first place. Amongst the major culprits the school of thought known as neo-conservatism has come in for the most resolute attack from all sides- from traditional conservatives angry that we attempted to impose a democracy on Iraq and from liberals angry about the abandonment of the due process of international law and international consensus as expressed in the United Nations.

In Commentary, the neo conservative thinker, Joshua Muravchik, offers a rousing and well written defence of the doctrine against all comers. He argues that neo-conservatism consists of four principles, which he defines as

(1) Our struggle is moral, against an evil enemy who revels in the destruction of innocents. Knowing this can help us assess our adversaries correctly and make appropriate strategic choices. Saying it convincingly will strengthen our side and weaken theirs. (2) The conflict is global, and outcomes in one theater will affect those in others. (3) While we should always prefer nonviolent methods, the use of force will continue to be part of the struggle. (4) The spread of democracy offers an important, peaceful way to weaken our foe and reduce the need for force.

He argues that these principles are equally applicable to the cold war, the context in which he suggests the doctrine as a foreign policy theory originated, and to the war on terror. He suggests that they victored in the Cold War- there are legitimate questions about whether they did or whether the Soviet Union collapsed out of its own domestic problems- but leave that aside and that they will victor in the war on terror. He suggests that the 'Iraq' case demonstrates a combination of a tactical misjudgement (particularly on the part of Donald Rumsfeld) and over exaggeration by the media of the downside to Iraq- a civil war is not equivalent to an unstable country for Mr Muravchik.

Some of those judgements are sound. I agree with him that there are dangers in assuming, as many conservatives do, that it would have been easy to impose a successor to Saddam- a strong man- in 2003. American force would still have been needed to back any such strong man up- especially had the Baathist army been unwilling to assist. The picture in Iraq is a dark shade of grey and not completely black. Other things that he says I think he is wrong on. The events in Libya during 2003, when the Libyan regime gave up the Weapons of Mass Destruction program that they were advancing on, they did it partly as a result of the kinds of astute diplomatic footwork that the neo-conservatives disdain. Similarly in Afghanistan, the stupendous victory in the war there was the product of tribal leaders changing sides at the right time, and even now as the BBC has reported there are people in government who have human rights atrocities on their hands and links to the Taliban.

Muravchik overestimates the ability to reshape a region through force. He also overestimates the role that force plays in a conflict against terrorism. He is right that terrorism is an unambiguous evil when prosecuted for Islamist ends but wrong to presume that military tactics will root it out. Furthermore linking say Hamas and Hezbollah to Osama Bin Laden is a mistake- the first two have ties to what is a national struggle against Israeli forces- the second is the leader of an existentialist struggle against moderate Islam and its Western allies. Hamas and Hezbollah are horrible organisations and both commit terrible atrocities but misunderstanding their nature doesn't help us explain what is happening in the Middle East- they have other motivations. Muravchik ridicules those who describe the terrorist threat as a policing matter- but in truth to a large extent that is what it is. Many of the terrorists come from the West or allies of ours in the Middle East and are affected by a more general malaise- what Olivier Roy calls an expression of globalised Islam. The solutions to the problem of terrorism are not obvious and Mr Muravchik risks being blinded by a particular interpretation of history into providing un-nuanced solutions.

Lastly Mr Muravchik mentions and does not dwell on another major weakness in neo-conservatism which is its obsession with the Middle East. Mr Muravchik argues that the neo-conservatives have spoken about other issues- if so they haven't spoken very loudly. There are crucial issues out there which neo-conservatism seems relatively quiet about- China and Russia are two major issues. But there are others. Neo-Conservatives should talk more about central Asia- they haven't, however it is noticable that the diagnosis of problems in the Middle East would lead to a pessimistic view of Central Asia. We can see the same conjunction of oil reserves, angry populations, dictatorships and strategical importance.

Mr Muravchik, despite his impressive prose, has less impressive arguments. Some of what he says is right- but much of us is too simplistic and needs nuance and more analysis. Neo-conservatism as an ideological school is fairly nebulous and difficult to define, Mr Muravchik's attempt to define and defend it is an interesting one but ultimately it is a failure.

The lives of Politicians

David Brooks wrote an interesting article this morning in the New York Times. Basically Brooks argues that most politicians are involved in a game which dehumanises them. They have to campaign constantly, that involves both being uncharitable to their opponents and egotistic. They have to reduce policy decisions to tribal political decisions and all these things are demanded of them by the electorate operating within a democratic system. Brooks is right in many ways. What is interesting about this though is the way that our system creates a lonely and often very sad elite of people, so consumed by battling to reach the top, that they barely have time to consider what they should do when they arrive there. He speaks of the fact that politicians don't have time to privately consider or reason about what they do. They don't have that time because they have to spend that time answering questions and dealing with a media that grows by the hour. The problem is that often good politics and good policy contradict each other: the one might be symbolised by a character like Alistair Campbell, an obsessive who finds in every passing headline the panic of a moment, the other by a James Maddison thinking in the very long term and looking into history to write the American constitution. Unfortunately modern politics develops more Campbells than Maddisons and that is simply the way it is.

Don't trust your statistics!

Matt Wardman has published an interesting article, for anyone who runs a blog, about statistics here, depending on the statistics program he used he saw a varience of about 100% in how many unique views it recorded. This is probably only of interest to bloggers but it reinforces a suspicion I've always had about statistics and what they record- I definitely noticed a change when I switched from blogpatrol (because it always went down) to sitemeter. I don't think that change was to do with the numbers changing but with the recording mechanism.

A Bill to stop Politicians lying

Politicians lie. This is bad. We should make it illegal. That would stop politicians lying. And then everyone would see that there is a truth, a good policy, which is only obscured by lies and spin and we could follow that policy. That seems to be the logic behind a new BBC documentary which advocates passing a bill to stop politicians lying. Unity at Ministry of Truth rightly blasts the non comprehension of the constitution involved in asserting that the people are sovereign when they aren't, the monarch is sovereign. But there is something deeper which is wrong here- because there is a real problem with what constitutes a lie, what constitutes spin and what constitutes the best interest of the people.

Lets take the recent debate about inheritance tax. The ideological thrust for this has come from the Tories so I'm going to concentrate on them. David Cameron and George Osbourne maintain that an inheritance tax would benefit everyone, it is a tax cut they say for the people of Britain. Actually it would effect a slice of the people of Britain. But the Conservatives aren't lying, they believe that any tax cut for the top group of the population is a tax cut for us all because at some point we might be rich and also for reasons that wealth spills down. The Left would disagree- its a tax cut for the rich and the opinion that its not is a lie. James Higham will then come back and accuse the left of deceit to stay in power. The point is that actually noone is lying, this is a real difference of opinion.

You can see this in other controversies as well. Lying is often a reflex when you don't understand the point that the other side is making. There are genuine cases where people lie. For example Jonathan Aitken is a definite crook. There is also spin. But here again the problem is that the sin is difficult to spot. Lets take an example the invasion of Iraq. I have no doubt that Mr Blair beleived wholeheartedly that the weapons of mass destruction lay in Iraq, two inquiries have proved that fact beyond doubt. I also have no doubt that the evidence behind the invasion was presented as more certain than it was, often though that was partly because these guys actually misinterpreted the evidence, partly it was because their process of government didn't weed information or design information presentation well. There wasn't in my view a conscious lie- and it would be difficult to prove that there was. There was a case for invasion- and over a million people knew enough about that case to say it was wrong and march through the streets of London in opposition. There were factual claims which turned out to be wrong- but they weren't intentional lies, both the intelligence was wrong, for the first time intelligence overestimated Saddam's capability (in the past we had always underestimated the capability) and the process by which that intelligence came to the Prime Minister was wrong.

Lying is too simplistic an explanation for political conduct. I'm afraid that the sources of political dispute and political mistakes lie much deeper. They are about the ways that our politicians, and yes us because we elect them, have made mistakes in the way that we view the world. When Golda Meir denied that there were Palestinians, she actually beleived that. She was terribly wrong but she wasn't lying, no more than a child who can't see that 2 and 2 make 4 is lying. Most often when people are talking about lying they are either trying to excuse themselves from their own opinions, or they are doing something else. Failing to understand that anyone intelligent might hold another opinion, they cry out that a politician has lied. Isaiah Berlin warned against monism- nobody listened- its time to take his warning to heart and try and take people seriously when they say what they beleive instead of just chucking accusations of lying around.

Shouting lie, is a comforting feeling, politics I'm afraid is not a comforting subject.

What do we mean by Wealth?

You may have noticed an argument about inheritance tax going on on this blog, there were a couple of comments on a post of mine, and a couple over at Mr Sinclair's. I think some of the regulars might have got involved as well. Anyway Matt has kindly responded to my post over at his place and raised several interesting points. Today though I want to focus on one point that he raises which is about social mobility and really is about what the word 'wealth' means in a capitalist society like the one that we live in. This issue, about what the concept of social mobility means, lies right at the heart of modern politics and it is essential to keep in mind when thinking about economic issues.

There is a problem with the way that our society defines the word wealth. Wealth can be an absolute concept- for example it is clearly sensible to say that someone who has a three course meal every day is more wealthy than someone who can't afford to eat. There is a clear sense in the argument that especially when defining destitution, adequate wealth to survive should be understood as a basket of goods but to define wealth solely in absolute terms misses another important use of the concept. Lets take an example, by the mere fact of owning a computer I am incredibly wealthy, I can project my pontifications to the world. However just because I own a computer doesn't mean that I feel rich, the BBC reported three years ago that in 2002 half of the households in the UK owned computers. Owning a computer makes me absolutely very wealthy (in that I can do communicate across the globe with anyone I choose) but I don't feel that absolute wealth, rather I feel a more modest sense of relative wealth to my own society.

Its worth thinking about wealth in terms of other words that are similar. I'd use the word fast. When I say of someone that they are a fast runner, I am actually using a term that has both absolute and relative components. A fast runner might say run a mile in 4 minutes. Absolutely if he took his entire life to move a mile he would be very slow and very confined in his surroundings. But also if everyone else can run a mile in 2 minutes, then what sense does it make to say that the man who runs it in 4 is fast. In truth the word fast has both an absolute component and a relative component. There is an absolute sense in which a human being is slow- ie taking 73 years to run a mile- but most judgements about how fast a human being can run are relative judgements. Nowadays Roger Bannister's four minute mile would be slow for an athlete- but at the time it was a world record.

Lets come back for a moment to wealth, if wealth has both absolute and relative components, does it matter that we understand both of them. In my view it does. It matters a lot that we understand the importance of absolute wealth. The most equal society on earth is the one in which everyone is starving to death! Everyone would in that society be relatively wealthy, compared to each other they are all equal, but it would be absurd to say that they are wealthy. To structure our entire society around equality, might end up making everyone equal in poverty. However to dismiss relative wealth is equally silly. It is to insist that the kid who can only run a 6 minute mile, as opposed to his mates who run a five minute mile, is fast because he can still run. It doesn't really help him when he is stuck a minute behind! To put that in economic terms, somebody is poor if they can't afford certain things which the rest of us can afford- and Matt in his basket of goods understands that point- poverty is intrinsically relative and so is wealth. And those concepts are more relative the further we get away from the situation of absolute poverty.

Lets come back to the concept of social mobility. Matt says that the idea that social mobility means that some must go up and some must go down is 'pretty silly' and obviously on one level he is right. If I get richer, that doesn't neccessarily mean that you get poorer- in absolute terms what I earn is irrelevant in assessing what you earn. But wait a minute, that is not entirely true if we leave the realm of numbers for a moment. What I earn is then very relevant to what you earn. If my stately home is the only one in the country, then I am the richest person around, but if everyone owns one or if more and more people own one my comparative status diminishes and hence in a sense my wealth diminishes, despite the fact that I may be earning more than I was before. Hence if some people go up the social scale, others come down because they are less well off compared to the rest of society than they were. Hence social mobility has to go both ways. That is true whether people are losing money or whether society is becoming more equal. It is the differentials that matter- the rich are those who are wealthier than the rest of society. Social mobility means people from the bottom join the rich, therefore the rich must get larger as a class which means that the differential between them and the mean person shrinks or rich people must become part of the mass below them- hence social mobility has to go both ways.

Social mobility involves people's wealth diminishing as well as increasing because ultimately social status is a relative concept. Part of social status is wealth and I think we can show that wealth itself is a concept that has two meanings: there is an absolute sense of wealth, but there is also a relative sense of wealth. The problem both on the left and the right of politics often consists in saying that a concept is only this or only that, the problem is that people try and fix language into arbitrary definitions without realising that concepts overlap and often contain different but related meanings. Its a good debating tool- its not good politics. Social mobility does involve people falling as well as rising- and you can't conclude otherwise as soon as you look at the logic involved.

Conkers

The Today Program just went mad. They had a whole item on Conker Championships- whether keeping a Conker for a year, maturing it in vinegar and other nefarious tricks harden up your conker to win a Championship. As someone who played conkers as a kid (for those who have no idea what I'm talking about the rules are here and an explanation of the game is here). I was about to write a post on relative and absolute poverty- but as the world has gone mad I thought that this blog should join it.

The Nobel Peace Prize

Al Gore, the former US Vice President and Presidential nominee from the Democrats, has received the Nobel Peace Prize. Mr Gore is obviously a distinguished public servant for the United States and as American interests often coincide with the interests of the rest of us, for the world. His campaign on Global Warming is one with whose broad outlines I sympathise. But to award him the Peace Prize seems to go too far to me. Global warming could cause conflict, but Mr Gore has not stopped global warming nor moderated it, he has made a film about it which raised awareness of it. Mr Gore has not actually achieved anything politically at all yet, beyond creating a constituency. I don't underrate that acheivement but it should not be the subject of the Nobel. I'm not sure to be honest who this should be awarded to but I don't think it should be awarded just as a demonstration that someone has started a campaign. It should be awarded for achievement not aspiration.

Inheritance Tax Again

I have already argued, a little down the page, that cutting inheritance tax is unwise. It appears the Chancellor disagrees with me. Well I don't merely think that what he has done is bad policy- it is but that's a question for another thread- it is also bad politics. I've summarised the reasons why in this article at Bits of News, the key passages are these though...

The worst thing though about Mr Darling's new announcement though wasn't the bad policy- most governments have many bad policies. It is awful politics though. Mr Darling and his friend, the Prime Minister, Mr Brown are both on the backfoot. They have yielded the leadership of the debate to the conservative party. Mr Brown was humiliated at Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday, assaulted by his opposite number Mr Cameron. One Tory MP asked Mr Brown whether his imitation of Tory policy was flattery for the Conservative party or a belated attempt at salvation for his political soul. Quips flew across the chamber and the dour Scot in the centre looked unamused by the affair.

He doesn't have anyone to blame though but himself. After-all Mr Brown could have followed his predecessor Mr Blair's strategy. Mr Blair as soon as the Conservatives announced a policy, would describe it as the next thing to National Socialism. Every MP and minister would go around the country repeating the exact form of words in the same way and pressure groups would be invited to write reports substantiating the charge. Then once the Conservatives had been humiliated, bashed into submission, Mr Blair would walk off with their policy if he thought it was a good election winning (sorry sensible and prudential) policy. He perfected the art, and Mr Brown had to do nothing else but follow the template. But he didn't. The Prime Minister panicked- he decided to follow the winds and grab the policy before the Tories had lost the advantage of first proposing it, now he merely looks stupid.

These events undermine two of Mr Brown's key strengths on coming into office. He has a reputation for being a gloomy, boring calculator of a man. However he also has the reputation of being a serious thinker with good ideas about policy and being consistent and determined. He has the reputation of being an adult as opposed to Mr Cameron's adolescent. Well the events of the last week have seen the adolescent start proposing policies that the adult has taken up. Mr Brown's seriousness has taken a blow, if this is a good idea shouldn't he have come up with it by himself. Mr Brown has been shown up as inconsistent as well- attacking a policy minutes before adopting it.

Even if you support abolishing inheritance tax, now was not the time for Labour to do it. They should have denounced the Tories and then waited to grab the policy later. Just like Tony Blair always used to do- how many Labour supporters are wishing that the new man had just a hint of the nous that the old guy used to display in intellectual theft. At least when he did it he wasn't caught red handed, the day after the Tories had bought the policy!

The Ultimate Insider

Russell Baker reviews Robert Novak's autobiography at the New York Review of Books this week. Novak is a character who has always fascinated me as a particular kind of reporter and political animal. Novak has specialised for years in picking up the titbits of Washington conversation, hearing the pebbles roll at the top of the mountain which may cause an avalanche further down. What interests me more than the idea of Novak the reporter, and I admit he is almost certainly a very good one, is Novak the caricature.

His recent biography is entitled Prince of Darkness. Novak has been caricatured ruthlessly by many over the years, for Jon Steward he is a member of the undead for example. He is loathed and hated by people who think that he is darkness personified. He himself talks about himself as a political force, a master of the black arts of politics. According to Baker, Novak in this biography sketches out a role as the Machiavelli of Conservatism, backing his sources with judicious discretion and even more judicious leaking.

And yet in possibly the greatest drama of his career, Novak emerges not as a prince of darkness but as a dupe. He has always been a partisan conservative and there is no doubt that Novak opposes almost all Liberal causes. However he was against the Iraq war, for which the National Review blasted him. In 2003 he was given by Richard Armitage, the under secretary of state, the name of Valerie Plame the CIA agent. Novak published it, having had it confirmed by Karl Rove. He thought it minor. It was not and it blew up into a massive investigation, the results of which led to a White House official Lewis Libby doing jail time for the obstruction of justice.

What emerges from this though isn't that Novak knows what he is doing but that he was used. Possibly he wasn't even used, possibly there was just an administrative cock-up in the Bush administration- indeed quite what connection Armitage a leading sceptic over Iraq had to the neo-cons who are supposed to have engineered Plame's outing has never been explained. But the central issue is that Novak was played for a fool, and its not the first time it has happened either. Presidents Johnson and Nixon fed him with false information at times which he believed to be true and published in his column, sending the press off on wild goose chases. He did it inadvertantly.

The real lesson of Robert Novak's career is that actually, despite his sinister demeanour, nobody can live up to being the Machiavelli of the right or left. You can't hold all the strings in your hands and more often than not we are all groping in the dark, unaware of the wider meaning our actions may have. Robert Novak who was condemned for opposing the Iraq war, may end his career with the reputation of having been part of a conspiracy to support it. The Prince of Darkness may end his career with a very un-Luciferian reputation not for evil but for folly!

A lesson to us all in not assuming our own omnipotence!

A Grope from the Grave

Matt Sinclair wants us to abolish inheritance tax- at least that is how I read this article. Inheritance tax is let us be clear a tax which only functions above a certain freshhold, it is notable that as the Conservative Lord Sheikh made clear the numbers of people affected by the tax has declined over the last seventy years:

In 1938-39, 153,000 estates were subject to inheritance tax. By 1968-69, that figure had almost halved to 81,000. By 2006-07 it has declined to 35,000 estates, though I accept that in recent years there has been some rise as a result of the house price boom. This is not a tax that is becoming increasingly onerous; it is one that is affecting fewer and fewer people over the long term. We heard in the debate last week that the Treasury predicts that it will continue to be the case that 94 per cent of estates do not pay inheritance tax.

Its worth remembering that the numbers of people actually paying this tax has fallen and according to the Treasury will continue to fall. This is not an onerous tax stopping inheritance (it doesn't do that anyway as it only takes 40% of money inherited above the freshhold) it is a tax which redistributes from the very wealthy to the less well off.

Taxing the inheritance of the wealthy is vital. Ultimately if you do not tax this, you end up with the groping hands of the wealthy in previous generations pushing their decendents upwards as opposed to anyone else's descendents. You perpetuate an aristocracy. That afterall was the reason that inheritance tax was rightly introduced- to enable people at the bottom of the pile to rise to the top. Large capital transfers can ultimately allow people to leapfrog others- using that capital to invest in setting up companies where others don't have a similar opportunity. It perpetuates an aristocracy of property. Matt's eloquent defence of the value of parental love misses the fact that what he is really defending is the perpetuation of oligarchy and aristocracy.

Lets go further. One of the justifications of capitalism is that it isn't aristocratic- despite accusations from its detractors- capitalism does enable the poorest in the land to rise to become the richest through their own talents and hard work. Well inheritance tax is a classic means which enables that to happen, because it reduces (though it does not eliminate) the advantage that the wealthy have in the game of life. In a time when inequality is rising and social mobility falling, is it really right that we abolish one of the taxes which actually helps social mobility and creates equality.

Perhaps Matt thinks it is- and he thinks it is because he thinks that it is wrong to tax a virtue- well again I think he is wrong- hard work is a virtue and income tax takes 40% of people's income above a freshhold and more people are taxed via income tax than inheritance tax, would Matt abolish income tax. He might- but it would be imprudent to do so if we are going to continue to fund services for the poor as well as the rich. Inheritance tax helps the government financially very little, but it does reduce inequality and gives a more level playing field between the children of the rich and those of the poor.

Nobody is talking about abolishing inheritance and there are ways that the tax might be better structured. Reform is possible. But abolition is totally unjustified. It would help in the creation of an aristocracy of privilege and yes it would make the poor strangers in the lands of their fathers- handicapped by the fact that they unlike the rich were not granted assets gratis by their parents. Ultimately Matt's argument is an argument for privilege, and George Osbourne's announcement at the Conservative Party Conference suggests that the Conservatives are a party of class interest alone and not for the national interest.

In 1909, making a speech on the Liberal budget Winston Churchill, then Home Secretary told his audience that'unless property is associated in the minds of the great mass of the people with ideas of justice and of reason' respect for it might fall. Churchill argued that

The best way to make private property secure and respected is to bring the processes by which it is gained into harmony with the general interests of the public. When and where property is associated with the idea of reward for services rendered, with the idea of recompense for high gifts and special aptitudes displayed or for faithful labour done, then property will be honoured. When it is associated with processes which are beneficial, or which at the worst are not actually injurious to the commonwealth, then property will be unmolested; but when it is associated with ideas of wrong and of unfairness, with processes of restriction and monopoly, and other forms of injury to the community, then I think that you will find that property will be assailed and will be endangered.

The future Conservative Prime Minister was clear, property should be associated with 'services rendered', 'recompense for high gifts and special aptitudes or faithful labour done' and not be 'injurious' to the commonwealth. By all these tests massive inheritances fail- they do not reward labour, they are injurious to the commonwealth by perpetuating inequality from generation unto generation.

Inheritance tax may have bad externalities- and reforming it is a possibility to make it less bureacratic and close loopholes- but its principle is right. It is one of the few taxes that doesn't tax hard work, but taxes privilege and unearned income. Rightly it exists, rightly it should continue to exist. Benificence from parents to children is a good but it produces a bad externality- increased inequality- and it is the duty of the commonwealth to reduce that as far as it can. We should not make the children of the poor more disadvantaged than they are already by abolishing this tax, we should not make them strangers in the lands of their fathers merely because of the incapacity of their ancestors to earn money.

It should not be for us to cement aristocracy, it should be for us to allow talent to prosper and thrive. Inheritance tax should stay!

Ian McEwan On Chesil Beach

On Chesil Beach is a novel of missed opportunities, of tragedies reached because of youth and failure to speak out. It is a tragedy of a moment where a call wasn't made, where communication failed, where naivety led to crisis. Its about the wedding night of two young people. Edward a recently graduated student from the University of London who studied history and hopes to write it and Florence a beautiful musician who plays in a quartet and loves her music but has spent her life in the cloistered surroundings of all female company. They met in a pub in Oxford and fell in love walking through fields and talking idly in the summer after they had both graduated. They come to their wedding night, both of them facing their first love alone for the first time in a sexual context and filled with expectation of how good or bad it will be. McEwan is excellent at conveying particularly Florence's nervousness about the act, her fear of Edward's roughness and the way he squashes her as they lie together, her disgust at his semen.

This is a novel filled with uncomfortableness. It happens in 1962, before according to Philip Larkin sexual intercourse began. Taking place in a hotel on the beechfront, just after the wedding, with the accompaniment of the most awful British cuisine imaginable, an atmosphere of mundane tawdriness dresses what should be the most romantic encounter of their lives. They adjourn to their bedroom for the 'act' and hear the radio downstairs playing the news to men, taciturnly listening. Both Florence and Edward come from families, who are unconventional, he has a mad mother, she has an academic mother- but in both their families the mother and father don't communicate themselves. Edward's family is insecure socially, Florence's is effortlessly superior. Edward wants to prove himself somehow, Florence wants to cultivate her music.

The period is less crucial to this than the critics presume. People of my generation who are in their twenties now still feel a great deal of anxiety about sex, not everything is easy. Albert Camus once suggested that inside there is always unhappiness and insecurity, I can't remember his exact phrase but he was right to capture that essential hesitation in the human condition. Perhaps though what is intrinsic to the period is the ignorance of both characters about sex on their wedding night- today people tend to marry later. There are some wonderfully comic vignettes- Edward cannot undo the back of Florence's dress. There are also moments of miscommunication which are filled with a tragic potential energy. One such for example is Florence's arousal as Edward brushes her against a stray pubic hair- he doesn't continue to massage her thigh and thus a moment of connection is lost, a moment when she is reassured enough to have confidence that she will enjoy what is to come.

That moment though is filled with something else. McEwan takes us inside the heads of both his characters. Both Florence and Edward have things they could and should say to each other. Both of them have moments where they are driven less by desire than by the situation to say things which hurt and don't help. Both of them find it difficult to articulate their desires. Florence can't say to Edward that she is fearful and finds the initial sexual contact repulsive rather than attractive. Edward is too busy wanting to be a man to want to be a husband. In that bedroom are all sorts of anxieties and problems with English society in the sixties. From the banality of the cuisine to the ubiquity of desires for masculine affirmation, from the ignorance about sex to issues about class, we can see the scene on Chesil Beach as a microcosm of English society in 1962.

McEwan plays with these strands deftly and also demonstrates how this moment, this fumbling failure is crucial for both of the characters. He reminds us how important our choice of partner in life is and thus how important it is when we lose a partner who suits us. Edward finishes the book as a fashionable failure, having done everything in his life apart from think. If anything could have given him purpose and determination, it would have been marriage to Florence. She would have awakened his talent and turned it to more use than becoming a fop about town. We are presented with Edward's nostalgia in his sixties, his realisation that in later life he has failed to be more than superficially successful and he dates it all back to this moment. Of course age has its delusions as well as youth: and it is the image of Florence the pure that he keeps in his mind refusing to go and see her concerts at the Wigmore hall. For her too, though we see less, we know that there is regret.

Regret is the ultimate emotion that this novel provokes. There is a sense of might have been here which is impossible to capture in a review. McEwan has done it again though, blending the comic and the tragic together. Showing us how even a gesture is vital in the ballet of love and how finding yourself in the wrong position when the music, unexpectedly stops, can be disastrous.

Crossposted at Bits of News.

Britblog Carnival No 138

Ah well the Britblog has rolled back over here from a superb carnival at Philobiblon. Its going to be difficult to acheive anything similar to that wonderful carnival.

Perhaps the most important part of a good carnival is working out what a good blog is. Well a recent effort was made by Iain Dale, and Unity isn't happy with Dale's definition. Ian is worried by the appearance of partisanship in the blogosphere and the way we could lose trust. Never Trust a Hippy suggests why, writing a wonderful post separating political blogging from blogging about politics. Chris Dillow exemplifies exactly the type of political blogger that Never Trust a Hippy is talking about, as this post on inheritance tax, democracy and equality demonstrates. James Hamilton provides another analytical masterclass, with his history of innovation in football. Thinking of use of media- the thunder dragon deserves some kind of acknowledgement for his photoshop of Brown the Chicken and on the subject of having fun at the expense of our courageous PM, just take a look at this video from Nick Barlow!

Analytical bloggers though are only one half of the blogosphere- there are also the gossip bloggers. Iain Dale is off the mark first in this category with this video reminding Tom Watson of a promise he made a year ago. To be fair to Mr Watson he did pay the money he bet to a charity- and there is someone out there doing well out of a blogosphere punch up- now there is a shock! On more serious matters, there is the continuing Usmanov saga. Arsenal News Review suggests that Usmanov has been bribing journalists with trips to Moscow- Tim Ireland has more. Justin has more news of the way that Usmanov is manipulating the libel laws. On a related note, Unity's series on where we all stand with relation to libel law continues. The blogging world always gets riled by threats to free speech, just take a look for example at Stroppy blog who has got all stroppy about government surveillance of unions.

But the world isn't all Usmanov- there have been a couple of political events happening in various seaside resorts recently. This week was the Tory turn. And you'll find a servicable account of what went on from Steve Green who was in the hall, the City Unslicker wasn't but analyses the Tory economic policies. The most eye catching bit of the conference was the pledge on inheritance tax, for Matt Sinclair its better late than never, he argues using the film memento that inheritance tax strikes right at any concept of human kindness. The Tory Diary at Conservative Home finds low tax is the latest fashion accessory, but Don Paskini isn't so sure- he sees it as a tax cut for millionaires. In other political news, Lenin isn't too happy at Lenin's tomb with the occupation of Afghanistan and Dave Cole wonders is the US constitution too federalist. Gene at Harry's Place draws our attention to the common forms that anti-semitism takes whether from rightwing nuts in New Hampshire or Hamas, Jobeda isn't too impressed that the BBC had a program about the political merits of Shariah Law either.

And you'd think the world was all about politics if this was all that I left you- but far from it- there is much else going on. The Early Modern Whale reminds us that coffee was reputed to cure the plague, Ben Goldacre doesn't beleive in South Africans with magic quantum boxes and Professor David Colquhoun isn't too impressed by herbal medicine either. Matt Murrell started a comment thread about guilt and innocence here and on a related note, Crushed by Ingsoc has been thinking about the fashions and music of the nineteen eighties- oh and if that didn't make you feel queesy, then try this where Anne of the Inky Circle talks about what she has in common with cockroaches.

On a completely different line, Richard Brunton isn't happy that BAFTA wouldn't nominate any foreign language films for the Oscars. You can always learn new things about the UK, apparantly Birmingham has a bull ring, honest, here is a picture. All my Vinyl reviews an obscure album by the Animal Collective. On Stage lighting has an interesting post about how to get into stage lighting. Oh and should you feel like writing in a newspaper or anywhere else, be aware of the rules that the internet nomad has drawn up. The singing Librarion though is on his way thinking about parts he would love to take on in the future. Staying on the performance theme, Benjamin Yeoh reccomends you go and see a play in Ancient Greek- Medea is on at the Arts Theatre in Cambridge, one to see if you are around. Continuing with history, Vino has a nice post on the effects of Protestantism on European history- the Political Umpire also tackles a very broad historical theme, looking at the white slave trade in the 18th Century. Oh and anyone interested in more blogging should take a look at the latest roundup from the Blogpower group.

Anyway I hope there is enough there to keep people interested- keep the entries coming into britblogATgmailDOTcom.

Profile in Courage or not

Well the news has come through, Gordon Brown has postponed the election we were apparantly going to have. It seems that Mr Brown feels that he can't win- surveys and polls conducted in marginals over the weekend have convinced him of that. But lets be frank, there is in my opinion massive damage to Mr Brown's reputation. For a start, throughout his career Mr Brown has shown a talent for hesitating and not plunging the knife in- he could have stood for the Labour leadership in 1992, in 1994 and could have unseated Mr Blair as well at various points, but he never did. He backed off at every possible opportunity. Well he has backed off again.

The other problem is that Mr Brown now has to govern. That shouldn't be a problem. But at the moment the economic situation is benign, public services are ok etc. Were the economic situation to get worse then Mr Brown would lose in the polls. Furthermore public service expenditure is going to slow by all projections which means there won't be much improvement across the next couple of years, again for Mr Brown that won't be good in the polls. Mr Brown seems to me to be relying on something turning up- but I can't see that at the moment, the economy and the country are in places where what turns up will be good for him. Apart that is from the inevitable two issues- terrorism and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which are quite unpredictable in their impact. Politics as Harold Macmillan said is about 'events, dear boy, events': there will be lots of events before an election in 2009 which may occur against the backdrop of a recession.

Mr Brown has advertised his own preference to have an election now, he has backed out because he thought he might lose. By taking his troops right to the brink of battle and then skulking away, the Prime Minister has displayed a very public loss of nerve. A public loss of nerve that isn't exactly going to endear him to the population at large or indeed to his own party, used to the adroit handling of Mr Blair who when it came to this kind of thing was viciously clinical.

Obviously Mr Brown can dig himself out of this, but this decision is unwise and caps a bad week for the new Prime Minister.