There’s a war coming

Sorry to have come to Hallowe’en clad as the Harbinger of Doom, an oracle of calamity, but there we are. If you look around, it’s hard not to feel that the structures that hold our world in place are crumbling; the fabric of our society is coming apart like bits of rotting zombie flesh.

Unsustainable energy supplies. Environmental pollution. Climate change. Famine. The list could go on but, y’know, it’s Monday.

The seventh billion person has been born today (probably). What kind of place have they arrived in?

Here, of course, the biggest worldwide issue that currently affects us the most is still the economy. To sort this out, we have the undead Cameron, who feeds on people’s forgotten memories of the 1980s, and Count Osborne, who sucks all life out of flailing economic growth. They do this, I’ve heard, due to their ideological stance.

No retreat! No surrender to disappointing quarterly figures! Onwards, to austerity and to freedom!

To be locked in to such a rigid dogmatic path might be something of a hindrance. There’s no wiggle room. If I can be allowed to add anything to the political philosophy debate I’d like it to be that strict economic ideologies show serious weakness in the wiggle room department. In exactly those words. If we are obliged to refer to the Coalition’s economic plan as “ideological cuts” at every instance then my idea of opposing that would be to take a different approach and then, basically, kind of, see if that works. Maybe not in those words, though.

For others, however, the perfect way to counter the “ideological cuts” is to take a different ideology and then ruthlessly stick to it. Fight fire with fire.

This, unfortunately, is where the war I speak of happens. Some see this time of insecurity as the battleground for the greatest ideological warfare of all time. The one to end it all. It’s socialism versus conservatism. The dividing lines are drawn. You’re either with us or against us. There’s no third way. In the red corner, with an apparent 99% of the population, it’s the Progressive Majority! In the blue corner, weighing in with 75% of the wealth, it’s the Vanguard of the Elite! It’s Marx and Hayek, bare-knuckle, behind the bike sheds after school. Ties off, sleeves up, I’ll hold your coat. Winner takes all.

It’s this kind of attitude that worries me. Down this path lies heroic failure. It’s the kind of thinking that led Tony Benn to hail Labour’s performance at the 1983 General Election as a “remarkable development” because so many people voted for proper socialism. 1983. Remarkable indeed.

I know some people look at events here and worldwide and see a radical shift in public attitude towards the left, but I’m afraid I don’t. At any rate, it would be far to early too pin our hopes on the fluttering red flag. I’m sorry, I wish I had your ability to see all your own values reflected in news events that would seem to suggest the opposite, but I don’t.

I’m not calling for a tack to the right, I just want us to remain open-minded. In the world I see, there are lots of problems and most people don’t know how to solve them. In fact, most people probably don’t even have a basic political philosophy that they can apply to every situation. We, the Labour Party, the Left, whatever, should try and reflect this. We have our values, sure, everyone has lines they won’t cross. But we’ll approach problems pragmatically.

In his acceptance of the Democratic nomination for president in 1960, Kennedy said he felt the American people expected more than the usual cries of indignation or attack: “The times are too grave, the challenges too urgent, and the stakes too high to permit the customary passions of political debate.”

It feels like the world is falling apart like bits of rotting zombie flesh. But it’s not impossible to fix.