Opinion: Russell Brand – a turgid mess of a manifesto

On Friday this week I was challenged by a friend to read Russell Brand’s article in the New Statesman, after I went on Facebook to casually eviscerate his interview with Jeremy Paxman. I cursed my friend for making this request, which seemed too reasonable to refuse yet to tiresome to enjoy. Below is an edited version of my response.

I have now read the piece and I think it is self-referential to the point of narcissism. Brand’s intellectual ambitions literally reach for the stars. But his self-congratulatory ignorance is exposed by his failure to provide evidence beyond his personal experience for such universal arguments.

Reading Brand’s piece line by line it is easy to get bogged down in the crass generalisations, the misrepresentation of others’ ideas, and the indiscriminate use of adjectives. But it would be unfair to Brand to lose track of his core message by failing to see the wood for the trees.

So what is Brand’s core message? He likes the environment. He likes ‘chaos’. He likes himself. He likes socialism. He dislikes Tories and he dislikes corporate greed and he dislikes politics in general. Many people would sympathise with Brand’s complaints (and then ignore his advice and still go out to vote). But taken together they do not a political alternative, make.

Brand says he wants a revolution. Intuitively this does not surprise me: he rejects democracy because he disagrees with what voters choose. Somehow he conflates his own selfish disaffection with the plight of all the dispossessed, the disenfranchised, and the voiceless, to convince himself that by overthrowing democracy he would be enacting the will of these unfortunate people.

Brand’s messiah complex is so complete that he calls his vision of the overthrow of democracy a ‘movement for the people, by the people’. Brand is right that he does not have to vote to be politically engaged. But I do not understand how he can claim to speak on behalf of the left when he has rejected it as a movement, and neglected to read about its history or ideology.

Brand has a gift for a poetical turn of phrase. It’s clear that many people are stirred emotionally by his writing and, to my amazement, his performances on Newsnight and Question Time.

But revolutions need ideas, or at the very least they need tangible objectives. I struggle to find the seeds of revolution in Brand’s turgid mess of a manifesto.

* Jack Williams was the Constituency Organiser for Nick Clegg MP from 2010 to 2012 and the Parliamentary Researcher for Lorely Burt MP from 2013 to 2015. He now campaigns for the party as a volunteer.

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57 Comments

  • Cenydd Phillips 28th Oct '13 - 9:14am

    Well said. What Brand neglected to mention is that, in a democracy, if you don’t like the government you only have to vote for someone else, and if you don’t like the alternatives on offer you can put yourself up for election and start your own party – if enough people agree with its ideals and vote for it, it becomes the government. That is an essential element of a free society – the people must be in charge of deciding how they are governed via an electoral process – it’s not for one group to decide what is best for everyone and impose it on the people. Radical revolutions almost always lead to authoritarianism and totalitarianism. If he and his supporters do decide to have their revolution, ‘smash the system’, sweep away democracy and impose their own solutions on society without any electoral mandate for doing so, I for one will be manning the barricades in defense of democracy and liberty!

  • @Cenyyd Phillips
    ‘– it’s not for one group to decide what is best for everyone and impose it on the people’
    You have just described this coalition and all previous governments. Free Schools, NHS reorganisation, sell off of Royal Mail from the Coalition for example. Yes we have a choice who to vote for then they do what they want not what the people want when they sniff power. We have a Parliamentary Democracy which in reality is not real Democracy and that is what should be swept away and an end to Career Politicians who only join the party they think they can get ahead in and not for any belief. This is why people are sick to death of politicians.

  • A nice piece here on how you can get involved and make a difference:
    http://draxar.livejournal.com/374721.html

    Much more useful than not voting.

  • Simply Russel is playing the system to boost his own image and get paid to talk rubbish and lives his life opposite to what he preaches. He simply self serving Best to ignore him . If im wrong the only thing it can be Drugs or Lack of have effected his mind. In my view Politians an political class dont live in real world too and a lot needs to change.

  • Richard Church 28th Oct '13 - 10:09am

    Brand offers a cop out. He actually says nothing at all. It is seductive, and his sentiments have widespread appeal, assisted by his clever use of language and humour.

    Disaffection with mainstream politics is real and very serious. Russell Brand articulates it but offers absolutely nothing to deal with it.

  • Joe’s second comment articulates my views pretty well

  • “Profit is a filthy word” says Russell Brand, perhaps he was glad then that his remake of Arthur didn’t make one.

    Whenever I hear the argument that its hard to tell the difference between the parties these days I can’t help think that they are not paying that much attention and how they seem upset there isn’t as much division as there used to be.

  • I agree with everyone here, it is easy to criticise something when you, personally, are doing nothing about it.

    Brand, big on problems, short on solutions. I guess in that regard one could say he speaks for the apathetic members of our society. However, in my experience, a revolution is too much work for them.

  • Andy Boddington 28th Oct '13 - 2:50pm

    I am desperately cynical about Russell Brand. What he says and what he writes is wrongheaded and egocentric. Brand matters nothing to me. But he matters to politics and to young people.

    If you want evidence of that, just look at how much media coverage his spouting last week got. It was pretty good. More than many politicians could hope for.

    Of course, all those of us in the traditional political mould are disgusted by his apolitical anarchy.

    But my young friends are well tuned to Brand. We talked about the Paxman interview while beering outside the brewery on Friday night. I didn’t raise the topic, they did. Here is a rough vox pox:

    “Yeh, he’s spot on. About the disconnection, not voting thing. What’s the point? They all trash you. They say one thing to get elected, then they trash you. Doesn’t matter who they are. No point in voting. Brand got it right.”

    Politicians ignore and deride Brand at their peril. He’s more in tune with young people than the rest of us.

  • George Kendall 28th Oct '13 - 3:05pm

    When anyone talks about how they despise politics and anyone involved in politics, I like to paraphrase what they say by replacing the word politics with the word democracy, because, if they are rejecting the political system, in this country, that essentially means rejecting democracy.

    So, to paraphrase Brand:
    – imagining the overthrow of democracy is the only way I can be enthused about politics.
    And:
    – Like most people I am utterly disenchanted by democracy. Like most people I regard anyone trying to stand in a democratic election as a fraud and a liar and democracy is nothing more than a bureaucratic means for furthering the augmentation and advantages of economic elites.

    Those statements are either ridiculous or sinister. Personally, I’d go for ridiculous.

    But in the back of my mind is the thought that this is very clever cynicism. That this is all about building his brand by tapping into disillusionment with politics. All in order to make even more money.

  • Matthew Huntbach 28th Oct '13 - 3:26pm

    Anne

    Yes we have a choice who to vote for then they do what they want not what the people want when they sniff power.

    Er, no. People voted Tory and they got Tory. What this government is doing is what Tories do. Anyone who voted Tory should have expected what we have now.

    You might say that only 36% of those who voted cast their vote for a Tory. Yes, and so? In 2011 we had a referendum One side of the referendum case put the line “We should keep our current electoral system because it usually distorts representation so that the party that wins the most votes gets over half the seasts and so has complete control of government”. That side won – twice as many people voted for that side as voted for the side that wanted to change our electoral system. That is, by TWO TO ONE the people of this country voted to say that, yes, if party X wins more votes than any other party, its representtion should be twisted upwards so it has complete government control. In 2010 party X was the Tories. In 2011 people voted for this distotion, that is they voted to have this rotten wretched Tory-dominated government. By two-to-one, Labour areas as well as Tory areas, that is how people voted, to have THIS government.

    We have what people voted for. If you don’t like it, don’t try and pretend they voted for anything else. The people of this country need to take responsibility – you get what you vote for. If you follow the Russel Brand line of not voting, well then, you get what those who did vote voted for – which in 2010 and 2011 was a Tory government.

    Oh, as a minor footnote, you might say “But actually we have a Tory-LibDem coalition”. Yes, and so? If your complaint is that it’s a bit too LibDem and not enough Tory, fine. But anyone who voted “No” in the 2011 referedum was voting for teh idea it’s best to javea governemnt entirely of the biggest party, regardless oif whether that partuy actually had anywhere near half the votes. So the more this government is like a pure Tory government, the more it’s like what the people of this country voted for, by two-to-one, Labour areas as well as Tory areas, when they voted in the referendum of 2011.

  • Matthew Huntbach 28th Oct '13 - 4:03pm

    George Kendall

    But in the back of my mind is the thought that this is very clever cynicism. That this is all about building his brand by tapping into disillusionment with politics.

    Clever? Er, no. As Andy Boddington nearly put it, it’s the sort of line every teenager and those who are still mentally teenagers tend to put. They’ve been encouraged to think this way by the political right and the money men “politics is all bad, don’t get involved”. That way, those who do go out and vote are more likely to be those who vote for the political right. Brand has not put any thought into this, he’s just like someone who never needed to develop beyond being a teenager because he was so good at it that he’s been paid to carry on doing it as an act.

    This idea that politics is all bad and people should not get involved has not resulted in any sort of socialist uprising (and we all know what sort of governments tend to come in place when such tings do happen). Not only has it helped the political right win, because there are insufficient votes and activity on the democratic left to balance the power of money paying for the political right, it has also helped the general line “politics is all bad, so we should not have things run that way”. So instead, we have things privatised and run by big business and not under democratic control.

    As I’ve put in my reply to Anne, the teenage whine which Andy Boddingtom so well characterises ” What’s the point? They all trash you. They say one thing to get elected, then they trash you. Doesn’t matter who they are.” is wrong. Actually, we have pretty much what people voted for. I’ve spent my life arguing for a different sort of politics, a politics that redistributes wealth and power. And so often I’m told “You can’t say that, it will lose us votes”. Was Russel Brand giving us an practical policies that really would redistribute wealth and power? No. Was he arguing for practical things like higher taxes on wealth? No. And when we do put forward timid little ideas on these lines, and are howled down by the right-wing press for it, where are the Russel Brands of this world? Supporting us? No. They’re sitting in their bedrooms striking poses and achieving nothing – apart from bolstering the political right because the anti-politics line is the line the right loves.

    People believe that politicians are all bad people, so much worse than anyone else, because it’s in the interests of the political right to push that line. In fact mostly the politicians in this country are not corrupt, and put forward the policies they do because those policies are what wins votes, and when they get in they enact those policies. Sure, the Liberal Democrats did not abolish university tuition fees, but they did not “get in” (despite Nick Clegg’s self-destructive boasting that they did). 306 Tory MPs got in and 57 LibDems. That’s why we have a government which is far more Tory than LibDem. People voted LibDem, but did not get LibDem policies – yes – but that’s democracy – more people voted Tory. If the Tories gave up their “low tax, give power to the businessman” policies in order to push LibDem ones, people could rightly accuse them of breaking their promises. And more people voted Tory than LibDem, and as I said, people voted by two-to-one to say this means we should have a purely Tory government.

    See how the “Duck House” scandal brewed up – so that people will always quote that sort of thing as an example of how bad our politicians are. Oh, COME ON! If the worst thing people can throw at our politicians is that they’ve claimed a few thouands in expenses for garden knick-knacks, well that’s very clean. REAL corruption is when politicians use their positions to get contracts worth millions, not over-claim expenses for a few thousand. Meanwhile, the businessmen and bankers who power has been handed to, on the lines that it shouldn;t be with poliyicians because politicians are bad people, get payments of millions, and there are many more of them than the few hundred MPs claiming their expenses. The MPs expenses scandal was a classic example of the use of distraction, to get people to look away from the real problem, to focus their attention instead onto something trivial.

  • @Matthew Huntbach
    We never had the choice you continually state we did. We got to chose between a shockingly non-proportional system and one that could be equally shockingly non proportional. The question was:

    “At present, the UK uses the “first past the post” system to elect MPs to the House of Commons. Should the “alternative vote” system be used instead?”

    There was no proportional option, there was only the miserable little compromise. Your argument is like offering someone dying of thirst a glass full of sand or a glass full of cement and then blaming them for not choosing water. AV was never worth putting to the Country, the Tories knew it and played the leadership of the Lib Dems like a fiddle.

  • Matthew Huntbach 28th Oct '13 - 5:27pm

    Steve Way (in reply to me)

    We never had the choice you continually state we did. We got to chose between a shockingly non-proportional system and one that could be equally shockingly non proportional.

    Yes, but the referendum was taken as one on electoral reform as a whole. The main argument used in favour of retaining the current system was the argument that would be used against proportional representation.

    If the “No” campaign had campaigned on the line “AV is not enough of a reform, reject it and call for a proper proportional system”, then, yes, you would have a point. But NO-ONE (apart from David Owen) used that line.

    Not a single person in public media commentary, so far as I am aware, interpreted the “No” victory as a call by the people for a more thorough-going electoral reform. Every commentator interpreted it as clising down the case for ANY electoral reform for a lifetime. I am not aware of ANYONE who made a public protest about this, who responded “No, when I voted ‘No’, I did not mean it as you now interpret it”.

    Because the referendum vote was interpreted universally as a vote against electoral reform, the only way that case is going to be opened again is for the people of this country to SEE what in effect they voted for, or at least how their vote was interpreted. That is what I am doing. Why is no-one else doing it? Have we ourselves stopped believing in electoral reform? Do we not think the dominance of the Conservatives and weakness of the LibDems in the current coalition due to the imbalance in representation caused by the distortion of our current elecoiral system makes a good case for proportional representation?

  • Julian Tisi 28th Oct '13 - 6:38pm

    @Matthew Huntbach
    In your lengthy posts don’t you think you’ve gone a tad off the point?

  • The single best refutation of Russell Brand’s little manifesto that I’ve come across is a photo of him in his Paxton interview, the caption of which reads, “Russell Brand – professional manchild”.

    And then I’m done with the whole thing. Encouraging him by talking about him is like accidentally popularising Miley Cyrus by watching her YouTube videos. Making him a serious force by giving him platforms and ‘buzz’ only helps to lower the level of political discourse.

  • Matthew Huntbach 28th Oct '13 - 10:12pm

    Julian Tisi

    In your lengthy posts don’t you think you’ve gone a tad off the point?

    No.

  • Ash Garstang 28th Oct '13 - 10:26pm

    Firstly I’m not going to argue whether or not Mr Brand is egotistical etc as I don’t really know much about him and I’ve decided to try and ignore that part of the debate as it’s not really that relevent to me.

    Democracy as it is isn’t really much of a choice – similar to choosing between being shot, hanged, drowned or burnt (an extreme analogy I admit), either way your left with a shoddy deal and it’s not fair to state that ‘you have a say in your future’ when the kind of options offered aren’t all that great. As mentioned by a previous blogger I think the party political system encourages aspiring politicians to modify their actual veiws to aid their career ambitions.

    I disagree with some of what Mr Brand said, but the one thing that stuck with me was that we are obviously not doing a good job when we are damaging the planet to the extent that we are. WW1 and WW2 veterans are linked quite often to the words ‘sacrafice’ and ‘freedom’. People in 100 years will look at the Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y and forseeable future generations and think ‘selfish’.

    Isn’t that embarrassing?

  • Peter Watson 28th Oct '13 - 11:01pm

    @Matthew Huntbach “No.”
    🙂 Perhaps I’m tired, but that is the first post on LDV that has made me chuckle out loud. Thank you.

  • Bill le Breton 29th Oct '13 - 8:47am

    Even a broken clock is right twice a day: the environment and inequality?

  • Who is Russell Brand? Have I missed something?

  • Matthew Huntbach 29th Oct '13 - 1:11pm

    @Peter Watson

    Well, I hope the connection I’ve made between the rise of the anti-politics message as characterised by Russell Brand here and the rise of the political right is so obvious that I do not need to say any more.

  • Matthew Huntbach 29th Oct '13 - 1:16pm

    Ash Garstang

    People in 100 years will look at the Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y and forseeable future generations and think ‘selfish’.

    Yes, and characterised by Mr Brand with his oh-so-trendy sit in your bedroom and moan like a spoilt teenager attitude which is a direct attack on those of us who have dedicated our lifetimes to going out and getting involved in politics to build a better society.

  • Matthew Huntbach 29th Oct '13 - 1:25pm

    Bill le Breton

    Even a broken clock is right twice a day: the environment and inequality?

    Yes, and so?

    Look at the power of the right-wing press that is used against us when we propose even mild measures to do something about these things. Green taxes? LibDem rotters wanting to make life harder for the poor by making them pay more taxes. Mansion tax? LibDem rotters who want to throw little old ladies out onto the streets for the crime of living in a big old house. We can’t get our message across because we don’t have the people and resources to do it. It makes it harder to win elections when the people who might support what we support think the best way to support it is to sit at home thinking themselves to be superior because they never vote.

    Oh, sure, if you’ve never gone out and tried to win votes, it’s easy to think that everyone agrees with your views, and the only reason those views don’t get turned into policy is because dirty rotten politicians won’t do it. It’s different when you actually have to go out and propose policy that will work and will win votes.

  • Bill le Breton 29th Oct '13 - 3:21pm

    M
    In what ways does his intervention with its focus on the environment and inequality make it harder for us to campaign on the environment and inequality?

  • Matthew Huntbach 29th Oct '13 - 5:05pm

    Bill le Breton

    In what ways does his intervention with its focus on the environment and inequality make it harder for us to campaign on the environment and inequality?

    Well, consider his words ” Like most people I regard politicians as frauds and liars and the current political system as nothing more than a bureaucratic means for furthering the augmentation and advantages of economic elites.” The consequence is that if we campaign on the environment and inequality, it will be assumed that what we are saying is all fraud and lies. As I said, this assumption means we are open to attack from the political right, who will use populist anti-politics language to make out that things like green taxes, measures to deal with climate change are all just a political elite pursuing their own self-interest. Similarly, the sort of measures which are needed to halt and reverse the growth in inequality are very easily turned, if you start with the assumption that all politicians are bad people, into populist lines which make out that land taxes, wealth taxes and the like are just greedy politicians taking money for themselves.

    The reason politicians don’t propose the sort of measures which Brand says he wants (not that he goes as far as giving practical details) is that there are no votes in it, or at least not many. The political right pushes the message that politics and politicians are all bad in order to push the line that control of things should be taken away from politicians and put into the hands of the alternative i.e. big business, but also in order to discourage those who would be on the left of politics from getting involved and so helping build an alternative. In this they are being directly supported by Brand here with his anti-politics message. Russell Brand and Rupert Murdoch are one and the same thing, pushing this same “politics is bad, don’t get involved” message in order to further the cause of the political right. Oh, sure Brand claims he wants to see something different, but what is he doing to further it? Nothing whatsoever. Rupert Murdoch and the like also make vague claims about wanting a better world, suggesting all that is wrong with the end we have is these rotten politicians, get rid of them or reduce their power to nothing and we’ll have it.

    Throughout my lifetime I have seen a drop in political involvement and a drift to the right in politics. I think the two are directly connected. The less most people are involved in politics, the more politics moves to the right, because the politics of the left requires people, but the politics of the right requires only money. When people like Russell Brand push the message “politics is all bad”, they are directly pushing the message and the interests of the political right, even if they make vague hand-wavy gestures about being romantic leftists.

  • “When people like Russell Brand push the message “politics is all bad”, they are directly pushing the message and the interests of the political right, even if they make vague hand-wavy gestures about being romantic leftists.”

    Presumably you mean indirectly.

    Directly furthering the interests of the right would be more like what the Lib Dems are doing at present.

  • David Allen 29th Oct '13 - 5:47pm

    The charge that the “Politics is all bad” message plays into the hands of the Right may well be valid. But whose fault is that?

    Joe Otten said “When parties promise much, deliver some, …it is quite understandable that people might despair…. But behind the … mudslinging, there is … a genuine enquiry into how to address the problems society faces. It’s just that we all seem to do our best to hide all that from public consumption. I suspect that if Brand and those of a similar view were to look past the public face of politics, they would be pleasantly surprised.”

    In other words, we politicians have only ourselves to blame. Most politicians care about things like society, or at any rate, they did when they first started out in politics. But what most politicians actually do, most of the time, is twist statistics, sling mud, score points, and distort issues. The public see that, and they don’t like it.

    Russell Brand is like the footballing superhero who kicks the ball into an empty net, then spends the next five minutes dancing a celebration of his own genius. It’s not pretty to watch. But he does score the goal, and we politicians don’t.

  • daft ha'p'orth 29th Oct '13 - 7:31pm

    “It’s clear that many people are stirred emotionally by his writing and, to my amazement, his performances on Newsnight and Question Time.”
    It certainly gave me a good laugh. First genuinely funny thing I’ve ever seen Brand do, a perfect little microcosm. He and Paxman should take it on tour. I thank you for bringing this to my attention as I hadn’t seen it before and I enjoyed it very much. That said, this opinion piece does rather play into Brand’s hands – why volunteer to play the outraged straight-man alongside Brand’s Ali G? Especially the ad hominem insults. Brand could not ask for a better supporting cast.

    @Matthew Huntbach
    ” those of us who have dedicated our lifetimes to going out and getting involved in politics to build a better society…”
    Brand presents his views as follows: he doesn’t think that avenue [politics] has worked and consequently doesn’t think that it will work in future. Definition of insanity, repeating same action with expectation of differing results, and all that. Could be a fair point, to a certain extent. Politics isn’t the only way of changing society. Nor is revolution. It’s an odd belief, that the options for would-be world-changers are a dichotomy between ‘wide-eyed loony revolutionary’ or ‘wearing a suit to Westminster’, given that neither option is very available to most people anyway.

    “The consequence [of Brand’s words] is that if we campaign on the environment and inequality, it will be assumed that what we are saying is all fraud and lies.”
    People aren’t going to assume that politicians are lying because Russell Brand says so. They’re going to assume politicians are liars, if they assume it at all, on the basis of lived experience. Brand is not saying anything particularly novel, except possibly for the suggestion linking Paxman’s beard to his armpits.

  • So if Brand, or any such person who is happy to have a poster of Che Guevara (representing revolution) on their wall but not one of Leonid Brezhnev (representing what comes afterwards), can’t get what he wants through the political system because not enough people would turn out to vote for it then why do they think they could get people to turn out for a revolution?

  • I wanted to do a test to see how much he is capturing the imagination of young people and to what extent he is saying what old people think that young people think, so I just did a google search for “I agree with Russell Brand” in quotes – top result, Janet Street-Porter. Case closed I think.

  • daft ha'p'orth 29th Oct '13 - 8:33pm

    @Richard S
    You’re looking at the wrong medium. Real-time search on Twitter instead. Or check the guy’s Messiah-branded Facebook.

  • Matthew Huntbach 29th Oct '13 - 11:13pm

    daft ha’p’orth

    Politics isn’t the only way of changing society. Nor is revolution. It’s an odd belief, that the options for would-be world-changers are a dichotomy between ‘wide-eyed loony revolutionary’ or ‘wearing a suit to Westminster’, given that neither option is very available to most people anyway.

    So, what else? I am putting the point that there’s a direct contradiction here, Brand is saying that politicians are all right-wing because they’re rotten nasty people. I’m saying they are right-wing because that’s who the people of this country choose to vote for. If people who don’t agree with right-wing politics don’t vote on the grounds “politics is all bad” or “there’s other ways to change things”, which is the line Brand is so praising, then it’s not surprising we have right-wing politicians. So Brand and his like are the cause of the thing they moan about. If you think politics is all irrelevant, fine, just don’t moan about it, because that means its YOUR choice to have the politicians we have by your not deigning to get involved with it.

    We are told the alternative is pressure groups and posy demonstration like that of Occupy. So what has that sort of thing achieved? NOTHING. The rise of pressure groups has coincided with the fall in left-wing politics. In the end, why should politicians care about pressure groups? The only thing that’s going to get them to change their minds is the fear of losing their seats. And they won’t lose their seats if the sort of person who would once be running political campaigns in their constituencies to elect someone else is instead spending all their time in posy useless pressure groups.

    Look, we could be knocking out Tory MPs all over the place, all we need is a few hundred keen activists in each Tory seat to do that. We could have a fundamentally different government in place if we had that. But we don;t. Because the sort of people who could be doing it are spending their time in posy pressure groups, or just posing full stop. Sheesh.

    People aren’t going to assume that politicians are lying because Russell Brand says so. They’re going to assume politicians are liars, if they assume it at all, on the basis of lived experience.

    Do people believe “politicians are liars” because they have actually experienced it? Or do they believe it because the right-wing media aided and abetted by poseurs like Brand keep pumping out this message? As I’ve already argued, I think the government we have in place is doing about what the Tories said they would do. Sure, it’s a Tory government, and the Tories won only 36% of the vote, but as I said, we have an electoral system which gives them effective power on that basis, and when the people were asked if they wanted to change that system by two to one they voted “No”, after a campaign in which this distortion in favour of the biggest party, which was the Tories in the last election, was put as the system’s best point. That is, we don’t have the government we have now in place because anyone lied, we have what the people said they wanted by the way they voted.

    daft ha’p’orth, one of the things that has motivated me in my lifetime’s activity in politics is correcting the inequality in society, particularly that deep inequality caused by high house prices in that part of the country where I live, the south-east. Why do you say that my joining and campaigning for a political party that believes in what I think would help so much with this – the Liberal Party with that clauses in its constitution about community created land values belonging to the community – makes me a bad person and a liar, because by being a member of this party I am a “politician”?

    And how else am I to go about getting society changed so that land value are taxed and hogging of housing land beyond your need is penalised apart from working to elect MPs who agree with that? Letting politicians whose core belief is the noble nature of unearned wealth (i.e. Tories) get elected by default because there aren’t enough local campaigners around to put the alternative, and then begging and pleading with those politicians to change their minds?

  • Matthew Huntbach 29th Oct '13 - 11:23pm

    daft ha’p’orth

    Brand is not saying anything particularly novel,

    I’m not saying he is, in fact I’m saying the opposite. He’s just pumping out the old anti-politics line of Rupert Murdoch and that sort, and pretending it’s hip and radical. As I keep saying, the anti-politics line, the line that all politicians are bad people, liars, etc, is pumped out by the political right because it serves their cause so well. If young people go for it, well, young people are so easily manipulated by the mass media. The best way to manipulate them is to make out that what they’re being manipulated into is somehow new and radical. That’s why we have all these made up entertainment stars, oh so supposedly striking an “in your face” pose, and oh so carefully marketed by the money-men. The phony nature of all of this is shown by the typical teenage whine “I want to be different, just like all the others”.

  • @Matthew Huntbach
    “Do we not think the dominance of the Conservatives and weakness of the LibDems in the current coalition due to the imbalance in representation caused by the distortion of our current elecoiral system makes a good case for proportional representation?”

    Apologies for the late replay but I would fully agree with the above comment. The problem is that a proportional system was never on offer. Two non-proportional systems were offered, it was the wrong referendum at the wrong time. Clegg was suitably toxic (the Tories ensuring tuition fees and trust were at the front of everyones mind).

    In my view the mistake was a lack of ambition in what was offered, and the timing of the whole thing.

  • Matthew Huntbach 29th Oct '13 - 11:34pm

    daft ha’p’orth

    Brand presents his views as follows: he doesn’t think that avenue [politics] has worked and consequently doesn’t think that it will work in future.

    Fine, so what else works?

    The line that politics and political control don’t work has largely been accepted. It’s the Tory line, and there’s a well-funded group in our party who want to make it our line as well, they wrote a book about called “The Orange Book”.

    We are already in the world those who think politicians are bad people want, that is one where power had been taken out of the hands of politicians. It’s called “privatisation”. Politicians are all bad people and liars, and that was the argument for e.g. taking control of gas away from them and giving it away through the “tell Sid” campaign. So now it’s in the hands of people paid hugely more than politicians, making nice big fat profits from it, while the poor have to choose between starving or freezing to death. But I suppose that’s all fine, because these fat cats aren’t liars like politicians.

  • Matthew Huntbach 29th Oct '13 - 11:43pm

    Steve Way

    Two non-proportional systems were offered, it was the wrong referendum at the wrong time.

    The referendum was universally taken as a proxy referendum on proportional representation. The lines the “No” campaign used were the lines that would be used against proportional representation, many of them actually made no sense as an argument against the minor reform that was AV and actually would have been more appropriate had the referendum been on a proportional system.

    No-one concluded from the referendum that the victory for “No” should be interpreted as AV not going far enough, so we should soon have a referendum on a more thorough electoral reform. Everyone concluded that the referendum result should be taken as a rejection of all electoral reform, that it meant the case for proportional representation was dead for our lifetimes.

    We live with the politics that that “No” vote created. One which means a dreary succession of Tory-Labour-Tory-Labour forever, because by blocking electoral reform, the people of this country blocked the chances of any other party breaking through. I see this as a boot stamping on a human face forever, in Orwell’s words. That is what the people of this country voted for, by two-to-one.

  • daft ha'p'orth 30th Oct '13 - 1:31am

    @Matthew Huntbach
    Yes, you already made the point that you don’t agree with Brand. I don’t agree with his approach; personally I’d spoil my ballot paper if I couldn’t find anyone worth voting for. Still, Brand has given a performance that, for the moment, he chooses to present as his point of view, and he’s right over there on Twitter if you feel like discussing with him directly. Personally I disagree with both his proposed solution (to the extent that he has one) and yours. A self-styled Messiah is unlikely to do what it says on the tin. That said, I am not seeing much in the way of positive innovation in our present circumstances, but I expect there will turn out to be a solution to the ‘boot stamping on human face forever’ problem. There usually is.

    “Do people believe “politicians are liars” because they have actually experienced it? Or do they believe it because the right-wing media aided and abetted by poseurs like Brand keep pumping out this message? ”

    The “right-wing media” is not the creator of issues like: “No top-down reorganisation of the NHS”, or the dear old tuition fee pledge. These things happened without the help of Rupert Murdoch and “poseurs like Brand” (he is a poseur, certainly, but I don’t think it’s pertinent here). You don’t need to read the right-wing media to care about issues like not being dead or not having to owe 50k for the privilege of becoming slightly less totally unemployable. And please don’t rehearse the old arguments regarding coalition or voting structure or AV. It doesn’t matter why U-turns were taken; it matters only that they were. One who wishes to prove that politicians do not at times flirt with untruth is on a hiding to nothing . It would probably be easier and more rewarding to argue that there are good reasons to do so.

    “Why do you say that my joining and campaigning for a political party that believes in what I think would help so much with this – the Liberal Party with that clauses in its constitution about community created land values belonging to the community – makes me a bad person and a liar, because by being a member of this party I am a “politician”?”

    I don’t say that, actually. You are in any case conflating several separate roles. Not all party members are “politicians” (Politician (n) a person who is professionally involved in politics, especially as a holder of an elected office. As far as I’m aware most party members don’t depend on a political career for their daily bread). I do, however, take the view that professionally representing any large special interest group tends to present ethical challenges. I also tend towards the view that an individual who is asked to select their talking points from a crib sheet may well be faced with certain limitations regarding freedom of self-expression. Exactly the same problems are faced by corporate executives, who are not, by and large, famous for their individuality and forthright self-expression either.

    You should perhaps consider the possibility that Rupert Murdoch, whilst evidently the anti-christ, is not actually Brand’s puppeteer. And also note that newspapers as a medium are increasingly unpopular in terms of combined electronic and print audience reading time. The Brand-Paxman interview may parody the sorts of viewpoints presented in this thread not to further the nefarious machinations of the evil Australian but simply because, seen from a certain distance, they are funny (and questionable; “our way or the highway” is always questionable).

  • Mattthew Huntbach “The line that politics and political control don’t work has largely been accepted. It’s the Tory line, ”

    So the Tories are in favour of legalising Cannabis for example? Have they done a U-turn on what internet searches are and aren’t acceptable to their morality? The line that political control is bad is the libertarian line, but it pretty much matches the views of people born after 1980, not the blue-rinse brigade. Of course by about 2030 the majority of people voting will be born after 1980, so this stuff is going to happen anyway, but the reason that generation is not involved now is that two ideas have not sufficiently been explained to them. 1) that politics doesn’t have to be about political control. It can be about freeing people as legislators can also repeal legislation, not just add more on top of them, as well as 2) – and this is the one I hope you will agree with me on – that political parties are not just fan clubs for existing politicians, but actually a means to replace those politicians.

    I looked at Russell Brand’s facebook page. It seems like the politics is just comedy, with him trying to take a selfie as Che Guevara and a photo of a protest holding signs saying “Down with this sort of thing”.

  • It is a depressing reflection on the political media that so much attention is given to a self obsessed, self advertising, flatulent poseur.

    Why Paxman should get involved beats me, except to point out that there is a bit of Brand in Paxman. Much was made pf Brand not voting: he lives in Hollywood; he very probably is not registered to vote in the UK. In fact it would be marginally interesting and so more interesting to know what he pays, if anything, in the way of taxes to the UK.

  • @Martin, the media, and particularly the BBC, is very self-referential so of course they think it is big news if one of their ex-employees makes a joke about politics.

    By the way, if we say that people who are not happy with the status quo or the current crop of politicians should get involved in political parties and use them to push their views and put new politicians in place, then we are effectively saying that young people not currently represented should be practicing entryism. I don’t have a problem with that – it seems pretty much necessary in a non-PR system, but I wonder if everyone else agrees.

  • Matthew Huntbach 30th Oct '13 - 2:24pm

    daft ha’p’orth

    The “right-wing media” is not the creator of issues like: “No top-down reorganisation of the NHS”, or the dear old tuition fee pledge.

    No, but that’s why I’ve written at length about these issues above. Julian Tisi may think I was going a tad off the point, but this was all about the central point, the one that all politicians are liars who say one thing and do another. On the whole I think this Tory government is doing what the Tories said they would do. They haven’t gone in and nationalised things, or made life tougher for the rich, or made access to housing more equitable. They’ve gone along with the line they always use and used in the election, that the way to improve anything is to open it up to a competitive market, and that the rich should be cossetted because of you are rich it means you have worked hard and that benefits everyone else. This government is not pushing through Liberal Democrat policies because it is not a Liberal Democrat government. If it were to push through Liberal Democrat policies, then most of its MPs COULD be accused of breaking their promises, because most of them are Tories, not LibDems. With just 57 MPs to 303 Tory MPs, all the LibDems do is get through a few of their policies, those which aren’t in direct contradiction to Tory values. If people don’t like the way the Tories are able to be so dominant with just 36% of the vote, they had an opportunity to signal that by voting for electoral reform – just a minor change, all the Tories would let the LibDems propose, a miserable little compromise yes, but if the people had backed it, it would have opened the gates for more – but, by two-to-one they voted against, hey voted against when the “No” campaign explicitly stated their main case was that they thought it good for representation to be twisted so that the biggest party would have many more seats than its share of the vote, and third parties get many less. The people HAVE what they voted for.

    Clegg has fouled things up considerably by making out that the miserable little compromise of being the very much junior partner in the coalition is our end goal, a triumph, all we always wanted and were campaigning for all those decades before. On the whole we’ve not been able to get across the argument that being a junior partner in coalition is not the same as being in complete control of government, so that to accuse us of being “liars” because we haven’t been able to implement 100% of our manifesto is silly – we haven’t been helped in this by a leadership which seems determined to destroy our party by using the very lines that our opponents will use to attack us. But I don’t think the fact that our party is led by Mr Calamity should be taken as an argument to give up on democracy altogether (and one might say the LibDems have got what they voted for in its leader, can’t say they weren’t warned).

    The point I’m trying to make is that the idea that politicians always and everywhere always say one thing to get elected and do something entirely different when in office doesn’t seem to me to be supported by the facts in this country. It’s a lazy sloppy line which is pushed by those with anti-democratic motivation, and lapped up by many others without realising how they’re being used. And, as someone who believes in democracy, that makes me angry.

  • Matthew Huntbach 30th Oct '13 - 2:38pm

    daft ha’p’orth

    Not all party members are “politicians” (Politician (n) a person who is professionally involved in politics, especially as a holder of an elected office. … I also tend towards the view that an individual who is asked to select their talking points from a crib sheet may well be faced with certain limitations regarding freedom of self-expression.

    Throughout my 35 years of membership of the Liberal Party and Liberal Democrats, I’ve argued passionately against that model of politics. I’ve largely been on the losing side, but I still believe in what I always believed in, which is that political parties should be loose co-operative networks, and not Leninist top-down organisations. I’m sorry that my idea of what a political party should be is now considered so alien to most people that they are hardly aware it could be like that, but I still don’t see that as an argument for abandoning democracy, because I have not seen a better alternative put forward.

    You may say “not all party members are ‘politicians'”, but that is how it tends to be seen, as soon as you are identified asa member of a political party, it is assumed you are some brainwashed thing who says and does only what his party leader tells him to say and do, and no longer has a mind of his own. It saddens me that I spend most of my time on Liberal Democrat Voice attacking our disastrous calamity-prone leadership, but when I defend some aspect of them because I think the attacks are unfair, I myself get attacked under the assumption that what I’m saying can only be because I’m a Leninist who has no mind of his own and says what he says only because he;s been brainwashed to follow the party line.

    People rarely join political parties now, because that’s what they think being a party member means. And if people don’t join, well, hardly surprising that the political right comes to dominance, that those who win elections are those who can do so because they have money backing them rather than large scale membership of ordinary people. But I don’t see that as an argument for giving up on the very idea of democracy.

  • Matthew Huntbach 30th Oct '13 - 2:44pm

    Richard S

    So the Tories are in favour of legalising Cannabis for example? Have they done a U-turn on what internet searches are and aren’t acceptable to their morality?

    Sure, they pick and choose. But, however much you dislike it, the old-school blue rinse Tory types did have a sense of social responsibility, though of a very paternalistic type. You dislike those little bits of it that are left in the modern Conservative Party, but I think they are becoming less and less what the Conservative Party is about, and it clings on to them mainly because it fools a lot of old style social small-c conservatives into voting fora party which actually is anything but.

  • Matthew Huntbach 30th Oct '13 - 2:49pm

    daft ha’p’orth

    You should perhaps consider the possibility that Rupert Murdoch, whilst evidently the anti-christ, is not actually Brand’s puppeteer

    I am not saying he is. I suspect that Rupert Murdoch and those with his sort of politics are very happy with Russell Brand, seeing him as a “useful idiot” in the Leninist terms, someone pushing their ideology without even being aware of it. Brand, I am sure, supposes himself to be the epitome of opposition to that sort. I have written at length in this thread to argue why that is not the case.

  • @Matthew Huntbach,
    I think we will have to agree to disagree in terms of how much the Tories have changed. What I want ask you about is to what extent do you perceive the view that people who are not satisfied with the way things are should be getting involved in politics to change things as being in conflict with the idea that entryism (what you perceive the orange bookers to have done) is a bad thing in politics? It seems to me that in a non-PR system there is either going to be either a lot of this type of entryism or a lot of people being shut out as their views don’t match those of any party.

  • Martin Caffrey 30th Oct '13 - 11:55pm

    Hmmm……the thing about Mr Brand though is that he isn’t a bomb making, expenses stealing sexual predator like some Libdem MP’s and a certain councillor.

  • Matthew Huntbach 31st Oct '13 - 10:51am

    Richard S

    What I want ask you about is to what extent do you perceive the view that people who are not satisfied with the way things are should be getting involved in politics to change things as being in conflict with the idea that entryism (what you perceive the orange bookers to have done) is a bad thing in politics?

    No, I DON’T think those who wrote the Orange Book are “entryists”. It had a variety of articles from different authors, with an orientation to the idea that market forces are an aspect of liberalism, with which I don’t disagree. My disagreement is with those pushing the idea that they are ALL liberalism is about, that is those who deny that enslavement by poverty, ignorance or conformity can exist, suggesting instead that the only thing that can enslave us is the state and the taxes it makes us pay. I’ve no problem with a variety of viewpoints within a party, so long as each treats the other with respect and acknowledges it as part of the coalition that makes up the party. I’m concerned, however,
    that those who are on the economic right of our party are NOT doing that – they are taking over the party in ways other than its democratic mechanisms, and they are treating those who stand where liberalism historically stood with contempt.

    Now sure, I recognise the position you write about because I myself have reached the point where there is no political party I feel I am happy enough to be active in. My involvement with the Liberal Democrats now is to pay the membership fee, take part in internal debates, but under its current leadership I shall pay no more money to it, I shall deliver no leaflets for it, I shall knock on no doors for it. I hope things will change, and at some time in the future I’ll be happy enough to get back more involved, but I can’t do it when it’s led by someone who seems determined to destroy it by making so many obvious mistakes and treats long-term members like me with contempt in so many of his remarks.

    I still don’t see that as an argument for giving up on democracy, because I don’t see that a case has been made for any other way to get things changed. If I were younger and with less ties, perhaps right now I would be looking into building some alternative political movement along the lines of what the Liberal Party seemed to be promising when I joined it with its community politics in a form which then was much more visionary than the clapped out campaign technique people now assume is all it ever meant. But I can’t be bothered any more, I hope someone else will take the lead.

  • David Allen 31st Oct '13 - 6:18pm

    Matthew, if we want to do better than Mr Clegg, and we want to do better than Mr Brand, then we have to get involved.

    Being a Lib Dem on strike makes a start. But things have to move on from there.

    As you imply, we are probably now beyond redemption by internal renewal. We need a fresh start.

  • Stuart Mitchell 31st Oct '13 - 7:24pm

    Why is anybody interested in this?

  • Matthew Huntbach 31st Oct '13 - 11:26pm

    David Allen

    Matthew, if we want to do better than Mr Clegg, and we want to do better than Mr Brand, then we have to get involved.

    Sure, but I’m getting older and more tired, I can’t afford not to put all my energy into my paid job any more, so, while in theory I agree, in practice I just can’t be bothered any more.

  • Completely agree with the original blog. The most important problem is that Brand doesn’t have a solution, just a series of “stop everything” style comments.

  • I’m sorry but Russell Brand speaks more sense than all of you lot combined. He relates to the rest of the UK. The lib dems don’t.

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