On the morning after the General Election, feeling rather shell-shocked by the results, I turned on the radio and caught John Dowland’s lute song In darkness let me dwell. The music captured the feeling of the moment, but context was more thought-provoking: a Radio 4 programme The glass delusion, exploring a seventeenth-century phenomenon of people thinking they were turning into glass.
The link to Dowland was because melancholia was seen as a disease of the imagination. That flowering of melancholic music and the glass delusion were reflections of what was going on in society at the time.
Delusions are manufactured symptoms which make life bearable: they beg the question of what someone with a delusion is escaping from. Freud’s influential essay Mourning and Melancholia suggests that the two look very similar, but in mourning there is a clear sense of what has been lost, but in melancholia it is something unknown, or unacknowledged, so melancholia is more generalised.
This leaves me thinking about the election. We face some big issues: globalisation, climate change, the European Union, and the potential breakup of the UK. These were barely mentioned. Even talk of the NHS focused on money and fantasies of threats, ducking the real issues of increased life expectancy and fear of death.
The Tory victory owes a lot to their stoking fears of the possible influence of the SNP on Labour, in flat contradiction of Labour’s assertion that there would be no deal, and of the reality that MPs returned by Scots constituencies have the same right to be involved in government formation as all other MPs.
Many in England were relieved that Scotland voted “No” to independence. Demonising the Scots to ensure an English-dominated majority and then ignoring their MPs seems bound to undermine the union. The poor standing of the Tories in Scotland owes a great deal to Margaret Thatcher and her legacy. It is as if they invented a delusion of the SNP/Labour threat to avoid engaging with the real threat of breaking up the UK. It’s no less dangerous in that they have been rewarded by having a small majority.
Globalisation and climate change are huge forces. One of the main tasks of the European Union is to create economic stability to enable us to face them. TTIP offers a way to extend that protection, though it has been met by lots of fantasised anxieties that have little to do with the actual text under discussion. Yet with populations of 1360 and 1250 million respectively, China and India both have more people than the EU and USA combined (825 million). Active involvement in the EU offers protection, yet UKIP and the right wing of the Tories seem to want to escape to a long-lost world where we were a colonial power. Like all delusions it is believable, not because the facts support it, but because the delusion makes people not see the facts. There is a half-focused mourning for an unspecified something lost – remarkably close to Freud’s definition of melancholia – which stops people engaging with reality.
This starts to make sense of the poor showing of the Liberal Democrats. We’re an internationalist party, that engages with globalisation, is deeply (though not uncritically) committed to the European Union, and with a realistic approach to building a low-carbon economy. If those things are scary, and people are making a delusional flight from them, then our low vote makes sense.
By contrast, we now have a minister for the disabled who has a record of voting against disability benefits , an equalities minister on record as opposing gay marriage, the beginnings of an attempt to repeal the Human Rights Act, and a referendum being promised on membership of the EU after discussion of repatriation of powers, even though the House of Lords Europe Committee reported that this is against the national interest. Where Liberal Democrats pulled the coalition to a place of wise engagement, the Tories on their own seem drawn to a delusional world where they make up their own reality in a way that is profoundly dangerous.
* Mark Argent was the Liberal Democrat candidate for Huntingdon in the 2019 and 2024 General Elections.
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22 Comments
I agree up to a point. The EU stuff is delusional and very dangerous for the economy. But the approach to the disabled and the poor is driven by a very nasty near sociopathic desire to punish for A) being a “burden” and B) for not voting Conservative. Another unacknowledged threat is “English laws for English MPs” Now when I voted on May 7th, I was unaware that a British election could be turned into an ad hock English Assembly and that the British parliament could be used as its home. This proposal, to me, seems like a prime candidate for causing a constitutional crisis big enough to request that the Queen dissolve parliament. It’s like something out of a military junta in it’s disregard for the electoral system and this is a government with a tiny majority in a country were 40% of the electorate don’t vote.
I’m still waiting to see the outcome of the TTIP negotiations before deciding if the proposals are compatible with Liberal Democracy or not.
Will ordinary people, their elected representatives, nation states and collaborative groupings be empowered or mainly the multi-national corporations?
Good piece. We should recognise that delusion and deception are the key purpose of the Conservative Party. It could not be otherwise. Their financial backing comes overwhelmingly from millionaire oligarchs and businessmen, whose bidding they do. That is an agenda which can only be pursued by stealth, deception and delusion. That is what the Tories have done.
The SNP delusion is the prime example. In reality, Labour have always been more cautious about giving power to Scotland than the Tories. Cameron, having persuaded a nation that Labour are dangerous, have now sat down to give more power to Scotland than Labour would have contemplated. If this is danger, then Cameron is the danger!
Quite how the SNP might be dangerous was, wisely, not spelled out in the Tory campaign. That was wise, because it would have been difficult to spell out a plausible story. An attempt was made to suggest that the SNP might force Labour to scrap Trident. It was then pointed out that a Tory Opposition could vote with Labour to neutralise any SNP threat in that direction. In response, the Tories responded that they would not vote for Labour defence estimates! In other words “The Tory scare story is real,because we Tories will threated to act in a way which will make your fears come true!”
There is a more general point here. The Tories win elections by fear. To win these elections, they themselves must create fearful situations, and then – disgracefully – pose as the answer to that fear. Thus, because Toryism has made employment income less secure, you should be frightened into voting for Tory tax cuts, which in turn mean making employment still less secure.
True Liberals should never have any truck with Conservatives.
In sorry but, while I enjoyed the article and thought it was well written and had some interesting points, I can’t help but feel optimistic. We (as a party) truly have the chance to refocus our core values so then we can become a true pillar of British politics again. As the articles highlights, we have a lot of obstacles ahead of us but surely we can use these challenges to unite us and the British people behind us rather than letting them overwhelm us.
I know I may come across as idealistic, but I truly believe in Politics of Hope rather than Politics of Fear
“TTIP offers a way to extend that protection, though it has been met by lots of fantasised anxieties that have little to do with the actual text under discussion”
‘Fantasised anxieties’ around what may or may not be covered by TTIP are encouraged by the small detail that the “actual text under discussion” seems to be very hard / impossible to come by. You would think the treaty text would be front-and-centre on the [url=http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/in-focus/ttip/documents-and-events/index_en.htm#_documents]EU’s TTIP documentation page[/url], but nope – and given that reluctance to make it public, it’s no surprise that people – understandably – worry.
There’s a whole section on ‘transparency’ on the EU site linked to above. If they believe in transparency that much, they should publish the draft text. No amount of explanatory notes, position papers or ‘democratic guarantees’ will reassure people quite as much as sight of the actual agreement.
@ Mark Argent
“One of the main tasks of the European Union is to create economic stability to enable us to face them. TTIP offers a way to extend that protection, though it has been met by lots of fantasised anxieties that have little to do with the actual text under discussion.”
That you confidently make this claim it follows that you number amongst the few thousand bureaucrats from the European Commission and nebulous “stakeholders” from businesses and public organizations that have seen the document – through which route did you obtain access?
“TTIP offers a way to extend that protection, though it has been met by lots of fantasised anxieties that have little to do with the actual text under discussion.”
‘Fantasised anxieties’ over what impacts TTIP may have will remain for as long as the ‘actual text under discussion’ remains difficult / impossible to come by. The EU’s [url=http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/in-focus/ttip/documents-and-events/index_en.htm#transparency]own TTIP site[/url] has many documents available, but the treaty text is notable by its absence, which rather makes a mockery of the claimed committment to transparency in this case.
Position papers, explanatory notes and ‘democratic guarantees’ will only go so far in the absence of the text that governments are being asked to sign up to.
I agree up to a point, but original post (posted before any other) is still being held up in the queue. Am I on the naughty step?
So am I, David!
David Cameron’s Conservatives are laughing all the way to the Bullingdon Club Reunion Ball to celebrate the fact that some rather foolish Liberal Democrats have spent the last five years saying —
” The Conservatives are not that bad really and we have been proud to work alongside them in Government.”
The impact on Liberal Democrats in the general election ought to be obvious even to a rocket scientist.
I hope we are not going to spend the next five years saying —
“The Conservatives in Government are really very, very nasty.
When there was a Coalition the Conservatives were only very nasty – so the Coalition was like heaven on earth.”
The TTIP thing is interesting in that the failures in transparency have allowed the stories Mark Argent mentions to grow in strength and credibility, to the great detriment of political discourse.
The European side has made its positions public, although it does still need to learn that there is a great deal more to transparency and effective communication with citizens than simply dumping all the documentation on the europa.eu web portal. Unfortunately, the United States considers all of its negotiating positions and any joint texts to be classified. Bit of a cultural clash, really. But the learning point is that in a connected world of instant communication, stories rush in to fill voids left by secrecy and traditional credibility is less and less important in framing the narrative.
Transparency is only part of the answer – no use being transparent if nobody’s looking. But combined with an effective communications side, it is essential in dealing with these examples of political melancholia.
“This starts to make sense of the poor showing of the Liberal Democrats.”
A party, and a leader, who promised a different style of politics, including no more broken promises, going into coalition with the Tories, which was certainly not what was written on the tin, combined with breaking a pledge on tuition fees, reorganising the NHS, and so on… that’s what makes sense of the poor showing. Many of those who voted lib dem last time thought they were going to get something like what they were promised, and it’s hardly surprising that many of them wouldn’t do so again. It may be childish, but having voted for something different, and got something just the same, many ex ld voters are very angry about it. Something similar seems to have happened to Labour as well.
“Unfortunately, the United States considers all of its negotiating positions and any joint texts to be classified.”
Actually it says a lot about the EU! Namely that it isn’t prepared to stand up for its principles. If the EU is really committed to transparency then it would be standing up to the US and saying “this is the way we do negotiations, if you don’t like it…”
@JohnTilley
What I would’ve liked to have seen during the Coalition years was more of an effort to highlight everything we actively said no to or that didn’t reach Parliament as the Conservatives knew it didn’t have LibDem support – as an effort to maintain our distance and try to make sure that we weren’t seen as Tories Lite. Whether because of ‘government collective responsibility’ (reasonable for a single-party government, not so much for a Coalition) or something else, I didn’t perceive much evidence of that, and perhaps that’s why were were given as much of a kicking as we were.
From the US prospective:
“Obama’s trade-deals — especially TPP with Asia, and TTIP with Europe — are so vicious against the American people, the Obama Administration has labeled the documents “Classified,” and is threatening prosecution against any member of Congress who quotes from the texts; it would be “leaking classified information.”
However, empirical economic studies already indicate what would likely be the result from both the TPP and the TTIP: one independent economic analysis has been done for each of these two international-trade deals, and both of them come up with the same conclusion: the publics everywhere will lose wealth because of them, but aristocrats, especially in the United States, will gain wealth because of them. (It’s like what happened with NAFTA, but only far more so.) In other words: the same billionaires who fund congressional and presidential campaigns are the people who will be taking from the general public vastly more money via TPP and TTIP than the paltry billions they’ve invested to fool voters into voting into office the Senators and Representatives who are now rubber-stamping into law Obama’s ‘trade’ deals. (And, of course, the same aristocrats also funded both Obama’s and Romney’s campaigns, just as they did those of both Clintons and of the Bushes”
See more @:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-tpp-and-the-ttip-how-congressional-republicans-lie-to-approve-obamas-trade-deals/5450662
Bryan Morton 20th May ’15 – 3:57pm
I agree with you.
Having gone into a Coalition with the party who had been the sworn enemy since 1870 it was not unreasonable to expect —
“….more of an effort to highlight everything we actively said no to or that didn’t reach Parliament as the Conservatives knew it didn’t have LibDem support – as an effort to maintain our distance and try to make sure that we weren’t seen as Tories Lite.
I am told that half a dozen of our Liberal Democrat MPs and considerably more of our members in The Lords took the same view as you. Those who took the opposite view have never really explained themselves.
It is obvious which side of that divide the two candidates for the leadership fall.
It is not too late for Norman Lamb to explain why he thought the “Cabinet Collective Responsibiity” route was a good idea.
As Nick Clegg’s confidente and bag carrier for the first two years of Governent he is well placed to know the thinking behind this disastrous approach.
From another US site:
“Will the U.S. Congress vote to approve “free trade” agreements that are, according to the agreements’ authors, “living agreements” that will constantly change and “evolve”? This mutational feature of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) should be of top concern to members of Congress — and their constituents. However, this critical aspect of the secretive agreements has received virtually no attention in the establishment media.”
We in the UK should be only too aware of how our membership of the EU started as ‘joining the Common Market’ – but ended up with us surrendering large chunks of our sovereignty. It seems that these two agreements will do likewise. We can assume that TTIP will be ratified with as much as the authors are able to include and be certain of ratification by the EU Parliament – knowing that whatever else they want can be introduced at a later date.
Bye, bye the NHS – if not soon – then some time at a later date!
An excellent, excellent article. Well reasoned and argued and enjoyable too!
John Roffey 20th May ’15 – 4:04pm
Thank you for providing the link.
It is Interesting to see this report of the US side of the TTIP story.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-tpp-and-the-ttip-how-congressional-republicans-lie-to-approve-obamas-trade-deals/5450662
Why has this thread degenerated into 38 degrees style scaremongering over TTIP?
Who seriously contends that all 28 EU member governments, of a range of political flavours, would sign up to a treaty that would undermine their own public services? If you told me that one or two don’t believe in public services and don’t want to be re-elected, that might be plausible, but all 28? Come off it.
Joe Otten
Because there is a lot of suspicion on oth sides of the Atlantic generated by the secretive nature of the TTIP negotiations thus far.
Liberal Democrats used to draw attention to and criticise the democratic deficit in the institutions of the EU.
We used to campaign for greater transparency and greater powers for the elected representatives over the executive.
That seemed to ut put on one side during the Clegg era of “the party of IN “.
I hope you will join in the return to a more Liberal and democratic approaching than unquestioning, passive acceptance of everything The Commission suggests.
John, that’s a crock and you know it. Show me a single treaty negotiation that has been conducted more openly than this.
And you haven’t answered my question.