Cameron?s masterly inaction is putting us back on course – Telegraph Blogs

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During the summer holidays, I prepared for my new position as The Daily Telegraph’s chief political commentator by making a serious study of the writing of T E Utley. For a substantial part of the post-war epoch, Utley was the life and soul of this newspaper, converting the saloon bar prejudices that unconsciously animate us into exquisite and learned argument. Utley, who was never deterred by the handicap of his blindness, was also the author of a number of works of political philosophy, all of which, as I discovered by the pool, are worth reading today. Better than any modern writer I know, this rather wonderful man elegantly articulated the profoundly unfashionable argument that it is virtuous to be a Conservative. (Anyone wanting to get a flavour should obtain A Tory Seer, a selection of his writing edited by two of Utley’s most gifted protégés, Charles Moore and Simon Heffer, with a foreword by Margaret Thatcher and an introduction by Enoch Powell. This volume should be core reading for anyone contemplating a future in Westminster journalism or a career in the Conservative Party.) The more I studied Utley’s work, the more it became plain to me how much he would have liked and approved of David Cameron and Nick Clegg’s Coalition. Not that this most distinguished of Daily Telegraph commentators would have admired everything the Government has done. He would surely have been aghast at the shambles of a defence review, appalled by the deranged plan to spend £17 billion carving up Middle England in order to shave half an hour off the train journey between London and Birmingham, and horrified by George Osborne’s immature triumphalism when announcing harsh spending cuts in October. Utley would also have found David Cameron’s idea of “progressive conservatism” intellectually shambolic and vacuous beyond belief. But Utley would have been absorbed by the grand ideas that animate the Coalition. This is because the great theme that exercised him throughout his magnificent career was the nature and role of the state. Reaching intellectual maturity immediately after the Second World War, he grew up in the age of collectivism. This meant that for many years he was a lonely voice, even within the Conservative Party, because he argued that an unacceptable price was being paid for the new form of social organisation: the collapse of personal morality. One of his finest articles for the Telegraph was headlined “Nationalisation of vice and virtue”. It is worth quoting from at some length: “Social democracy may be defined as an arrangement under which we all largely cease to be responsible for our own behaviour and in return become responsible for everybody else’s. The temptations which this way of doing things offers to synthetic anger, fraudulent penitence, all other forms of hypocrisy and the sheer evasion of duty are infinitely too great for fallen man.” Utley warned that this state of affairs brought with it one further problem. With the voter reduced to the role of inert spectator, a dangerous phenomenon emerged: the all-powerful politician who alone was capable of offering a solution to life’s problems. Ever since his death in 1988, the central paradigm of British government has involved some kind of strong man at the centre. It has to be accepted that Margaret Thatcher, another of Utley’s disciples, failed to discourage this tendency. From Thatcher onwards, Britain abandoned cabinet government as traditionally understood – a process described by constitutional experts from Graham Allen, the Labour MP, to Professor (now Lord) Peter Hennessy. Instead, we have adopted something more akin to the American presidential system. One of the joys of the Coalition is that it is turning back the tide. Let’s give one minor example: its response to last week’s severe weather conditions. We know from experience how Gordon Brown or Tony Blair would have reacted. There would have been photo-opportunities with the prime minister in the snow. The Cobra cabinet committee (a largely unnecessary innovation used relentlessly in the New Labour years) would have been noisily convened. Some kind of instruction would have issued by Downing Street, duly followed by “action”. We have had none of this nonsense from Cameron and Clegg. Indeed, the Prime Minister has steadfastly refused to encourage the bankrupt proposition that a national leader can do anything meaningful to sort out a crisis brought about by the weather. This deeply reasoned inertia carries risks because it makes a mockery of the interventionist culture that has dominated media reporting over the last two decades. Last Tuesday’s Daily Mirror, for example, carried a front-page picture of the Prime Minister alongside a report from its political editor that “David Cameron disappeared yesterday as the worst winter in 100 years plunged Britain into travel and fuel chaos”. It is a pleasure to note that Downing Street simply ignored this kind of half-witted and hysterical coverage. Just imagine what would have happened had the Cable affair broken during the Blair years. There would have been all the shouting and panic which Alastair Campbell’s diaries describe so graphically. But last week, David Cameron did not even break sweat. He refused to be intimidated by looming news deadlines. He made a calm decision, and stuck to it. The 19th-century journalist Walter Bagehot wrote that it was essential that a prime minister should not get too concerned with day-to-day affairs because he needed what Bagehot termed “mind in reserve” for a real crisis. Cameron appears to understand this profoundly. Here’s another contrast. A few months after Tony Blair became prime minister, word went round that he was not really running the country and that he was “chairman” rather than chief executive. These stories terrified his press handlers, so a series of elaborate stunts were arranged to get across the point that Blair really was the man in charge. In contrast, David Cameron does not mind at all when people remark that he has the relaxed style of a company chairman, rather than the hands-on freneticism of a chief executive. Indeed, he actively encourages such talk. He has let it be known that he believes in the doctrine of cabinet responsibility. The most important remark made by Vince Cable this week did not concern Sky TV and its owner, Rupert Murdoch. It concerned the nature and style of the Government. This is what the Business Secretary said, and it was so good to hear: “The Cabinet does function as a cabinet, in the way it is supposed to in the textbooks. We debate things across the table.” This kind of intelligent and grown-up approach lies at the heart of all the best things that the Coalition is setting out to achieve, whether through Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms, Michael Gove’s free schools or Eric Pickles’s Localism Bill. All of them, in their different ways, set out an answer to the great paradox exposed by T E Utley so many years ago: how to reconcile state intervention and personal responsibility. Some of its ideas may be flawed. But no one should doubt that the Coalition is a mature, humane and (in the best sense of the word) reactionary

I wouldn't go so far as to agree that the welfare state is a Bad Thing (TM) no doubt it does encourage a certain amount of moral idleness, but I'd rather be morally idle in a country that'll educate me and put my broken legs in plaster than a manly, pioneering soul that can't read and has to fix his own broken legs. If that makes me a horrible shallow person, so be it.

I'm a big supporter of inaction in government, on the other hand.

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I would agree that social safety nets may, in specific circumstances, lead to bad moral choices by creating perverse incentives.

OTOH, "converting the saloon bar prejudices that unconsciously animate us into exquisite and learned argument" is a pretty damning indictment of conservative philosophy. If all they do is put an exquisite and learned face on a pile of shite, it is a highly dangerous exercise as well as hypocritical.

Furthermore, "Social democracy may be defined as an arrangement under which we all largely cease to be responsible for our own behaviour and in return become responsible for everybody else’s". Really? So murderers and thieves are now let free to roam the streets? Disordely drunks are no longer arrested by the police? Debtors no longer see their assets repossessed? What does that even mean 'cease to be responsible for our own behaviour'? Show me examples - Coz I really doubt it actually occurs anymore that it did before the advent of social democracy.

And lastly "The Cobra cabinet committee would have been noisily convened. Some kind of instruction would have issued by Downing Street, duly followed by “action”. We have had none of this nonsense from Cameron and Clegg. Indeed, the Prime Minister has steadfastly refused to encourage the bankrupt proposition that a national leader can do anything meaningful to sort out a crisis brought about by the weather".

Wow! I am sure the Ancient Egyptians would have been impressed by that kind of stoicism. "Those Nile floods? Aaaah, nothing we, national leader, can do about it. What do you mean 'harvesting those floods for cultivation through a socialist entreprise'? You morally bankrupt animal! Throw him to the crocodiles". Or the Persians. "Look, mate, it's a fucking desert. Nothing's going to grow there. What? Canals? Complex irrigations? Stop smoking that weed, you morally bankrupt animal"...

To add to the idiocy of such comment, this is now the third year in a row that we have had "unusually" snowy winters. At which point do you fucking wake up and smell the coffee and start thinking that snowy winters may very well be the new normal. Sweden and Norway and Russia deal with them very well. Normal, they're used to it. Maybe it's time we get used to them too. And, yes, 3 years is fairly short on climate scale but, fuck it, it seems worth it to spend a little bit on being prepared. If the next few years are back to normal, it'll be just a bit like having bought some insurance...

Fucking moron.

"I'm a big supporter of inaction in government, on the other hand" - I can do that on my own. I don't pay 50% of my GDP away for inaction... For that kind of money, I want, no, I bloody demand a system that works - and that works (fairly) smoothly on top.

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OTOH, "converting the saloon bar prejudices that unconsciously animate us into exquisite and learned argument" is a pretty damning indictment of conservative philosophy. If all they do is put an exquisite and learned face on a pile of shite, it is a highly dangerous exercise as well as hypocritical.

Indeed!

F

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OTOH, "converting the saloon bar prejudices that unconsciously animate us into exquisite and learned argument" is a pretty damning indictment of conservative philosophy. If all they do is put an exquisite and learned face on a pile of shite, it is a highly dangerous exercise as well as hypocritical.

Yes, you have to hand it to the left, they seldom attempt to turn their saloon bar prejudices into anything very exquisite.

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Furthermore, "Social democracy may be defined as an arrangement under which we all largely cease to be responsible for our own behaviour and in return become responsible for everybody else’s". Really? So murderers and thieves are now let free to roam the streets? Disordely drunks are no longer arrested by the police? Debtors no longer see their assets repossessed? What does that even mean 'cease to be responsible for our own behaviour'? Show me examples - Coz I really doubt it actually occurs anymore that it did before the advent of social democracy.

Well it's true that individual responsiblity is on the decline. If it weren't that so many of our systems are based on it and people are good at ignoring evident contraditions in their philosophies things'd be worse that they are.

I admit that for the moment it doesn't really matter.

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And lastly "The Cobra cabinet committee would have been noisily convened. Some kind of instruction would have issued by Downing Street, duly followed by “action”. We have had none of this nonsense from Cameron and Clegg. Indeed, the Prime Minister has steadfastly refused to encourage the bankrupt proposition that a national leader can do anything meaningful to sort out a crisis brought about by the weather". Wow! I am sure the Ancient Egyptians would have been impressed by that kind of stoicism. "Those Nile floods? Aaaah, nothing we, national leader, can do about it. What do you mean 'harvesting those floods for cultivation through a socialist entreprise'? You morally bankrupt animal! Throw him to the crocodiles". Or the Persians. "Look, mate, it's a fucking desert. Nothing's going to grow there. What? Canals? Complex irrigations? Stop smoking that weed, you morally bankrupt animal"...

Their climates were a great deal less changeable than ours.

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To add to the idiocy of such comment, this is now the third year in a row that we have had "unusually" snowy winters. At which point do you fucking wake up and smell the coffee and start thinking that snowy winters may very well be the new normal. Sweden and Norway and Russia deal with them very well. Normal, they're used to it. Maybe it's time we get used to them too. And, yes, 3 years is fairly short on climate scale but, fuck it, it seems worth it to spend a little bit on being prepared. If the next few years are back to normal, it'll be just a bit like having bought some insurance... Fucking moron.

I've also heard it said that occasional cold winters come in roughly 11 year cycles and next year it could very well go back to normal. When, presumably, everyone will begin cursing the government for wasting taxpayers' money on pointless cold weather equipment.

Tbh if I was in government I'd rather be called a moron with a low deficit than a moron with a high one.

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"I'm a big supporter of inaction in government, on the other hand" - I can do that on my own. I don't pay 50% of my GDP away for inaction... For that kind of money, I want, no, I bloody demand a system that works - and that works (fairly) smoothly on top.

I think it does. Would David Cameron going out to talk to people waiting at the airport and setting up a rapid response snow taskforce have made you feel significantly better about things?

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Originally Posted by Zichao

Yes, you have to hand it to the left, they seldom attempt to turn their saloon bar prejudices into anything very exquisite.

Tsk. Any saloon bar prejudices ought not to be turned into anything exquisite. If you have a point, say so, show me the data, the analysis, the inducive reasonings or, otoh, if you prefer, we can work from first principles and use deductive logic. At no point should we ever lower ourselves to merely dress up saloon bar prejudices. Otherwise, what's the fucking point? Let's just have the BNP, the UKIP and, well, i don't know of any low brow leftwing party in the UK so I'll use the French Force Ouvriere (FO) and dispense with all the other parties...

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Well it's true that individual responsiblity is on the decline.

Is it? Just because we recognise that social environment has a role in shaping up someone does not mean we ignore personal responsability. What's the difference between "the devil told me to do it" (pre-social democracy, conservative golden age) and "I had a difficult childhood so that's why I did what I did"... And is that even what that guy mean?

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I admit that for the moment it doesn't really matter.

Also my opinion.

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Their climates were a great deal less changeable than ours.

Were they? Or is it that we are running a more complex ship so smaller variations may throw us off guard if we haven't actually build in some robustness?

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I've also heard it said that occasional cold winters come in roughly 11 year cycles and next year it could very well go back to normal. When, presumably, everyone will begin cursing the government for wasting taxpayers' money on pointless cold weather equipment.

1- I am not capable of discussing the science of it. If you say so. I just note that, three years in a row, being offered the same "it's unusually, really" explanation for my delayed flights and/or gridlocked London is not acceptable.
2- But, if sciences has something to say, by all means, let's use that as a way to plan our expenditure. If there was a good scientific reason for not buying more cold weather equipment after last year, I am willing to listen.
3- To a degree, some public spending has to be treated as insurance spending. No one (hopefully) plan on using their nuclear arsenal. But it's not bad spending, from an insurance pov.

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I think it does.

Either you haven't tried travelling in the last few weeks or you're way more tolerant than I of poor services at expensive price.

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Would David Cameron going out to talk to people waiting at the airport and setting up a rapid response snow taskforce have made you feel significantly better about things?

No. What would have made me feel better was if they had spend a bit more during the run-up to this winter and last year's one on cold weather related equipment. Failing that, an annoucement that they were considering the science involved and the cost/benefits for investing in such equipment in order to prevent a repeat next year would be acceptable. I'd be grumbling (why was it not done last year?) but accepting.

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Tsk. Any saloon bar prejudices ought not to be turned into anything exquisite. If you have a point, say so, show me the data, the analysis, the inducive reasonings or, otoh, if you prefer, we can work from first principles and use deductive logic. At no point should we ever lower ourselves to merely dress up saloon bar prejudices. Otherwise, what's the fucking point? Let's just have the BNP, the UKIP and, well, i don't know of any low brow leftwing party in the UK so I'll use the French Force Ouvriere (FO) and dispense with all the other parties...

If you were looking at data you wouldn't be committed to left or right.

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Is it? Just because we recognise that social environment has a role in shaping up someone does not mean we ignore personal responsability. What's the difference between "the devil told me to do it" (pre-social democracy, conservative golden age) and "I had a difficult childhood so that's why I did what I did"... And is that even what that guy mean?

I didn't say that it does mean that we ignore personal responsiblity - that's where the cognitive dissonance comes in. Kind of like US Christian fundamentalists who hate science and are quite happy to blog about the fact on their new MacBook. We don't believe in personal responsiblity except when it suits us, and live in a society that is entirely based on it all the while pretending that we're far too mature for such silly things.

If you say "the Devil told me to do it" the implication is "and I chose to listen to him".

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Were they? Or is it that we are running a more complex ship so smaller variations may throw us off guard if we haven't actually build in some robustness?

Well... euh... yes. In Egypt certainly. In Persia I presume it varies more. I mean in Egypt you've got hot, and bloody sweltering and that's about it. River rises, river falls. It's pretty reliable.

I'd also guess that the ease of international trade actually makes us less susecptible to climate variations. If you had a bad year in Egypt there'd be famine. We just buy abroad.

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1- I am not capable of discussing the science of it. If you say so. I just note that, three years in a row, being offered the same "it's unusually, really" explanation for my delayed flights and/or gridlocked London is not acceptable. 2- But, if sciences has something to say, by all means, let's use that as a way to plan our expenditure. If there was a good scientific reason for not buying more cold weather equipment after last year, I am willing to listen. 3- To a degree, some public spending has to be treated as insurance spending. No one (hopefully) plan on using their nuclear arsenal. But it's not bad spending, from an insurance pov.

I just want a cost-benefit analysis rather than a kneejerk response.

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Either you haven't tried travelling in the last few weeks or you're way more tolerant than I of poor services at expensive price.

Well yes, but the British trains are shite and expensive whatever the weather.

Actually, I missed a connection the other day because of the snow and it was pretty inconventient, but I'm not going to dismiss modern liberal democracy as useless just because I had to wait at the station for half an hour, even if it was in Saint-Brieuc.

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No. What would have made me feel better was if they had spend a bit more during the run-up to this winter and last year's one on cold weather related equipment. Failing that, an annoucement that they were considering the science involved and the cost/benefits for investing in such equipment in order to prevent a repeat next year would be acceptable. I'd be grumbling (why was it not done last year?) but accepting.

I'm not sure, but I think it's local councils who deal with it.

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