We're all getting a flogging and we love it
'Share the pain,' say the Tories and the country thrills. De Sade would have been impressed
o Nick Cohen
o The Observer, Sunday 11 July 2010
o Article history
Britain has just had the most extreme budget in its recent history. It is not hysterical to imagine that we will soon be a miserable and angry country as a result. At a minimum, we are entering a future in which police officers will be fired and criminals left free to proceed unmolested; fire stations will close so the chances of your home going up in smoke will rise; teachers, university and teaching assistants will go, leaving the young more in danger of spending their lives in ignorance than they already are; housing, rail and road projects will be cancelled; regiments disbanded; and the sick, handicapped and old left to suffer. To top it all, everyone's taxes will rise as well.
Foreigners are looking at the government inflicting the suffering with some amazement. As the New York Times noted on Friday: "No reputable economic theory justifies this bleeding." By going beyond the already stringent austerity programme Labour had planned "in pursuit of a pointless structural budget surplus", the Tories and Liberals risk pushing Britain into "years of stagnation".
Yet the British seem to be enjoying themselves. The sun shines for weeks on end, the pubs and the cafes heave and warm feelings of approval engulf the new administration. George Osborne feared he would become the most hated man in the country. Last week, a Mori poll reported that he was not only popular, but the most popular Conservative chancellor since its records began in the 1970s. Meanwhile, all surveys show that the voters regard David Cameron and Nick Clegg as decent men trying their hardest, rather than dangerous ideologues or blithering idiots.
To be sure, discussions about austerity have been about the theory rather than the practice of "sharing the pain". Undoubtedly, too, many voters fail to understand what their rulers are planning. But the Tories and Liberals are also benefiting from the sadistic streak in British culture. They are appealing to those who can't wait for the lash to fall as long as if falls on other people.
Commenting on le vice anglais is always difficult because British readers assume that when their fellow citizens engage in S&M they prefer the M to the S. I can't deny that whenever you hear that a peer of the realm or member of the bench of bishops has been caught up in a sex scandal, you can guess without needing to be told, that he will have been chained to a bed and beaten with assorted rods, whips and whatever other instruments of torture are to hand.
Inevitably, Max Mosley's landmark victory against the News of the World, which established our current draconian privacy law, followed the paper's revelation that he had been beaten black and blue by five prostitutes but not as Mr Justice Eady insisted, by prostitutes dressed in Nazi uniforms, for that would be a step too far in his honour's eyes, which the law would not have tolerated.
Eady's Mosley ruling established an Englishman's right to be flogged in the privacy of his own dungeon, but outsiders will find the case confusing. They have always assumed that the English perversion was sadism rather than masochism; that we wanted to be floggers rather than the flogged. In The Romantic Agony, the classic study of morbid themes in 19th-century art, Mario Praz devoted two chapters to describing how the character of the monstrously cold and brutal Englishman spread through European literature.
Praz did not regard the stereotype as outrageous. He quoted as supporting evidence the career of the 18th-century politician George Selwyn, a friend of Walpole and member of the Hellfire, rather than the Bullingdon, club. Not content with satanism and necrophilia, Selwyn was fascinated by the infliction of pain in executions. On one occasion, he was watching hangmen draw and quarter a Parisian criminal with such obvious interest a French nobleman asked: "Vous κtes bourreau?" ("Are you an executioner yourself?") "Non, non, monsieur," the crestfallen Selwyn replied. "Je n'ai pas cette honneur; je ne suis qu'un amateur."
It is not just because the English are the only people on the planet politically correct producers believe they can offend with impunity that movie villains so often speak with English accents. Hollywood is tapping the old belief that cruelty lies behind English reserve. However unjust and cowardly the characterisation, they have a small point. You can see it being made now in the spite that animates all those who think that civil servants deserve everything they are about to get. Resentment at secure pensions, a culture in which the incompetent are hardly ever dismissed and generous redundancy terms is everywhere. I don't know anyone in the private sector who does not feel it to some degree, or does not exaggerate the number of public sector fat cats while forgetting all the modest people below them.
Union leaders should remember that recessions breed fear and envy and smother generous impulses. If they call out their members in protest against pay freezes or pension reductions, most people will laugh in their faces.
The almost hallucinatory atmosphere in Britain, the sense that we are living in a daydream, can be explained by the vindictive and delusional belief that austerity can be achieved by hitting the featherbedded and sparing everyone else.
The reverie can't last. Michael Gove is being reviled on all sides because he is the first minister to move from the theory of austerity to the practice. Tory and Liberal Democrat MPs are shocked to discover that 25% cuts in the education budget must mean that school building stops.
Clearly, many had not grasped this before. One, Ian Liddell-Grainger, the Tory MP for Bridgwater, is proposing to lead a march of his local teachers on Downing Street. His website shows that he also opposing the closure of his local courthouse to save money and the sale of Somerset county council's assets. He sees no connection between the policies he endorses in Westminster and their consequences for his constituents. Like so many other supporters of this government, he will find that the British taste for S&M has its limits, as he is awakened from his daydream by the sound of thwacks and indignant cries of: "Ow, that hurts!"
We're all getting a flogging ? and we love it | Nick Cohen | Comment is free | The Observer
We're all getting a flogging and we love it
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