Opinion

February Reflections

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BY STEWART SLATER

  • “I never have to clarify,” said Kemi Badenoch. Those with long enough memories might recollect that she spent much of last Autumn’s Tory Conference if not exactly clarifying, then certainly making clearer her views on maternity rights. Those with shorter memories will be aware she spent the middle of January further elucidating her views on the triple lock. This is not a personal or partisan point –the Keir Starmer of the Prime Ministerial imagination is not the Keir Starmer of reality. An avatar of integrity in his own telling, he surprisingly remains in No. 10 after Donald Trump said he was “doing a very good job”, presidential praise having previously been evidence Boris Johnson wasn’t “fit to be Prime Minister”…  If governance would be improved by self-awareness, it is unfortunate that politics appears to select for those who lack it.
  • This is not a uniquely British problem. The newly inaugurated destroyer of Democrats’ (Big “D”? Small “D”? You decide) dreams may frequently be incoherent but apparently has “the best words”. Perhaps he does, but the order he puts them in could often use some work.
  • There was a certain amount of sniffiness from this side of the Pond about the Inauguration. Not a patch on the coronation, many thought. To my mind, it had two undisputable advantages. First, it was grounded in reality – the people acclaiming the man the people had elected. The putative point of the Westminster Abbey performance was a man being anointed behind a screen by a god in whom most of his people do not believe. Secondly, the scale was appropriate to the country, an expensive ceremony for a rich nation. The coronation relied on hand-me-downs from an earlier time. Starting from a clean sheet of paper, we could not afford all the kit and kaboodle today (and even if we could, Rachel Reeves wouldn’t allow us to buy it). The Inauguration may, or may not, have shown America’s greatness compared to the world, the Coronation, I felt, displayed Britain’s smallness compared to its past, a small boy wearing his father’s suit.
  • One ruler of a similarly dead empire who did have a degree of self-awareness was Marcus Aurelius, Rome’s philosopher king, whose Meditations feature regular admonitions of his own failings. I have an odd relationship with the book – it is probably the work I have read most frequently and, despite being short (120-odd pages), it always seems to have something new and relevant to say. But every time I put it down, I do so with the sense that if he was not exactly a prig, he was certainly a bit of a fun sponge whom I probably wouldn’t much have liked.
  • Still, even if I don’t much care for the author, bits of his book are always with me (perhaps they are now part of me, books do that). One passage in particular has been in my mind recently. Look back, he says, to the time of Vespasian (100 years earlier), outlining all the things people did. Look then, he continues, to the time of Trajan (50 years later), “everything the same”. What he could not have known was that looking forward to our time, nothing has really changed. We are still “marrying, having children, falling ill, fighting, feasting (thoughts and prayers to those struggling to shed those final Christmas pounds), trading, farming. Etc. Etc.” Our differences with our predecessors are often only on the surface.
  • Take “stove shaming” (this is, as the young might say, “a thing” apparently). Residents of Brighton (where else?) are concerned that their neighbours will look down on them for owning a nasty, polluting wood burner. Does this show a uniquely modern concern for the environment, or is it just the latest excuse for the favourite human pastime – looking down on our peers? Just as in Marcus’ time, we still “push, suspect, plot… [and] grumble at our lot”.
  • Or consider the salivating glee with which the media covers trials and, particularly, sentencing hearings. Are we all that different from those in the past who thought a trip to a hanging was a banging day out or joined a lynch mob? This, I admit, makes me uncomfortable. Justice must be done, Justice must be seen to be done, I’m just not sure that Justice must be seen being done. Beware, as Nietzsche said, of those in whom the desire to punish is strong.
  •  If modern civilisation has not changed who we are, it does change the ways we can show who we are. A journalist who assiduously retweets praise was probably always a bumptious blowhard – now his thousands of followers know it.  Men of little status have long regaled their fellows about how they would put the Emperor, Chief, Great Khan, President, whatever, to rights if only they got hold of him. Now, they can “@” their target and tweet into the void. (Voltaire was impressed by the English king’s openness to his people. And appalled by the abuse they gave him, so there was a certain delightful irony, I felt, in a French Twitter user replying to Ed Davey’s impassioned warning of the dangers of Trumpism with those three deadly words – “Who are you?”).
  • More encouragingly perhaps, Sunday afternoons here are, by unwritten consensus, car-washing time. I noticed on a recent stroll (car-washing time and I not being bosom buddies) that every time I approached a drive, the resident turned off their power-washer and waited till I passed before turning it back on. If doing no harm is the foundation of manners, technology has allowed us to discover (and discover spontaneously – there being no law about this) a new way of respecting it.
  • One area, I think, where there has been some genuine innovation is friendship. In the old days, people either stayed where they were and were forced by proximity to retain their relationships; or they left and maintained them only through choice and effort. Social media has changed this – we add people when we meet them, but we never take them off again (not without cause, anyway). As time passes (and time, I have noticed, has a nasty habit of passing), friends become acquaintances become strangers whose backstory we vaguely remember. We no longer see them, we no longer expect to see them. We may, if we are being honest, have no real desire to see them. But through sheer inertia we continue to pump information at them through our “socials”. A nice tribute to a shared past or a rude imposition reflecting an arrogant assumption of an importance we no longer have? We wouldn’t send our holiday snaps to someone we’ve never met, so why do we send them to someone we haven’t met for thirty years? We unsubscribe from mailing lists which no longer interest us, why should we not unsubscribe from people in whom we have no ongoing interest (and who – much though our ego shudders at this thought – appear to have none in us)? You decide.
  • I have. An unusual decision, I know. But not so unusual that there isn’t a word for it – “eremition” Facebook randomly chose to tell me while I was writing this. Just one of those synchronicities which adds sparkle to life? Or a sign of an unsuspected order to the universe? You decide.
  • One figure who (like a former friend) now exists only in our memories (and another unusually self-aware politician) was Jimmy Carter, whose funeral was held last month. Once more, to British Twitter, Britain did these things better. Much was made in the eulogies of the fact that he was always “Jimmy from Plains, Georgia”. This was, to the attendees, a good thing. Was it really, I wondered. He travelled the world, met countless people from countless cultures and never changed. That surely implies that he never learned, never developed, never found a different, better way. Does the world really have nothing to teach the residents of Plains, Georgia?
  • Still, at least, unlike some politicians, Carter did not take himself too seriously. Perhaps he was prevented by his Christianity. Perhaps his awareness of his less than stellar record in office. Or perhaps he had glimpsed that great eternal truth – the more seriously someone takes themselves, the less seriously others can take them.
  • Unlike restaurant critics – their articles appear increasingly to be about the journalist who ate the food rather than the food the journalist ate.
  • Unlike politicians too – Wes Streeting, forever telling us in a serious voice that he is a serious person doing serious things in a serious way, has recently launched an inquiry into social care. Since last we spoke, his colleagues have launched inquiries into grooming gangs (well, an ‘audit’) and into the Stockport stabbings. Funds are, we all know, tight, but I think we need another – an Inquiry into why Britain needs so many Inquiries. They are not a sign of a successful society.
  • “I wish you could see this. Light’s coming up.” Gordon Gekko tells Bud Fox in Wall Street. I wish you could see this, the light going down as I write, painting the sky more shades of blue than I can name. For Gekko, it was a sign to wake up, for me, I think, it is a sign to wind up. One duty remains, our closing quote – “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters,” said the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. But, of course, it is only by facing monsters that men can become heroes.

Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.