Life is, without getting over philosophical, nothing more than a stream of experiences. We are constantly bombarded by sensation and information, even if, most of the time, we are unaware of it. You were, for example, probably not aware of the feeling of your sock on your foot until you read these words.
In a world ever in flux, there is no shortage of new experiences presenting themselves to us. The scent of a strange flower, the taste of a new food, the sound of a new piece of music.
I had one of these novel experiences myself the other day. I felt a sense of approval for Yvette Cooper.
For although Ms Cooper and I have both contrived to join one particular tribe of those life and choices force one into, there our similarities end. We disagree about pretty much everything, not least whether Ms Cooper should even be in public life. It is hard, I feel, to survey her career and see much value-added.
But when the Outrage Pixie took to the stage at the Labour Conference, she talked about the Ukrainian refugees she had hosted. Not her usual diet of “disgusting”, “disgraceful”, “shameful” and the other hyper-moralising words she reaches for with the practised ease of a drunkard and a pint glass, but a simple account of something good she had done.
Outside the Kremlin, few could argue that hosting Ukrainian refugees was anything but a good thing. And yet, it had been done by someone who, if I don’t think is actively bad, could certainly do with bucking her ideas up a bit.
The greatest tragedy in science is, apparently, a beautiful theory being ruined by an inconvenient fact. But a similar problem exists beyond the lab. What could be more discombobulating than seeing those of whom you disapprove doing something of which you approve? That’s not supposed to happen. We all believe ourselves to be the man (or woman) who is the measure of all things. The world is supposed to behave, people are supposed to behave just as we expect. Deviation cannot be allowed, because deviation raises the uncomfortable prospect that we might be wrong.
As a way of viewing our fellow humans, we know it is deeply flawed. We are not a single shining star of pure goodness, nor a black vanishing point of unremitting evil. We are a messy ball of qualities, some good, some bad. After the neurochemical hallucinations of early love wear off, there is none who, hand on heart, would say there is nothing they would change about their partner. We choose to overlook these things (“tact and tolerance” were, I’ve been told, my grandfather’s words to his prospective son-in-law – we only need to tolerate things we don’t like…) because we do not let them define who we think our partner is.
But, by some strange, and never explained quirk of metaphysics, it is only our nearest and dearest who are fully-fledged, messy human-beings. Everyone else is nothing more than the instantiation of a single, all-defining quality. Wes Streeting, as always, taking himself too seriously to be taken seriously, decided that one leaflet (more accurately one interpretation of one leaflet) was enough to define Nigel Farage as irredeemably racist. Oddly, his historic tweet fantasising about throwing a female columnist under a train was not enough to make him an irredeemable misogynist. Wes, you see, is just a man who said something misogynistic (more than once if we’re being strictly honest), while Nigel is just a racist man.
Streeting’s forgiveness does not extend just to himself (even if it doesn’t stretch all the way to Nigel Farage). “We need her [Angela Rayner] back” (editor’s note: We don’t actually), ignoring the fact that her resignation was so recent the severance payment has yet to reach her mortgage provider. Others’ breaches of the Ministerial Code are career-ending failures of character, hers was merely a little local mishap which could happen to anyone.
If you think that indecent haste, you would be wrong. For Labour is the party of decency, in contrast to those nasty Reform-types. You can give money to charity, volunteer with the elderly, fund a donkey sanctuary in Sussex (in a tax-efficient manner, of course…) and give a kidney to a blind Ugandan orphan, but if you don’t vote Labour, you are, by definition, not decent. Equally, one could seek to overturn a democratic election, junk all the policies on which you stood for the leadership, stab your boss and “friend/not friend” in the back, and get a rich guy to buy your clothes and still be decent, just by dint of the fact that you lead the Labour Party.
Similarly, if you are a member of the Labour Party, you, by definition, love Britain. It runs through you like a stick of vegan rock. You can wear Union Jack socks, lead battlefield tours of the Western Front and have done more for Britain’s brewing industry than any man living (and in possession of his own liver), but stand against Labour and you’re no patriot. I don’t make the rules.
We could leave this here. You’ve got 800 words of (I hope) reasonably well-honed invective against your outgroup. Keir Starmer’s a hypocrite. Labour are a bunch of wrong ‘uns. Duty has been done and honour served. Time for the pub.
But it is, of course, a bit more complicated than that. You may look at Keir Starmer’s career in public life and conclude he is a man of shockingly low character (Boris was, at least, honest about his dishonesty). But Starmer was, by all accounts, a dutiful son and devoted to his disabled brother. You may look at the performance of his government and conclude that a bunch of particularly slow amoebae could do better. But all the evidence suggests that it is populated by highly clever people. Intelligence has never meant omniscience. We cannot complain about them caricaturing us, if we caricature them right back.
It is easy certainly; convenient too. Pick something about someone and use it to define them, no more need to think. Self help (which isn’t really about the self and doesn’t really help) tells us we have “real selves”, single points which are irreducibly and authentically “us”, why not extend the same thought process to others and assume that, whereas we have to read books and engage coaches to discover ours, theirs are magically on display to all 24/7?
Because we know it’s not true. We know we are more complex than that. How we get upset when we don’t feel “seen”, in that ghastly expression redolent of psycho-babble and grift.
We talk constantly about unity and division. The former good, the latter bad. But why would anyone unite with someone who hasn’t taken the time to find out who they are. Who divides people into sheep and goats depending purely on whether they agree with them, one fact enough to welcome them into the pasture or send them off for slaughter?
“If you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.” Strange times, when there is more wisdom in the relationship pages of Cosmo than the entire political system.
Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.
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(Photograph: David Woolfall, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
Don’t the zealots of all political parties/current unchallengilble ‘beliefs’/religions overtly or privately hold everyone else in contempt?
Well, the core of the argument in the above article seems to be that nobody is perfect. That applies to us all, politicians included. Not sure that anyone has ever disputed that. I know I haven’t.
However, the fact that Yvette Cooper hosted a Ukrainian mother and her two (world class, it turns out) dancing children in her home (for how long?) doesn’t change the fact that she is hosting potentially dangerous illegal migrants in hotels and is handing them cash benefits at taxpayers’ expense.
Criticising people on professional grounds, doesn’t mean that we are condemning them for not being perfect. It’s obvious that Yvette Cooper would be very pleasant, for example, in a chat over a cup of tea. Her persona appears, without exaggerating, to be little short of charming. Doesn’t change the fact that she is hosting illegal migrants in hotels and giving them cash benefits at taxpayers’ expense. So, I read the above article with something of a dropped jaw. To ground level.
Nobody is perfect, so the lack of perfection in politicians ought not be the basis for voting – that should be obvious. It should also be obvious that if the policies of a particular political party are obnoxious (open borders, for example) then we are entitled to criticise, even if a member of the front bench hosts a mother and her two (world class) dancing children. I suspect that Yvette had more than enough room in her home and that she’s not seriously suggesting (by example) that the rest of us host any of the young men arriving in boats who have thrown their passports into the water and whose talents don’t quite measure up to those of the admirable (world class) dancers.
I remain of the opinion that Labour is making a mess of governing the UK – while, at the same time, admitting that the individual politicians (and even those who voted them into power), are very possibly people of good will. Maybe they are simply misguided in their support for the Party policies. Don’t mean to do us any harm. Fact is, they are doing us harm. a lot of it, and hopefully the ongoing public unrest will help bring an end to it sooner rather than later.
Patricia – perfect.
Carrying it further perhaps some of those “caring” individuals who stop the deportation of the “irregular” migrants should be asked to accommodate them for a while – as long as the process takes.
I might then be prepared to listen more closely to their whining if I knew they had skin in the game as it were.
Until then it’s just no-cost (to them) virtue signalling and the rest of us usual plebs have to pick up the tab.
JBUK,
Well said – especially those first two words: they count among my favourite words on the internet, alongside “I agree with you” and “you are SO right”!
Seriously, I agree with you (!) that those who are preventing the deportations – and make excuses to defend the invasion of so many illegal migrants, need to provide the accommodation – put their own money where their mouths are, so to speak.
Just reflecting on the scandalous cases before the so-called courts is infuriating: the tribunal members who stopped the deportation of a child because he didn’t like foreign chicken nuggets, and the Judge who ruled that a Taliban commander’s nephew be allowed to stay, with permission to ship in seven of his Afghan relatives, sums up as “beyond belief”.
Personal good and bad character points notwithstanding, nice personalities or not, these politicians are making fools of us all. Having a laugh, as the saying goes – to the point, where if there were an aisle nearby, I’d be rolling in it!