Authority and Power 

What our cavemen ancestors thought of the animals among which they lived their lives, we cannot tell. Neither left us any written records to decipher. But since a sabre-tooth tiger could do as much damage to us as we could do to it, it is reasonable to assume that, to the humans of the day, they were peer competitors. Different things, certainly, but not necessarily a different category of thing.

This approach did not survive the dawn of civilisation, however. In the Bible, animals were made the day before humans while to the Roman philosopher Epictetus, we had a fragment of the divine reason, they, bluntly, did not. There were humans. There were animals and that was just the way it was. It was the Victorians who took this approach to its extreme, much of their behaviour being designed to allow them to deny any “beastly” instincts. Which of us can honestly say we have never been driven to a frenzy of animal lust by the sight of an uncovered table leg?

But it was also the Victorians who cut the (table?) legs from this approach. Once Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace discovered evolution, the notion that there was an “us” and a “them” became increasingly hard to support. After some initial resistance, we have come to accept this reality and lean into it, many things the Victorians would have condemned (breast-feeding in public) or criminalised (homosexuality) often now being justified by the notion they are natural – animals do them, we are animals, therefore we should do them.

One can, of course, have too much of a good thing. Certain corners of the internet have adopted the language of the pack and decided to adapt it to humans. You know the sort of thing I mean. The badly dressed lads who rent a Lambo for an afternoon and wang on about being an “Alpha”. You can be too, of course. A trip up the pecking order being available to anyone who puts their hand in their pocket. No matter that no self-respecting “Alpha” would demean themselves by telling you – they wouldn’t care what you think – nor that it is far from clear that “Alphas” exist in the natural world (wolves appear to live not in packs but in something approaching a nuclear family, further fuel for the debate about whether we domesticated dogs or they domesticated us – they haven’t come off badly in the trade…). Like the poor, the gullible will always be with us.

That the internet may have gone too far should not surprise anyone who has ever been on the internet but, as so often, beneath the grift, there may be a thin layer of truth. Animals do form pecking orders. Some are just fitter than others. They know it and their litter-mates know it too. Everyone knows where they stand.  The dog my parents had when I was born had been the runt of the litter and didn’t make it much beyond my third birthday. I have an alibi, before you ask.

Nature has a way of dealing with these things. A way humans often subvert. Take the Prime Minister.

Just eighteen months after the event, it is easy to forget that he won the second largest majority in modern history. He won more seats than Boris Johnson in his “Get Brexit done” election, he won more seats than Mrs Thatcher in her “Britannia who re-took the Falkland Islands” pomp. The former, in the words of one journalist “squatted across the centre-ground of British politics like a fat toad”, the latter became a one-woman shorthand for an entire decade.

Sir Keir, however, not so much. Almost as soon as he crossed the threshold of No. 10, the rebellions started. The back-biting started – he hadn’t won, the Tories had lost. The U-turns started because the Parliamentary party was clear on what it would and would not accept.

Can you imagine the same back in 1983? The situation does have its similarities. Massive majority won against a widely hated and split opposition. Of course you can’t. Thatcher would not have put up with it, nor would her MPs have dared. She was the big dog. Everybody knew that.

For authority and power are not the same thing. The former makes using the latter unnecessary – people will do what you want without being forced to do what you want. Maggie had authority. Boris had authority (particularly when Dominic Cummings was putting a bit of stick about). Starmer doesn’t. People don’t choose to do what he wants because he wants it. They do what they want and dare him to stop them.

Imagine a Conservative Andy Burnham (given his political meanderings, a less unlikely prospect than one might initially think. As the Labour joke goes, “A Blairite, a Brownite and a Corbynite walk into a pub. ‘What’ll it be, Andy?’ asks the barman.”). He would never have tried to be an MP under Margaret Thatcher. Nor under Boris in his early days. He wouldn’t have dared. He might have sat and seethed, but he would not have stood. But because Starmer doesn’t have their authority, he did and the Prime Minister had to use his power to stop him. There is, of course, a vicious cycle at work here – having to use his power further undermines the little authority he has. But it is a cycle he has to follow.

It is a cycle which has an inevitable end. At some point, a bigger dog will decide that it wants first dibs on the prey. And it will get them, because there is nothing to stop it. No fear to hold it back. No suspicion it might fail.

However much we may try to subvert nature, we cannot durably replace nature. Authority is like Lord Clark’s view of civilisation. We can’t define it, but we know it when we see it. We’re all just animals and politics is a dog-eat-dog world.

Stewart Slater works in Finance. He is now also on Substack, where you are welcome to follow him.

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