One way of understanding the Prime Minister, I think, is to assume he is a child playing at being Prime Minister. Like a little person solemnly sitting down at a desk and shuffling papers, much of the time, he seems to do things not because he needs to or wants to, but because he has seen others do them and thinks he should too.
Take his press conference on the situation in the Gulf. Other countries had taken action to ameliorate the new burdens on their citizens. Not Sir Keir. He stood there and didn’t really say anything. There were no announcements, just regular invocations of the National Interest and vague assurance that the government was on top of things and holding meetings. Prime Ministers give press conferences at times of crisis, so Sir Keir did too. But without any real news, it was a press conference that could have been an email.
The Prime Minister regularly invokes the National Interest. It is the sort of thing he has seen other Prime Ministers do. But he is not alone. For there is no figure anywhere on the spectrum who does not claim to act in the National Interest. If you owned the rights to the phrase, you’d be richer than Elon Musk.
Now, you may have noticed that not all these people agree on all points at all times. Nigel Farage can claim to act in the National Interest, and do things which would make Sir Keir blush. The government thinks it in the National Interest for the King to go to Washington, Ed Davey disagrees.
It may be, as politicians would claim, that they are right about the National Interest and all their opponents are wrong, but it is more reasonable to assume that each nation has a range of interests, and different people will ascribe different values to each of them. It is in Britain’s interest to have a growing economy – so import migrants to do lower value-added jobs, and free up better educated Brits to be more productive. It is also in Britain’s interest that the country be cohesive – so limit low-skilled migration. Choose your priority and pick your policy.
Britain has not entirely lived up to its reputation as the Millwall of geopolitics in its reaction to the situation in Iran. Figures from across the spectrum have queued up, if not to condemn it, then at least to suggest that they do not support it. Those outliers who showed a bit of ankle in the early days have learned their lesson and reverse ferreted. Fair enough, the reaction of the oil markets hasn’t been helpful and it is not as if the economy was particularly rosy before.
But nations are not just economies. MI5 tracked over 20 lethal Iran-backed plots in the year to last October. This is, of course, just the ones they know about. Iran uses its proxies to target one of our allies in the region. A large number of its leaders are believed to be “Twelver” Shia, every bit as adamant as Jim Bob the revivalist preacher that the End Times are upon us and the Final Battle close (albeit disagreeing with him about what the outcome will be). People hoping for the End of the World are not necessarily the people one would want to have a weapon capable of bringing it about – the banned cluster munitions they are deploying against Israel are bad enough. They have attacked non-combatant states, and choked one of the world’s major trade routes.
Put it like that, and Sir Keir could play at Col. Tim Collins from the Iraq War, chewing on a cigar and telling his followers, “The Ayatollah should be in no doubt, we are his nemesis and bring about his rightful destruction. Our business now is East!” before clambering into his tank. Wanting the regime to fall is a perfectly legitimate aspiration, and not just for the relatives of the tens of thousands of protestors it has killed so far this year.
To the best of my knowledge, no politician has actually taken this route. Instead, there have been regular invocations of the cost of living and, particularly, petrol prices. And there is good reason for it. Politicians are rational actors doing what they need to to achieve their aims. Like a child smiling winsomely to get a toy…
For while the fall of Iran’s regime may be in Britain’s interests, it is not necessarily in Britons’ interests. With only 20 known plots disrupted, there is little reasonable chance that any of us will be affected (particularly if they specifically target Iranian dissidents). Cluster munitions are bad, but they’re not using them on us. We probably won’t be their first target if they do get a nuke, and they probably couldn’t get it here anyway. Fingers crossed. The fall of the regime would have little impact on my life or yours.
The petrol price? That’s a bit more germane. Disruption to fertiliser supplies suggests higher food costs and no-one likes that. Low stocks of avgas may mean your holiday gets cancelled. The crippling of the helium market means your new computer just got more expensive. There’s a lot of practical downside to go along with the purely theoretical upside and the electorate rarely votes for politicians who make them poorer.
Democracy, it is said, is the theory that the People know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. The British people want to stay out of this conflict. They want petrol prices to come down and they want the beaches of Dubai to be the only part of the Middle East they think about.
But other people want different things. Iran’s leadership, for example, wants the destruction of Israel and America and the domination of the oil market. None of which would be particularly good. Acting in Britons’ interests today risks damaging Britain’s interests tomorrow.
Iraq gave imperial policing actions a bad name. We have plenty of problems at home, so why create more abroad? We have, perhaps, a bit of post-colonial guilt; less ready than our ancestors to assume we are on the side of righteousness and justice.
But there is also, perhaps, an identity issue at play. More atomised and individualistic than we once were, perhaps we are less interested in putting the interests of the collective above our own; even if we all gain, why should I suffer? The national interest is all well and good, but what about my interests? What’s in it for me?
Leaders are supposed to bridge the gap. To tell the electorate where all their interests truly lie, to make the case when needed for pain today for pleasure tomorrow. To point, not to pander. To remind their electorate that while they may not be interested in history, history is still interested in them. To be, to coin a phrase, the adults in the room.
It’s a pity we’ve got children pretending to be politicians. We’d better hope the other countries do too.
Stewart Slater works in Finance. He is now also on Substack, where you are welcome to follow him.
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Any politician in high office who doesn’t at some time suffer from ‘imposter syndrome’ a more aposite way perhaps of describing being ‘a child playing at being a poitician’ lacks sufficent humility. The alternatives are far worse – scruffy blond windbags (and wind of the type that has brown lumps in it btw) who rule by right because…well just because and don’t presume to question pleb.
𝖲̶𝗂̶𝗋̶ ̶𝖪̶𝖾̶𝗂̶𝗋̶
Please stop it. He deserves no honorifics having wrought the continuing destruction of Britain at the behest of his WEF puppmeisters. Just ‘STARMER’ is more than he deserves.
Or simply ‘Tool’, as he thought his ‘ever so humble’ origins might endear him to some.