Red Pepper » Jeremy Hardy

Jeremy Hardy thinks… about the death of the coalition

admin — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 10:00:50 +0000

It is a sign of the sterility of Westminster politics that the best Ed Miliband can do is to make mischief by exploiting the coalition’s most visceral divisions, and that the most visceral divisions in the coalition have been about the constitution and the European Union. These dry and tedious matters are the two issues that have derailed the Liberal-Conservative love‑train, emboldened the Tory right and fatally weakened both Clegg and Cameron.
Tories delight in a spat with Brussels, because upsetting foreigners is second only to killing them in stimulating the pleasure centres of the Conservative Party. Liberals, on the other hand, love Europe. They adore anything continental: the cheeses, the voting systems, anything. Their party’s whole raison d’etre is the vast superiority of French campsites. I refer, obviously, to sleek, modern Liberals, not the old-fashioned radicals who were content with a good cheddar, a thermos and a wet walking holiday, reading a biography of Joe Grimond.
And to be fair to Liberals, all of them have always loved democracy. The left is ambivalent about it. We pay lip-service to it but can’t help suspecting that people might be too stupid to realise the high regard we have for them. And Conservatives, despite belligerently enthusing about western democratic values, have never truly been convinced by this country’s experiment with universal suffrage. Their greatest terror is the mob. That’s probably why they want the troops home from Afghanistan. They don’t want to be left without a squadron of dragoons when the millworkers get restless.
If they were honest with themselves, they’d admit that they were perfectly happy with the House of Lords as it used to be. Conservatives like things that are inherited: money, land, property, titles. Most of them even have hereditary disorders.

Jeremy Hardy thinks… about competition

admin — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 10:00:15 +0000

Competition is not healthy. I enjoyed the summer’s sport as much as the next lazy asthmatic. I felt proud of my city, the drama was exhilarating and many athletes had an endearing humility or cheekily-harmless hubris. And it must have been irksome to racists. Mo ran so well that hardly a soul in the land questioned his nationality. It’s only right he should run for the country in which he lives: America. I jest.
But watching the long-distance running, I started to wish each athlete had run separately, unaware of how others had run. All the ‘intelligent’ and ‘talented’ stuff seemed to involve messing up the opponents, deliberately tiring them, making them run at a pace they didn’t like, getting in front to slow the race down, holding back to let others burn themselves out. It’s quite cynical, and realising that is like the moment you realise boxing is genuinely fighting.
I’m being too serious; sport isn’t important. That’s the joy of it. People can be competitive because nothing much is at stake. And competitiveness is not the whole story. Courage, dedication and the pursuit of excellence are involved and all have value in other areas of life. But competition doesn’t, so why inculcate kids with it?
Did sibling rivalry make you happy? Would you like to be treated by a more competitive doctor? Would the roads be safer with more jostling for position? Do you want hypermarkets to win the battle with local shops? Do you want your kids fattened on competitively-farmed fried chicken? Do you want the sky full of cheap flights and greenhouse gases? Do you want elections determined by a tiny margin of difference among the runners and the amount of money spent on them? Does it matter that this isn’t the best column you’ve ever read?

Jeremy Hardy thinks… about greed

admin — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 10:00:15 +0000

Judging the rich is like judging the poor: if you’ve never been in their situation, you don’t know what you’d do if you were. But we like to think that the reason people have too much money is that they are morally flawed, and that the world of finance is so morally flawed that it’s almost impossible to understand. You’d have to be incredibly greedy or have a personality disorder even to find it interesting.
And we all like to hear of a big pot of unpaid tax that could be put to good use. All we have to do is lever it out of the hidden hands of the morally repugnant. Just as the left pretends that every penny of dodged tax would otherwise have been spent on hospitals (by George Osborne?), the right, I presume, has it earmarked for weapons and the bankrolling of the private sector.
Because conservatives especially bemoan immorality. They would have us believe that a creeping and recent venality is blighting capitalism’s good name. Greed and sharp practice have replaced philanthropy and propriety, goes the narrative.
In fairness to conservatives, they have a long tradition of economic intervention that stands in contrast to the economic‑liberal theory that everything sort of sorts itself out somehow. Tories are close enough to capitalism to know that it doesn’t actually work – not without a lot of help. They also know it has nothing to do with morals. In a market-driven society, it is a tribute to human decency that anyone behaves with any morals at all.
Furthermore, while it’s fun to point out that the worst tax-dodgers are always Tories, when Conservatives put financial gain before everything else, they are being entirely true to their principles.

Jeremy Hardy thinks… about the press

admin — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 10:00:58 +0000

I have never disliked the Sun as much as I dislike the Mail. I’ve always believed the latter to be more dangerous because its readers think it’s a proper newspaper. I don’t think Sun readers make that mistake.
Nor do I believe they pay much attention to its voting instructions. I remember that, in its Thatcherite heyday, an independent poll of readers revealed that most assumed the Sun was a Labour paper, which must have been both reassuring and disconcerting for the Labour Party at the time.
How a paper allied to what was nominally a party of the left might have delivered a verdict such as it did on Hillsborough is hard to imagine. That was in the days before Kelvin MacKenzie was re-invented as a loveable curmudgeon. His lies about Liverpool fans managed to shock without being surprising. The Sun had long been a vicious bag of hate and fiction. It continued to be so when it did start to support Labour.
Neither did the Mail or Express lighten up on travelling people or refugees when they fell in love with Tony Blair. The fact that they are read by so many people and that the country is not overrun with lynching parties must mean that, despite my second sentence, not all their readers take them seriously.
This is not to say the ‘quality’ right‑wing papers are covered in glory. The Telegraph is okay, so long as you know that a belief that the army should run the country informs even the punctuation, and that many of its readers use the word ‘abolitionist’ pejoratively. But the high-end News International papers are impossible to take seriously. The Kim family must passionately envy the Murdochs, wishing they got such an easy ride from the Pyongyang Times. No, it really is called that.

Jeremy Hardy thinks… about the jubilee

admin — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:27:33 +0000

Having read ‘Royal Babylon’, a phenomenal piece of writing by Heathcote Williams, on the website of the International Times, I am reminded that we have every reason to loathe the monarchy and yet have become inured to its existence. This is in part because of the way it has humanised itself.
Gone are the Germanic strangulated vowels and clipped consonants, to be replaced with the public-school cockney favoured by Tony Blair and Peaches Geldof. Prince William can kick a football about, with no apparent urge to pick it up and run for the touchline. Black people are glad-handed as often as possible, and even picked up if small and sick enough.
The royals seem pretty much like any other celebrities, and other celebrities relate to them as such. Is that Christopher Biggins or Princess Michael of Kent in the audience? Either way, they can take a joke, so long as it’s delivered in a spirit of ingratiating bonhomie.
And it’s all for charity. If Prince Charles can’t reach out to disenfranchised youths, raised on vast estates, surrounded by guns and having no hope of worthwhile employment, who can? And look at all those teenagers getting Iron Crosses as part of the Duke of Windsor’s award scheme.
Do we really want the bother of an elected president? Isn’t a Windsor a familiar and convenient alternative? In the same way, I’d rather my funeral were moderated by a vicar than have my corpse exploited by the humanists. However irrational religion might be, I prefer the diffident mumbling of a cleric to the outpourings of people so unrelentingly pleased with themselves. I’m serious about that.
Perhaps abolition of the monarchy isn’t a priority right now. We could get round to it when we get round to abolishing capitalism. Which reminds me…

Jeremy Hardy thinks… about Margaret Thatcher

admin — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 10:53:49 +0000

This is set to be Margaret Thatcher’s year. At the time of writing, she is still with us, but obits are being updated. I know this because I am sometimes asked to appear in programmes being prepared for posthumous broadcast. I refuse, because I have no wish to speak ill of the dead, even when they are still alive. But I’m sure all manner of people have lined up to pay homage, Tony Blair gushing, ‘She was the People’s Pinochet.’
No mention of her friendship with the Chilean mass murderer and torturer appears in the rather silly film The Iron Lady. Indeed, according to that version of history, her motivation in taking on General Galtieri was in part that he was a fascist. But, in common with her friend Reagan, fascist dictatorship wasn’t something she frequently held against people.
The one thing the film usefully reminds us of, as the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War descends upon us, is that she had sanctioned the winding-down of naval protection for the Falklands. The film might have gone further and shown that Argentina was being given a growing role in the future of the islands until they blew it by invading. In trying to use military force to rescue his popularity, Galtieri only succeeded in rescuing Thatcher’s. But in a sense, Argentina won the war. They got rid of their crazy, right-wing ruler; and we were stuck with ours for several more years.
In the end, it was her own party that ditched her, denying us the chance. Today, I bear her no malice. I’m sure she thought she was right. People generally do. But I’ll say it now rather than when her loved ones are grieving: she did terrible harm, and little of any merit.

Jeremy Hardy thinks… about a planned economy

admin — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 18:45:03 +0000

Bursting a tyre in a pothole, yards from my home, I wondered why Keynesians might feel the need to pay people to dig holes and fill them in again. There are tons of things that need doing in this country. And tons of people doing jobs that add absolutely nothing to the sum of human wellbeing.
But, since the Great Depression, there has been a perception that it doesn’t matter what people do, so long as they have money to spend. Likewise, it doesn’t matter what they buy, so long as someone gets paid for making it. So millions of people have mind-numbing and soul-destroying jobs manufacturing crap we don’t need, and the only objection to that fact is that so many of them are now Chinese rather than British.
And the only reason mainstream politicians are now berating a boom that was fuelled by credit and property values is the fact that it ended. The Tories now profess a love of British manufacturing but until 2008 they were as much in love with the City as Gordon Brown was. Indeed, by the time John Major left power, this country was making nothing but Kendal Mint Cake and instruments of torture, and Conservatives were quite happy for our consumer goods to be sweated out of people in hot countries, while we just sold them to one another.
And despite being divided about exactly how to provoke a ‘recovery’, both main parties have junked any real concern about the fact that we are rapidly using up our planet and heading for an environmental disaster that will make pensions largely unnecessary. There has never been a stronger case for a planned economy, and one with a great big heart.

Jeremy Hardy thinks… about Ed Miliband

admin — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 23:59:45 +0000

I don’t know why some of us nurture the hope that a Labour leader might someday articulate a little of what we feel, but we do. In these days of the internet, the shadow cabinet is a bit like the Top 20: people have a vague idea of who might be in it but it doesn’t really count for much.
If we want to know what’s inspiring young people, social media offers a better indication than the BBC. But the Beeb does give massive exposure to whoever’s at Number 1, even though he won’t be there for long. So maybe we can be forgiven for minding that he’s being so useless.
Ed Miliband is clearly determined. He crushed the dreams of his brother, a man I wouldn’t like to cross – mainly because I’d fear being bundled onto a plane by the CIA and flown to Bagram air base. It’s possible Ed was more worried that David’s creepy relationship with the US state department would come back to haunt Labour if it elected him.
It’s also possible that Ed intended to offer the country something more progressive than his brother. If so, he doesn’t seem to know what it is. Moreover, he appears to be terrified. He’s so desperate to dissociate himself from union militancy that he sees it in everything unions do, thus trampling his only hope of overcoming the Blairites baying for his downfall – a strong alliance with the unions around an alternative to New Labour.
My stab at amateur psychology is this: the reason he’s terrified is that he knows in his heart that capitalism doesn’t work. He knows because he was taught that from birth. He rebelled as a young man but has been forced back to the realism of his parents by his experience as climate change secretary if not by the banking fiasco.
But anti-capitalism is now the belief that dare not speak its name at Westminster, and what if someone found out?
That’s a generous interpretation, anyway.

Jeremy Hardy thinks… about hating the Tories

admin — Mon, 30 May 2011 05:25:42 +0000

Something weird is going on. People don’t hate the Tories as much as they should. They do hate the Liberal Democrats, or rather Clegg. The only other contemporary Lib Dem most would recognise is Cable, and people are, at the time of writing, suspending judgement on him. We still don’t know what he might do. He could just go nuts with a chainsaw, so no-one wants to write him off quite yet.
Generally, the Liberal Democrats have become a stab-vest for the Tories. This fact alone, however, can’t fully explain the fact that the Conservatives are not more widely loathed. Maybe people have fallen for the newness. The Tories have taken on human form, which is when they’re at their most dangerous.
Even some progressive commentators are toying with the idea that they might be on some kind of journey. John Harris in the Guardian suggested that the ‘big society’ should not be dismissed too readily by ‘the tired old left’. I don’t consider either of those adjectives to be an insult, by the way.
Of course, Conservatives are actually human and, aside from a fear of the unwashed and a simpleton’s optimism about markets, they’re not always rigidly ideological. They might easily smile on the odd co-op if they thought it an amusing wheeze.
Cameron and chums seem to be in politics mostly for their own entertainment. It’s no wonder Dave gets on so well with Prince William. They both treat Britain as their play-thing, and perhaps Britain has mistaken their cavalier attitude to it as a refreshing informality that humanises serious men who have a profound sense of duty and a poshness that’s almost a burden. I fear Britain has not shaken off a deference that borders on masochism, and which helped to keep Thatcher in power for a very long time.

Jeremy Hardy thinks… about the royal wedding

admin — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 05:29:45 +0000

What to give William and Kate is the dilemma facing so many at the moment. I hope they had the decency to print ‘We already have everything we need – to put it mildly’ at the bottom of the invitations. Perhaps guests were asked to do some something charitable, like buying a unicorn for the Kenyan village where William proposed.
I don’t want to sneer. I bear the happy couple no ill-will as individuals. We are all products of our environment, unless you believe everything is hereditary, which I suppose you do if you’re a prince. William’s father has resolved the environment v heredity argument, because in his mind the environment is something he inherited.
We should probably be grateful that he sees himself as its dutiful guardian. He might be no George Monbiot but, as the idiot spawn of incestuous German robber barons, he could be worse.
William himself had a difficult start in life, barely nurtured at all by dysfunctional parents who’d themselves been completely neglected by dysfunctional parents of their own.
The monarchy and the aristocracy don’t do parenting as such. Diana, God rest her, was a terrible mother. I doubt she ever met those boys from school, and they only needed picking up three times a year. What kind of environment is life in a boarding school? Kennelling for the children of the privileged.
At the time of writing, I can’t say whether I shall be lured to the television on the big day or whether I shall wait until 6pm to see what Al-Jazeera makes of it. As I’m self-employed, David Cameron’s gift of a day off means little to me – and little to many, I imagine, since he’s giving thousands of people a lot of days off from now on. Still, I suppose redundancy is something to share with the royals.