A brief tour of the rubble

I have essentially retired from politics - I probably won't vote in the European elections and quite possibly not even in the General Election. My political career ended in failure: I lost so many pub arguments with an ex-lefty college friend who broke liberal that I just gave up and retreated into a sort of embittered exile. Funny thing was, it felt like I'd seen most of it before, on Blogger, in the noughties, in the arguments we all used to have about the war, free markets, America, etc. The Decent Left, the Euston Manifesto, "if you were really left-wing, you'd actually support [war/free markets/America] because [clever-bollocks reason]". A lot of it was indeed familiar, but the practice was for nought. I held out for a bit, a few no-score draws, ten men behind the ball, but ultimately I was routed. I'm now just sitting around in the rubble.

I will give you a brief tour of the rubble. It's made up of little fragments, broken statues, charred fortifications, some ramparts offering pretty views. I've been unable to assemble the pieces into anything coherent, anything that functions, but if you are looking to construct a new worldview, you might find something of use that you are welcome to take with you. It might take a couple of posts, I'll try to break it up with some pictures.

"I'm socially liberal and economically liberal"

I don't trust this at all, it's always struck me as fishy. Same as "I'm an 18th Century Liberal" (great, you're just in time!).

The "and" is trying to do too much work. I'm not going to award you any points for being socially liberal. You don't get points just for not being racist, sexist or homophobic. So all you're really saying to me is, "I'm economically liberal". We can talk about that. But putting a rainbow decal on your economic liberalism isn't going to cut it with me.

Economic liberalism is basically about clever people making sure they are allowed to get rich

Letting clever people accumulate all the money is better than letting people whose dads stole it by force keep it, sure. But watching millionaires like Nick Clegg get all misty-eyed about liberty and the Magna Carta sticks in the craw a little.

What do you mean by "socially liberal", exactly?

That race/gender/sexuality should be no handicap to working within the liberal-rational system, or that there might be other systems and worldviews - other rationalities?

1. Left 2. Conservative 3. Liberal

I guess what I'm really ranking here is the plan for looking after the poor.

1. Some form of solidarity
2. Noblesse oblige
3. Free people pursuing their rational self-interest and it all just sort of coming out in the wash

The first one is vague, I'll grant you, but the third one is obviously a mental utopian fantasy. The second one at least involves an element of care.

There's an element of Oxbridge snobbery in the Left -> Liberal movement

Look at this picture:

Cringeworthy, right? Who wants to keep this kind of company? Even a few steps up, the Guardian columnists, social justice bloggers, "community spokespeople" - such earnestness, such self-satisfaction, so many errors made. Trenton Oldfield! Do you really want to be defending these people at dinner parties? Why can't that nice man Tony Blair come back and make us feel respectable for being lefties again?

Well I would just ask - is a 19-year-old UCL girl holding a po-faced placard and Instragramming herself really a good enough reason to go all contrarian and end up, in the name of "cleaning house", just adopting every liberal counter-argument to lefty dogma you can lay your hands on? Is that how you treat all the members of your family?

The Left is doomed barring a major and violent crisis

People just aren't really into solidarity anymore, and it's difficult for me to imagine how you construct a left politics in a post-solidarity world (other than just a guerilla, oppositional politics).

"Deliberative" democracy is a dangerous sham

I want us to be able to choose our leaders, but I don't think I really believe in the "deliberative democracy" model, where we all apparently come together in the public sphere as disinterested individuals (i.e. not representing class or other bloc interests) and see to it that the best argument carries the day. It's a dangerous fiction, dangerous even as an aspiration.

On a practical level, the clever people just get to stitch it up. But also they get to stitch it up while pretending that there are no "sides", that it's just for the common good. This is incredibly annoying. I don't see politics as a logistical problem to be solved and I don't trust clever people to take care of it just because they are clever. They cut corners.