How can Britain survive? part VI of a series

 The UK has experienced 2 major shocks in the last 6 years – Brexit and Covid – on top of 40 years of relentless neoliberalism. The series has been trying to explore the effect this has this had on the UK’s social, political and institutional health,

I have to say that I find a surprising paucity of material about this. I’ve mentioned The Neoliberal Age? Britain since the 1970s (2021) but this is really the intellectual history of an idea and doesn’t, unfortunately, try to explore the effect that it has had on our social, political and institutional lives. 

One of the few authors who, clearly and strongly, frames Brexit as a consequence of the global financial crisis of 2007/8 is sociologist William Davies whose essays can be accessed in both the Guardian and the London Review of Books but collected in This is not normal – the collaps hee of Liberal Britain (2020) which he nicely introduces thus

There are various preoccupations throughout this book -

• the abandoning of liberal economic rationality,

• the declining authority of empirical facts,

• the main-streaming of nationalism,

• the hatred of ‘liberal elites’,

• the effect of big data and real-time media on our politics,

• the new mould of celebrity leaders,

• the crisis of democratic representation.

These are all linked in ways that I’ve endeavoured to show. The over-arching theme is of a shift from a liberal polity based around norms, laws, expertise and institutions to a neoliberal one based around algorithmic surveillance and financial calculation.

The task for the kind of ‘real-time sociology’ that I was engaged in with these essays is to straddle the fast-moving world of the news cycle (which has grown significantly faster in the twenty-first century) with the search for underlying structures and conditions. This is not unlike the kind of ‘conjunctural analysis’ that Gramscians have long aimed at, and for which Stuart Hall’s work has been the model. Hall always encouraged us to pay attention to the new and unprecedented, and not simply view history as a predictable unfolding of underlying mechanics. Many of the essays in this volume perform a kind of brokerage service, moving between unfamiliar and shocking political events and familiar social and political theories, including many of the classics – Marx, Hirschman, Arendt, Foucault, Weber. In scurrying back and forth between my Twitter feed and my bookshelves, the hope is that we can understand what’s going on, without either wishful thinking or denial of the genuine conjunctural novelty.

And it is really odd that the best (weekly) analysis of the condition of British politics comes not from a journalist or political scientist but from another sociologist – this time of the organisational sort whose blog has been following Brexit for more than 6 years - namely Chris Grey’s Brexit and Beyond. What makes his blog remarkable is the forensic logic with which his weekly post dissects the various arguments of that week – replete with copious hyperlinks and reminders of the typologies of previous argumentation. Just look at the incisive power with which Grey assesses the possibilities and constraints facing the UK’s latest Prime Minister

The other analysis I’ve picked out is Reckless Opportunists – elites at the end of the establishment; Aeron Davies (2018) based on 20 years of researching elite figures in five areas associated with the modern Establishment:

• the national media,

• the City,

• large corporations,

• the Whitehall civil service and

• the major political parties at Westminster.

Over that time, I have interviewed and observed over 350 people working in or close to the top. The book is organised in four parts. Part I surveys the elite state of play in Britain as it is now. Chapter 1 argues that the Establishment, as it has been conceived, is coming to an end. Chapter 2 looks at how elites, by trying to get ahead, have destabilised the very institutions on which their power is based. Part II looks at how leaders have adapted to get to the top.

Those most suited to pleasing their assessors get there first.

That means PPE degrees and MBAs rather than qualifications in law or engineering; media management and accounting skills instead of creativity and entrepreneurship. Sellers now trump makers, and bluffers outrank experts.

Part III reveals some of the ways elites stay at the top once they get there. As Chapter 5 shows, joining the club means sharing its culture and ideas, and adopting dominant norms and positions, no matter how nonsensical.

Chapter 6 looks at the secrets and lies that underpin elite power and control. Some are systematic and organised, and some are simply the lies leaders tell themselves. Chapter 7 shows that leadership has been transformed into a numbers game because numbers can be tallied up in a way that ideas can't. And because elites co-create the game, they can also change the rules as and when they need to.

Part IV focuses on exit strategies and how canny elites survive when it all goes wrong. As Chapter 8 shows, leaders follow far more than they lead. It's safer that way. And when the going gets tough, the tough join the herd. Chapter 9 is all about mobility, because the modern leader must be ready to up and go whenever things start falling apart.

Staying ahead no longer means staying on top of one organisation or nation but floating across several. The conclusion tries to join the dots and briefly explores what solutions there might be to the current problems of leadership