Down the Sewers with Right-Wing writers

They say that we should get out of our “bubbles” and be open to alternative voices. And the BBC certainly these days gives access to the entire spectrum of opinion from Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage, Wes Streeting et al – particularly with interviews on such programmes as Political Thinking with Nick Robinson. Yesterday I steeled myself to listen to Matt Goodwin on this programme. 

But who, you might ask, is Goodwin? He was a political scientist who co-authored 

in 2018 a book I enjoyed National Populism – the revolt against liberal democracy 

but has since left academia to become a political advocate for the causes 

he previously only analysed. 

The discussion between Robinson and Goodwin became quite heated as he 

tirelessly rehearsed the usual arguments about excessive immigration 

(with which I partially agree), Muslims and this curious fixation on a “new class” 

which also figures in the current Conservative leadership contest.

Recommended Reading
The Routledge Companion to Fascism and the Far Right ed P Davis and D Lynch  (2002) 
Fascists  Michael Mann( 2004) Mann is one of the most interesting sociologists
The Road to Somewhere – the populist revolt and the future of British politics David 

Goodhart (2017)
Whiteshift – populism, immigration and the future of white majorities Eric Kaufmann 

(2018) https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/eric-kaufmann/ 
National Populism – the revolt against liberal democracy R Eatwell and M Goodwin (2018)

National Conversation on Immigration (Hope not Hate 2018)

The New Faces of Fascism – populism and the far right  Enzo Traverso (2019)

https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2020/09/demons-and-demos.html 
The Roots of Populism – neoliberalism and working class lives Brian Elliott 2021
America’s Cultural Revolution – how the radical left conquered everything Christopher 

Rufo (2023)
“Values, Voice and Virtue – the new british politics” ; Matt Goodwin - review (2023)
Taboo; How making race sacred produced a cultural revolution; Eric Kaufmann (2024) 
Conservatism in Crisis – the rise of the bureaucratic class (2024) with an 

introduction by Kimi Badenoch, the current favourite in the Conservative leadership 

race which refers to the current labour government as being “left-wing” – a real joke 

since most of us view it as simply continuing the neoliberal policies of the previous 

government.

The Party Machine

I started with the intention of subjecting the labour party machine to a ruthless (academic) analysis, using Peter Mair’s Ruling the Void (2013) as a lever which might offer insights into the sorry state of the Labour Party. But, as usual, I got distracted first by Tom Nairn’s expose on The Nature of the Labour Party in 2 editions of New Left Review in 1964, then by Enzo Traverso’s Revolution – an intellectual history (2021) which took me to Leon Trotsky and to GDH Cole’s monumental study of the History of Socialism, running to 7 volumes. 

I had started the early draft of the post by arguing that political parties are 

a more or less successful device to:

• recruit political leadership

• represent community grievances, demands etc.

• implement party programmes - which may or may not be consistent with those community demands.

• extend public insight - by both media coverage of inter-party conflict and intraparty dialogue - into the nature of governmental decision-making (this is the theory – the reality is that most of the MSM titilate citizens with gossip, with social media….)

• protect decision-makers from the temptations and uncertainties of decisionmaking – being able to offer the excuse of the party whip to head off criticisms.

These days, however, elected officials probably perform only the first two of 

these roles which perhaps accounts for the public cynicism which Peter Mair 

explored in this 2006 article in NLR developed, with Mair’s seminal Ruling the 

Void book appearing posthumously in 2013. The two British parties are torn 

by profound internal divisions with the right-wing elements in both having so 

far won out. I have argued elsewhere that our society is hardly what one would 

call a participatory democracy. The term that is used - "representative" 

democracy – recognises that "the people" do not take political decisions 

but have rather surrender that power to one (or several) small elites - 

subject to infrequent checks  Such checks are, of course, a rather 

weak base on which to rest claims for democracy and more emphasis 

is therefore given to the freedom of expression and organisation 

whereby pressure groups articulate a variety of interests. Those who 

defend the consequent operation of the political process argue that 

we have, in effect a political market place in which valid or strongly 

supported ideas survive and are absorbed into new policies. 

They further argue that every viewpoint or interest has a more or 

less equal chance of finding expression and recognition. This 

is the political theory of pluralism.
A key question is: How does government hear and act upon the signals 

from below? How do "problems" get on the political "agenda"? The 

assumption of our society, good "liberals" that most of us essentially 

are, is that

• the channels relating governors to governed are neutral and

• the opportunity to articulate grievances and have these defined (if they are significant enough) as "problems" requiring action from authority is evenly distributed throughout society.

The inescapable reality is that the UK, European and US media 

are owned by plutocrats who impose their right-wing agendas on 

the public . Peter Oborne is an interesting journalist who, 

from an original right-wing background, now exposes in this 

short video the client-journalism of the MSM
Two years ago almost to the day, Al-Zeera showed The Labour Files – a 2 

part series, each lasting an hour and a half. This exposed the activities of 

the right-wingers in the Labour Party who had used the anti-semitic trope 

on – of all people – Jeremy Corbyn. They may have succeeded in their aim to 

remove him from the Labour Party but have done irreperable damage to the 

party in the process.  
Most people have probably forgotten the Forde Report which was asked by 

the party to investigate the chaos of these claims and counterclaims. 

I don’t consider The Guardian any more a fair reporter of these events 

(given its bias to Zionism) but this is how it covered the report. A more 

objective analysis is probably this one 

There are rumours that the Labour peer Lord Ali funded the plot to overthrow 

Corbyn. If you’re wondering why our politicians are so corrupt it’s because the ones 

who aren’t corrupt are removed from politics. This is how we end up with 

bastards who will do things like genocide if it’s better for them personally.

Has British Labour lost its Moral Sense?

I served as a Labour councillor from 1968 to 1990 – that’s 22 years and all of them in an official position as the secretary to the entire group of Labour councillors, first in a Clydeside town and then on Strathclyde Region which covered half of Scotland. This required surviving, every two years, an election of office-bearers which I managed no fewer than 8 times since I offended neither the right or the left. But, thanks to the example of my parents and to the community activists who taught me so much in my early years of council service, I knew where my accountabilities lay – to ordinary working folk – and certainly not to the big battalions. Hence Social Strategy for the Eighties (SRC 1982) on which I tried to throw some light in the recent article Some Dilemmas of Social Reform

My last decade in Scotland was during Thatcher’s reign which gave me the 

incentive to leave the country to become an adviser to central European and 

central Asian governments as they clawed their ways out of communism to 

various forms of kleptocracy which I called “impervious regimes” for the simple 

reason that they were generally impervious to the voices of their citizens 

(the Baltic countries were perhaps the only exceptions).

From a distance I was no fan of New Labour, so obviously the inheritor of 

Thatcher’s neoliberalism. But I did respect Jeremy Corbyn and was appalled 

by the way he was treated by the right-wing of the party which revealed itself 

in all its hideous colours. And Keir Starmer was part of that.
I am totally ashamed of this latest Labour governmen – I understand it inherits 

an economic mess but cannot accept its flaunting of privilege, freebies and 

support for welfare cuts, privatisation and Israel.  

Useful Background Reading – with the exception of the third book, these are texts 

I have just come across which I need to skim
Imagining the Neoliberal state – Assar Lindbeck and the genealogy of Swedish neo-liberalism 

Victor Pressfeldt (2024) Lindbeck chaired the Swedish Nobel prize committee for more 

than a decade when it offered the prize to several neoliberals
Progressive Proposals for Turbulent Times (Foundation for European Progressive Studies 

2022). Strange how the left now pretends it’s otherwise by the use of the “progressive” 

label. That was actually the descriptor used by my conservative father when he stood for 

election in our home town in the 1960s
The Neoliberal Age? Britain since the 1970s ed B Jackson et al (2021) A powerful critique
Beyond Digital Capitalism – new ways of living ed Albo 2021 (Socialist Register)
Corbynism and Democracy Yerrell thesis (2020)
State Transformations – class, strategy, socialism G Albo et al (2020)
Leftism Reinvented – western parties from socialism to neoliberalism Stephanie Mudge 

(2018)
The Moral Economists – RHTawney, Karl Polanyi, EP Thompson and the Critique of Capitalism 

Tim Rogan (2017)

The struggle for Labour’s Soul – understanding Labour’s political thought since 1945 
ed R Plant et al (2004)
“Progressives, Pluralists and the problems of the State” Marc Stears (2002) - 

a book about progressive political optimism written at a time of progressive 

political disillusion. It traces the relationship between two movements of 

political thinkers – one British and one American – who were joined together 

by their collective sense that the political, social and economic mould of their 

countries was about to be recast. 

As the book demonstrates, these were thinkers who produced detailed plans 

of new democratic institutions and far-reaching social and economic reforms 

and who lived in the continual expectation that these programmes would soon 

be enacted. They were activist intellectuals who believed in the power of 

their own ideas and who had faith in the agents of political change. 

They were political theorists, then, who wrote not only for each other, 

but for political leaders, party members,campaigners, trade unionists, 

and for society at large. They were convinced that they lived in nations that 

were about to be remade, and they wanted to do all that they could to ensure 

that those nations became fairer, freer, more communal societies than they 

had been hitherto.

The contrast with our own new century is, of course, remarkably stark. Few British and American progressive political theorists today share such expectations, or such faith. The political theory of our own times is characterized more by a sense of limitation than of possibility. We inhabit societies which have become dramatically less equal in the last few decades, where civil liberties are continually under siege, and where democratic political institutions are increasingly either dominated by money and special interests or superseded entirely by executive agencies staffed by unelected officials. Political theorists themselves understandably appear to have responded to these tendencies by abandoning the world of politics altogether. The specialized discourses of our leading journals are, then, more often captivated by philosophical speculation and theoretical models than by programmes of political action; their readership is restricted to those who share a concern with abstract ideals of justice rather than with immediate proposals for change.

There are, of course, notable exceptions to this tendency. Both Britain and the United States have traditions of dissent that have not been dimmed by the general pessimism of our times, but those loyal to those traditions are now less frequently to be found at the apex of authority either in academia or in politics at large. My aim in writing this book, however, was to remind us of the spirit that lay behind those earlier aspirations. I wanted to try to recall a time when it was possible to believe that the mechanisms of mainstream politics in Britain and the United States could be used to attain greater freedom, equality, and communality. And I wanted to recapture a sense of political theory as a profession that requires its practitioners to talk to audiences far beyond the confines of the university. I do not believe that either the American nationalist progressives or the British socialist pluralists of the early twentieth century could solve the problems that we now face. I do believe, however, that we might still learn something from their sense of vocation. That is why this book tells their story.

UPDATE

One Labour MP has had the decency to resign the whip in protest against the hypocrisy of Starmer’s leadership – and you can see Rosie Duffield’s resignation letter here – with an explanation from Owen Jones. Although I’m now hearing she was a Starmerite who went along with his opportunistic use of the totally unfounded slandering of antisemitism against Jeremy Corbyn

A CONFESSION

I was slightly distracted when I wrote the last post - by the English poet Philip Larkin whose book The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin (ed Archie Burnett 2012) I had pulled down from the shelves and started to read – leading me in turn to download both it and two others about the poet  

• Philip Larkin – selected poems ed Gilroy (2009) which is less a selection 

of his poems and more a commentary on his work.

• Philip Larkin – Letters Home 1936-1977 ed James Booth (2012) which is 

hardly the most fascinating of reads being letters to his mum and sister but does contain some of his wonderful cartoon sketches

Larkin was the poet who wrote Annus Mirabilis which begins

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

The last post may have created some confusion in readers between the State 

(as an inanimate object - which continues to fascinate me) and the government 

of the day – about which I am much less interested. It’s passing strange that 

the State arouses so little interest amongst citizens. You would have thought 

that an organisation which controls such a large part of our lives and manages 

such a huge budget would have been of interest. But it’s the Government of the 

day that attracts the attention and ire rather than the functions of the state
and the recent debate about the DEEP STATE (in right-wing circles)  is little 

more than a gross oversimplification. To help readers, I’ve extracted this list of
books about the state from one of the Annexes to the current draft of my The
Search for Democracy – a long journey 

• The State in theory and practice Harold Laski 1923

• The State in Capitalist Society Ralph Miliband (1970) a highly readable account which is vastly superior to the literature on “the Establishment” (Jones, Sampson, Scott).

• Bob Jessop is a British sociologist who is probably the world’s foremost theoretician of the State with The Capitalist State in 1982; The Future of the Capitalist State in 2002 and The State – past, present and future in 2016. These are not easy reads. I would suggest instead Christopher Pierson’s The Modern State (2^nd ed 2004)

• The Private Government of Public Money by Hugh Heclo and Aaron Wildavsky (1974) which made a boring subject (how the UK Treasury controls the budget) really sexy!

• B Guy Peters’ The Politics of Bureaucracy – an HYPERLINK "http://dspace.lzuu.lt/bitstream/1/3316/1/37672.pdf"introduction to comparative public administration (1978) was probably the first comparative and sociological approach to the subject

• Approaches to the State – alternative conceptions and historical dynamics useful 

review article (Comparative Politics vol 16 no 2 Stephen Krasner 1984) From the late 1950s until the mid-1970s the term state virtually disappeared from the professional academic lexicon. Political scientists wrote about government, political development, interest groups, voting, legislative behavior, leadership and bureaucratic politics, almost everything but "the state." However, in the last decade "the state" has reappeared in the literature. If you are feeling very adventurous, I would try two short articles - Stuart Hall’s “The State in Question” (1984) or David Held’s “Central Perspectives on the Modern State” (1984)

• Bringing the State Back In ed Evans and T Skocpol (1985)

• the classic study Bureaucracy – what government agencies do and why they do it JQ Wilson (1989).

• Chris Hood was one of three academics I came to rely on in the 1990s for clear, insighful analyses of UK public administration (Chris Pollitt and Rod Rhodes were the other two). And in 1991 he produced a masterful article analysing the new public management (NPM) A Public Management for all Seasons?

• Managing Core Public Services; David McKevitt (1998) was a useful textbook for its analysis of the distinctiveness of public services

• The History of Government Sam Finer 1999 some 1700 pages

• Captive State – the corporate takeover of Britain by investigative journalist George Monbiot (2000) was the start of my painful realisation that UK politics was not as pure as I had imagined.

• In Praise of Bureaucracy; Paul du Gay (2000) A wonderful defence of a much maligned institution

• The Modern State (2^nd ed 2004) C Pierson. A far easier read than Jessop

• The Middle Aging of New Public Management - into the age of paradox?; C Hood and B Guy Peters; The Journal of Public Admin Research 2004

• The Civil Service Commission – a bureau biography 1855-1991 by Richard Chapman (2005) was then the best guide to civil service reform in the UK.

• ”Good and Bad Power – the ideals and betrayals of government”; Geoff Mulgan (2006). One of the moșt interesting books about the state.

• ”The Social Construction of Public Administratian” Jong Jun (2006) an early and promising post-modern take on the subject by a South Korean

• The Innovative Bureaucracy – bureaucracy in a time of fluidity; Alexander Styhre 2007 – a highly original account of a much-maligned system

• Public Administration – the interdisciplinary approach to government; J Raadschelders (2011) A Dutch scholar whose specialism is the history of the subject

• A Theory of Governance Mark Bevir (2013) a British political scientist who, with Rod Rhodes, adopts an interpretive and postmodern approach

• The American Deep State – Wall St, Big Oil and the struggle for American Democracy by Peter Dale Scott (2015) 

• Rebalancing Society – radical reform beyond left, right and centre Henry Mintzberg (2015) was a superb summary of how corporate greed had upset the balance which trade unions and government had supplied in the postwar period to corporate power

• The Deep State – the fall of the constitution and the rise of a shadow government Mike Lofgren (2016) – US oriented

• Dismembered – the ideological attack on the state Polly Toynbee and David Walker (2017) a more popular book

• The Rise of Managerial Bureaucracy – reforming the British civil service by L Castellani (2018) updates Chapman’s book

• History of the Deep State by Jeremy Stone (2018) only 82 pages

• Reimagining the State – theoretical challenges and transformative possibilities ed J Newman 2019 

• The Three Ages of Government – from the person to the group to the world Jos Raadschelders (2020) This is the book I’ve been waiting for. TABLE 1.1. State concepts and characteristics and what they mean for the role of government gives 20 definitions.

• Out of the Belly of Hell Anthony Barnett (2021) an extended essay which places Covid in the context of the key “turning points” of the past half century

• The Return of the State – restructuring Britain for the Common Good Ed by Patrick Allen et al (2021)

• The Deep State – a history of secret agendas and shadow governments Ian Fitzgerald (2021) only 94 pages

• The Return of the State – and why it is essential for our health, wealth and happiness Graeme Garrard (2022)

• The Project State and its rivals Charles Maier (2023) 

• The Battle for Britain – crises, conflicts and the conjuncture J Clarke (2023)