Aaronovitch savages the dinner-partyocracy
April 3rd, 2005I’m a bit hungover and grumpy, but even excluding those factors, I still got irked at David Aaronovitch article in today’s Observer, about Labour’s detractors - it’s described as “polemic dynamite” but is actually a pretty poor rant. Once you get past his insulting anyone who has criticised Labour, and his dismissal of the bruschetta-munching upper-middle class intelligentsia (like, er, most of the Cabinet and the author himself), he advocates Labour’s policies on tuition fees, Iraq, the curtailment of civil liberties as being the only way it was possible to encourage education for the working classes, freeing the world from tyranny and protecting us from terrorism. No other alternative, any better alternative is entertained - New Labour’s way is the only way. Any debate on whether how things should be done is waved away - as long as it looks like something’s being done, that’s all that matters. Aaronovitch boasts that money is being flung at schools and hospitals - no matter whether or not it’s being hoovered up by wasteful PFI projects. And when over-simplifying can’t help him out, a selective use of the facts comes in instead. The gap between rich and poor may have indeed closed in the past two years, but it is far outweighed by the widening that has occurred since 1997.
It’s a disappointing article, it’s not a polemic at all. There is nothing provocative there, as he has boxed himself into purely a New Labour way of thinking; nothing more a simplistic and false attitude that if you don’t agree with New Labour’s approach, you’re part of this false cabal that has abandoned the left and the common man in favour of dinner-party sniping. And people wonder why people are so cynical about politics. The worst part of the article is the ominous reference to past spectres like the Major administration and the poll tax, as if it is the only alternative out there. New Labour’s mediocrity and muddling through may be better than the Tory administrations of the past, but it’s nowhere the best we could ever get - the liberal left have every justification to express discontent at the government.
April 3rd, 2005 at 23:44:12
Thank you for countering an article which I felt was wrong but didn’t have the knowledge to counter myself. I can vaguely accept some of Aaronovitch’s points that people don’t appreciate what the labour government has done. On the other hand our glorious leader doesn’t make a big thing of it, preferring to fight for re-election based on the suggestion that they are not as bad as the alternative, while suggesting all sorts of reactionary policies to please daily mail readers. As far as I know most of the good things that Labour has done are due to Gordon Brown so we can go on hating Tony all we want. Also a recent Guardian article suggests that Blair’s plan after the election is to reduce the role of the treasury and civil service, further consolidating his power and ability to do what he wants, and he will be able to do this with a large majority.
April 4th, 2005 at 12:38:03
God dammit - I’ve been trying to become part of the trendy bruschetta orthodoxy for years now. I moved to a refined, hip part of London, within easy reach of Islington; I voiced my unhappiness with the Labour hierarchy’s attitudes and policies with exactly the correct tone of righteous, intellectual disenchantment; I worked in the media. I did everything I possibly could to become a part of the comfortable, middle-class liberal elite that I feel is my natural home - nay, my birthright.
Hell, I even spent three weeks stalking Polly Toynbee.
And for what? Not one invite. Not a sun-dried tomato in sight. I haven’t been to a dinner party in months, nearly a year. Here I remain, eating supermarket mini-pizzas on my own, with only my keyboard and next-door’s cat for company.
And yet, somehow, I still disagree with a large number of my party’s policies. How can this be? I’m puzzled. Am I attending dinner parties without realising it? Could I be sleep-dinner partying? Are a shady cabal of well-educated Guardianistas holding stealth dinner parties, just near enough to me that I somehow absorb their ill-thought out moaning?
It’s a mystery…
(Copied and pasted from what I wrote on the Observer blog.)
April 4th, 2005 at 16:49:10
Never liked Aaronovitch, always thought he was right wing! So it is no surprise to hear he is off to the Times soon. It will be interesting to see if he does a Melanie Phillips!
April 5th, 2005 at 04:49:50
Aaronovitch can be summed up best as a smug, myopic, complacent twit in sore need of a slap. Still, he does liven up my Sunday mornings - like Hoxton’s answer to Mr. Bean let loose on the editorial section of The Observer.