Taking Hazel Blears seriously
Matt Wardman challenges me and others, to read the full speech in which Hazel Blears attacks political blogging, and give it a ‘real blogger examination’. Well, I’ll try.
Blears’ speech is ostensibly about political engagement with the public or lack of it. She says…
You will know that the Electoral Reform Society called the 2005 general election the ‘worst election ever’, in terms of turnout and basis of support for the elected government.
This is the same Hazel Blears who emphasises super-marginal constituencies as key battlegrounds for Labour activists:
The next election will be won and lost in those super-marginals like Crawley, Hove, Harlow, Dartford, Swindon. These are the places where we’ve got to go out and fight for what we believe in.
I don’t think you can have it both ways. She says that only a handful of voters actually matter in a general election and then wonders why people are disenfranchised. Telling them their votes are taken for granted probably doesn’t help.
Some voters are more equal than others. Some voters are less important and thus less worthy of attention. Maybe Hazel could suggest some concrete proposals for electoral reform and equality of voter input before we get to ‘neighbourhood level engagement’ and other measures that sound suspiciously like here-today-gone-tomorrow New Labour kite-flying. Tell the electorate that they are all equal in the eye of their representatives; that every vote is important.
It’d also be nice if my local MP didn’t pick and choose which of my letters she replies to (it’s not as if I send very many) and didn’t turn up canvassing on my doorstep with a grasp of the facts so loose as to give suspicion of a dirty tricks campaign.
Blears is herself guilty of exacerbating poor political engagement. Look at her ‘Communities in control: real people, real power‘ white paper that she pushes in her speech. You can pay £33.45 if you’re one of the one third of the population who don’t have internet access. Or else you can download a 1,809 kilobyte PDF document or two three megabyte Microsoft Word documents. The white paper is 157 pages long by the way. Then you can read it off the screen or print it out if you’ve got a printer that’s up to the job. How’s that for encouraging engagement?
My comments about Blears’ comments about blogging stand. I blog and try to make my views and voice heard because I’m not represented by the narrow choices offered by mainstream politics and I can’t expect the Guardian’s letters page to publish my opinion every day. I doubt I’m alone. I don’t believe I have any influence nor do I seek any beyond the loose campaigning coalitions I’ve been part of that are really – no disrespect to them – just highly organised adjuncts to the traditional lobbying of MPs anyway.
Of course I’m pissed off that Blears’ blogroll doesn’t seem to extend much beyond a drink-driving right-wing libertarian homophobe and a passive-aggressive Tory propagandist with a neat line in character assassination by proxy. But then I’m not in a position to disabuse her of her indolence and ignorance. She has more in common with the mainstream media than she might imagine.
Her idea of increased recruitment from the working class into the political elite does push a romantic button in me. The thought of my 11-plus-failing yet intelligent and politically self-educated mum and dad (let’s say, proudly) talking sense and truth to power is a warm and appealing one. It’s also utterly laughable in the current political climate. The glass ceiling is about six feet thick.
Look at the forces of the establishment. Oxford and Cambridge. The need to build alliances and make ‘friends’. The vital attributes of pragmatism and realpolitik. As someone who’s witnessed local council meetings, I’d say these are skills necessary at all level of government. Is Hazel Blears suggesting the noble savages she proposes giving a leg-up will be educated in such matters? Is she perhaps suggesting they will sweep away the current way of doing things? She says ‘public services [are] best run from the bottom up’. I bet that’s where these working class activists are expected to stay: at the bottom.
Look at the waters in which our politicians choose to swim. The depths to which they have to sink. Champagne with arms dealers. Canapes with the nuclear industry. Abasement with Murdoch. I imagine Peter Mandelson’s face while he pretends to listen to the view of my parents. Then I imagine myself punching it. Will my mum – who watches Question Time every week and stayed up all night to cry when Obama won – get an invite to Oleg Deripaska’s* yacht after Hazel Blears’ triumph of the proletariat?
Let’s be honest. Hazel Blears was never going to convince me. I’m solid in my belief that there are fundamental problems with our democracy as it is. An authoritarian and top-down New Labour government is very much part of the problem. I’ll be happy if this turns out to be more than kite-flying from Blears. An admission that New Labour have done much to kill political engagement, and that entrenched establishment attitudes will take decades to dig out if at all, was too much to expect.
(I’ve probably got more to say but that will do for now. I broke my ‘no longer than 400 words per post’ rule.)
* I knew how to spell his surname without having to look it up. How’s that for being engaged, Ms Blears? Yes, I am deeply sad.
Posted on November 6th, 2008 at 8:35pm under Eye Catching Initiatives, New Labour, UK politics
[...] a racist, he just disseminates their talking points “victimhood” ). So I say set Hazel Blears on him, what better than having two idiots scrap with each other, you can’t lose. Posted in [...]
Bloody brilliant, Jason.
Her comments on political blogging are clearly based on total ignorance about the subject, so why the hell are bloggers even thinking about taking any of this guff seriously? As for the rest of it – neither she, nor her colleagues nor her party will make the slightest efforts to make any of these wonderful changes happen.
Jeezus, they have just brought back Mandelson, haven’t they? Nuff said.
Bloody brilliant, Jason.
Seconded, although the name needs adjustin’.
Exactly. Blears is the exact reason why politics is currently in the state it is: she might think these things or make these points in speeches, but she’s not prepared to actually put those words into action.
The girls is simply wrong, there are many blogs adding value and helping to increase engagement. Something NuLabour has spectacularly failed to do.
Blears is just another glib, Blair-Brownite apologist. Labour is the hollowed out crumbling shell that it is because it fails to accurately deal with reality, ie the real problems that people face and the real solutions which a truly democratic, representative government would undertake. Like taking back control of the Post Office and making it reopen post offices – I don’t care if they`re losing money, as there should be a way to figure out how to provide PO services on the micro-local scale. Then there`s utility prices, which an authentically democratic government, responsive to the needs and predicaments of ordinary people, would have put price-rise caps on. Instead, Brown et al obeyed the wishes of their true constituency, rich investors and the executives and managers of Britain. Pip pip!
Er, and I meant to say that blogging is our outlet of anger and frustration, almost our only avenue for the kind of protest that the mainstream media – specifically TV media – avoid like the spineless jellyfish that they are. Ahem.
If all that mattered was what people say then we’d get nowhere constantly and pedantically picking over personal interpretations and definitions.
What is more important is what people do.
Blears speech was in support of the white paper ‘Communities in Control’ published under her ministry.
So perhaps we can dispel some of the cynicism by ignoring the swathe of insults and offense being slung about between all sides and actually discuss the provisions laid out in the bill.
I think bloggers can play a crucial role in dissecting and disseminating information which relates to real people’s lives, so I hope you’ll be able to read the white paper and constructively criticise it by picking out the good bits and the bad bits.
http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/communities/communitiesincontrol
I take it you skipped this paragraph of mine, Thomas:
Blears is herself guilty of exacerbating poor political engagement. Look at her ‘Communities in control: real people, real power‘ white paper that she pushes in her speech. You can pay £33.45 if you’re one of the one third of the population who don’t have internet access. Or else you can download a 1,809 kilobyte PDF document or two three megabyte Microsoft Word documents. The white paper is 157 pages long by the way. Then you can read it off the screen or print it out if you’ve got a printer that’s up to the job. How’s that for encouraging engagement?
Those are some pretty big barriers to entry that the government themselves have erected. I take it you’ve got a spare 33 quid, bionic eyes or a top-notch printer. I don’t, unfortunately.
I have to say Thomas that you seem to be coming to this blinkered to the last ten years of New Labour kite-flying, spin, eye-catching initiatives, headline chasing and all round empty bullshit. Has it not dawned on you that New Labour are responsible for the cynicism you see around you?
But – alright – how about this…
Why don’t you think of a way of usefully dividing the white paper up and delegating the analysis? Do it through Liberal Conspiracy. I’ll put my money where my mouth is and objectively look at a chunk if it’s done in the right way.
*tumbleweed*
Do I assume this was a drive-by commenting?
*mulls response over*
you’re right, but we still need to get out of this vicious circle of spiraling negativity somehow – elections aren’t the be all and end all of change.
I like the idea of doing some delegation through LC, so watch this space…
“I’ll put my money where my mouth is and objectively look at a chunk if it’s done in the right way.”
Suggestions for ‘done in the right way’ would be handy…
[...] decisions be made by our betters. And then Hazel “bloody” Blears has the gall to lecture us about about political disengagment and the negativity of bloggers? November 22nd, 2008 | Tags: Hazel Blears, Lord Goldsmith | [...]
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