The Slog spells out why our divisions are so bitter

Although we have a Coalition Government for the first time in 65 years, I cannot remember a time in my life when the country was more sharply divided.

Some readers will, I’m sure, think this an exaggeration: after all, there was longhair v redneck in the 1960s, radical chique v conservative in the 1970s, and then Trade Unionist v Thatcherite in the awful Eighties – easily, for me, the nastiest and most depressing decade of all.

But the situation we have now really is different. Hippyism was short-lived, and the latter two divides were a more or less traditional row between Left and Right. This time, I think, the argument is about the very nature of what we become on this island, and how we should relate to the rest of the world. Its wild currents run haphazardly between Left, Right and back again. And I doubt if either ‘side’ can ever win without some major violence to accompany the struggle between the economic reformers and the socio-financial oligarchs.

Previous divides also tended to work on a young v old and/or working v middle class basis, but this too no longer applies. When Guardian journalists refer casually – as in, without thought – to the Progressive tendency in society, what they mean is people in the right – regardless of social class, age or gender. There is alongside this a subtext about all others being in the wrong, but this is not entirely confined to soi-disant liberals; very right-wing Tories and skilled workers retain views which, at time, give no quarter to a tolerant culture whatsoever.

It often struck me when I was younger that the progressive v reactionary battle was like a person looking at his image reversed in the mirror, and saying “Hang on, that’s the wrong way round”. But despite that, it was still the same person. Just, if you like, an alter ego – with which, by definition, one had a lot in common. And over the years, the character in the mirror seemed more and more to be the person looking in as well: because the real person had made a journey across the spectrum of opinion…..and wound up being far more like the reflection than he realised.

But in 2011, I am a former progressive become empirical reality peddler. The reflection in the mirror is still me, but I’ve turned into an angry radical. The mellowing process isn’t being allowed to happen.

There is no ‘different kind of me’ in the mirror any more. The enemy’s reflection is in the newspapers, on discussion programmes, and in the House of Commons. And truly, I cannot see any compromise between me and some of the Things staring back at me from a Question Time panel.

Please don’t hit me with the Grumpy Old Man shtick. GOM has become a lazy person’s descriptor of anyone who is more of a free thinker than them. I am not the old bloke wittering on about ‘things in my day’ all the time: it’s the day we’re sharing right now that has me worried sick.

One can describe some of the debating dimensions involved throughout any given day, as I have done many times before: big v small, local v global, community v Westminster, capitalist v monopolist, extremist v moderate, State v Individual and so forth. But reading websites and watching the news stations, for me the true nature of the divide is proper analysis and learning on the one hand, and flakey polemical faith on the other.

Put at its most basic, it is a divide between empiricism and goalism.

The problem is that we don’t seem able to agree on anything in any given day – apart from its name, and the nature of the weather. The news invading our already overfull brains between weather forecasts will evoke completely different perceptions of reality, depending on whether you are a thought-cop or a realist. To disagree on the interpretation of the day’s events is nothing new; on the contrary, that goes back to Moses and beyond. But to disagree on what is….well, that’s a whole different development. This is proven fact being repackaged as opinion.

Lenin, of course, would’ve loved all this. The ultimate relativist – “It all depends on where you’re standing” – Vladimir Ilyitch Ulyanov could’ve witnessed the psychotic shooting of a Congresswoman, and described it as a Hero of the Revolution eliminating a symbol of Reaction. No event was allowed to cross his path without some form of twisted analysis in terms of political Weltanschauung. What we need to grasp today is that Keith Vaz and his ilk are the inheritor of such denial: his relentless insistence that “this is not a situation I recognise on the ground” is a rigid acceptance of the Leninist principle so penetratingly X-rayed in George Orwell’s 1984.

Membership of one side or the other of this Coming Battle (and it is, sadly, looking increasingly like that) thus has nothing to do with demographics, and everything to do with psychographics. This, above all other factors, is what makes our econo-political divide unique compared to all previously divisive debates in Britain.

To clear up the jargon before we move on, psychographics offers a way of subdividing society based on personality type. You could hardly call it an exact science, and over the years I’ve taken to calling it hypographics at times, so silly were the claims being made for it. But in our contemporary context, I think it sheds both light and insight: and for short, I’m going to call it typology.

The incidence of different typologies will of course vary depending on the culture – but less than you’d think. Studies I was involved in between the mid Eighties and 2000 showed remarkable consistency on several bases, notably

Obsessional, controlling, goalist

Pragmatic Group-dependent, follower

Extravert, self-starter, empiricist

The overwhelming majority of humans are – as you’d expect with any pack-animal – pragmatic group-dependent followers. The other two groups are tiny and, although they have much in common, differ on several key dimensions. The self-starters like to win the chase; for them, it’s not the eating of the prey so much as the winning that counts. The obsessive controllers also like to win, but their general approach is to try and be the only contestant.

These three groups are correlated respectively with the citizenry, economic entrepreneurs, and the governing/fiscal power seekers. I have to say that this general rule has also been my Sample of One experience, but I would add two personal observations: there is a degree of ‘travel’ between the economic entrepreneur into the power-hungry group, although not that much; and when the power folks meddle in the entrepreneurial sector, they make a complete Horlicks of it.

I doubt very much if even the most untutored readers are falling off their chairs just yet: this all makes eminent sense, and in many ways explains the successes and frustrations of living in Britain over the last thirty years.

But where we are now is something new. Something created by the goalists – to the detriment of social stability.

What has happened during those three decades is that political polemics (based on opportunist ignorance) have interfered in the general make-up of these three typologies. The results have been disastrous, and could be summarised in the following manner:

1.       Between 1980 and the mid 1990s, the Thatcher culture persuaded many pragmatic followers that they were entrepreneurs, when they were quite obviously no such thing. (The success of the TV comedy Only Fools and Horses is based on this premise).

2.       During the period roughly spanning 1988 to 1996, that same culture (and the weapon it produced, Big Bang) persuaded some fiscal/financial controllers that they too could become big-league entrepreneurs and globalist players. This completely false conclusion resulted in demutualisation, carelessly chosen credit targets, insanely packaged risk, and eventually the 2008 meltdown – continuing to this day – which is far from over.

3.       Tragically, the Blairism that followed based its accession on the two worst interpretations possible of previous events: that their belief systems must be copied; and that (incoherently) vulnerable people must be protected from those systems. (Being very much the controlling tendency, New Labour had to have people defined as vulnerable, whether they were or not. And being largely patronising middle class folks, their assumption was that there must be lots of them).

There were many other actions and mistakes influencing our arrival at the ghastly place in which we now find ourselves. But some seriously problematic outcomes are a direct result of the above:

• Financially immature and naïve people among the pragmatic followers have wound up in the sort of bankruptcy, mortgage and credit card debt that is making a nonsense of the consumption model of capitalism. The recovery simply isn’t happening, because the majority are too scared and/or broke to spend.
• Financial institutions unsuited to shark-like competition have either failed or been bailed out. The vast majority of the remainder are in a parlous financial state, and thus scared to risk-lend in the sort of way that powers real capitalism. Growth ‘renewal’ in business thus isn’t happening either.
• The minority of ‘successful’ banks have become richer, more powerful, and openly contemptuous of government in general and its initiatives in particular. Importantly, they now see themselves as the biggest part of the economy, rather than its servants. In particular, the fiscal-controlling typology is now seen to be in the ascendancy: the dominant desire is to snuff out any and all competition. Many of these folk are now dangerous monopolists with scant regard for the citizenry’s needs.
• Sadly – and this is the real crunch – the pragmatic follower majority are dominated by the so-called vulnerables. Aware that the State upon which they depend has been pauperised (and is therefore about to reduce their dripfeed) this newly enlarged sub-group has become frightened. Certainly, too frightened to vote Conservative. The result is a Coalition Government that no majority supports and few people like, whose members cannot always take the drastic action they know to be vital if Britain’s credit rating is to survive.
• Less concerned with the empirical reality than the rapid destruction of their goals, the obsessively controlling element within Labour and the Trade Unions is in charge of most decisions, committees and key positions. They promise the ‘scared vulnerable followers’ an alternative without reality…and the example of violence as a means of adopting that alternative. The more illiberal, activist end of the empiricist entrepreneurial typology finds itself incensed by this. It demands Government action to control demonstrations, and ensure that such people are never allowed anywhere near the reins of power.
• The media are, in turn, following suit in this increased polarisation – witness the recent editorial policies of the Guardian and Independent on the one hand, and the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail on the other.

Other partially or wholly ‘foreign’ typological influences are also adding to the seemingly vicious nature of our national vortex. Islamism is obsessively controlling, and has far too many pragmatist fellow-travelling followers. The Europhile tendency reflects the controlling nature of Brussels to a frightening degree. And outspoken leaders like Bob Diamond fan the flames of the fire building up beneath the goalist banking community.

 

Ultimately, of course, we all know where goalism ends: by definition, the means justify the ends. So to my mind, for instance, there is an exact and frightening parallel between the way Bob Diamond bludgeoned his way to a deal at all costs to buy the Lehman Brothers investment division, and the way Harriet Harman left the Coalition a ‘human rights’ (as she sees it) grenade to blow the legs off several government measures.

But like it or not, this is why the divide this time is so filled with rage, and yet as wide as the emptiest canyon of empirical reality as you could manage to get: because the uncontrolled, untutored, controlling and extreme goalists are in charge of the followers. And the fear of the followers is gradually eroding their pragmatism.

So: what can we do?

Well, as always, the key point to remember is that we have these extremists outnumbered. But the 2011 situation is muddied by the speed at which events are pummelling the senses of those who know that deranged goalism isn’t going to work.

The single currency isn’t going to work. The economy based on notional wealth transactions isn’t going to work. The globalist stand-off isn’t going to work. Fluffy pc welfare-socialism isn’t going to work. And denying the urgency of our credit hole isn’t going to work.

The only thing likely to work is an injection of empiricism. Empiricism in the sense of everything from the ludicrous inadequacy of the German position on EFSF, to the reality that Europe’s peoples – not even the dozy British people – will tolerate government fantasies this far removed from the citizen’s needs and rights.

The nature of obsessive controllers has been changed by policy and subsequent events.  The pragmatist followers and genuine capitalist entrepreneurs must now respond to this. But the problem of their very typologies gets in the way: the pragmatists want a quiet life, the entrepreneurs prefer to focus on the chase – and the controllers can’t wait to pass the laws necessary to silence the real opposition.

It is an odd and motley pair of armies who now face each other. Monopolist bankers, Islamists and the State corporatists stand on the one hill; and the quiet folks, entrepreneurs, communitarians, libertarians and anti-EU Tories are perched on the other.

I know whose side I’m on, and here’s why: an autocratic Shariah Law State bankrolled by hypocritical financier exceptions handing out gruel and fanaticism to an increasingly poor population sounds uncomfortably like Iran to me. So on balance, I’ll be found at some point among those who’d prefer an entrepreneurial and self-sufficient island with power devolved locally, a shrinking State, and a stronger culture of personal responsibility beneath the Rule of Law.

But this conclusion does very much make the point with which I started out: a choice this stark has never previously been the one before the British people. The choice itself will be obscured by the likely speed of events – and things could very easily turn nasty along the way. Whatever the complacent Establishment thinks, this time it really is different.

Related: The discreet complacency of the British ruling class.