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Date Published: 22/11/2000
Author: Simon Retallack Thought, vision and courage, says Simon Retallack, are the virtues that politicians are in danger of losing. |
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It has become fashionable for politicians of all persuasions to deplore the rising tide of public cynicism and disillusionment with politics today. The unrelenting descent in voter turnout at elections and the plummeting of respect in which politicians as a group are held over the past two decades, we are told, threatens the proper functioning of democracy and is hence a matter of enormous concern. That may well be. However, it would be taken a little more seriously if the ever-so-sincere politicians who agonised about this worrying trend recognised that it is they who may be its principal cause.
The misuse of power for personal or party enrichment has been well documented and has certainly taken its toll. But so too has the intellectual bankruptcy of modern politicians. The vast majority are so uninspired; keener to stifle debate and control their image than achieve real change or provide the electorate with any real choice. No matter what they promise, in office most end up subscribing to the same managerialist, visionless and unthinking agenda that abdicates democratic power to corporations and global markets, and is devoid of any serious commitment to protect the interests of society or the planet.
That struck me more forcefully than ever when I went to interview one of Tony Blair’s cabinet ministers, Clare Short, earlier this year. My acquaintance with her just before she entered government made the experience particularly alarming. Back then she had been highly critical of the status quo, talking openly of her determination to fight to change the ‘malfunctioning’ institutions of the global economy – the World Bank, IMF and WTO.
Now, as Secretary of State for International Development and as a Governor of the World Bank, she had changed beyond recognition. Suddenly, these institutions were essential forces for good – linchpins of global poverty reduction no less – and when presented with evidence to the contrary she reacted with a combination of denial and abuse.
To findings that World Bank funds are increasingly being channelled to the projects of large corporations she said: ‘That is completely biased and unrepresentative information,’ adding, ‘I doubt that it’s true’. To evidence that World Bank projects had very high failure rates: ‘I wonder what the failure rate of the articles The Ecologist carries are?’ To the question of whether it would make sense for the Bank to shift its funding away from greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuel projects, towards renewable energy projects in order to mitigate climate change (of which the poor are already the biggest victims): ‘This is a bundle of half-informed prejudice,’ she said, accompanied with a look of sheer contempt. To an enquiry as to how she could justify her support for a World Bank project which would increase Chinese emigration to Tibet: the very fact that I asked the question was ‘proof’ that I was ‘prejudiced’. Moreover, the project, she insisted over and over, was ‘not in Tibet!’, despite the fact that the Dalai Lama was born in the region to be resettled and that the Chinese themselves have designated it a Tibetan area. She simply dismissed Third World critics of World Bank policy that I cited as being ‘wrong’ or ‘not representative’, and developed country critics as being lined up with the ‘far right’.
Turning the argument spectacularly on its head, she maintained that it was people such as the writers and readers of The Ecologist that were the real problem! Environmentalists, she claimed, are ‘in a muddle’ that is ‘very dangerous for the future of the world’. Furthermore, they are ‘morally wrong’.
I emerged from the interview feeling genuinely shocked and repelled by her implacable hostility, stunned that someone with views, attitudes and such an incompetent grasp of the facts as her should be in a position to wield any power whatsoever.
True, in keeping with the zealous approach associated with the newly converted, the manner in which she expressed her case may represent something of an embarrassing extreme (a likelihood her press officers seemed keenly aware of given their apparent attempt to prevent me publishing nearly every quotation cited here). But the thinking (or lack of it) behind her arguments is all too typical among senior politicians the world over.
Labour or Conservative, Democrat or Republican, Left or Right – it makes virtually no difference today. For members of each tradition, the fundamentals of neo-liberal macro-economic management and the global institutions that help enforce it are still sacrosanct and almost completely unquestioned; the poor and the environment the perpetual victims to whom political attention is rarely given.
The corporate cash that funds political parties clearly plays a part in this, as does the inextricable fact that politicians have handed away to unaccountable economic entities many of the powers with which they could effect change. But equally responsible is the lack of thought, vision, wisdom and courage that typifies most politicians today. Given the monumental challenges we face, that situation urgently needs to be reversed if we are to stand a chance of restoring public faith in politics and the democratic process.
Simon Retallack is managing editor of 'The Ecologist’s' special issues. He studied Government at the London School of Economics and was politics editor of its student newspaper for two years.
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