Robert Sharp

“Did you inhale?” A cliché of modern politics. Ever since Bill Clinton’s bizarre admission of not-quite-drug-use, that question has become a staple of sniggering journalists everywhere. Meanwhile, “Yes I have and yes I did” has become the boilerplate response for those politicians eager to demonstrate their flawed, human side.

Such admissions are possible because currently, the morality of such individual choices barely gets discussed. “It’s a choice I made when I was young” is the limit of the debate. The transgression is framed as a purely internal, moral choice of the individual. In a liberal, tolerant society, this is not matter for public discussion. (If it were, then another example of tweaking your reality, drinking alcohol, would be dragged into the debate too, and no one wants that). Instead, cannabis use becomes a simple public health issue. The recent furore, in March, was concerned with whether cannabis use can induce psychological problems, and therefore whether class B or C is an appropriate designation.

But there is another argument against cannabis use: It is part of a highly unpleasant and criminal supply chain. For every eighth of hash or bag of weed you buy and smoke, there is a chance that you are lining the pockets of some gangster. Sure, your local dealer is probably a gentle sort, but there is no guarantee that somewhere along the line there is not a more dangerous character who is trafficking in other things too. Heroin. People. It is noteworthy that when a politician is asked about his or her past drug-use, the question is the anodyne “did you inhale?” when it should be “did you know where it came from?” Few of them would know the answer, and “I knowingly contributed to the problem of organized crime and the exploitation of the vulnerable” is a very different mea culpa compared to the usual “I did things when I was young which I now regret.”
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At last Gordon Brown has found his way out of the ridiculous political cul-de-sac he had wandered into with regard to this embryo legislation.  A few thoughts on the ethics and politics of the issue.

First, I think we can all agree that the debate has been clouded by hyperbole and hysteria.  The legislation as it stands does not give scientists license to create their own little Island of Dr Moreau.  As I understand it, human genetic material is not being spliced with other species to create Greek-style chimeras.  Instead, it is proposed that human DNA will be inserted into animal cells, which are free of that animal’s genetic material.

I think it is important to make the distinction between two scientific-moral considerations here. The first concerns the identity of a set of genes: whether it is morally permissible for scientists to alter that gene, and whether its identity changes when they do. The second consideration is how the gene (regardless of whether scientists have altered its sequence or not) is allowed to develop, and for how long.

A cell is made up of many things.  In addition to DNA genes there are mitochondira and other structures which allow the cell to produce energy and function properly.  But we know that it is in the DNA that the potential for life is stored.  Genes are the instructions for life, while other matter inside the cells are tools for releasing that potential.  It is only in the DNA that identity rests, and that identity will remain regardless of where it is placed. So it seems to me that the current ethical controversy falls into the second category described above.

I think the animal cell is a sort of ’surrogate’ that bears a similar relationship to the duplicating genes as a surrogate mother would to a baby that she carries.  Although a surrogate mother is essential for the development of the foetus into a baby, the instructions by which the baby grows are supplied from elsewhere.  The genetic link between the biological mother, father and child remains unchanged.  Likewise with this proposed microbiological technique:  The genetic link remains secure. Scientists are not ‘playing God’ by altering genetic material. Like surrogacy, all we are doing is allowing existing genetic material to grow in a new environment. If it can lead to medical breakthroughs in cancer treatment or Altzheimers, then it should be allowed.

Of course, “it’s just a surrogate” has moral limits too.  My stomach would turn at the thought of allowing such cells to develop into a foetus or a child, just as it would if someone were able to grow a human baby inside a non-human surrogate (say, an organgutang or a Huxley-esque vat of goo). Future ethicists may not be so squeamish.

A couple of quick constitutional questions.

First, as I understand things, there has always been a parliamentary convention that The Lords would not block legislation sent over from The Commons, if the content of that legislation was contained within a manifesto pledge.

I wonder, could this principle apply in reverse? Thinking about the current row over an EU Referendum, perhaps the Lords has a duty to block legislation that is contrary to a stated manifesto pledge? Indeed, where better than the highest court in our land to rule on whether there is a substantive shift in power?

Personally I’m a Europhile of sorts. I think there are some projects, like tackling climate change, where it is probably advantageous to pool sovreignity. But the EU’s reputation for bureaucracy undermines it, and this messing about over referendums is a sitting duck for the Euroscrotics.

David Cameron has been defending those parents who baptize their children in order to win a place at popular schools. Meanwhile, the hackles of some Labour MPs have been raised:

Fears that middle-class parents are adopting religion to get their children into popular schools have led some Labour MPs to call for an end to the expansion of faith schools.

The usual Labour objection over schooling is that parents can ‘buy’ better education for their offspring, either by sending them to a private school, or by moving to an expensive area with better state schools. But I don’t see how this argument works regarding faith schools, since presumbably parents of all classes can arrnage a cynical baptism, thereby gaining that edge in the competition for places.

More likely, the Labour MPs are objecting because they beleive the practice emboldens Catholicism, which in turn they believe to be a threat.

If his is the case, then they are mistaken. Although Catholicism is a threat to progressive, liberal values, it will not be strengthened through this particular ploy. In fact, quite the opposite - by inviting these pseudo-Catholics into their churches, Catholic priests dilute the fervour and reverence of their congregations. The cohesion of their community is inevitably weakened, and the religion as a whole loses power and influence.

By making silly demands on people’s spirituality, priests of all religions undermine themselves. One aetheist friend of mine signed allowed his fiance to sign a form committing their unborn children to the Catholic faith, just so they could get married in a Catholic Cathedral. And a Hindu friend of mine will ‘convert’ to Islam this year, just so certain relatives of her betrothed will attend the marriage.Yet her appreciation of the five pilliars is slight.
The social pressures which religions were able to exert over their communities many centuries ago, hardly exist in contemporary Britain. Baptising someone is no longer enough to keep them in the pews. By demanding these empty conversions, priests ask these parents and newlyweds to tell a lie, the easiest they will ever tell. No souls are secured, and the church will recieve no succour. More of it, I say.

Posting here has been light due to a catastrophe that I cannot yet bring myself to discuss.  Don’t worry, no-one has died, but its a bereavement of sorts.

The political crisis in Kenya, and the US Presidential Primary season, remind me of some old thoughts on the nature of democracy.  First, is voting along ethnic lines really democratic?  Apparently the Kenyan crisis has an ethnic element, with supporters of Kibaki and Odinga dividing along tribal, rather than ideological lines.  As I said before, such voting seems to be nothing more than a count to see who has the bigger gang, and undermines the rationalism on which democracy is supposed to rest.

Meanwhile, a race row circles the Democratic Party like a vulture. “Is America ready for a black president?” squwark the commentators, comfortable with their cliches.  Just under a year ago, I wondered whether a good indicator of a mature democracy is when someone who is not from the traditional ruling elite is elected.  I admit this is a rather optimistic stance when Hillary and Barack are mudslinging, but I think there’s a kernel of truth here.  Voting for someone who is different, be it gender, colour or ethnicity, requires a certain confidence in the system.  It is an acknowledgement that you have certain things in common with someone from a different background (this is what the Dalai Lama calls multiculturalism).  And of course, it means there is a high level of political equality.

The counter argument is that, in a democracy, we don’t get to set the terms on which people vote, and that a citizen can vote based on whatever criteria they choose - including racist or sexist considerations.  Attempting to stamp this out would be ineffectual and illiberal.  This may be true, but I think the point about the relative health of a democracy still holds.  If you’re voting for someone purely on the basis of ethnicity or gender, then I’m sorry, but you’re not doing it right.

Other countries are not immune.  I recently read that Jacob Zuma will probably become “South Africa’s third black president“, as if his ethnicity was politically interesting in that country, with its very particular history.  A white president in modern South Africa is currently impossible, but that would be the more politically significant milestone, because only then will politics be blind to race.

Here in London, Rushanara Ali is the Labour Candidate for Bethnal Green & Bow, and therefore stands a good chance of becoming the UK’s first female Muslim MP.  If she is elected, it may count as a contrived first, but I understand that the campaign against her is likely to centre around her religion and gender, rather than her ideas or achievements.  Not very mature at all.

We all know that opinion polls are useful. Even in a representative democracy, the opinions, wants, and needs of the people should be known and taken into account, so that the ‘democratic conversation’ can make headway.But I question their usefulness at election time, when the settled will of the people will be known in a few days/weeks time anyway. The hysteria in Iowa and then New Hampshire, concerning the fall-and-rise of Clinton, and the rise-and-fall of Obama, are entirely driven by, and make no sense without opinion polling. Obama’s performance in the latter state was only considered a ‘loss’ because the pollsters had him up by 15%. Had the last polling been a few weeks earlier, the same result would have been a ‘win’.

It is because of polling that politicians change strategy, flip-flop, and say what they think the public want to hear, not what they actually believe. In turn, this duplicity insults the public and demeans the system.

The polling surrounding these Presidential Primaries is ridiculous, and not only because it appears to be so innaccurate. What is the point of calculating these pseudo-results, when a real plebiscite is only days away? Each Primary acts as its own, super-opinion-poll, asking an entire State of people what they think.

What would happen if public opinion polls are banned within one month of an election? Candidates and Election Monitors could still do their own, private polling if they wished, and a more even distribution of the Primaries would mean that the media had an unfolding narrative to report on. We would still have the highs-and-lows, winners and losers (both real and ‘percieved’). But these would be based on tangible results, not conjecture, extrapolation, falsehood, or hyperbole. The Bradley Effect, and insidious concept, would be killed off. Voters would vote for their preferred candidate on the issues, and not suffer the emotional blackmail of being asked to vote ‘tactically’ for what the media tells them is the most electable candidate.

Polling is like a lense, which often allows us to magnify and understand a political issue. But at election time, these lenses do nothing but distort, and the picture we see is uglier than it should be.

For various reasons, I’m re-reading Anthony Crosland’s The Future of Socialism. This quote resonated:

[The British Conservative Party] lacks the essential attribute of a counter-revolutionary party - a faith, a dogma, even a theory. A passionate desire to restore the past must rest on a deep attachment - moral, ideological, or theoretical - to the virtues of that past. And this the British Conservative, typically pragmatic and empirical, seldom has. His attachment to the status quo, whatever the status quo may be; and his function is less to reinstate the past than to preserve the present.

I think this is a key reason why I consider myself to be Of The Left - The word ‘Conservative’ means resistance to change… and that’s not me. Indeed, the quote above looks like a slur to my eyes.

Interestingly, though, I sense that it does not look like a slur to anyone who does consider themselves Conservative, or just conservative. Last year’s Christmas reading, The Conservative Soul by Andrew Sullivan, puts the reluctance to change things at the heart of the Conservative mindset.

Sullivan also rejects the need for a core ideology. He celebrates what Crosland condemns, calling the Conservative approach the politics of the doubter. Indeed, that is the distinction between the religious/social Conservatives and the fiscal/libertarian Conservatives, two groups who are becoming increasingly uneasy bedfellows within the US Republican Party (and I suspect the British Conservative Party too). The religious/social Conservatives do seem to wish for a return to an earlier time, which is what makes them so much more worrying than Conservatives of the fiscal/libertarian bent.

None of this, however, allies me with blogger Alex Hilton’s recent suggestion that Toryism is ‘evil’. There’s more subtlety to politics than that, which is why its so interesting, and challenging.

For those opposed to the ID card scheme, it is easy to see the silver lining to the recent news that the taxman has lost 25 million records in the post. While the disappearance of these CDs causes grave concern for the people who’s data has gone missing, the incompetence does undermine the case for ID Cards: “We cannot afford a similar error on the national ID database,” (the argument goes) “… so, lets scrap the scheme”. Tactically, yes, I think it is an argument we in the anti-ID card lobby should be making loudly… but let us never forget that the administration of the system is a practical reason to oppose the scheme, and not a moral or ideological reason. Even if (in some thought experiment world, some Cloud Number 10) the government could 100% guarantee the security of the data, I would still be opposed to the scheme, because the political relationship between citizen and state does not change when the State buys a better computer system. Nor, for that matter, would it change if the cost of the scheme were to rise or fall. Brighton blogger Neil Harding recently changed his mind on ID cards, based on these practical reasons. While his interlocutors crowed at his volte-face, it seemed an empty victory to me. The moral argument was sidelined.

This matters, because arguments for ID cards seem to be made up exclusively of practical reasons. Advocates in Government and the security services play down the costs, and instead cite ‘convenience’ and ‘efficiency’. The moral aspect to their argument – that the cards will offer a measure of safety from terror and crime – is unproven and untested, and has the unmistakeable allure of the post hoc about it.

Meanwhile, here in the anti-camp, the opposite is true. The moral resistance to any change in the relationship between individual and state is conceptually prior to, and transcends, the concern over costs or data-security. If we successfully communicate this to our fellow citizens, we shall win the debate.

Periodically, a print journalist will write an article decrying blogging and bloggers. They will have probably had an unpleasant experience on Comment is Free and formed the conclusion that the online world is full of vindictive old men. Most of the time, we bloggers put this down to the journalist misunderstanding the medium, or simply having wafer thin skin.

What irks and surprises these writers is, I think, the tenacity of bloggers. Like an old dog, they simply will not let go of that bone. In print, we might see a couple of rounds of testy letter-writing, spread out over a week, or maybe even months in the case of periodicals. Online all this happens immediately, and because of the near-infinite amount of space available to publish comments, the volume of argument rises exponentially. Not only do we have several replies, and several more replies-to-a-replies, but we have replies-to-replies-to-replies as well. “And another thing…”

One of the most frustrating experiences in the world is when someone says to me “let it go.” Admittedly, this usually happens in a pub after a few pints, and I cannot remember what the original point of contention was. Sometimes, however, I am fully aware of what the debate is about. I’m not actually drunk, but my passion for the point at hand might give a different impression. My refusal to let the point lie is because my interlocutor simply has not understood the nature of the debate, or what’s at stake. “Let’s all agree to disagree” says someone. “No,” I reply, “this isn’t a matter of opinion.” When the debate becomes about how important the dabate is, then to abandon the discussion is to admit defeat.

I see this happening online a lot. Recently, Tim Ireland at Bloggerheads has been trying to rebutt allegations and smears that have come his way. The only problem is, his argument lies within some relatvely obscure timestamps and IP logs, which can never have the rhetorical force of an intellectual argument about civil liberties. His posts are therefore thousands of words long, and it is easy to label him obsessive and belligerent.

In Tim’s case, he has the stamina to keep on rebutting-the-rebuttals-of-the-rebuttals. The problem arises when the smears and falsehoods cannot be challenged effectively. This might occur for financial reasons, such as when Craig Murray’s website was taken offline (his hosting company did not have the resources to repel a legal challenge from Alisher Usmanov). It might occur due to the sheer volume of smears, as is the current situation with Presidential Candidate Ron Paul.

Or it might occur due to ennui - the slander slips by because the slanderee is to busy or tired to respond. This happened to me recently, when a friend of mine declared that I was arguing “for the sake of it,” when in fact I was sure there was something more tangible at stake. Again, the discussion moved off the substansive points, and onto the nature of the debate itself. Eventually, we had to just “let it go”. Although it was an argument about graphic design, rather than politics, I think the pattern of the exchange, and the unsatisfactory resolution, still fit the unhealthy template of many blog debates.

Justin makes the case for why the arguments should continue, and bloggers should never let go of the bone:

I have a feeling that a lot of bloggers trying to stick it to a future Tory government and their online cheerleaders in a few years time are going to wish they’d paid more attention to what’s going on right now. Sooner or later they’re going to target someone you care about. Real world reputations are at stake and are being damaged. It’s time to get in the ring and go toe to toe.

This week, there has been a short online discussion about blogging on the (virtual pages) of The Guardian. Michael Billington asserted the need for professional, paper based reviewers, but I think some of his comments betray a patronising tone. He is simply wrong when he claims that

The critic, unlike the blogger, also has a duty to set any play or performance in its historical context.

… since blogs have the same responsibility if they want to be considered relevant (or simply, ‘good’). Billington is taken to task for this misunderstanding in the comments, and also for a misplaced nostalgia when he says:

The blog seems to me have supplanted the kind of prolonged argument about the arts that once took place in the correspondence columns of newspapers. Example: years ago, when I rashly suggested that Shaw was the best dramatist after Shakespeare, a considered, if heated, debate went on for weeks in the paper itself. Now such a suggestion would be a 48-hour wonder on the blog.

But that’s the point, says Ian Shuttleworth in the comments:

Blogs in this respect are filling a gap that has for some time and increasingly been left by editorial neglect in print publications.

Meanwhile, Lyn Gardner is a good deal more positive about the medium of blogging. It was her contribution which drew me to the debate, because last year I remember she used The Guardian’s theatre blog to publish a dissenting review of Katie Mitchell’s Waves, which had been panned by… none other than Michael Billington. Sadly, an online argument about Mitchell’s (admittedly divisve) work never materialised. This was a shame, since this sort of debate, between critics who care, is a feature which Billington himself misses. Blogs can complement theatre criticism, not challenge and marginalise it in the way that TV and film reviews have done.

Other writers also lament the absence of such robust industry. I am reminded of Michael Coveney’s essay in Prospect (November 2005). Here is a telling paragraph:

But the truth is that newspapers increasingly devote largely uncritical coverage to the latest product of the publicity machine … Previews and interviews now take precedence over critical responsibility. But the idea that they do so in order to meet a public demand is, I believe, false. Anyone under the age of 30 who wants to read about pop music, new film and reality television knows where to go. That place is not the broadsheets, but magazines and the internet. So the liberal, professional intelligentsia who read the broadsheets are confronted with coverage they don’t want and comment on “high culture” by people who often know less about it than they do.

The Guardian’s consideration of blogging is welcome, but ultimately, I cannot help but think that these critics are arriving late onto the scene, when they should have been in the vanguard. When Natasha Tripney writes

Bloggers are not constricted by word count or deadlines, and have free reign to write about what they want, when they want

or when Michael Billington types

critics are much more accountable for their opinions… the blog also gives a voice to the hitherto voiceless

we are reading insightless cliché - Many of us have been identifying these features for yonks! To paraphrase Michael Coveney, bloggers are being presented by comment on “blog culture” by people who often know less about it than they do.