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Welfare Queen and delinquent son.
In a week with the threat of global nuclear disaster from Japan, the probable crushing of popular insurrection in Libya by the criminal Gaddafi, and a major defeat of democratic institutions in Wisconsin (about which I shall soon write), it is a relief to turn to the domestic news of Great Britain (a country name that provokes a slight chortle in itself).
If you are feeling a bit depressed by events, there are few bits of news more likely to cheer you up that the saga of David Cameroon and the Half-Wit Prince. It is likely that as for the other installments in this series (e.g., The Queen), this episode will become another big screen blockbuster comedy. The theme music is already written ('The Grand Old Duke of York…"). In the meantime, the Prince provides us with constant republican propaganda. Were the PM to remove the Doggy Duke from his post as traveling shyster it would be a severe blow against UK republicanism.
With so much extremely engaging activity among the royals, it is understandable that most people might have missed the convention of the Liberal Democrats. (For those unfamiliar with British politics, this was a political party until wholly absorbed by the Tories in a friendly takeover bid.) For the vast majority that overlooked this non-event, I can bring you up to date: at the convention the answer to an urgently non-pressing question (about which few care) was definitively resolved: what is the political position of Nick Clegg?
Yes, Nick, that is your right wing.
The reason so many had to ask this question is that the politics of the Clegger (rhymes with "clunker") reside in a previously undiscovered and uncharted territory, the "radical centre" (I'm not making it up, see The Guardian, 14 March 2011, page 14). For those unclear as to the precise location of the radical centre, it lies midway between Never-never Land and the Emerald City of Oz. Its characteristics are spectacular mediocrity, insightful stupidity and committed irresponsibility. The Clegger himself summarized the Radical Centre (RadCen for tweeting purposes) in words that shall, no doubt, be long debated for their subtle substance by political philosophers: "We are governing from the middle, for the middle" (did not make that up either, see Guardian article), which implies that the radical centre rest comfortably in a Mediocre Muddle.
By contrast to the ambiguity as to where the Clegger is politically, it is quite clear how he and the other Liberal-Democrats traveled there. The Conservative Party is the party of capital, with a clear class base and a clear class line: profits really are more important than people, because without those profits there would be no capitalists to fund a party of capitalists. That may sound simplistic (it is), but true nonetheless. The Labour Party is the party that would be party of working people if there were one. The Green Party is the home of those dedicated to saving the world from destruction (which explains why its membership base is so narrow). The BNP is for those who would be Conservatives except they think the Tories are insufficiently fascist.
One proposed location of the Radical Centre.
So where does that leave the Liberals? Well, that is exactly their problem, no base in either of the great classes of modern society, and no overriding issue that anchors their existence. Hardcore Marxists have for 150 years argued that located between labor and capital without a clear class base, the petite bourgeoisie is destined to be perpetually squeezed in the political arena. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels wrote, "where modern civilization has become fully developed, a new class of petit bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie".
As shopkeepers, small businesspeople, and professionals, the petite bourgeoisie is fiercely individualistic, thus committed to personal rights such as those found in the so-called Bill of Rights of the US constitution (freedom of religion, speech, etc.). This individualism also stimulates belief in myths of self-advancement and disdain for the collective consciousness of the working class. Sharing some of the interests of capital and fearing the working class, the petite bourgeoisie tends to gravitate to the political right.
Now, I have always thought that analysis to be dogmatic and simplistic. Having encountered the Clegger, it occurs to me that there may be something to that dogmatic simplicity.
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