Everything in Moderation

Peace and freedom: the blessings of capitalism

The great ideologies dispossessed my father. It was democracy that let him live and die in safety and contentment

7 September 2011

A little more than a week ago my father lifted his arms and did something that he had done countless times before, blessed his children as he ushered in the Sabbath. But he was doing it for the last time. When he had finished, his hands fell to his side. He died the next day, with the blessing as his final act.

He had known for several weeks that his illness was terminal, and each day he grew more tired. But through it all his mind remained as sharp as ever, which is to say very sharp. And so each night in those precious days before his death, I sat by his bedside and we talked, sometimes about his extraordinary life, sometimes about a task that still needed doing (updating, for instance, some references in the book he had been writing about Polish Jewry) and sometimes about the future of capitalism.

I didn’t find these odd topics, even though he was so ill. My father cited ‘conversation’ as his chief hobby, along with ‘not gardening’, and took both seriously. Yet with him, the small talk was never small.

Throughout my life we would discuss philosophy and argue about politics over breakfast. At dinner we might talk about problems of physics and maths, with a long discussion about how many cans of drink might be fitted into a fridge of a given volume. Both my parents, I recall from one Friday night meal, felt very strongly that it is insufficiently appreciated that a centimetre is not a proper SI measurement.

The day after a debate on some ethical question I would often get a call, my father having sought clarification from a scriptural source or from one of his many reference books.

And all of this seemed so natural that it is only in writing it down now that it occurs to me it might seem a little eccentric to others. Oh, well.

Anyway, all this is to say that considering the future of capitalism counted as light chit-chat. Our latest discussions began because I had been reading some articles by journalists and commentators whom I respected, which argued that the Left had been correct about capitalism all along. Capitalism, they said, had proved to be a conspiracy of the elite against the masses. Karl Marx’s prediction that it was inherently unstable had been right.

I wanted to know what my dad thought because, as far as I could see, this argument contradicted the experience of his life.

In response he began, as he often did, by telling me a story. It was one that I knew – the one about the cocoa and the bones – but one that I wanted to hear again, just one more time. In 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, my grandfather had been released from a labour camp, where he had been serving a sentence of eight years’ hard labour for having been, the communists judged, a ‘socially dangerous element’.

Leaving prison, my grandfather had joined the Polish Army Corps, had traced his family to the remote Siberian outpost where they had been exiled, and had managed to send them a little money.

After almost two years of starvation, my father and his mother rejoiced that they had some cash, and, their deportation order having been lifted, the right to spend it. My grandmother decided to go to the finest restaurant in the whole of Semipalatinsk.

In they went, a waiter took my grandmother’s coat and they sat down, each with a large and fancy-looking menu card. Yet as they requested items, they were told that unfortunately, today, this or that was off the menu. Eventually my grandmother was forced to ask: ‘Well, what do you have?’ Just bones and cocoa, came the reply.

My father never had much time for complaints that ‘consumerism’ was undermining the moral fabric of society. He thought it odd that people would regard it as a bad thing to produce items to buy and sell and to make a profit from them. He also thought that a gloomy view of Britain and Britons totally lacked perspective. The idea that ordinary people did not benefit from capitalism seemed to him too obviously absurd to require refutation.

However, the main benefit of capitalism was not, as far as he was concerned, money. Beyond the ability to purchase books and the occasional Indian takeaway, he was not motivated by accumulating wealth. He left an inexpensive Casio watch which, as a measurement scientist, he liked because it told the time accurately. What he really appreciated about liberal capitalist democracy is that it left him in peace. In peace and freedom.

A fellow detainee in my grandfather’s prison had tried to persuade him not to leave when he was released. They could stay safely in the camp, he said, and drink the meths in the hospital. On behalf of his family, my grandfather chose freedom instead. And though it brought many trials and years without land to call home, my father never doubted its virtue.

The great sweeping ideologies had been a failure. They had driven him from his home and from his life, killed his relatives, dispossessed his family. My dad took a rather dim view of those extolling Marx’s powers of analysis, which he found, to say the least, wanting. He supported capitalism for the small things that it brought – the suburbs, the rule of law, Brent Cross Shopping Centre. He was safe here. His family was safe here. The vast majority of British people are safe here.

In those last days, we discussed, too, how his life showed that it was, in any case, silly to think of Britain as some sort of free-market anarchy. My father had been on National Assistance when he first came here, had spent years in the coal mines working for a nationalised industry and had then spent the bulk of his career as a university professor.

Unlike those of us born here, my father became British on purpose, as a conscious act, one that he had thought about deeply. He never thought Britain’s leaders corrupt, or that the country was going to the dogs, or that our society was collapsing, undermined by its moral decay. He lived here proud of a nation that let him live, let him learn, let him teach, and let him practise his religion. He knew what it meant to be British.

Six reasons why I’m an uber-moderniser

David Cameron must not retreat from his progressive agenda

Just before the 2003 Conservative conference George Osborne, then still shadow chancellor, gave an interview in the Spectator in which he said that he ‘didn’t take the kind of uber-modernising view that some have had, that you can’t talk about crime or immigration or lower taxes. It is just that you can’t do so to the exclusion of the NHS, the environment and economic stability.’ I didn’t really disagree with this, but it was interpreted as George (who absolutely is an uber-moderniser) distancing himself from modernisers. So I thought it an opportunity to state some of my own basic views about Conservative politics.

3 October 2007

I am about to do something dangerous, something I might regret. I am about to allow myself to be labelled. The history of this is not encouraging. A few days ago Roy Hattersley wrote about how much he wishes he had not accepted the label ‘old Labour’.

And put it this way, the Tory ‘wets’ are no longer paying a grateful retainer to their branding consultancy.

But the boy can’t help it. I am an uber-moderniser. The moment the phrase was coined by George Osborne to describe the keepers of the Tory modernising faith I realised the term fitted me perfectly.

There are plenty of people who think that what David Cameron should do now is gently retreat from all that modernising rhetoric. It is all too ‘Blair’, they argue, and there isn’t enough in it for Middle Britain. I completely disagree. A sharp break from the strategy that lost three elections is essential. When Mr Cameron stands up later today, he needs to show that he still carries the modernising torch.

Here, then, is the uber-modernisers’ manifesto.

That optimism triumphs over pessimism

Tory modernisers argue that the Conservatives must talk about more than the economy. Quite right. But we uber-modernisers worry. We think that all this talk of the quality of life can easily lead the Tories to sound gloomy, angry, at odds with today’s society, banging on about anarchy on the streets.

And voters will come to associate the Tories with that pessimism, just as visitors to a car show associate the vehicle with the sexy woman sitting on the bonnet. Mr Cameron must talk of his confidence in modern Britain. A sunshine strategy, that’s what uber-modernisers want to see.

When you talk about them, voters learn about you

The Tory party members would cheer a vicious attack on Gordon Brown, but it would still be a mistake. Voters will not rely on Tories to tell them what to think about the Prime Minister. Instead they listen to Tory politicians and make their mind up about Tories. Are they reasonable? Are they pleasant? Are they in touch?

Last week there was a ludicrous call for [Labour minister] James Purnell to resign because somebody, without his permission, had photoshopped his picture to suggest he had been in a group photo. In fact he had been slightly late and photographed separately. Uber-modernisers regard calling for his resignation, as some did, as an indication that Conservatives still don’t get the point about being seen as reasonable and intelligent. And it’s an important one, since commenting about Labour is one of the main things that TV viewers see Conservatives do.

That to win, Tories must appeal to their core vote

This may seem a bit odd. Isn’t the whole point of modernising to move away from a core-vote strategy? Ah, but that depends on what you think the Tory core vote is.

Uber-modernisers argue that the real core vote for the Conservatives, the people who have elected Tory governments for a century, are the middle class, and particularly women. The experiences, views and aspirations of this core have changed massively in the past twenty years and the Tory party failed to change with it. Instead the party chased after new voters who shared traditional Tory prejudices. This group is too small, lives in the wrong places and is disinclined to vote Conservative.

A proper core-vote strategy requires a more liberal, tolerant Tory party in tune with working women and the modern middle class.

That brand decontamination comes before everything

The very start of the modernising journey was the realisation that a proposition that could win popular support became unpopular the moment it was advanced by the Conservatives.

So before you can make a successful public appeal on crime, immigration or, say, voucher schemes for schools, you first have to persuade the voters to trust the party.

You have to remove from the party’s brand the idea that, for instance, it doesn’t care about public services and that it dislikes foreigners. You have to show that what matters to voters matters to you and matters more than your obsessions – say on Europe – and more than Westminster gossip.

While Mr Cameron has made some progress, personally, on this task, the party as a whole has a long way to go. Uber-modernisers are concerned that the party overestimates how far voters think it has come.

That the danger is having too much policy, not too little

When David Cameron became leader he was told by almost every commentator that he needed lots of policy. Not us Uber-modernisers.

Policies don’t win elections. Victory comes from voters feeling that a party is fit for government and preferably that voting for them is something to be proud of. And policies don’t tell people how you are going to govern either. The micropolicy produced in opposition by a research team too small to do it well forms only the smallest part of the real programme of a government.

So uber-modernisers were always concerned about having large numbers of policy commissions under light central control. And we were right. The confusing mess of unfiltered policy ideas has been very damaging.

In his speech Mr Cameron needs to make a proper argument, accompanied by big statements of direction on important issues, but not make lots of small, poorly thought-out policy promises.

That you must show as well as tell

It is not enough to say that you have changed. You must demonstrate it. It’s what you are that matters, not just what you say.

Since party reform is one of the few things an opposition can actually do, how you handle the party is vital. That means, for instance, that the leadership simply has to succeed in getting large numbers of women candidates.

And it also means the leader has to show he is strong. Party reform is not complete and Mr Cameron must not ignore it.

There is a long way to go before there is modernisation. Too much modernisation is certainly not the Tory problem.

MPs? Well, I can’t trust anyone. Not even you

The British public is feasting on hatred. One minute it’s estate agents, then bankers or foreigners. Who will be next?

This was written at the height of the MPs’ expenses scandal.

27 May 2009

I can’t. Believe me I’ve tried. And I know it would make my life easier. Occasionally in the last three weeks I have managed to work myself up into a state of righteous indignation for an entire hour at a time. I feel briefly as though I may be able to join in. But then it goes. Nothing I can do about it, I am afraid. The national anger, the frenzy, the fury about MPs and their allowances just passes me by. Actually, it is worse than that. I am afraid it makes me shudder.

When Princess Diana died I walked through St James’s Park and saw people, tears in their eyes, laying funeral wreaths for someone they had only seen on television. I remember then feeling outside the national mood, finding the intensity of the mourning slightly strange.

Yet I did, at least, find something uplifting in the emotion, even if I didn’t feel it myself. Sadness at the death of a young woman with two young children is, after all, compassionate, a worthy sentiment. I felt rather proud of my compatriots, if a little bewildered at their fervour.

The national mood of anger at MPs strikes me rather differently. It doesn’t bewilder me as the Diana wreaths did. I can see that some MPs have behaved badly. I even think some should (and might) end up in prison. So I ‘get it’. I see why people feel as they do. I understand it. I am, to use that dreadful political cliché, ‘in touch’ with the national mood. I just can’t share it. I find it ugly, unpleasant, lacking all sense of proportion.

Robert Mugabe starves his population to death. Nothing. The Janjawid commit genocide in Darfur. Nothing. Gordon Brown bankrupts the country. Nothing. Then someone buys an unnecessary trouser press. Pandemonium.

When people are being murdered in their millions, dying in their boring, banal way, the BBC puts Question Time on at 1.30 in the morning and sticks a comedian on the panel to give proceedings a bit of a lift. Now that Cheryl Gillan has accidentally claimed for £4.47 of dog food, they move the show to prime time, bumping the Two Ronnies or whatever, so that everyone can boo Ming Campbell.

I would find it all fantastically silly if I didn’t find it so worrying. It is, you see, a flashing alert signal for me when ‘I was following the rules laid down by Parliament’ ceases to be regarded as any sort of defence. I get worried when I see people declared guilty until proven innocent in Harriet Harman’s famous ‘court of public opinion’ because there has been an article written about them in a newspaper. It makes me shiver when a whole category of people – politicians – are regarded as guilty, because ‘they’re all the same’, and when it becomes routine to dehumanise them by comparing them to farm animals.

And it isn’t just the MPs, you see. It would matter less if it was, I suppose. It is that all of us think everyone else is on the take, or is useless, or tasteless.

We’ve only just finished (for the time being) a great national furore against bankers. Bankers, they’re all greedy. With their big, fat bonuses. Ripping us off, lining their pockets, making off with our savings. That Sir Fred Goodwin, he’s one. Take away his pension. Strip him of his knighthood. Kick him out the golf club, him and his banker friends.

And before the bankers, there were social workers. Totally useless. They let Baby P die because they were busy ticking boxes. It’s left-wing political correctness gone mad (and you don’t want to go mad, or you’ll have to see a psychiatrist, and there’s a group of people you want to steer clear of). Sack them. Take away their pay-offs. It’s time that whole profession had a clear-out.

When the opinion pollster (not that you can trust opinion pollsters) Populus asked voters their view of MPs’ pay, they were virtually unanimous in wanting an independent group put in charge. ‘How about a major accountancy firm?’ Populus asked their focus groups. Oh, no, came the reply. We can’t have accountants, they’re the worst. ‘Lawyers, perhaps?’ Lawyers? Are you kidding? They’re worse than accountants.

Although perhaps not as bad as estate agents, I suppose. Does anyone know what they do for all that money they get paid? No, neither do I. You can’t trust a single one of them. Any more than you can trust a journalist. And don’t get me started about journalists. Here they are, going on about MPs’ expenses when they’re all on the fiddle themselves. I know they are, because I read it in the newspaper.

Journalists, they’re as bad as second-hand car salesmen. Or those people who sell insurance, come to think of it. Or those so-called advisers who hook you on their pensions and leave you without a penny. And there you are destitute, while Premier League football players, who are stupid and always up until 2.30 in the morning in a nightclub with one of the millions of young women who are now out binge drinking, swan around ‘earning’ a million pounds a week for kicking a ball around and shouting at referees (who aren’t deaf, even though they are all blind).

Mind you, at least they work for a living. Not like toffs who think they own the world (and probably do). Their sense of entitlement is dreadful, particularly the ones who went to Eton. It’s a toss-up whether their arrogance is to be preferred to the smugness of middle-class people who live in dull suburbs and sound like Richard Briers and cut the grass too often.

Vicars? Wet and ineffectual. Property developers? Rapacious, reactionary. Teachers? Left-wing, long holidays. The police? Never come when you need them. Firemen? All off doing their second jobs when they should be working for us. Public-service workers? Pen-pushers in plush offices. Farmers? Always got their hand in the public purse, when they are not spreading diseases. Benefit claimants? On the fiddle, obviously. The bin man? Leaves rubbish all over your drive unless you pay him off.

The Scots, the French, TV documentary makers, hospital consultants, MEPs, traffic wardens, diplomats, council workers, people who wear sweatshirts with a hood. Let’s face it, I can’t trust anyone, except me and you. And I’m really not sure about you.

The other day I stumbled across an American opinion poll. It showed that a quarter of Americans, when asked, said that they blamed the Jews for the financial crisis either moderately or a great deal. Even more – nearly 40 per cent – attached some blame to us. Great.

When I witness this national mood of anger and blame, when I see people heckle politicians, and call them crooks, and lump them all together, and pass by all the good they do, I hope you will forgive me if I can’t join in. I don’t like it when people start mobbing up. It frightens me.

I’d never voted Tory. But changing was easy

The tribalism of British politics has always been a mystery to me. I hope it doesn’t cost David Cameron his chance to govern

This article was my final column of the 2010 election campaign. The day after it appeared, voters went to the polls and the result was the beginning of Cameron’s coalition government.

5 May 2010

Perhaps it’s because I am Jewish. Or the son of immigrants. Or perhaps not. I don’t know. But I have always found British tribal political loyalty hard to relate to.

When I was a child growing up in Hendon, there was a baker we used to use on a Friday. Good bread, biscuits not bad, but service? Hilariously, unfailingly, rude. They wouldn’t just take an order, they would tell you what you should have ordered. ‘Bagels? You don’t want them. And anyway you had them last week. Rye bread’s nicer. You’re having the rye bread.’ It would have been cabaret if they’d meant it to be funny.

I developed a theory. Yes, even though I was nine, I developed a theory. That’s just how I am, leave me alone. My theory was that we Jews are outside the British class system. In most shops, I’d noticed, there was a little deference to the customer, a little bit of ‘and what would sir like today?’, even if sir was only just old enough to see over the counter. In most shops, the idea of poking the customer in the stomach and asking them if they’d put on weight wouldn’t occur to the salesman. But with one Jew selling to another, a little bit of stomach poking was acceptable, is acceptable, as a matter of fact. Deference just doesn’t come into it. Nor class resentment.

Now I am sure that not all Jews feel like this, but on me all that prodding left a mark. I find class hard to understand, and class tension baffling. And being a member of one tribe (British Jews), I have never felt the need to add a second.

Which creates a difficulty when it comes to analysing this election. Because I think the key to Thursday’s outcome – the difference between the Tories falling short of an overall majority and winning comfortably – lies with people struggling with a deep, tribal, inherited, often class-based loyalty.