Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Two articles in today’s Observer show the two sides of contemporary English judgement: at its best and its worst. It is the difference between someone who thinks and researches deeply and writes clearly and with care against the zeitgist of superficiality while the other postures, strives for effect, gets things wrong and is a perfect example of the Age of Blair. One is by an esteemed Professor of European Thought at the LSE the other penned by a thriller writer, journalist and editor of Vanity Fair.
Yes, there are top scholars at our universities, But you cannot beat a pompous professor at a ‘great’ English university for narcissism, self-indulgence and sheer claptrap.
John Gray (for it is he) warns against a liberal modernising the constitution on the grounds that it will turn Britain into an Iraq (as if it was liberals not neo-cons who masterminded that disaster). He continues his fight against all “abstract models” of change in Britain, although he can name none who advocate one. Successful countries that enclose different ‘nations’ are mostly monarchies he claims. Handily forgetting India’s democratic and secular example, while falsely implying that liberal written constitutions today are based on “the poisonous politics of identity”. Indeed Sunny Hundal’s recent OK post shows the opposite is the case. Six European countries are monarchies and have democratic constitutions, it is the latter not the former that protects them.
This is well brought out by Henry Porter (for the other is he) in a sober assessment of Gordon Brown’s first month, all the stronger for having been open-minded, not rushed to judgement and talking privately with the Prime Minister. He builds on Brown’s call for two months detention without trial (which I posted against) and combines it with what he says they are now calling “ID Security” - a spin I’d not heard about that trades disgracefully on the two meanings of the word security to imply that “securing” your identity defends you against terrorism. He concludes, “The hard fact is that Gordon Brown may be a much more organised and more intelligent foe than any of us in Liberty Corner realised”. Until the Palace shows the slightest sign of protecting us from the destruction of our freedoms, which Henry Porter has documented better than anyone, I’ll look for a much needed democratic movement rather than the monarchy to protect our liberty.
