Idealism and conflict: alignment, non-alignment, realignment

In UK politics, we seem stuck on the horns of an age-old dilemma, which is how to deal with conflict. We don't agree with each other. At the moment, disagreement seems like the only thing we can agree on.

Some Tories are now apparently trying to deselect their ‘impure’ members, just as the Labour Party has been doing for some time. Let me be clear:  this is not yet an epidemic on any front. But it exists, despite denials, and exists beyond the Labour Party. And the two main parties will persist in arguing which of them is the worst! while the minor parties can have a field day blaming the major ones and thus show how clean their own hands are. As though the answer to these questions would get all our eggs boiled! Realignment is in the wind. Who will leave to form another party, and would it be viable to do that? 

Democracy in a free society requires compromise if it is to work. This is so obvious, I would have thought, that only an idiot would not be aware of it as a fundamental fact of political life. Compromise doesn't mean, 'others will have to change their tune to fall into line with my solution." Sorry, that won't work either. Compromise means, 'everyone has to change their tune to some extent to arrive at a solution that satisfies the majority.' 'Doing what is in the best interests of the country' is another boat that will not float. What is in the UK interest is as variable a theme as there are Members of Parliament! It is covert speech for 'others will have to fall inline .... etc." 

Conflict is inevitable among human beings with minds. Let's start there, shall we? Short of giving up our minds, there is no likelihood ahead of a Utopian state in which we all agree to agree, even at the most basic level.  However 'right' your position may be, you still have the major task of persuading others that your ideas are the ones worth supporting. Maybe the present situation in Parliament has laid this bare, perhaps for the first time, for some people. It may have opened some people's thinking to include the realisation that other people have minds. I've been worn out by the number of people with strong political beliefs I meet, who think it is obvious what the 'right way' ahead is, and will define the problem in terms of other people 'not being presented with the right choices' - or 'not understanding the issues', or 'being misled, or brainwashed into their present position', or whatever. They persist in assuring me that if only people really knew the truth, or really understood the problem, they would think differently and vote differently. 

But sadly, truth itself is a slippery concept - which is why so many philosophers have written about it. From a psychological point of view, truth seems to push the problem 'out there' somewhere, where some divine authority or intellectual genius has laid out the groundwork of the issues and come to the true conclusion. All we have to do is to discover it and embrace it. Our faith in such authority is sometimes wonderful to behold! Makes me wonder what the education system is doing if we really think that in droves? And it seems we do. 

Listen up. There is no absolute truth on this earth. Virtually all positions are a matter of opinion, which means personal conviction, based to a greater or a lesser degree on evidence and/or experience, or hopefully both. 

I say 'virtually' because I give way to the splendid wisdom of some scientific knowledge, which gets us close to strong, verifiable probabilities. But even they are in short supply. Science proceeds by hypothesis, which then gets verified by experimental evidence, and every hypothesis has to be able to stand up to constant replication, otherwise it isn't science. Even then, it becomes today's hypothesis - which is not the same as 'truth'! Did you know that Einstein's propositions are constantly under challenge, and probably will be overturned in the future - which is only science doing its job. If you think science is all about truth, you have another think coming. Every scientific field I know is fraught with conflict, where ideas change constantly, and where everything known today is up for grabs tomorrow, to whoever can come up with a better idea. And in this sense, politics is a scientific theory; based to a greater or lesser extent on data collection, research and constructive thinking. We can say the same for economics, which is looking ancient and dusty just now and the search is on for new ideas.

And is this not a good thing? How would we ever have made any progress worth a bent penny without such an attitude? Actually, the world took a long time to arrive at this position, that nothing is forever and ultimately true, and it was a major step forward in human development when we finally woke up to this. Finally, we understood that the church could not decide whether our planet was the centre of the universe, that science could not proceed based on the deduction of truth by the clever human mind alone.      

It's not the truth 'out there' that will save us, but the truth within us - what we find acceptable in our own hearts. And what we find acceptable in this sense has massively deep roots in our background, culture, upbringing, personal experience.  There's evidence to support this - I don't know whether it's 'true' but it seems likely. Political research shows that people tend to vote for those with whom they identify - in terms of personal characteristics. They vote by and large for people, not for projects or political platforms. They say to themselves - not necessarily verbally:  'so-and-so is like me. I could get on with him/her.' The election of Donald Trump is a classic example of just this. And no matter what he does, people do not forget this allegiance, because it's the man they voted for, not the beliefs. Even a tyrannical dictator has to get an initial following, an initial foot in the door. Some people, after all, voted for Hitler. It's probably similar to choosing a partner! Like falling in love.

Which is why we are often surprised after the election that someone who seemed 'like us' was not thinking and behaving the same as us at all! This is how divorces happen. We wake up to all that we have not chosen in our partners - and face a serious dilemma about what to do about it. Maybe the US electorate will divorce Trump at some point - and he himself is not famous for his faithfulness to old allegiances. But just in case they don't, their constitution doesn't allow him to last longer than eight years. Therefore, we need a relatively sane and wise set of rules governing our democracy, which protect us from ourselves and our questionable judgements. We also have parliamentary rules governing the process of debate and decision making. Suddenly we've all heard of Erskine May's Parliamentary Practice, original title: 'A Treatise upon the Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament.' (no relation to Theresa!) But Erskine May has now become 'truth' in some quarters, please note! Whereas he was only a studious bureaucrat, doing his best to codify what had become general practice in the House. Whatever standard you hike up as inviolable 'truth' is usually your way of demanding your own way!   

Notice also that the demand for 'my way' is almost always a way of avoiding change. 'The way things are done' is something we cling to way beyond reason and common sense, in disregard of 'evidence and experience.' Perhaps the fact of our entering the EU in the first place challenged some of our citizens way beyond what they were used to. We wedded them to an identity which included, "citizen of the UK". Actually, I thought I was a citizen of Great Britain', I must confess, from my school days, until I discovered we were 'the UK!' A change which slipped in at some point, I couldn't say from where. Perhaps we started getting a bit embarrassed about calling ourselves 'Great.'  

But am I saying that the political process is so irrational that no important, serious ideas are part of the mix of those we vote for? No - I think 'ideas' are included in our general assessment of a person, and probably some people will include more ideas than others in the balance of their judgements. I'm saying it is the overall impression of 'the kind of person s/he is' that gets the vote and sometimes the long-term support, assuming fair weather and no major stumbles. And if we were to ask, 'where does that overall impression' come from. wouldn't we have to say, 'from people I know already?' What we do is say to ourselves, "I know person A, and so I ask myself, is person B anything like person A?" If they are like, we take to them. If not, we are more cautious. Curiously, this includes the good and the stranger stuff in person A. What we know already is easiest to get to grips with. Many of us so-called liberal intellectuals went abroad for our holidays and for occupational reasons from an early age, and so we learned that 'the other' was not so different from ourselves as we thought. That many things they did 'over there' were interesting and attractive, and we looked forward to the changes that the EU might bring in challenging and improving some of our own ways of doing things. We were confident about facing change. 

But this is not the norm. The fear of change. I'd suggest, is the norm. And the less change you've experienced and the less willing you are to countenance it.   

So the real question is, how can we get often frightened, different people with different identifications to work through their disagreements, and arrive at a compromise which is roughly satisfactory to them all, though not ideal? And when you stumble on the word 'ideal' you are at the real point of trouble!  

OED Definition of ideal - 'satisfying one's conception of what is perfect; most suitable; existing only in the imagination; desirable or perfect but not likely to become a reality; representing an abstract or hypothetical optimum.' 

I suspect that many idealists go into politics. With great intentions, they have a Utopian vision of what is 'perfect, most suitable,' which is a powerful force in their imaginations. And they believe what is in their imaginations can be converted into reality - with just another little heave.

I'm not very convinced that we can convert any ideal into reality. The reason is that it's not the nature of the beast. Ideals are not reality. they are ways of thinking: by which we plan and decide what to do with the situation we're in. They give us rough goals to aim at. Ideals belong to our creative imaginations - and creative thinking differs from rational thinking. Rational thinking says, "What can I achieve in this situation?' For example, "I'm starving. Only my favourite Lancashire hotpot will do. But I only have ten minutes. Would it be better to make a sandwich?" The idealist starves, if necessary, so that he can prove his thesis correct - that only the hotpot will do. The rationalist settles for what we can achieve with the time and resource actually available and given the great diversity of opinion around us. Yes, the sandwich is a compromise, and it sure ain't Lancashire hotpot. But I would point out that there is nothing to stop you setting about making the hotpot once you have satisfied your immediate hunger with the sandwich! This argument however, cuts no ice with the idealist. He sees the sandwich-maker as undermining everything he believes most important! If you once compromise, s/he says, you are lost forever! 

"Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world,” said Archimedes (so they say!) 

I'm no physicist, but I think he was talking about change, and how to bring it about. It's all about weight and balance. A lever can move something that Superman himself could not lift. But you didn't just need a very long lever, you also needed solid ground under your feet from which to exert pressure. Many of those struggling against change did not feel any solid ground under their feet since the last EU vote - and now they were being asked - to vote for further insecurity, that has no sense of a built-in limit. It was a long lever, one that might change their world forever. And they could not countenance that.   

'Can you define "plan" as "a loose sequence of manifestly inadequate observations and conjectures, held together by panic, indecision, and ignorance"? If so, it was a very good plan.'― Jonathan Stroud, The Ring of Solomon

Brexit was that sort of plan. In that, it was not unusual. Most human plans are like that because they're human! 'It fell among idealists' - as the bible might put it! And sometimes the history of the last few years feels like the history of the ten tribes of Israel wandering in the wilderness, all fighting with each other on the way!

Brexit is not a competition we are in, first. Could all the parties involved consider that? The trouble with being a politician is that you are constantly looking over your shoulder at your own reputation. But it doesn't matter who comes out on top, provided the result is in the interests of most of the country. Note that this is not the same as 'in the interests of the country,' which politicians will state as their goal as though it contained not a single full stop that is undeliverable! Yet, as we all know in our hearts, no such plan exists! It is an ideal - another strike at the Utopian world of pure fantasy. Some will lose out, whatever the result of current debates, whether we leave with a good deal, a bad deal or no deal at all. This being the case, we must put in place plans to ensure that those who lose will be supported and brought into a better place, whatever it takes. This may involve spending money on the have-nots. And why not? it doesn't happen every day after all! 

Idealism does not plan well - as the Brexiteers have proved in a public and undignified way. But neither do the idealists on any side. Take Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader. I think he has done a better job, on the whole, of steering Brexit than the media give him credit for. The difficulty is he has no instinct, it seems, for what works as a political plan, though he is great at reciting all the ideal ones. Labour's list of tests for a Brexit deal was based on a known set of the barmy ideas purveyed by the Leavers during the referendum debate. I don't say they didn't know this. The Labour plan, presumably, was to catch the Leavers in a patently obviously set of lies. Someone thought it clever at the time - but was it, really? It cast the whole Brexit public debate in terms of meaningless twaddle from the word go. And two years down the line we were still arguing these barmy referendum issues when we ought to worry about more important things. Like our vision for a viable future for the UK, a vast issue in itself, like our future relationship with the EU, and like the consequences for the Union, let alone the planet, for a leave vote? I cannot entirely absolve the Labour Party of this failure, and while the buck stops with Jeremy, it would not have existed if the Party as a whole had not endorsed it. 

Might it not have been better to provide a list of genuine, honest standards or goals that the Remainers wanted to work towards in the negotiations? That were practically obtainable and could be honurably upheld under pressure? And the fewer Red Lines the better. The very term Red Lines suggests idealism - implying that some things cannot be negotiable - they are way up in those clouds of 'truth' and 'principles". We all have our limits in any conflict - that is wise, and human. But when politicians talk about principle, you need to keep your wallet close to hand! Far better not to spell our limits out too soon, since we don't really know how non-negotiable some things are until we face them in actuality.

I’m sure Jeremy has had a deep strategy, which however gets no further than the pathway between his gut, his heart and his voice! I’m sure he knows what he wants, though he is less good at communicating it. But his problem now is that he has to model the kind of behaviour he demanded so often of the old guard, and whom he bitterly accused when they didn’t deliver. Like allowing greater democracy in the party? I mean real democracy, that does not regard their point of view as inviolable. When people demand democracy, they usually mean “why doesn’t everyone agree with me? As they surely would if only they were allowed space to speak out - knew what the real issues were” etc.  As soon as they get power, such leaders discover to their amazement that not everyone agrees with them! And they have no urge, it seems, to allow others free votes if they don't toe the line, and are just as ready as their former self was to rebel if they don’t like what s/he’s proposing. 

They discover that you can’t govern on that basis. Leadership means that someone has read the runes and ultimately calls the tune after due consultation - and the chosen tune will not suit everyone, but it is still better than chaos. Even the Tories are now uttering words like ‘broad church’ (good heavens - wasn’t that Labour Party speak?) British politics can only function based on a broad-church view on all sides - which is why I personally have always resisted joining a single-issue party. It doesn’t seem to me to float any boats to achieve change. Though I completely understand why people do it, especially if an issue seems to them to be overriding - like climate change. Their logic seems reasonable, but, as far as I can see, it doesn’t get their single issue taken any more seriously. And to the extent that it isolates them from mainstream politics, they achieve less power than if they had stayed with the broad church, with all its questionable compromises.