Delivering his Autumn Statement on Thursday, Jeremy Hunt specified two ‘great national’ qualities: genius and ‘British compassion’. The Chancellor’s announcements made it clear what he was doing: raiding the incomes of the decently well off to fund benefits rises and protect pensions. Talk of our shared compassion then seems a bit off.
Politicians should exploit ideas of Britishness less, or at least do so less explicitly. They should focus on what Britain actually needs in order to be uniquely good in a British way. That isn’t hollow words for a population imagined to be at Key Stage One. It’s coherence: a decent economic model, a political philosophy, and a theory of how humans tick.
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Invoking a “great’ national trait or two during a war or a pandemic is patronising, but understandable. To do so on the British population now is wrong, especially from a chancellor. If you’ve just announced you will take thousands off millions of people and scythe off the ‘excess profits’ of energy firms, it is just insulting to tell the same people their innate British ‘compassion’ will sweeten the pill. And what about their great British ‘genius’? After that statement they’d be well justified in taking it elsewhere, especially when they learn, courtesy of a Telegraph investigation, that billions have been wasted by Whitehall on, to name a few items, vegan ice cream, Covid payouts to fraudsters, and a luxury villa in Naples. These are among expenditures that British ‘compassion’ may not stretch to.
It’s not just wrong for a chancellor to emotionally blackmail a nation while raiding its pockets. It’s also none of his business what the emotional make-up of Britons is, compassionate or otherwise. National character isn’t something to be wheeled out cynically and thrown back at people; it’s a delicate thing of porous edges that does not profit by being sized up and spat out in the Commons on budget day. Pinned down, the whole thing dissolves, for it is ridiculous to specify the dominance of any one personality type in a free society of 67 million.
If anything, to be British is not to proscribe emotional or psychological traits. It is to comply with life in a multicultural liberal democracy. Or, if you’re in politics, it seems to be to fudge, to be incrementalist, not to move too quickly, and alas, it seems, to hate the rich – or at least to do your best job of seeming to. With the latter, Hunt hasn’t been altogether unshrewd: the cross-political national hissy fit that met Truss’s scrapping of the 45p top rate of tax suggested that the country really does unite in wanting those that do well to be punished. Which is sad, for under that philosophy, as Thatcher understood, the whole country loses out.
There is much throwing about of Lady Thatcher’s name in the present government, but there is little real engagement with her ideas. If there was, there would be an understanding that selfishness and support for the less fortunate are two sides of the same coin. To stifle the former is to stifle the latter; it is to ensure the country levels down. ‘People look to themselves first,’ said Thatcher. She didn’t mean that people, including high-earners, are therefore bad. On the contrary. She simply wanted to harness reality. ‘There is a living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate.’
Words, used badly, are cheap. When it comes to compassion, as Thatcher knew, you can tax it out of people, but you can’t tax it into them. And it definitely doesn’t make them British.
Politicians talking about what Britain’s values are is always about pulling wool over your eyes. Their idea of what the character of the nation is is always aligned with being submissive or supportive of whatever drivel they’re trying to get us to swallow. Calling it emotional blackmail is a great choice of words. “Support my policy or you’re not someone who belongs in our society” is emotionally manipulative.
Alright ebenezer, because Oil war spoils are going to serve everyone but BP and shell share holders while granny freezes.
And truss economics failed because she made the mistake any first year student
Studying macro-economics would make with text book neo-liberal idealism. she made her own bed with the chaos, volatility and exceptionally bad timing. Leaving your next gov no options. Hunt has no options other than to stabilise the market and appease the middle.
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Delivering his Autumn Statement on Thursday, Jeremy Hunt specified two ‘great national’ qualities: genius and ‘British compassion’. The Chancellor’s announcements made it clear what he was doing: raiding the incomes of the decently well off to fund benefits rises and protect pensions. Talk of our shared compassion then seems a bit off.
Politicians should exploit ideas of Britishness less, or at least do so less explicitly. They should focus on what Britain actually needs in order to be uniquely good in a British way. That isn’t hollow words for a population imagined to be at Key Stage One. It’s coherence: a decent economic model, a political philosophy, and a theory of how humans tick.
Most popular
Douglas Murray
Fifa has scored a spectacular own goal
Invoking a “great’ national trait or two during a war or a pandemic is patronising, but understandable. To do so on the British population now is wrong, especially from a chancellor. If you’ve just announced you will take thousands off millions of people and scythe off the ‘excess profits’ of energy firms, it is just insulting to tell the same people their innate British ‘compassion’ will sweeten the pill. And what about their great British ‘genius’? After that statement they’d be well justified in taking it elsewhere, especially when they learn, courtesy of a Telegraph investigation, that billions have been wasted by Whitehall on, to name a few items, vegan ice cream, Covid payouts to fraudsters, and a luxury villa in Naples. These are among expenditures that British ‘compassion’ may not stretch to.
It’s not just wrong for a chancellor to emotionally blackmail a nation while raiding its pockets. It’s also none of his business what the emotional make-up of Britons is, compassionate or otherwise. National character isn’t something to be wheeled out cynically and thrown back at people; it’s a delicate thing of porous edges that does not profit by being sized up and spat out in the Commons on budget day. Pinned down, the whole thing dissolves, for it is ridiculous to specify the dominance of any one personality type in a free society of 67 million.
If anything, to be British is not to proscribe emotional or psychological traits. It is to comply with life in a multicultural liberal democracy. Or, if you’re in politics, it seems to be to fudge, to be incrementalist, not to move too quickly, and alas, it seems, to hate the rich – or at least to do your best job of seeming to. With the latter, Hunt hasn’t been altogether unshrewd: the cross-political national hissy fit that met Truss’s scrapping of the 45p top rate of tax suggested that the country really does unite in wanting those that do well to be punished. Which is sad, for under that philosophy, as Thatcher understood, the whole country loses out.
There is much throwing about of Lady Thatcher’s name in the present government, but there is little real engagement with her ideas. If there was, there would be an understanding that selfishness and support for the less fortunate are two sides of the same coin. To stifle the former is to stifle the latter; it is to ensure the country levels down. ‘People look to themselves first,’ said Thatcher. She didn’t mean that people, including high-earners, are therefore bad. On the contrary. She simply wanted to harness reality. ‘There is a living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate.’
Words, used badly, are cheap. When it comes to compassion, as Thatcher knew, you can tax it out of people, but you can’t tax it into them. And it definitely doesn’t make them British.
Politicians talking about what Britain’s values are is always about pulling wool over your eyes. Their idea of what the character of the nation is is always aligned with being submissive or supportive of whatever drivel they’re trying to get us to swallow. Calling it emotional blackmail is a great choice of words. “Support my policy or you’re not someone who belongs in our society” is emotionally manipulative.
Alright ebenezer, because Oil war spoils are going to serve everyone but BP and shell share holders while granny freezes.
And truss economics failed because she made the mistake any first year student
Studying macro-economics would make with text book neo-liberal idealism. she made her own bed with the chaos, volatility and exceptionally bad timing. Leaving your next gov no options. Hunt has no options other than to stabilise the market and appease the middle.