Scottish Labour: learned nothing, forgiven nothing.

I have an embarrassing admission to make: I rate one of President George W Bush's speech-writers. My social democratic sentiments may baulk at the conservatism he promotes, and we may share relatively few political values, but the Canadian-American political analyst, David Frum, is a sharp cookie.  

Frum has a bit of a tin-ear when it comes to his interpretation of British politics, but whatever my disagreements with him, there's undeniably a mind at work there, which is admirable irrespective of one's political divisions. If you are interested in your American federal politics, Frum's analysis of "why Romney lost" at the Policy Exchange UK earlier this year repays attention. 

Another one of Frum's favourite themes popped into my mind this week, unexpectedly, during Johann Lamont's interrogation of the Maximum Eck at First Minister's Questions in Holyrood.  Frum has helped to popularise the unnecessary wonky-sounding phrase of "epistemic closure" in American politics (or at least, introduced it to "Beltway" pundits).  Seemingly nicked from academic philosophy, in its political application, the idea refers to the effect, when a party and its supporters load themselves up into the echo chamber, slam the door shut behind them, and turn the key in the lock. Frum has the Tea Party dominated Republican caucus in the House of Representatives, and its increasingly eccentric political fixations, in mind.

Inside, all is warm and cosy. Dissenting voices are smothered into silence, or exile themselves from the stultifying fug of its unquestioned, and occasionally dangerously wrong, consensus. The common sense in the room, however uncommon it may be in the country, works its strange magic.  Everyone I know agrees with me, so surely everyone really agrees with me.

I've written about this phenomenon before, in the anti-Nat assumptions of the Oxford college high table.  Such closure is not limited to the right of centre, or to those suspicious of Scottish nationalism. Folk love newspapers and blogs which conform with their pre-existing beliefs (or, if we're talking about folk we disagree with, their prejudices).  If you and your colleagues envisage yourself as an idiosyncratic minority collective, little harm might be done. If, by contrast, your small knot identify yourselves and your opinions with those held by the whole body of the Plain People, the script for trouble composes itself. As one of the madder unsuccessful Republican senate candidates said the other year,  I'm not a witch. I'm you.

In its loopier manifestation, this can resolve into the belief that everyone agrees with me, even if, when given the opportunity, they decided not to.  When challenged, this argument sometimes transmogrifies into a second form: All the people that really count agree with me, even if ... er ... you know ... they didn't actually vote for me. We really won in some important, spiritual, non-real-world sense, while the real victor is a disreputable cheat whose legitimacy is always suspect.  Epistemic closure allows different definitions of success and failure to be applied.

In the United States, the ideological echo is furnished by the rhetoric of Talk Radio, poisonously partisan cable-news outlets, and the willingness of both to depart from ... um ... reality where the facts aren't comfortable to their ideological commitments.  There's no point in pelting folk inside this echo chamber with contrary evidence. Such data can always been shaken off as the lies brewed up by the "liberal media".  Put your unflinching faith in the priests and apostles of your own movement, whether or not they are unprincipled chancers, transparent hucksters or empty-headed reprobates. "Who're you gonna believe honey, me or your lyin' eyes?"

A parallel imperviousness to reality characterised one of Johann's flyaway lines at FMQs this week. She quipped:

"One would think that, having had a fortnight off, the First Minister might have had a think about doing his job properly. The First Minister would do well to listen to the lesson of Dunfermline. The people of Scotland want Scotland off pause; they want him to stop obsessing about independence, and for him to do his day job."

Now, we all know that Labour have been desperately pushing the line that "Scotland is on pause" under this SNP government, however unsuccessfully.  Eminently predictably, Salmond snarked back:

"First, I will address my two weeks off. Along with others, I devoted a huge amount of time during the past two weeks to helping to save Grangemouth, which is a key part of the Scottish economy. I am not quite certain what Johann Lamont’s role was in that, but I thought that her silence was meant to be helpful."

Whatever the observable reality, promote your agenda.  Whether or not the argument looks remotely credible to anyone else, press on with it. You smite for truth and goodness, whatever mere worldly facts disclose.  Even if Salmond was really busting the gut to save Grangemouth - or for the horribly cynical, even if he was only bursting the gut to appear to be trying to save the petrochemical facility - in the entombed Labour mind, the First Minister was really just out on constitutional manoeuvres, neglecting the country. Scotland on pause. You can't win with these people.

Cara Hilton's largely unreported victory speech in Dunfermline spoke for the echo chamber even more explicitly. Reading her preprepared remarks, Hilton suggested that the by-election represented an important waystation on Labour's journey of "reconnecting" with all Scottish communities, "rebuilding trust" in the party. A hard road, she recognised. But one to be trod, with Johann leading the way, like Moses in the desert. So much, so boilerplated. But she went further, hoping that this "reconnection" would mean that :

"... many more Scots will see Labour as the party that we have always been. The party that is on their side. Representing their best interests, aspirations and dreams for the future."

Being an instantly forgettable by-election speech, it is easy to miss just how hubristic and irresponsible this rhetoric is.  The problem faced by Labour, on Hilton's diagnosis, is not their own missteps, or errors, or mediocrity, but the people's loss of trust in the party that was always really on their side. The people misapprehended where their interests lay. If Labour is to win again, the people must change, not the party. Lamont's problems are entirely about communication, not about what is being communicated. That's the political lesson to take from the party's six doldrum years.  Remarkable.

The fatal danger of epistemic closure is that it lulls you into the belief that everyone else shares your - often quite eccentric and extreme - ideas, preoccupations and obsessions.  Memo just in: they don't.  That JoLa or her PR stooges still thought that they could get away with pitching such an incredible jibe Salmond's way speaks volumes. As Talleyrand said of the deposed House of Bourbon, sitting in vinegar, stewing, in defiance of the changed realities in the French Republic, "they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing." And forgiven nothing. 

A "Devolution distraction"?

Yesterday, Policy Exchange published a report entitled "The Devolution Distraction: How Scotland's constitutional obsession leads to bad government", composed by one Tom Miers. About the author, I can tell you very little. The document styles him thus:

After a career in finance and management consultancy, Tom Miers worked as Executive Director at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London. Between 2003 and 2007 he ran the Policy Institute, a Scottish think tank. He now acts as an independent public policy consultant specialising in Scottish issues.

However, it is no secret that the publishing London-based think-tank is avowedly Conservative in orientation, well represented by the cluster of Tory testimonials on its about us page. They describe themselves as:

... an independent think tank whose mission is to develop and promote new policy ideas which will foster a free society based on strong communities, personal freedom, limited government, national self-confidence and an enterprise culture.

I mention this only for background detail, you understand, better to situate an understanding of the author's case - not as a cunning attempt to ad hominem Miers' arguments into illogical oblivion.  A hasty scan of the report sketches a pretty slim (or in the alternative, paired down) argument, running only to forty-odd spacious pages or so.  The pamphlet has already been discussed or at least reported on by elements of the Toryesque press and commentariat. I've not read the piece myself yet, but I wanted to draw your attention to it. If I find it sufficiently riling or sagacious (or some exciting combination of the two), expect a more concerted dissection in due course. Here's an abstract of Miers' argument:

Since the Scottish Parliament was established in 1999, Scotland’s politicians have neglected to address the deep-seated social and economic problems faced by the country. This report calls for a new approach to politics in Scotland, based on honesty in measuring performance, radicalism in policy making and a generational truce on the constitutional issue.

You can directly access a digital copy of "The Devolution Distraction" here.