Alarm Clock Heroes

Nick Clegg’s written an editorial for The Sun. 

What a pathetic piece of electioneering this is. There’s a by-election in Oldham East and Saddleworth tomorrow. It was caused by the previous result being annulled because the narrow winner, Phil Woolas (Labour), was found to have made false statements about his Lib Dem opponent by an election court. At that annulled election Labour got 31.9% against the Lib Dem’s 31.6%. Despite all that, it’s looking as though Labour are going to romp home. Hence Clegg’s desperate editorial.

First we have this ludicrous coinage ‘Heroes of Alarm Clock Britain’. It’s intended to immediately connect with people. I have an alarm clock, ergo I must be a hero. But it doesn’t feel heroic to wake up to an alarm clock. It feels annoying. I feel resentment towards it. Frankly, for Clegg to describe us as alarm clock heroes sounds dangerously close to a rich man taking the piss.

Second, there is an ugly attempt to divide us. We who are addressed are heroes because we are ‘people, like Sun readers, who have to get up every morning and work hard to get on in life’; ‘we are those who ‘want their kids to get ahead’. These terms of address and these virtues are extreme opaque (get on, get ahead); they might just as well refer to pushy, arrogant, selfish people as to saintly toilers for the good of all.

No more meat is put on the bones elsewhere. Who are these people? They are ‘hard-working’; they are ‘the backbone of Britain’. They are ‘prepared to roll up their sleeves and get Britain back on its feet’. They are ‘busy making this country tick’. What does any of this mean?

Oh I see what it means. It means we’re not THEM. THEY ‘want to rely on state handouts’; THEY ‘need politicians to tell them what to think or how to live their lives’. Ah, I see, THEY are feckless scroungers, criminals, asylum seekers, that lot. Bastards. I’m glad I’m not THEM.

Wait a second, we have a legal system. I have disputes with parts of it, but broadly I think it’s appropriate that the government institutes a series of legal principles, enforceable by the prison system, that tells us how we may live our lives. I don’t consider the laws against rape and murder an unwarranted intrusion on my magnificent freedom.

Ah, but you don’t need a politician to tell you what to think, do you, Dan? No, I certainly don’t. But who does? Who is Nick Clegg talking about? Who does he think he’s talking about? Who actually looks to politicians to provide the contents of their minds? No one, surely. It’s just a general way of othering people; it implies that out there, somewhere, are people unlike you; they are so lazy they don’t have an alarm clock, but instead loll in their fetid languorous beds well into the afternoons, waiting for politicians to fill their heads with ideas, and cascade banknotes into their grasping hands.

And here’s another thing. I rely on state handouts. I work in the university sector, which is still mainly state-funded. My salary is largely provided by the taxpayer. And I write plays that are mainly put on in publicly-subsidised places: I write for the BBC, for the subsidised theatre sector. I don’t believe a privatised university sector or a privatised theatre would provide much of an income, so yes I do rely on the state. Of course these are not handouts. What are? Disability benefits? Are they handouts? The lazy, feckless, chair-loving crutch-fetishists, do they get handouts. What about child benefits? The irresponsible, libidinous, condom-avoiding halfwits, expecting the state to hand cash to their ghastly spawn.

Oh no, hold on, he means the unemployed and probably asylum seekers. What are you going to do, Nick? Not give people who have fled torture, genocide, persecution any means to live? Are you going to allow the long-term unemployed to die of starvation? Or are you just othering them to pander to our prejudices? Whip us up into self-righteousness and resentment? Happily, I’m not someone who needs a politician to tell me what to think (and, even if I were, I wouldn’t start with you).

And why all this? Oh it’s because we’re in the ‘hole Labour left us in’. We’re still struggling with the ‘problems Labour left us with’. These are ‘Labour’s debts’. This has been repeated like a mantra since May.

It’s a classic rhetorical strategy. Bombard people with lies while still insisting on the listener’s independence. ‘Of course, I wouldn’t dream of telling you what to think about those lying, scrounging immigrants’. But let’s put a bit of pressure on this strategy. The cuts proposed by the Coalition are only estimated to bring the public finances back to where they were before the banking bail-out. They are intended to restore the status quo ante but no more. There’s a larger question about the ability of a country to live quite comfortably with debt but let’s just look at our recent history. I certainly remember that the Tories floundered when the banking crisis began; they had no idea what to do. They criticised the government; then they supported it; never, then or now, did they propose a coherent alternative policy to taking the failing banks temporarily into public ownership. On the other hand, it was Gordon Brown’s finest hour (yes, he did have one). He was recognised internationally as one of the few leaders with a grip on the crisis. What about the Lib Dems? Would Nick not have bailed out the banks? And does he believe that if he hadn’t bailed out the banks, we would be in a better position than we are now?

So how is this Labour’s debt? It’s a debt necessitated by the ignorance, greed and stupidity of the banking sector. Nick and David are agreed on the wisdom of the market. They didn’t call for greater banking regulation. They are part of a political system that accepted - and, as is perfectly clear, continue to accept - that governments should not interfere with the financial services industry’s divine right to make money. Nick, it’s your debt as much as anyone’s.

And then, though it’s almost too cruel to mention it, Clegg tries to rally support by talking about his tax plans about which ‘the Liberal Democrats made a promise to voters on the front of our manifesto’. Ah yes, the manifesto. That binding Liberal Democrat document. I’m not a politician, but if I were you, Nick, I wouldn’t want to remind people about the commitments you made in your manifesto.

Well anyway, glad to have got that off my chest. And all before sunrise too.