"The country"

On the Today programme yesterday Justin Webb asked Yvette Cooper: [do] “you think Jeremy Corbyn will keep this country safe?” (1’57” in).

From one perspective, the question is utterly absurd, because what is jeopardizing the country is not Corbyn but austerity. It’s plausible that this is killing tens of thousands of people by underfunding health services, driving some to suicide and contributing to a health crisis in deprived areas. And this is not to mention the underfunding of flood defences and the police that threaten harm to thousands.

Security policy is not the only way in which a government keeps its citizens safe. It also does so by health and welfare policies. Under the Tories, the latter are jeopardizing the country. To the extent that this is the case, Corbyn will increase the country’s safety by relaxing austerity.

In this sense, the question Webb should have asked is: is the country safe under the Tories?

Why, then, was his question even remotely plausible?

A benign possibility – which gains credence from the context – is that Webb was considering only external threats such as from Russia; he just forgot to add these words to his question. Maybe this exculpates him in this case. But I’m not sure it applies to everybody whose asking similar questions. The fact is that far more Britons’ health and safety are being threatened by austerity than by Russia or Islamist terrorists.

Perhaps there are two other things at work here.

One is a form of reification, which regards “the country” as an abstract entity comprising something other than its inhabitants. On this view, even minor attacks from outside threaten “the country” more than policies which kill thousands because they undermine the integrity of the nation.

It’s this reification that has allowed the right for decades to present leftists as unpatriotic. The fact that the left wants what it believes to be best for British citizens is not regarded as patriotism. Instead, its refusal to subscribe to myths of our glorious history (for example questioning the morality of the British Empire) and its reluctance to go to war are seen as attempts to undermine national pride. (In truth, the left has often not helped itself here).  

But there’s something else. For centuries, talk of “the country” has excluded the poor. C.B Macpherson wrote of 17^th century puritan attitudes that “the poor were not full members of a moral community...They were in but not of civil society.” (The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, p226-27.)  We see echoes of this today. When Tories tell us that “the country can’t afford” high welfare spending, they implicitly exclude welfare recipients from their perception of “the country.”

Such talk helps to equate the national interest with the interests of the rich: it is very easy to convince oneself that ones’ own interests are also the public good. Once you’ve done this, it follows that Corbyn is indeed a threat to the national interest and a traitor. Conversely, the fact that the Tories take thousands of pounds of Russian money does not at all bring into question their patriotism because, in defending the rich the party also defends “the country.”

The idea that Corbyn is unpatriotic or worse whilst the Tories are patriots rests upon a very questionable conception of what is ”the country”.

Another thing: Being neither a military man nor a newspaper columnist I am unqualified to speak of the merits or not of Corbyn's defence and security policies. Let's suppose though - arguendo - that these are weaker than the Tories. We then face a choice between thousands of deaths under the Tories or (barring talk of catastrophe which I find implausible) a handful more Skripals. If we are to be faced with this sort of trolley problem, I favour the latter.    

Comments

[Phil]

The Macpherson reference is fascinating. The underlying idea, I guess, is that the poor aren't going to be contributing - financially - to the community, so they don't really count as part of the community; if anything they're guests, dependants, liabilities of the community. To protect "the country", then, is to protect the owners of wealth, not the mere consumers. (This also reminded me of that odd phrase "man of substance", with its hidden double meaning - to have no "substance" (property) is implicitly to have no substance, to be insubstantial.) Corbyn represents quite as much a threat to that group and their self-perpetuation as he does to the nation's nuclear 'defences'.

[Nicholas Shaxson]

"Weebles wobble but they don't fall over." Remember that advert? They don't fall over because the weight is at the base. A top-heavy structure is less 'safe'.

In other words, well said.

[Dave Timoney]

Also worth noting that the reified country has long been associated with the non-urban and therefore with Tory dominance. Our weapons are meant to protect Constable's Haywain (as in Peter Kennard's satirical montage), not an inner-city tower block.

[Blissex]

Economic news are by convention reported from the point of view of investors and proprietors, and it is thus no surprise to me that "the country" is used as if it meant the “aspirational voters who shop at John Lewis and Waitrose” and their betters.
And the english elites are a network of intermarried friends/enemies who go to the same (fee paying) schools, universities, boardrooms, and seem to consider the servant classes as part of the natural environment, like the birds or the trees, and think that "England" means them.

T May as chairperson of the Conservatives said in 2002:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/oct/07/conservatives2002.conservatives1
«There's a lot we need to do in this party of ours. Our base is too narrow and so, occasionally, are our sympathies. You know what some people call us – the Nasty Party. I know that's unfair. ... We need to reach out to all areas of our society. I want us to be the party that represents the whole of Britain and not merely some mythical place called "Middle England", but the truth is that as our country has become more diverse, our party has remained the same.»

She was out of tune with her party: of course "the country" has not become more diverse, but those who are part of its environment have.

[Bill Posters]

The Today programme is ritualized theatre. English Kabuki.

What was Yvette Cooper doing on the show? Ostensibly she is there as the chair of the Home Affairs Select Commitee. Cooper's real purpose is to remind the audience the centre right of the labour party still exists and all may not be lost.

Whenever Cooper appears her support for Corbyn must be tested. Justin Webb must ask Cooper whether Corbyn should be leader of the Labour Party. Webb can't ask the question directly and Cooper can't just say Corbyn is hopeless. This is England everyone must be polite.

Your not meant to get any information from this exchange your just supposed to enjoy the performance. For reference Webb, Cooper and Corbyn are about as middle class as each other.

What I need at that time in the morning (especially after a session the night before) is some very loud Motörhead.

[Chris]

Thanks for that Chris - you put your finger on something I've been struggling to.

During the short period when the PM was trying to reintroduce grammer schools an interviewee on The Today Prog asked how people on sink estates would be able to escape such places without grammer schools. Why sink estates should exist or that some state schools should fail so badly was left unquestioned, it was only the potential solution of selective education for a fortunate few that was debated.

Implicit in the discussion was the assumption that there are those who by some cosmic misfortune were alloted to be born in the wrong class but could, with hard work, seek escape from being merely "in" and become "of" civil society. The poor are among us but not of us.

[Andrew Curry]

Re MacPherson: that was the division that split the New Model Army’s Putney Debates in 1647.

The radical Thomas Rainborowe: The poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he … I think it’s clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under.

To which Ireton, one of the New Model Army commanders, and therefore a pillar of the Puritan establishment, responded:
“the meanest man in England ought to have [a voice in the election of the government he lives under—but only if he has some local interest]. I say this: that those that have the meanest local interest—that man that hath but forty shillings a year, he hath as great voice in the election of a knight for the shire as he that hath ten thousand a year.”

I.e. that the property interest had to remain. Rainborowe was assassinated the following year.

Transcript here: https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/putney-debates-iretons-case

[Ben Philliskirk]

The physical security of the people within the UK would clearly be enhanced under Corbyn.

The security of the abstract entity known as 'the UK', the myth of which depends upon delusions of long-gone power coupled with the dubious ability to still blindly inflict mass destruction overseas, would fortunately be less safe in Corbyn's hands.

[Matthew lagden]

This is particularly galling because the defence community is profoundly angry with this government for (as they see it) underfunding defence while still posing as the voice of the military industrial complex. They rarely speak out (although retired officers are starting to) and there are real questions about what they are actually defending us from, but there is genuinely a feeling in defence circles that Corbyn wouldn't be any worse because at least his feelings are open. The tories talk strong on defence but have starved it of funding just like every other public service.

[Keith]

If May and BOJO are to be believed, not that anyone can believe anything they say, it follows from what they have claimed that under the Tory government another country namely Russia has committed an act of war on UK soil. Throwing out 23 oddbods with the automatic retaliation by Russia is a very weak response if this is what has happened. The question should be addressed to the Cabinet. Oddly british and american and european politicians have been slagging off Putin for years and managing to do nothing about him. May be the large amounts of corrupt money from the oligarchs in Russia, flowing west has had something to do with that? A fair proportion going to tory coffers in exchange for a tennis match with BOJO. Where has mogg sent his clients money? To a bank on a list of embargoed businesses. It is fortunate the Labour party is financed by ordinary working people is it not? Our country will be much safer and more moral with its leader as PM.