Sol Campbell—is the World Cup worth it? ISSUE 219 | JUNE 2014 JUNE 219 | ISSUE

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk JUNE 2014 | £4.95 How to save the Union DAVID MARQUAND HOW TO SAVE THE UNION Plus Nick Clegg, the lonely liberal EDWARD DOCX The truth about self-employment HAMISH MCRAE Nato chief: “we will not hesitate” BRONWEN MADDOX The death of the shelf WILL SELF Hand me the Booker prize LIONEL SHRIVER

Also Clive James, George Packer, Ben Macintyre, Lydia Davis, Alexander McCall Smith

Britain’s new E p14 classpoll divisions: results PROSPECT JUNE 2014 5 Foreword How to unite the kingdom 5th Floor, 23 Savile Row, W1S 2ET Publishing 020 7255 1281 Editorial 020 7255 1344 Fax 020 7255 1279 Email [email protected] [email protected] Website www.prospectmagazine.co.uk Editorial Editor and Chief Executive Bronwen Maddox Editor-at-Large David Goodhart Deputy Editor Jay Elwes Is this the last summer of the United Kingdom? In three Managing Editor Jonathan Derbyshire Arts & Books Editor David Wolf months’ time, the UK may surrender half its territory, with Creative Director David Killen Production Editor Jessica Abrahams not even a whimper. It would be too generous to credit the Digital Editor Serena Kutchinsky Assistant Digital Editor Josh Lowe Better Together campaign, alternately complacent and Editorial Assistant Chris Oldfield tentative, with even that level of decibels; even its name Publishing President & co-founder Derek Coombs captures its diffidence (what was wrong with “Best Commercial Director Alex Stevenson Together”?). The television news will airbrush Scotland out Publishing Consultant David Hanger Finance Manager Pauline Joy of the nightly weather charts, as it comically now does for Circulation Marketing Director Yvonne Dwerryhouse the Republic of Ireland. And the UK will finally have found Head of Sales a way to make real to the world—and itself—its shrunken Dan Jefferson 020 7255 1934 Account Manager influence and power. Tom Martin 020 7255 1934 Head of Engagement David Tripepi-Lewis Perhaps that is part of the reason for the quiet assent south of the border, Head of Partnerships and Events Adam Bowie Events Assistant Sara Badawi not just to the referendum but to the lack of campaigning for the Union. If so, Digital Consultant: Tim De La Salle it perhaps also springs from a likeable national trait: a lack of grandiosity or of Editorial advisory board David Cannadine, Clive Cowdery, AC claiming more than is fair. Or perhaps it is simple lack of interest, a shrug of Grayling, Peter Hall, John Kay, Peter Kellner, indifference—if our friends in the north want to go their own way, then let them. Nader Mousavizadeh, Toby Mundy, Jean Seaton Even so, it conveys a baffling passivity about the outcome. In agreeing to Associate Editors the referendum, was right that the pressure for independence Hephzibah Anderson, Philip Ball, Nick Carn, Tom Chatfield, James Crabtree, was not going to go away. But he was wrong to assume that the case for Andy Davis, Edward Docx, Ian Irvine, Sam Knight, Sam Leith, Emran Mian, Wendell staying united was so clear that it did not need to be made at all. And then, Steavenson, James Woodall the ambiguity of his own party strangled any clear message: torn between the Contributing Editors Anjana Ahuja, Anna Blundy, David humiliation of presiding over the dissolution of the union on one hand, and Edmonds, Helen Gao, Josef Joffe, Anatole Kaletsky, Michael Lind, Joy Lo Dico, on the other, the unspoken, siren lure of the natural Conservative majority in Elizabeth Pisani Westminster that would follow. Annual subscription rates UK £49; Student £27 What should the government have said—and what should it say in the next Europe £55; Student £32.50 three months? That there is a way to rewrite how the UK runs itself that does not Rest of the World £59.50; Student £35 Prospect Subscriptions, 800 Guillat Avenue, amount to granting full independence to its constituent parts—by constructing a Kent Science Park, Sittingbourne, me9 8gu Tel 0844 249 0486; 44(0)1795 414 957 more federal system to link them together. This is the case that David Marquand, Fax 01795 414 555 Email [email protected] historian and former Labour MP, makes here (p24). It would be a misshapen Website www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/subscribe federal system, as he acknowledges, with the English giant sitting amidst the far Cheques payable to Prospect Publishing Ltd. Subscription refunds must be made in less populous Scotland, and Northern Ireland. But a nation pragmatic writing to Prospect within four weeks of a new order or renewal, and are subject to an enough to run itself for so long under its unique constitutional arrangements administration charge of £15. No refunds are paid on quarterly subscriptions. could do that, if it wanted. And if it cared. There is a strong case for keeping the Union together, making The views represented in this magazine are not necessarily those of Prospect Publishing the offer to the regions that David Marquand has made. But it needed from the Ltd. Best endeavours have been taken in all cases to represent faithfully the views of all start to have been driven by more passion—and have aimed to stir up more anger, contributors and interviewees. The publisher fear and desire to keep the UK united—than the Better Together campaign has accepts no responsibility for errors, omissions or the consequences thereof. ever managed. If, after a campaign of strong advocacy, Scotland still voted for Newstrade distribution independence, there would at least be more reason to say with calm acceptance, Seymour Distribution Ltd 2 East Poultry Avenue, London, EC1A 9PT “Fine, that’s what they chose.” As it is, if the Yes vote wins, it will look more like Tel: 020 7429 4000 Images carelessness than courage on Cameron’s part—and a lost chance to redraw and Cover: Jonathan Hordle/REX improve the Union for the coming centuries. Cartoons by: Grizelda, Bill Proud, Tim Bales, Royston, Sue CK, PC Vey, Jonesy, Evans, Cowlin Additional design Jennifer Owens ISSN: 13595024 PROSPECT JUNE 2014 7 Contents June 2014

This month Features Arts & books 24 of Britain? 08 If I ruled the world 66 Winners and chumps alexander mccall smith The only way to save the Union. david marquand The truth about literary awards. 10 Recommends lionel shriver 12 Letters 68 The lure of the apocalypse Malthusian sensationalism lives on. clive james 70 In praise of war What explains the decline of violence? edward luttwak

32 Make your own work Self-employment is booming. Opinions hamish mcrae, bronwen maddox 14 Does class still drive British politics? 36 Interview: Nick Clegg peter kellner The lonely rationalist. edward docx 15 Interview: Secretary General of Nato bronwen maddox 42 Death of the shelf 16 Detroit’s pension blues Bare walls in the age of cloud storage. 72 You can’t ignore the bastard lynn parramore will self, andy davis James Joyce casts a shadow. 17 Letter from Beijing julian gough helen gao 76 Books in brief plus stephen collins’s cartoon strip. 18 Should we forgive mistakes? ac grayling Fiction 20 What if... Kim Philby had confessed? 78 Letter to the President.../ Judgement/ ben macintyre Learning medieval history Three very short stories by lydia davis

The Prospect duel Life 22 Is the World Cup a poisoned chalice? 48 Intoxicating conviction 80 Leith on life sam leith sol campbell vs simon kuper Edward Snowden’s mistakes. 80 Life of the mind anna blundy george packer 81 Matters of taste wendell steavenson 54 Blood and bones 82 Wine barry smith The cult of Marina Abramović. 82 DIY investor andy davis hephzibah anderson Prospect events 85 Join us at talks, debates, festivals

Special report: Infrastructure Endgames 87 barry r clarke 59 The money’s not the problem Enigmas & puzzles Politics is getting in the way 87 The generalist didymus mark dooley & dan wong 88 The way we were plus paola subacchi, mark fallon Western views of Turkey. ian irvine

WIN An iPad mini To celebrate the new Prospect app, we are offering readers the chance to win one of five iPad minis, worth £319 each (16GB with wifi). The iPad’s high-quality Retina display and 10-hour battery life will help you make the most of our digital edition. The first two iPad minis have already been won (see online). To be in with a chance THIS MONTH go to www.prospectmagazine.co.uk 8 PROSPECT JUNE 2014 If I ruled the world Alexander McCall Smith

Down with the bureaucrats

ere goes. The big and pressing issues would be dele- Department.” I saw a university lecturer described the other day gated (one can’t do everything, even with this sort of as the “lead” in a certain subject; I have also heard of students power). The issues of climate change and the world’s being described in a planning document as “units.” Orwellian financial system would be dealt with by a panel of doublespeak would be rooted out and exposed for what it is. experts.H Planning and architecture would be the responsibility Control of universities would be wrested back from the of Professor Christopher Alexander, author of the architectural bureaucrats and handed to those who would run them on col- classic, A Pattern Language, who understands humane architec- legiate lines. This would be a celebration of that endangered ture and would be given wide authority to demolish the inhuman concept: democracy. Similarly, I would hand the hospitals phallic symbols created by modernist architects (the buildings in back to doctors and nurses. Parking at hospitals would be free question know who they are.) New buildings would be on a human for employees, and for the seriously ill, rather than charged at scale, and relate to the other buildings near them. Big statements exorbitant rates. Matron would be reintroduced as a matter of of architectural ego would be discouraged. urgency. When we had matron, we had clean hospitals in which Now to the real business in hand: education and the arts. Edu- people slept in well-made beds rather than on trollies. Nurses cation is a good thing. You might think that this hardly requires actually nursed, rather than filled in forms. Matron would, of to be said, but there are plenty of people who view education as course, resemble the late Hattie Jacques in as many respects as a form of technical training designed to fit you for a job. It is so possible. Doctors would be left to act according to medical con- much more than that; the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom science. (Reactionary? No! Radical.) is an end in itself. It enriches our lives. And it should be within Not everybody should be urged to go to university. We would the reach of everybody who wants it. I would seek to reintroduce give great support for technical education in the form of appren- that great good that we had in the UK and that we somehow lost: ticeships. The dignity of these callings would be enhanced, and the grant system that enabled people to have a tertiary education people with technical skills would be admired more than those

© GRAHAM CLARK without ending up with massive debt. A graduate tax would pay for whose skill consists in moving money around. it: if you have an education cour- Teachers, too, would have their authority returned to them. tesy of the state then you pay Children would be taught grammar, and in particular encour- slightly higher income taxes aged to use the accusative case correctly and to put verbs in their throughout your work- sentences where possible. They would be told what a verb is. They ing life. That would not would be taught not to use the word “like” every 10 seconds. They be crippling—it would would be taught not to run alltheirwordstogether. This would probably be the cost of mean that when they got jobs announcing flights at airports peo- a cup of Starbucks cof- ple would be able to understand what they were saying. fee a day. Public broadcasting would undertake what it really should do, Universities would be which is to provide quality programmes of intellectual and artis- encouraged to behave like tic value. That would not preclude light-ish entertainment, but universities and re-intro- it would prevent the spending of public money on game shows, duce recognisable titles such reality television, and ridiculously high salaries for certain televi- as “Dean” and “Head of sion personalities. Audience figures would not be the standard of judgement: that is not what public broadcasting is about. I would protect the licence fee. The BBC is a great good, even if it has lost its way in some respects. I’m afraid that art colleges would face some scrutiny. It is very difficult for young artists to get training in drawing and painting because these subjects have been treated with derision by those in favour of conceptual art. As a result, most graduates of art colleges are incapable of drawing, which, as David Hockney has reminded us, is one of the basic building blocks of artistic creation. All of the above, it seems to me, are courses of action available to our current rulers. The ball is in their court, but I suspect we should not hold our breath. Alexander McCall Smith is the author of “The No.1 Ladies’ Detec- tive Agency.” His new book, “Fatty O’Leary’s Dinner Party,” will be published this summer (Polygon, £9.99) 10 PROSPECT JUNE 2014 Prospect recommends Five things to do this month

composer’s peak of wit and inven- Art tion—is not only its rarity but its endlessly attractive melodies and Peace Breaks Out! London and Gilbert & Sullivan-esque light- Paris in the summer of 1814 ness of touch. In typical operetta Sir John Soane’s Museum, from 20th style, the plot is very silly indeed. June When their pet parrot Vert-Vert In contrast to the procession of dies, the girls at the convent school events marking the centenary of of Saint-Rémy opt to replace him the start of the First World War, with hunky-but-dim Valentin, the the Soane Museum celebrates gardener’s apprentice. Cue much the glorious summer a hundred suggestive comedy and corrupting years earlier, when Napoleon was of innocence. defeated and what was hoped to A recent move to Wormsley be a lasting peace broke out all Park from the Garsington Opera’s over Europe. As architect and sur- original Buckinghamshire home veyor of the Bank of England, John has given the festival the loveliest Soane had been on standby to lead of natural settings. Framed in the the evacuation of the building, in A cariacature of a Briton in Paris in 1814, from “Peace Breaks out!” gorgeous folly that is Garsington the event of a Napoleonic invasion. Opera’s glass pavilion, this frothy Instead, after the Treaty of Paris, Over the next three years, as their Cowton, create a dance universe operetta should come into its own. he gave Britain’s ally Tsar Alex- youth evaporated, they became like no other. The mechanics of Alexandra Coghlan ander I a private tour of this mas- rebel insurgents. the body have never seemed more terpiece before leaving for Paris Director Talal Derki used sensuous, the interplay of skin to marvel at the deposed Emper- found footage, as well as spe- and light positively cinematic and or’s architectural innovations. cially shot footage, for his film, the cumulative effect of Cowton’s Theatre On view will be prints and paint- which won the Grand Jury prize at dripfeed electronica mesmeris- The Valley of Astonishment ings documenting the festivities Sundance this January. Unspar- ing. With additional music from Young Vic, 20th June to 12th July of summer 1814, some from the ing in bloody detail, intimate in Erik Satie and Armand Amar, The great director Peter Brook, museum, some on loan. There will moments of extreme suffering, it Maliphant extends his singu- 89 years old and still working out be drawings by Soane of Napole- can also be poetic. One memora- lar dance language to embrace of Paris, continues his association on’s Paris and a number of satiri- ble tracking shot follows a “safe” human/mythical elements that with the Young Vic with this inter- cal prints by French cartoonists corridor inside a ravaged build- can express beauty as easily as national co-production, which mocking the oafish British, who ing targeted by snipers. Makeshift violence. The powerful physique also involves theatres in , surged across the English Chan- doorways hacked between apart- of Dickson Mbi, lit by what looks Luxembourg, Marseilles, Athens, nel to inspect the defeated enemy. ments, marked by felt-tip arrows like a barcode, or the acceler- Bremen, Geneva and Amsterdam. Like many in Britain, Soane on the wall, link one abandoned ated grace of Thomasin Gulgec in This new work, co-directed nursed a secret admiration for the domestic space to another—news- the Nijinksy homage “Afterlight with Brook’s longstanding col- upstart Emperor. Amongst items paper still on the coffee table, (Part One),” are just two reasons laborator and translator, Marie- of Soane’s Napleonica on display dressing-gown by the bed. The to watch. The return to the stage Hélène Estienne, is billed as a will be portrait busts, a rare early film depicts a ghost town popu- of Maliphant himself is another. kaleidoscopic journey into the painting of Napoleon aged just 27, lated by armed young men like Neil Norman workings of the human brain and an ornate gold ring containing Basset and Ossama, whose ambi- (based on neurological research a lock of Napoleon’s hair. tions were not for war. and true stories of linguistic and Emma Crichton-Miller Francine Stock Opera visual synaesthesia) with refer- ence to the ancient Persian poem Vert-Vert The Conference of the Birds. Garsington Opera Festival, 7th June So Brook is revisiting two key Film Dance to 27th July periods of his creative life: his The Return to Homs Russell Maliphant Company: Still If you thought there was only one work in the 1990s with the neurol- On release from 27th June Current dead parrot in the history of popu- ogist Oliver Sacks which resulted As a documentary, The Return to Sadler’s Wells, 5th to 7th June lar culture then think again. Years in The Man Who, one of his mas- Homs is not balanced journalism. Russell Maliphant’s collection before Monty Python, Jacques terpieces; and a great adventure It is a partisan glimpse inside Syr- of works showcased in Still Cur- Offenbach was writing Vert-Vert of the 1970s, when he decamped ia’s third largest city, sometimes rent is a distillation of his choreo- for Paris’s Opéra Comique—a to Africa with a hand-picked called the “capital of the revolu- graphic philosophy. The synthesis giddy, whimsical fable about the ensemble (including Helen Mir- tion.” In the spring of 2011 when of expressive dance and martial death of a beloved parrot. ren) and used the text of The Con- the Syrian government launched arts is seamless, knitted together During a prolific career, Offen- ference of the Birds as a dramatic its attack on Homs, 19-year-old by the extraordinary lighting bach composed some 100 operet- allegory on a symbolic pilgrim- Basset was the charismatic goal- designs of Michael Hulls. In a tas, few of which make it into the age. Brook never looks back, so keeper for the Syrian national series of solos, duets and trios— regular repertoire of contempo- this won’t be a re-hash of old pro- football team; Ossama was qui- including the legendary “Two”— rary opera houses. The appeal of ductions but a distillation of a life- eter, an intellectual interested in Maliphant and Hulls, together seeing a fully-staged production time’s work.

COURTESY OF THE TRUSTEES OF SIR JOHN SOANE’S MUSEUM OF SIR JOHN SOANE’S OF THE TRUSTEES © COURTESY media, a pacifist with a camera. with musical collaborator Andy of Vert-Vert—written in 1869, at the Michael Coveney 12 PROSPECT JUNE 2014 Letters [email protected]

Unwritten constitution at such a high cost. lary of German are more like those The case for an unwritten constitu- This means that the job of the of English and easier for children to In fact tion gets rather short shrift from police is only one of containment. learn. The grammar is difficult, but Linda Colley (“Time for a UK con- The job that needs far more fund- an introductory course could avoid stitution,” May), who notes that a ing with both human and financial that and concentrate on words Geoffrey Howe, Chancellor of the boom in written constitutions be- capital is that of providing more similar to English. After a year, Exchequer from 1979-83, named gan in 1720 and persisted as new routes out of gang culture, of the they would have learnt quite a lot, his dog Budget. nations were constructed and colo- type that Karl has found. improving their confidence. Huffington Post, 18th March 2014 nies became independent states. We would also be wise to read Arthur Evans, retired French and What she does not say is how many across to the similar pattern emerg- German teacher More than 40m passports are listed of those constitutions were dis- ing in the radicalisation of young as missing on Interpol’s database. carded or twisted into shapes their Islamists: they too seek to belong. David Tall made some interesting Bloomberg, 11th March 2014 creators would not have recognised. Rather than just condemning, we observations about the role of Eng- The great advantage of the un- also need more obviously to offer lish and Chinese in students’ learn- The record for a human completing written constitution is its capacity routes out of radicalisation, before ing of maths (“Why are the British a Rubik’s cube is 5.55 seconds. to adapt to a fast changing world. more of them die in Syria or bring bad at maths?” May), however, my A robot can do it in 3.253. Ed Slavery was abolished in Great death back with them. view is largely different. Chinese Miliband takes 1.5 minutes. Britain by a single legislative act. Ian Blair, former Metropolitan mathematics reached its peak in BBC, 28th April 2014 Catholics were emancipated. Good Police Commissioner the 14th century. It then declined, race relations and gender equality, partly because Chinese mathema- Seals can use their whiskers to admittedly still in the process of be- ticians, who did not know English, detect the hydrodynamic trail of fish ing fully realised, were established Taking back the internet had to use characters such as swimming up to 600 feet away. by a series of legislative steps. In “All the world’s an app” (May) (Jia) and (Bing) (equivalent to Discover, 30th April 2014 A weakness of written constitu- Jacob Mikanowski rightly laments a,b,c... in English mathematics) and tions, meanwhile, lies in the inter- the binary nature of most technolo- (equivalent to x for equations) The number of schools teaching pretation. It is hard to believe that gy commentary: either the internet to express numbers and unknowns Latin in the UK has almost doubled the founders of the US intended is making us smart or it’s making until the late 19th century. After since 2000. 726 state schools and the Second Amendment—the right us stupid. Mikanowski gets close that, textbooks started using a, b, 449 private schools now teach it. to bear arms—to enfranchise all to charting a third path, but falls c… and x, y, z. Chinese symbols and Metro, 11th April 2014 adults to carry lethal arms every- back on concerns about the erosion characters are not used in modern where, but that is where we are. of interiority and introspection that maths. Moreover, as Tall noted, The , dating However, Colley makes one very have long been staples of technolo- Singapore students are among from around 1096, is older than the powerful argument for a written gy criticism. He calls on scholars to the top performers, but they learn Aztec empire, which got going only constitution in the UK—the con- produce more nuanced accounts of maths in English—apparently not a in 1325. sequences of the Scottish indepen- how digital tools have transformed barrier to them learning it well. Smithsonian, 11th October 2013 dence referendum. A Yes vote will the way we experience the world. In all high-performing Asian necessitate a new constitutional In contrast, I think we need countries, students overall show Waitrose is stocking settlement on borders, trade, fi- a return to political economy. strong motivation towards learn- “bubbleberries”—a small fruit that nance, and the structure of parlia- We need to take into account the ing. Parents place more value on it looks like a strawberry and tastes of ment; a No vote will likely lead to market forces that manufacture and have higher expectations. The bubblegum. Fragaria moschata were further devolution. Determining compulsive usability and addictive quality of teachers and teacher popular in the 19th century before what taxes should be raised at design. Our networked media is training is also commendable, falling out of fashion. Union level—to match remaining shaped to serve private profit, not and students spend more time on Metro, 30th April 2014 powers at that level—and what the public interest. That’s the real maths work. These are the factors should be raised at national level, story the polarised internet debate that really matter. Roald Dahl invented 283 words, will demand a constitutional settle- leaves out. Lianghuo Fan, professor of maths including ‘chiddler,’ ‘frobscottle’ and ment which could, and perhaps Astra Taylor, author, “The People’s education, Southampton University ‘scrumdiddlyumptious.’ should, be written down in law. Platform: Taking Back Power and Gizmodo, 1st May 2014 Shirley Williams, Lib Dem peer. Culture in the Digital Age” To read the full letter go to www. The value of unread books prospectmagazine.co.uk In “In fact” (May), you note that The wrong language most British households have read French should continue to be fewer than half of the books they Gangs: the way out taught in British schools (“The own, as if it were some kind of scan- Edward Docx’s fine article on Lon- duel” May), but not as the first dal. But unread books are in a fun- don gangs (“Walking with Karl,” foreign language. The sounds and damental respect more valuable May) contained many truths but everyday vocabulary are so differ- than read books, containing infor- the most significant was that be- ent from English that children are mation that is additional to what longing to a gang fulfils a need to often put off and give up trying to one has already sought to absorb. find emotional support and peer es- learn a foreign language. This is A household without unread books teem. The need to belong is an over- at least one of the reasons for our is a household running without any riding human desire, especially as reputation as poor linguists—we additional epistemic resources. teenagers: the tragedy of gangs is are learning the wrong language. Rupert Read, reader in philosophy, that fulfilment of that desire comes The sounds and basic vocabu- University of East Anglia 14 PROSPECT JUNE 2014 Opinions

Peter Kellner Does class still drive politics? It’s how we see ourselves—not how much we earn—that shapes our party loyalties

As so often, some of the sharpest political the nature of party loyalties. Today, using (Only 1 per cent called themselves upper insights come not from the sage columnists the same yardstick as in the 1960s—whether class.) As far as I know, no equivalent data of our upmarket papers but from comedy the job of the head of each voter’s household exists for the 1950s or 60s, but it is hard to writers. They have noticed—and exploited— is essentially manual (“C2DE”) or non- believe that the equivalent cross-over figures some of the social class cross-currents manual (“ABC1)—the class gap is far nar- would have been anything like as high. that conventional analysis has tended to rower. In YouGov’s survey for Prospect of Does this matter? Isn’t social class a relic overlook. more than 3,000 electors, Labour enjoyed a from the era of factories, coal mines, ship- Fifty years ago, things were simpler. The 1 per cent lead among ABC1 voters, and an yards and steelworks, of little relevance working classes voted Labour while the 11 per cent lead among C2DE voters—a class today? One reason why it deserves attention middle classes voted Conservative. In 1967, gap of 10 points. However, this fails to tell the is people’s party loyalties. When we ana- Peter Pulzer, the political scientist, wrote: full story. Class may no longer affect votes as lyse party support by the social class people “Class is the basis of British party politics; powerfully as it used to—but its influence is give themselves, we find a much larger gulf all else is embellishment and detail.” He had far greater than conventional polls suggest. between “middle” and “working” class vot- good reason to say this. Labour had won the As well as ascertaining their conventional ers than between ABC1 and C2DE voters. general election a year earlier, taking more class position, we asked people whether they Among those who describe themselves as than 60 per cent of working class votes. It regarded themselves as “working class,” “middle class,” the Tories lead Labour by 16 attracted only one in four middle class vot- “middle class” or “upper class”. It turns out per cent—while Labour is 23 per cent ahead ers, who preferred the Tories by more than that almost one in three gives the “wrong” among “working class” voters. This time two-to-one. answer: nine million ABC1 adults consider the class gap is a huge 39 points. The link Today, Britain’s economic and social themselves working class, while five mil- between occupation and politics may have structure is completely different; and so is lion C2DE adults say they are middle class. fractured, but that between people’s self-

Agreement Stop MPs Britain has Restore the Big company Britain is Nobody The with the immigration genuinely try changed for death bosses should better o should earn unemployed following into Britain to do the the worse penalty for care more as a member more than could get statements for the next best for their over the past murder of a about their of the EU £1m a year work if they few years constituents 20-30 years police o cer sta than not tried harder (Net agree 72 = agree minus disagree) % 46 46 32 27

Middle 16 16 7 12 8 class

Working -5 class -8 -7 -16 -25 -30

Raise energy Britain’s Trade unions Most children Private Rather than Parliament Most people Decriminalise or transport railways have done in Britain will companies spend more should scrap on welfare possession of costs to help should be more end up better allowed a on public the law benets are in small tackle climate nationalised harm than o than their bigger role in services, cut allowing ‘gay genuine amounts change good parents running state taxes marriage’ need of cannabis 49 schools and 32 NHS hospitals

6 1 3 1 0

-6 -11 -12

-27 -31 -27 -29 -33 -40 -42 -52 PROSPECT JUNE 2014 OPINIONS 15 perception and party support still matters. working-class voters wanted more nation- of business leaders. Working-class voters are To dig deeper, we combined “objective” alisation, strong trade unions, ambitious far more critical of their motives and their and “subjective” social class data, to create public spending programmes and higher ability to command million pound-plus sal- four groups, represented here (with admit- income taxes (which largely came from aries. Concerns for equity (or, if you pre- tedly insulting stereotypes) by characters people with middle-class jobs). That was fer, the politics of envy) still have a class from British comedy. The first two represent why they voted Labour. The middle classes dimension. But even these can be regarded people whose “objective” and “subjective” generally had little enthusiasm for any of as cultural more than ideological matters. status are the same: Captain Mainwaring, these things (although, until Margaret However, on two other cultural issues, there the banker from Dad’s Army who seeks to Thatcher, few wanted to turn the clock back is no class gap at all: middle and working- assert his status (ABC1 and middle class); to small government laissez-faire) and voted class voters are equally divided on decrim- and Alf Garnett, the character from Till Conservative. inalising the possession of small amounts Death Us Do Part (working class and proud). What are today’s political dividing lines of cannabis; and majorities of both groups The other two represent the cross-over between the classes? We listed 17 policy want to keep the new law permitting gay groups: Dave Spart—Private Eye’s middle- ideas and asked people whether they agreed marriage. class revolutionary, who regards himself as or disagreed with each. We were looking for This analysis helps to explain one of the working class; and Hyacinth Bucket—the the extent to which self-described middle- big political trends of the past 60 years—the snob with working-class roots in Keeping Up class and working-class voters differ. declining dominance of the two big, ideolog- Appearances. The widest gulf concerns immigration. A ically-rooted parties, and the rise of the Lib- We find that the politics of the two cross- big majority of working-class voters want it eral Democrats, the Greens, the Scottish over groups are driven far more by their stopped completely; middle-class voters are National Party—and, now, Ukip. subjective than their objective social class. evenly divided. Working-class voters are also At the time of writing, the votes in the Indeed, if anything, their attachment to significantly more likely than middle-class European Parliament elections have yet to their favoured party is slightly stronger than voters to distrust MPs; to think that Britain be cast; but, for a second successive election, those whose “subjective” and “objective” has changed for the worse in the past 20 to it looks as though the combined Labour and locations are the same. Thus the Tory lead 30 years; and to want the death penalty for Conservative vote will be less than 50 per among Britain’s Hyacinth Buckets is higher those who kill police officers. cent. True, this is a second-order, low-turn- than among its Captain Mainwarings, while The notable thing about those dividing out election in which people feel able to cast Labour does slightly better among the Dave issues is that they are all cultural rather than a protest vote without risk. But it under- Sparts than the Alf Garnetts—which, I sus- ideological. On the latter, class divisions are lines how Labour and the Tories have strug- pect, is precisely what the creators of these far narrower. Big majorities on both sides of gled to keep pace with the changes in British characters would predict. And it will come the class divide support renationalisation of society. as no surprise to them that Britain’s Alf Gar- Britain’s railways and oppose a bigger role Those who believe that either social class netts—the C2DE folk who regard them- for private companies in the NHS. Both still matters in the traditional way, or doesn’t selves as working class—provide more fertile groups are divided on the trade-off between matter at all, are both wrong. Social class is ground for Ukip than any other group. taxes and public spending, on whether trade still a significant factor in British politics, So social class still plays a significant unions have done more harm than good, and but the nature of that factor has changed role in British politics; but how? Half a cen- on whether most recipients of welfare bene- utterly. In this, as in so much else, the past is tury ago, class experiences, loyalties and fits really need the money. truly another country. attitudes were rooted in ideology. Most There are bigger differences on the issue Peter Kellner is President of YouGov Interview: Anders Fogh Rasmussen Nato “will not hesitate” Has the Ukraine crisis given Nato back its sense of purpose?

“We will not hesitate to take further steps” aims if countries continued to slash their (ISAF) in Afghanistan, and the US-led coa- to protect Baltic and other eastern Euro- defence budgets, he said. “We can’t afford lition in Iraq, made any of its main mem- pean states, the Secretary General of Nato to disarm in Europe, while seeing Russia bers keen to commit forces. told Prospect, as unrest in eastern Ukraine rearm and mass troops on the Ukrainian However, Russia’s effective annexation of continues to build. “We have from now border,” he added. “The cuts must stop.” the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine has reig- until September”—the next Nato summit, Rasmussen, entering his last six months nited the sense of threat on Europe’s bor- to be held near Newport, Wales—to agree at the head of Nato, has clearly found the ders, and prompted a flurry of responses new measures, on which work has already Ukraine crisis useful in sharpening Nato’s from Nato members. “We are focusing on begun, he added. sense of purpose and urgency at a time of the defence and protection of our allies,” Calling again on Russia to withdraw its swingeing defence cuts in most of its mem- said Rasmussen, who as Prime Minister of troops from Ukraine’s borders, and to stop bers. A quarter of a century since the fall Denmark from 2001 to 2009 took a robust supporting armed separatists in eastern of the Soviet Union, the north Atlantic mil- approach to liberal intervention, commit- Ukraine, Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that itary alliance has repeatedly had to defend ting its forces to the coalition in Iraq at an he had seen “not the slightest evidence” itself against those who say it has lost its early stage. Nato has deployed AWACs sur- that Russia had started to do so, despite way—or at least some of its funding. It veillance planes over Poland, sent ships to its promises. “On the contrary,” he added, has suffered from the loss of the enemy it the Baltic, and increased the naval presence calling President Vladimir Putin’s visit to was created to resist, and from US resent- in the Black Sea, he said. “More ships at Crimea, “which is occupied territory,” a ment at carrying the lion’s share of the bur- sea, more planes in the air, and more exer- “provocative” move. den. Nor have the struggles of the Nato-led cises on land.” With Ukraine itself, “we have But Nato would be unable to fulfil its International Security Assistance Force agreed military-to-military cooperation 16 OPINIONS PROSPECT JUNE 2014 including defence reforms and modernisa- Europe or the US. And Nato has “learned term rise in defence spending.” He was glad tion.” Nato “will not hesitate to take further the hard way” from the experience. “We to see, he said, that the UK still spent more steps,” he said, although de-escalation, and have more combat ready troops, more than 2 per cent of GDP on defence and had then a political or diplomatic solution, has tightly connected; we are stronger than dur- “full confidence” that it would continue to to be the first goal. ing the Cold War.” Within ISAF, he points be a leading contributor of Nato forces. He is adamant that Nato’s decision at out, forces from 50 nations have worked But many threats—such as that of a the 2008 Bucharest Summit to allow Geor- closely together. “It is a paradox that Nato nuclear arms race in the Middle East—were gia and Ukraine to become members still is much stronger than before [the Afghan better approached by diplomacy than force, holds good, provided that they fulfil the campaign] despite the defence cuts.” he said. And Nato members faced new chal- conditions. That, he says, is “for Ukraine “The cuts have had an impact,” he lenges, as in North Africa, and threats from to decide.” Its government under President acknowledges. The US defence budget cyber and missile attack. The September Viktor Yanukovych had turned its back on could fall from 4.7 per cent of GDP in 2011 summit would consider all of these, as well the offer, choosing a policy of “non-alliance” to around 2.7 per cent of GDP, although it as aiming to reach new commitments on partly to avoid provoking Moscow. remains by a long margin the largest force Eastern Europe. Nato now urgently needs to reassure in the world. “I feel confident that the US The Celtic Manor hotel is popular for the Baltic states and others on its eastern will stay committed to Euro-Atlantic secu- such international gatherings, being easy fringe such as Poland and Romania that the rity.” He pointed out that “we have seen the to secure, standing on a natural cliff over- alliance is fully committed to their defence. US act very fast in relation to Ukraine—it looking an M4 access junction, but Ras- The summit, to be held at the Celtic Manor was the first to deploy aircraft and to do air mussen is dismissive of its other world-class hotel in the first week of September, “might policing.” But Europe lacks observation feature: its golf course used for the 2010 include” a development of new defence drones and air-to-air refuelling, and “I urge Ryder Cup. “My patience is not sufficient to plans and “a proper deployment”, he said. the allies to fill these gaps.” Meanwhile, do golf,” he said. “Four or five hours go by, “We have from now until then to prepare. Russia has increased its defence spending and what have you got done?” It is possible We have to be ready to respond, wherever by 30 per cent since 2008. that Ukraine has given him the tools to make there is a threat against our allies.” “I know the challenge very well,” he some progress in four or five months in what Pressed on whether Nato would count said. “These [western] countries are also has eluded the organisation for years: renew- the 13-year Afghan mission a success, he struggling to cut deficits,” and they were ing and strengthening its own defences, and offered that “we have achieved what we right to do so, he added, as “indebted coun- with that, its sense of why it exists. came for,” arguing that in this time, terror- tries are more vulnerable.” But “I am still Interview by Bronwen Maddox, Editor of ists had been unable to use it for attacks on urging governments to prepare for a long- Prospect

Lynn Parramore Detroit’s pensioners sing the blues Bankrupt and demoralised, the Motor City has ground to a halt

Detroit, the once-gleaming metropolis whose sions, in part through a “grand bargain” to ber that Wallace Turbeville of the think roaring engines and sonic genius shaped the prevent the sale of city-owned art. tank Demos calls inflated. Orr’s first pro- modern landscape, is about to add another For civilian retirees—the librarians, posal was to slash pensions by between 6 entry to its legacy, summed up in the soul- sanitation workers, engineers, healthcare and 26 per cent, triggering a public debate crushing word: bankruptcy. Almost all the workers, and other employees (excluding about whether or not the people being asked car plants of the 1950s have closed or moved teachers, who are part of a state-adminis- to pay for the city’s problems were the ones away and the population reduced by more tered system)—the deal is a 4.5 per cent cut in who had created them. Americans, like their than half. In July 2013, the city filed for bank- annual pensions and the loss of cost-of-living counterparts elsewhere, had already watched ruptcy, its debts estimated at $18-20bn. adjustment increases. Police and fire service innocent people pay dearly for the 2007-08 The largest American city ever to go retirees, who do not receive social security, financial meltdown, while financial institu- bust has passed into a stage of naked dread: can keep their full pensions, but cost-of-liv- tions got special protection. Was it going to stripped bare of the trust on which democ- ing increases will drop. happen yet again? racy depends. Confidence in social institu- The Michigan constitution forbids this, Detroit’s pensions are not lavish: police tions, money managers, elected officials, stating that public pensions are a “contrac- and firefighters get an average of $30,000 and fellow citizens is fading fast. A deep dis- tual obligation” that cannot be “diminished per year, while civilian pensioners get about quiet is spreading over the rest of the coun- or impaired.” But Judge Steven Rhodes $19,000, plus social security, which averages try as the question of who will pay the price declared that federal bankruptcy law trumps $15,000 per year. Despite well-funded prop- of Detroit’s decline is decided. Today, it’s the state law. A ruling that many believe is a piece aganda that paints a picture of bloated pen- city’s pensioners who sing the blues. of legal legerdemain which may run afoul of sions and overcompensated public workers Recently, more than 32,000 Detroit city the 10th Amendment of the US Constitution, across the US, research compiled by Ali- workers and retirees opened their mailbox to which protects state sovereignty. There’s a cia Munnell, Director of the Center for find a ballot and a painful choice. They have make-it-up-as-you-go quality to the Detroit Retirement Research at College, until 11th July either to accept reductions to proceedings, but soon the city will establish shows that lower level public workers get retirement benefits they once believed to be precedents that others will follow. about the same wages and benefits as simi- guaranteed by state law, or refuse them and Kevyn Orr, the emergency manager lar private sector employees, while those at risk deeper cuts. A majority must approve appointed by Rick Snyder, the Republican the higher levels make less. Cases of overcom- the deal if the city is to secure $816m in state Governor of Michigan, reckons that Detroit’s pensation exist, but they are not a big factor and private money pledged to shore up pen- pensions are underfunded by $3.5bn, a num- in underfunding. PROSPECT JUNE 2014 OPINIONS 17

Many experts conclude that Detroit’s that areas with pension problems tend to cities and states may flee to the private sec- decline was a matter of lost revenue caused have high rates of corruption and that big tor. Schoolchildren and businesses that rely by the Great Recession, a disappearing money politics, increasingly driven by Wall on a well-maintained public sector may end tax base, declining state aid, and the city’s Street, often determine how pensions are up suffering. debt to Wall Street when swaps deals managed and allocated. Detroit is the canary in the coalmine of went sour. The pensioners had little to do One possible outcome of Detroit is a America, a case that will change views of with it. public sector brain drain, as workers with the sanctity of contracts and who gets pro- Robert Johnson of the Roosevelt Insti- higher skills think twice before signing con- tected by law (AIG executive bonuses—yes; tute points out that pension underfunding tracts that are worth little when times are librarian pensions—no). The fault lines of is not as widespread as media accounts sug- tough. Though teachers will not be affected American democracy have been exposed, gest, but confined to a few states, such as Illi- by Detroit’s bankruptcy, the precedent of and trends towards instability and inequality nois and Kentucky, and cities like Chicago reneging will likely impact them elsewhere may be worsened by the time Detroit’s fate is and Detroit, where the norm is poor govern- (this is already happening in Chicago). Those decided. Get ready for more, in Chicago and ance and unreliable public officials who mis- who educate America’s children, engineer its even far beyond America’s borders. manage funding with risky investments and increasingly complex public works, adminis- Lynn Parramore is Director of the New Economic accounting tricks. Thomas Ferguson of the trate sophisticated databases, and perform Dialogue Project at the Independent Media University of Massachusetts, Boston, notes the legal and healthcare work needed to run Institute

Helen Gao Letter from Beijing Widespread prejudice against outsiders “is the saddest thing about us Chinese”

Last week, when I returned to my parents’ three-bedroom apartment next door. Occa- “Waidiren,” or “people from out of apartment after a trip to the US, I noticed sionally I ran into them in the lift. We chat- town,” is a common phrase in Beijing, where the door of the neighboring apartment, usu- ted about their work and about Beijing (“I’m the 21m population includes eight million ally kept slightly open, was shut. The muffled getting used to the smog, but my skin always migrants from other provinces. They are chatter that normally drifted from behind feels dry.”) separated from local residents by the hukou the door had turned to silence. “The girls This amiable arrangement continued system, a household registration status that had to leave,” Dad explained. “The families until a few weeks ago, when a man from denies them full access to local health care upstairs and downstairs wrote a joint letter downstairs knocked on my parents’ door, services and their children free public school- to complain about them.” asking Dad to sign a letter of complaint. ing. The policy has attracted much criticism Half a year ago, three dozen young “They’ve been very loud,” he gestured at in recent years, generating momentum for women moved into the building, which is in next door. “But they don’t even use mobile reform in key cities. Less discussed, however, a posh neighbourhood in northwestern Bei- phones around here,” Dad said. “Anyway, we is the casual discrimination they encounter. jing. Wearing red uniforms, their hair tied also suspect they brought cockroaches into Vast and diverse as China is, mass migra- back in buns, they worked at a local 24-hour the building,” the man went on. “Those wai- tion is a relatively recent phenomenon. It hot pot joint, and slept in bunk beds in the diren are dirty.” was set off by Deng Xiaoping’s economic 18 OPINIONS PROSPECT JUNE 2014 reforms in the 1980s, and picked up speed in prefer guys from Beijing than elsewhere,” a also bringing the topic of regional discrimi- the 1990s, as coastal cities transformed into friend muttered over a cup of bubble tea at nation to the fore. One post on the popular metropolises, tempting people across the McDonald’s. “Otherwise, all his out-of-town social network Weibo the day after the March country with career opportunities. Migrants relatives would want to visit all the time, and knife attack seemed to strike a chord, being from Sichuan, Hunan and Shandong crash at our house.” Another friend, who has retweeted 94,000 times: swarmed into Beijing and Shanghai, turn- been in a steady relationship for years, also “After you see more of the society, you will ing the once-homogenous cities into melting has her qualms after visiting her boyfriend’s realise: those from Xinjiang don’t always bran- pots of dialects and customs. This has not led relatives in Shanxi province for the first time. dish a knife; those from Henan don’t all have to an outbreak of open-mindedness among “They are not from Beijing,” she sighed. sticky fingers; not all Cantonese eat every- locals, who readily fall back on stereotypes “Perhaps I shouldn’t be expecting too much.” thing, and the Sichuanese are not all addicted about outsiders. People from Henan, a prov- Out of all regional groups, perhaps none to mahjong; some people from Dongbei are ince in central China, suffer a reputation for is as stigmatised as the Uighurs, a Tur- shy, and some Shanghaiese are easy to get being untrustworthy; anyone from Guizhou kic-speaking Muslim people from China’s along with; Beijingers don’t really speak with and Shaanxi is probably poor and backward; western region of Xinjiang. Widely seen as a pompous air; and Tibetans aren’t always while the men from Dongbei—an area that cunning and violent, these prejudices have picking fights. Come on, we are mature covers northeastern China—are said to be become even more pronounced in recent adults, yet we observe this world through gangsters who beat their wives. months, following a number of terrorist assumptions and biases. That, I believe, is the These perceptions haunt the lives of non- attacks by Uighur separatists. In March, saddest thing about us Chinese.” locals in big cities, who experience prejudice eight knife-wielding men in the southwestern In the thousands of comments that fol- in numerous ways, from the unexplained city of Kunming killed 29 people at a railway lowed, people applauded the observations rejection of job applications to unrequited station, and left over 100 injured, and there and added their own. “I have a confession to love. Recently, I have found myself at a few have been several attacks since then. make,” said a Sichuanese at the end of a long school reunions, listening to confessions These incidents have directed public discussion thread. “I don’t play mahjong, and from female friends about their relation- attention to the growing tension between don’t even understand the rules.” ship dramas and criteria for suitors. “I much Han Chinese and the Uighur minority, while Helen Gao is a journalist based in Beijing

AC Grayling Not every mistake is a foolish one Should we still listen to ?

We can be the prisoners of our mistakes, able basis does not deserve to be listened to. tion of risk. A perpetrator of a mistake has especially if we do not learn from them; but Are they right? It depends. There are dif- a known negative record. Is it not rational to when we do learn from them we can be their ferent factors at work in the matter of mis- act accordingly, by withholding trust? To do beneficiaries. Which do we most tend to be? takes, even calamitous ones. At one end of otherwise is to allow hope to triumph over No doubt we all wish the latter. We console the scale there is incompetence, at the other experience (as Samuel Johnson said of sec- ourselves that to err is human, and that, as there is bad luck. In between there might be ond marriages). In relatively inconsequential George Bernard Shaw once remarked, it is one or more of inexperience; unforeseen cir- things this might not matter too much. But better to make mistakes than to do nothing. cumstances; pressures of various kinds; an in affairs of state? Of war and peace? Shaw’s point does not hold without excep- assortment of motives some of which have In Blair’s case one might be inclined to tion; it depends on the nature of the mistake. the effect of clouding the vision or distorting think that his experience, both negative and Inadvertently leaning on the button that fires the judgement. Can one conclude that some- positive, and what he has seen and done the nuclear missile is not preferable to having one is permanently untrustworthy because since, might give him an entitlement to be stayed in bed that day. Some mistakes teach of a mistake unless one has looked at the cir- heard. He is not asking to be Prime Minis- lessons that come too late to apply. cumstances of its making? ter again, so the case is not quite parallel to In the larger spheres of life—politics and Compare it with how we think about peo- mistrusting a mistake-perpetrator with a sec- government, international affairs—it is less ple who have served a prison sentence. We ond go at the same thing. On the contrary: easy to regard mistakes as learning oppor- say they have paid their debt, and we hope you might think that the views he holds now tunities for the perpetrators. If government that they will be reformed by the experience, on aspects of the sequel to his earlier actions ministers start a war, get economic policy 90 or at least disincentivised against repeating are all the more worth noting, precisely for degrees wrong, attempt reforms in health- it. Can someone never recover from being the that reason. care, education or the armed forces in ways perpetrator of a mistake? In fact, is there not If we turn inwards and reflect on our own that turn out to make things vastly worse, a presumption that—unless sheer incapac- mistakes and the fallibilities that prompt we are naturally reluctant to entrust them ity is to blame—the perpetrator is less rather them, we are sure to hope that we will be with big responsibilities again. That is part of than more likely to repeat it? allowed second and even third chances; that what elections are for. If we never forgive and excuse, never allow we will meet with generosity when we err. It Recently, Tony Blair made an outspo- second chances, we are not only being very has been said that the saddest of all words ken speech about the dangers posed to harsh, we are losing the opportunity to bene- are “it’s too late.” Not wishing to hear them global stability by militant forms of political fit from what someone might have learned. If said to oneself is a reason for being diffident Islam. Among those who think that he made mistakes pave the road to insight, if mistakes about saying them to others. For after all, as a calamitous mistake in going to war in the are better tutors than always (and sometimes the great Cicero pointed out: not every mis- Middle East are those who think his judge- by accident) getting things right, then not take is a foolish one. ment should never again be relied on. A man giving second chances is a lost opportunity. AC Grayling is Master of the New College of the who takes a nation to war on such a question- On the other hand, there is the ques- Humanities 20 OPINIONS PROSPECT JUNE 2014

...Kim Philby had confessed? Prospect’s counter-factual column, this month by Ben Macintyre

In 1977, some 14 years after he fled to Mos- compromised beyond repair, but others hand, MI6 would have gone back to busi- cow, double agent Kim Philby gave a lecture were still in play—a full confession would ness as usual, congratulating itself on hav- to KGB officers at The Centre, Soviet intel- have enabled both MI6 and the CIA to carry ing weeded out a wrong’un, a rogue traitor. ligence headquarters. The lecture, deliv- out damage limitation. Instead, by holding out and refusing to ered in English, ranged widely over Philby’s Philby’s confession would have meant confess, Philby opened up a gulf between long and astonishing career as a communist identifying his fellow Soviet spies, includ- MI5 and MI6, and ensured that when the mole within MI6, but its thrust was a piece of ing Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross; it truth did finally emerge a decade later, the heartfelt advice on a specific aspect of spy- would have revealed the full extent of Soviet effect was doubly calamitous, prompting a craft: the dangers of making a confession. penetration into western governments and mole-hunt within the secret service, a cri- What, Philby asked rhetorically, should establishments; it would have exposed sis of confidence within British intelligence, a spy do if he is interrogated by an enemy Soviet recruitment methods, spy-craft and and deep chill in relations between London intelligence service? Should he reveal all? personnel; it would have stopped, before it and Washington. Should he clam up? Should he seek to con- started, the public hue and cry for the Third But for all his pontificating to the KGB fuse his interrogators by laying a false trail? Man, the Fourth Man, the Fifth Man, and about the importance of resisting interroga- Philby was emphatic: “Any confession so on... tion, Philby did confess. In January 1963, he involves giving information to the enemy. It was confronted in Beirut by his old friend is therefore—by definition—wrong.” “What should a spy do if and MI6 colleague, Nicholas Elliott. After a He knew what he was talking about. long, brutal duel, Philby produced a written From 1951, when he first came under suspi- he is interrogated by an confession, a mixture of truth, lies and half- cion, until 1956, when he was officially exon- enemy intelligence truths. He said he had stopped spying for erated by Harold Macmillan, Philby was service? Should he reveal the Soviets in the 1940s, which was a lie. But repeatedly interrogated by MI5 in an effort he admitted enough of the truth to ensure to force him to confess. The security service all? Should he clam up?” that if he ever set foot in Britain again, he even brought in William “Jim” Skardon, a would face the full weight of prosecution. fabled practitioner in the art of interroga- A confession would have put the Anglo- Then he vanished. tion, who conducted almost a dozen sepa- American intelligence relationship back on Philby never admitted to the KGB that rate interviews with the suspected spy. an even keel, placated FBI chief J Edgar he had told Elliott anything. But they had Philby did not crack. He batted back Hoover and given Soviet intelligence a their suspicions. That, and the ease with every accusation, denied every shred of cir- bloody nose. It would have saved the Mac- which he managed to get away from Beirut, cumstantial evidence, and stuck to his claim millan government, already rocked by scan- probably explains why he was never made a that he was a loyal servant of the crown dal, the acute embarrassment that ensued hero of the Soviet Union, and treated with being unfairly hounded by McCarthyite when he defected. considerable distrust through his 25-year witch-hunters. Eventually, Philby’s pursu- But if Philby had confessed, we would exile in Moscow. ers gave up the chase. almost certainly never have heard of him. When he stood up in KGB headquarters But what if he had confessed? How The entire mess would have been swept and proclaimed that every agent should fol- would his story, and our world, be different, under the carpets of Whitehall; Philby low his example and never confess, he was if Philby had decided, instead of denying would not have been prosecuted, but shu telling another in a long life of lies—and at everything, to spill the beans? fled off into obscurity, and told to keep his least some members of his audience knew it. Some of the bloodshed he caused might mouth shut. The defections of Burgess Ben Macintyre’s books include “A Spy Among have been prevented. Many of the opera- and Maclean would have been dismissed Friends”, “Double Cross”, “Operation Mincemeat” tions he leaked to the Soviets were already as aberrations. With Philby’s confession in and “Agent Zigzag” (all Bloomsbury)

Read more at www.prospectmagazine.co.uk

secret of their scandal-proof l ECONOMICS David Hale have killed God but society l FEMINISM What has explains why the US is back in appeal still needs faith, says Alasdair happened to the women’s business and says that interest Craig rights movement in China? rates will rise l BOOKS Marina asks Jessica Abrahams Warner on fashion, l WORLD We need more than l WORLD It’s time for the feminism and why selfies and hashtags l SCIENCE The Longitude world to “adopt” Turkey’s fairytales matter to bring back the Prize is a pointless talent jailed journalists, says Nigerian schoolgirls, show of science, says Philip Serena Kutchinsky l RELIGION Science may says Noo Saro-Wiwa Ball

l POLITICS Josh Prospect’s digital subscription is just £26.99 for a year. Enjoy our interactive app, online exclusives Lowe goes on tour with and the archive. Visit prospect.subscribeonline.co.uk and enter code JUN14. Ukip to discover the 22 PROSPECT JUNE 2014 The Duel Is the World Cup a poisoned chalice? Do the costs of hosting it outweigh the benefits?

NO YES Sol Campbell Simon Kuper © GEOFFREY SWAINE/REX, IMAGE BROKER/REX SWAINE/REX, © GEOFFREY

To describe the World Cup as a “poi- and everyone has the opportunity to host it. been looking for it for about 25 years. NO soned chalice” for the host nations is It is important that countries such as Bra- The reason is that the things you buy for to ignore the fact that its value goes beyond zil have the opportunity to show what they a tournament—shiny stadiums, roads to the economic—it brings people and nations can do on the world stage. Brazil’s spend- those stadiums, lots of security—are rarely together. It’s also a fantastic platform from ing could go over budget—the total cost is essential for normal life. Yes, the World which to spread the message that racism now forecast to be around £7bn—but so Cup has forced Brazil to upgrade its sta- and homophobia in sport are wrong. did the spending for the 2012 Olympics in diums. But about half of these 12 new or I’m not denying that it costs a huge refurbished venues will become white ele- amount of money to host the World Cup “What the World Cup phants when the World Cup ends. The one but Brazil currently has the seventh larg- in Brasilia, for instance, seats over 70,000; est economy in the world, is rich in natu- gives back to the host but no local club regularly draws more ral resources and has a population of over nation is immense—you than 1,000 spectators. Other than stadi- 198m people. It is a nation that loves foot- can’t quantify the feel- ums, Brazil has built hardly any infrastruc- ball and has a strong tradition of excellence ture for the tournament. in the game; this event has forced them to good factor it creates” There are bigger issues here. You’re upgrade their stadiums and ensure they arguing that developing countries have a maintain a world-class standard. It has London. The popular mood might be tem- right to host World Cups. But surely their also made it essential for the Brazilian porarily negative in Brazil as a result of this citizens have a more important right to government to improve the nation’s infra- overspend, as it was in the run-up to Lon- basic needs? Lots of Brazilians still don’t structure. Brazil is supposed to be this new don 2012, but once the first ball kicks off have enough to eat, and their schools and country coming out and showing the world and the Brazilian team start doing well, hospitals are mostly awful. how powerful they are. I believe that host- the mood will change. What the World Cup I agree: life isn’t just about money. As ing the World Cup will, in the long term, gives back is immense—you can’t quantify Stefan Szymanski and I showed in our be a huge benefit to Brazil’s economy and the feel-good factor it creates for the host book Soccernomics, hosting tournaments global status. nation. does seem to boost national happiness. The If Fifa was scared of putting a strain on UK is probably rich enough to blow £9bn the economies of developing countries then I respect your arguments Sol, but I on the fortnight of fun that was the London the World Cup would only ever be held in YES can’t agree. You say that in the long Olympics. But I wish Brazil would increase mainland Europe, America, and possibly in term, hosting will be a “huge benefit” to Brazilian happiness by giving its poorest certain parts of the Middle East and Asia. Brazil’s economy. Well, if that benefit exists, people the basics first. This is the World Cup—everyone competes economists haven’t found it, and they’ve You say: “Brazil is supposed to be this PROSPECT JUNE 2014 THE DUEL 23 new country coming out and showing the More broadly, we need to rethink host- hosting the World Cup should help them world how powerful they are.” I just don’t ing. Politicians must stop pretending that achieve this. see the benefit of Brazil strutting the hosting boosts the economy, or increases “world stage” like some character from a national glory. I’m not sure what national I agree that the World Cup is a great 19th-century comic opera. Nor do most glory means to very poor people. If Brazil’s YES thing. It’s the event that comes clos- Brazilians: according to the latest survey governments had said, “Hosting a World est to uniting the planet. It makes people by Datafolha, the Brazilian pollster, 55 Cup is like hosting a party. It costs money, happier. per cent of them think the World Cup will but we’ll have fun,” at least that would have And precisely because it is a great bring “more losses than benefits to Brazil- been honest. thing, it deserves a better preparation and ians in general.” aftermath. Even if now we have a brilliant “According to one month of football, it will have been pre- I appreciate Simon’s point that the ceded by years of complaints by Brazilians NO Brazilian government should be estimate, Brazil’s total about wasteful spending and alleged cor- building hospitals and schools, but for a public spending on the ruption. The 2022 World Cup in Qatar is country with such a vast population this is set to be preceded by a full decade of reve- a huge task, and one that is likely to cost tournament would be lations about alleged bribery and ill-treated more than £7bn. Brazil is rich in natural enough to pay their social immigrant workers perishing while build- resources and until recently was experienc- ing stadiums. And as for the aftermath of ing rapid economic growth—they just need welfare bill twice over” these events: when the Wall Street Jour- to adopt a less protectionist stance and nal checked in 2010, 21 of the 22 venues open themselves up more to foreign invest- Uefa, the European football authority, built for the Athens Olympics of 2004 were ment. But it’s not the World Cup’s respon- isn’t naming a single host for Euro 2020, unused. sibility to bring about this type of social because it doesn’t want to land one coun- Let’s have some standards for hosting: and economic change. Where it can help is try with the expense. Instead there will we need fewer and simpler stadiums; no in exposing Brazil’s problems to the world’s be 13 host cities. Fifa needs a new model more white elephants; host governments media in an unprecedented fashion. too. It could impose a maximum number should be made to enact proper labour Simon’s claim that “half the stadiums of stadiums—seven or eight, say. After all, laws; and they must stop lying to their pop- will become white elephants” is flawed nobody watches the World Cup for the ven- ulations about supposed economic benefits. because there is an obvious solution—diver- ues. Let’s hope Brazil is the last poor coun- I’d like to end this by saying, “Fifa should sify what they are used for. Take Wembley try to get stuck with enormous costs while tell us exactly what happens to all the bil- Stadium—it is used for everything from the Fifa pockets almost all the profits. lions that it takes in from TV and spon- Champion’s League final to rugby events sors,” but then I really would sound like a and pop concerts. They should do the same NO While I respect Simon’s argument, utopian dreamer. A less shameful hosting with stadiums across Brazil. he risks losing the true meaning of process strikes me as perfectly feasible. The current mood might be slightly dis- an international sporting event like the Sol Campbell is a former Premier League illusioned, but this is because Brazil is also World Cup by reducing it to facts and fig- and England footballer. “Sol Campbell: The preparing for the 2016 Olympic Games— ures. He’s also forgetting about the fans— Authorised Biography by Simon Astaire” staging both events so close together has all they want is to watch their country do (Spellbinding Media) is available now put a lot of pressure on their emerging well in, and maybe even win, the tourna- Simon Kuper is a columnist for the Financial economy. But if they weren’t in this posi- ment. They want a fantastic show. Times and co-author of “Soccernomics” tion they would have no impetus to sort It is true that Fifa pockets a lot of the (HarperSport) out their infrastructure and economic profits from the sale of television and issues. The World Cup has forced Brazil to marketing rights, but when you consider Is the World Cup a poisioned modernise. how many people watch the World Cup chalice for the host nations? Tell us around the globe you can understand why your view at You say the money being spent the sponsors are keen to be involved—the prospectmagazine.co.uk/theduel YES on the World Cup wouldn’t go far brand exposure is unbeatable. We just need towards paying for healthcare and educa- to make sure that the profits from the event tion. According to Futebol Nation, the new are put back into football. book by the football historian David Gold- The idea of spreading out the responsi- blatt, Brazil’s National Court of Auditors bility for hosting the World Cup is not new— anticipates that the total public spend- South Korea and Japan held it together ing on the tournament would be “enough in 2002. That could increase to a maxi- money to pay the entire country’s annual mum of three, maybe even five countries, Bolsa Familia [social welfare] bill twice but 13 is too many. I would also give those over.” He says 2014 is “the most expensive countries 12 to 16 years to prepare [cur- World Cup ever.” rently it’s seven years]. If there were no You also advocate diverse uses for Bra- significant progress in the first four years, zil’s stadiums. That’s what the previous then Fifa could re-allocate it to a nation host, South Africa, wanted to do. But it that has existing facilities, such as the UK turns out there aren’t many international or Germany. rugby matches or Beyoncé concerts you But I am confident that this will be can stage in a provincial town. Even in a memorable and colourful World Cup, Cape Town, there are calls to tear down even if the run-up has been a bit of a roll- the loss-making, pointless World Cup sta- ercoaster. In the future I’m sure Brazil dium. That’s the future for Brazilian cities would rather be known as the powerhouse “Forget about it Goliath, I’ve decided to like Manaus and Natal. of Latin America than a developing nation; attack you online instead” 24 PROSPECT JUNE 2014 Features A federal UK? 24 Working from home 32 Nick Clegg interviewed 36 Self on the shelf 42 Watching the watchers 48 The artist is present 54 United States of Britain? It is the only way to save the union david marquand

ying on the desk in front of me as I type is my pass- not before.) But for the marriage between James IV of Scot- port. The cover is an elegant confection of maroon land and Margaret Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII of Eng- and gold. “” proclaims the first line, land, Margaret’s grandson, James VI of Scotland, would not in golden capital letters. Beneath, slightly larger have inherited the English crown, and the British state might golden capital letters add the words: “United King- never have come into existence. Had Austria defeated Prussia Ldom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.” Beneath that, also at the battle of Königgrätz, instead of the other way around, in gold, are the arms of Her Britannic Majesty, Queen Elizabeth there would have been no German empire, no Third Reich and II. At the top of the inside facing page are the words “European probably no German Federal Republic. Had the Duke of Bur- Union.” Below them are two lines, translating that term into gundy, Charles the Bold, beaten off the depredations of the the two Celtic languages of Great Britain, Welsh and Scottish French crown in the 15th century, a powerful Burgundian state Gaelic. Then come the words, “United Kingdom of Great Brit- might now dwarf a puny France. Had Ferdinand of Aragon ain and Northern Ireland.” Below them come, once again, their and Isabella of Castile not married, there would have been no Welsh and Scottish Gaelic equivalents. On the penultimate Spanish state. inside page of the passport, alongside an unflattering photo- The confusion that now engulfs the UK’s territorial constitu- graph and below my full name, are the portentous words, “Brit- tion can be understood only against that background. The refer- ish Citizen.” endum on Scottish independence called by the Scottish National The message is subtly, I almost said slyly, postmodern. It is Party government has provoked extraordinarily vituperative and also remarkably European. I am, my passport tells me, a Brit- insensitive attacks on the very idea of an independent Scotland ish citizen. But that is not all I am. I am also a citizen of the from all and sundry: George Osborne, Danny Alexander, Ed European Union, bearing the rights guaranteed to EU citizens Balls and David Cameron, with Mark Carney and José Manuel by virtue of the European Convention on Human Rights that Barroso bringing up the rear. They have all warned Scottish vot- all EU member states are bound to accept. I am represented in ers of the horrors that will engulf Scotland should they have the the directly elected European parliament, as well as in the Brit- temerity to vote for secession from the UK. They remind me of ish House of Commons. And thanks to the devolution of impor- King Lear’s famous threat “to do such things, what they are yet tant powers to the non-English nations of the United Kingdom, I know not, but they shall be terrors of the earth.” British citizenship itself is a far more complicated matter than Like Lear’s threat, the warnings delivered by Osborne and it used to be. I am Welsh by origin, and my wife and I have just company tell us more about the warners than the warned. Deep acquired a flat near , my native city. Before long, we shall in the sub-conscious of English politicians and commentators be entitled to vote in elections to the Welsh assembly or Senedd. lurks an unspoken, but profound incomprehension about the This is typical of modern Europe. All over the continent, nature of the non-English peoples of the UK. South of the bor- ancient ethnicities are emerging from under the carapace der and east of Offa’s dyke England represents normality; the of the familiar European “nation state.” For Wales and Scot- non-English are assumed to be would-be English, or even Eng- land read Catalonia, Sardinia, Galicia, Lombardy, Corsica, lish in disguise. The notion that the Welsh and Scots are not just the Basque country, Andalusia and Flanders. To make sense of non-English, but happily and contentedly non-English seems this, it is important to remember that the allegedly “national” eccentric to the point of perversity. Partly because of this, the states of Europe are, in many cases, artificial: products of terms “British” and “English” have been almost interchange- dynastic marriages and the contingencies of battle rather able for English people. When Kipling asked, “What do they than Abraham Lincoln’s “mystic chords of memory.” (The know of England who only England know?” he had Britain in mystic chords sounded after the nations came into existence, mind. When the Scottish émigré, Thomas Carlyle talked of the “condition of England question” he could equally well have David Marquand is the author of “Mammon’s Kingdom” (Allen Lane) called it the “condition of Britain question.” In his magnificent PROSPECT JUNE 2014 UNITED STATES OF BRITAIN? 25 © LONDON NEWS PICTURES/REX © LONDON The Union Jack projected onto Parliament during the Olympics: “If Salmond loses the independence referendum, there will be an urgent need to hammer out an alternative to Westminster absolutism” 26 UNITED STATES OF BRITAIN? PROSPECT JUNE 2014

1941 polemic, The Lion and the Unicorn, George Orwell called for parliament of Great Britain. If Dicey was right (and he was) the a “very English revolution,” but it is clear from the context that guarantees of Scottish exceptionalism given in 1707 were worth- by “English” he meant “British.” less: the Scots had been sold a pup. These deep-seated attitudes help to explain the widespread But at this point, the story takes a strange twist: Dicey’s doc- English failure to understand the logic of the SNP’s search for trine of legislative parliamentary supremacy is not British; it is independence and, on a deeper level, to remember how and English, quintessentially English. For Enoch Powell, the great why Scotland became part of the UK in the first place. It is a prophet of High Tory English nationalism, it encapsulated the long story, but the central fact is clear. As the Oxford politics very essence of English nationhood. In a beautifully crafted, professor Iain Maclean has emphasised, the Treaty and sub- if slightly mad St George’s Day speech, he compared it to the sequent Acts of Union of 1707 flowed from a bargain between “sacred olive tree” of ancient Athens. Like Athenians returning the two sovereign and independent Kingdoms of Scotland and to the ruins of their city after it had been sacked by Xerxes, he England (which then included Wales). The bargain was just declared, the present generation of the English had come home that: a bargain. It was not a diktat. It was made because the from years of imperial wanderings. Having returned, it had dis- ruling bodies of the two nations thought it was in their inter- covered an unexpected affinity with earlier generations whose ests. England secured its northern frontier, ruling out any rep- effigies were to be found in England’s country churches. Sup- etition of the “auld alliance” between Scotland and France; the pose they could talk to us, he asked, what would they say? This Scots accepted the English law of succession to the throne, rul- is his answer: ing out a Jacobite succession; the Scottish and English par- liaments were merged; Scotland became a junior, but richly One thing they assuredly would not forget, Lancastrian or rewarded partner in what was now the British empire. At the Yorkist, squire or lord, priest or layman; they would point same time, the continued existence of Scotland’s separate legal to the kingship of England... and that sceptred awe in which system and established church was guaranteed. These institu- Saint Edward the Englishman still seemed to sit in his own tions preserved the memory of independent Scottish statehood chair to claim the allegiance of all the English. Symbol yet and provided an enduring focus for a distinct Scottish identity. source of power, person of flesh and blood, yet incarna- Scotland, in other words, voluntarily joined a union with tion of an idea; the kingship would have seemed to them England. I cannot see any reason why it would be ipso facto as it seems to us, to embrace and express the quality that is wicked or shocking or improper for Scotland now to decide that peculiarly England’s: the unity of England, effortless and unconstrained, which accepts the unlimited supremacy of “Constitutionally speaking, the crown in parliament so naturally as not to be aware of it. UK is England writ large. The erhaps because he was ethnically Welsh, Powell was laying it on a bit, but he put his finger on an exposed Scots thought certain crucial nerve of the British polity. The Dicey-Powell doctrine demands had been guaranteed runs directly counter to the implicit Scottish con- Pception of popular sovereignty set out in the Declaration of in perpetuity under the Acts of Arbroath of 1320. The text of the declaration is worth ponder- ing. If Robert the Bruce “should give up what he has begun, and Union... They had not” agree to make us or our kingdom subject to the King of Eng- land or the English,” it proclaims, “we should exert ourselves it no longer wishes to remain a member of the union concerned: to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own rights that the bargain was, in fact, one-sided and has not delivered, or and ours.” (Note the “our” and “ours.”) The premise is that the at least no longer delivers, the goods that the negotiators of 1707 sovereign Scottish people should determine the future of their thought they were getting. country. This implicitly democratic conception lingered on in In sober fact, the guarantees given to Scotland in the Treaty the minds of politically and constitutionally conscious Scots, and Acts of Union rested on extremely shaky foundations. Eng- but as a principle of government it didn’t survive the union. lish constitutional lawyers could never bring themselves to Constitutionally speaking, the UK is England writ large. The accept that, in guaranteeing them, the settlement of 1707 had Scots thought certain crucial Scottish demands had been guar- sought to entrench them in the constitution of the new Brit- anteed in perpetuity, but according to the Dicey doctrine they ish state. In one of the most resonant sentences ever penned by hadn’t been; in fact, they never could have been. By an extraor- an English constitutional lawyer, the Oxford jurist Albert Venn dinary sleight of hand, the English doctrine of the “unlimited Dicey insisted that the “doctrine of the legislative supremacy supremacy of the crown in parliament” was imposed on the of parliament,” as he called it, was “the very keystone of the unconquered Scots, as well as on the conquered Welsh and the constitution.” None of the “limitations alleged to be imposed partially conquered Irish. In calling the independence referen- by law on the absolute authority of parliament,” he added, had dum, the Salmond government has rejected the Dicey/Powell “any real existence.” It followed that no parliament could bind doctrine of unfettered parliamentary sovereignty in favour of its successor. The Act of Union was no exception; logically there the ancient Scottish doctrine of popular sovereignty. could be no exceptions. Indeed, with joyous glee, Dicey showed Against that background, the SNP case for Scottish inde- that significant provisions of the Act of Union—one laying it pendence takes on a new colour. The central point concerns down that professors at Scottish universities should subscribe EU membership and its implications for Scotland. As the Scot- to the Presbyterian Confession of Faith and another prohibit- tish government points out, under devolution it has—and will ing lay patronage in the Church—were repealed by the sovereign continue to have—“no direct influence over EU decisions.” 28 UNITED STATES OF BRITAIN? PROSPECT JUNE 2014

The UK government does not—indeed cannot—pay due regard implied by that splendid trio. Mutatis mutandis the same is true to distinctively Scottish concerns in the endless round of nego- of Scotland. tiations and compromises that are the stuff of EU politics and But, ever since Mrs Thatcher crossed the threshold of No 10 governance. Since Scotland is subsumed in the UK so far as EU all UK governments, irrespective of party, have been in thrall to politics are concerned, there is no mechanism by which distinc- the imperatives of what Philip Bobbitt, the legal historian and tive Scottish concerns can be brought to bear in the EU legis- philosopher, has called the “market state.” These imperatives lative process. By definition, this is equally true of Wales and have not only violated the underlying assumptions of Scotland’s Northern Ireland. A Labour victory in the next election would political culture; they have also trampled on the religious tradi- leave matters as they are. The sovereign London government tions with which that culture is intertwined. Scotland’s religious would still control the UK’s negotiating stance; the mere fact traditions are Roman Catholic and Calvinist. Both reject the that the party composition of it had changed would make no dif- Hayekian market individualism of Thatcher and the watered ference to that brute fact. down version of it that prevailed under Blair and Brown. Two particularly egregious Thatcherisms stank in Scottish nostrils: “The political and social forces her dictum that no one would remember the Good Samaritan if he hadn’t had the money to give effect to his good intentions; that made the SNP Scotland’s and her notorious “sermon on the mound,” in which she insisted that since Christ chose to lay down his life, freedom of choice governing party, and lie behind was the essence of Christianity. its decision to hold a What if no fundamental change is made in the UK consti- tution? Probably—but not certainly—Salmond will lose the referendum, won’t go away” referendum. However, that won’t be the end of the story. It is worth remembering that champions of independence have only At this point, enter federalism. In a federal United Kingdom, got to win once; opponents have to go on winning every time this would no longer be true. The constituent states of the feder- the question comes onto the political agenda. The political ation—Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England—could and social forces that made the SNP Scotland’s governing play the role that the German “Länder” play at the moment in party and lie behind its decision to hold the independence the Bundesrepublik. They would be deeply involved in EU policy- referendum won’t go away. Sooner or later, if the UK constitu- making. The UK government’s position would be hammered tion remains unchanged, there will be another demand for inde- out in intra-state negotiations and bargaining; the state govern- pendence and another referendum. If the choice is once again ments would have a presence in Brussels, making sure that the between independence and the status quo, I find it hard to see British government stuck to the compromises made in the intra- how any self-respecting Scot could vote against independence. state process. And if, as would be logical, the mouldering archa- For, as my old boss might have said, almost all ism known as the House of Lords were replaced by an upper the objections which have been made to independence fall well house on the lines of the German Bundesrat, which represents below the level of events. They breathe the spirit of a pettifog- the Land governments, the states would be able to block any EU ging accountant, lacking in what the first George Bush called decisions that ignored their concerns. “the vision thing.” Only one objection needs to be taken seri- This is not just abstract theorising. The current UK govern- ously: Barroso’s claim that, if Scotland became independent, ment is Eurosceptic, not to say Europhobic. Its chief objectives it would be difficult, perhaps impossible for her to join the EU. in EU negotiations are to water down the “federalist” element in But that is a matter of opinion, not an ex cathedra ruling by a the EU Constitution in favour of the “confederalist”; and to pro- kind of Euro-pope. Barroso is not just President of the Euro- tect the UK’s overblown and, in parts, criminal financial services pean Commission. He is a right-of-centre Portuguese politician. sector from EU scrutiny. But none of this is true of Scotland. His political position is radically different from the Scottish gov- Scotland would like to be a constructive partner in EU politics. ernment’s. By no means all Commission officials share his opin- Like most small member states, it knows that the EU offers the ion. As we speak, Scotland belongs to the EU by virtue of her best protection that small European nations have ever had from membership of the UK. The question is not whether she should big predators, as well as the best shelter from the upheavals of be allowed to join, if and when she becomes independent; it is global markets. And, in present circumstances, the SNP con- whether she should be thrown out. That question will be decided tention that the Scots can play a constructive EU role only in an by political argument and negotiation, not by unchallengeable independent Scotland has compelling force. legal dicta. Of course, we cannot foresee the results. But it is Moreover, the Scottish government is—implicitly at least— clear that excluding Scotland from the EU would be an act of social-democratic. It seeks independence to protect Scottish gratuitous and self-destructive folly. against the market fundamentalism of the The moral is clear. If Salmond loses the independence ref- London government, both within the UK and in its dealings erendum, there will be an urgent need for a constitutional con- with the EU. The roots of Scottish social democracy go deep. vention to revise the UK’s territorial constitution, to decide how The political cultures of all the non-English nations of Great the nations that make up the union should relate to each other Britain are very different from their English counterparts. As and to the whole and to hammer out an alternative to Westmin- a civil servant in the Welsh education department put it in my ster absolutism. (Some peers are rumoured to favour such a con- hearing not long ago, the overarching theme of UK govern- vention before the referendum takes place, but it is hard to see ance can be summed up as “choice, competition, customer.” a suggestion from that quintessentially undemocratic quarter The Welsh equivalent is: “voice, cooperation, citizen.” Since gaining traction.) The important point is that if Scottish voters devolution, the Welsh government has tried to follow the path reject independence in September there will a breathing space 30 UNITED STATES OF BRITAIN? PROSPECT JUNE 2014 to hammer out an agreed solution to the great conundrum of violent forms. The IRB—the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, multi-level governance in the UK: how to satisfy the legitimate the so-called “Fenians”—were part of the context within which aspirations both of the non-English nations of the union and of constitutional opponents of British rule had to operate. The England. But the breathing space will not last for long. great question facing the Irish party in the House of Commons was how to reconcile the “Fenian” tradition with the constitu- t this point enter Charles Stewart Parnell, and the tional one; and how to fit in with the mores and atmosphere complex, long drawn-out and eventually tragic story of the still largely aristocratic House of Commons. As Conor of the struggle over Irish home rule and of the deeper, Cruise O’Brien has shown, this apparently unpromising con- sometimes agonising struggles within the hearts and text was tailor-made for Parnell—a Protestant Irish landlord, Aminds of those involved. It is rich in drama: William Gladstone’s an alumnus of Cambridge University, a hereditary member of first home rule bill and his magnificent speech in the debate on the Protestant Ascendancy, yet at the same time endowed with it; the Liberal split that ensured its defeat; Parnell’s terrible fall a rare combination of personal magnetism, political nous, stra- after being successfully cited as a co-respondent in one of the tegic vision, and, until his terrible fall, rock-like fidelity to the most sensational divorce cases of the 19th century; his prema- Irish cause. ture death; the Asquith government’s bitterly contested home As I suggested above, in the current debate over Scottish rule legislation before the First World War; the emergence of independence, federalism is the dog that hasn’t barked in the paramilitary forces both in Ulster and the south of Ireland; the night. In the debate over Irish home rule in 1880s, it barked Easter Rising of 1916 and the resulting “terrible beauty” that quite frequently and fairly loudly. A leading dog handler was Yeats hymned in imperishable lines; the savage guerrilla war Joseph Chamberlain, who saw—or claimed to have seen— between the IRA and the British that followed the First World that the federation of Canada was a model for the relation- War; and the equally savage civil war between the supporters ship between Ireland and the rest of the UK. People of English and opponents of the 1921 treaty that gave the 26 counties of stock, Chamberlain declared, had a special gift for “working out southern Ireland independent statehood. the great problem of federal government”: Canada and the US The story is also rich in passion, and in outsize political lead- were examples. In the Commons debate following his resigna- ers. Salmond is a cuddly tabby cat compared with Parnell. Cam- tion from Gladstone’s government, he “raised the possibility of eron is laughably lightweight in comparison with Lord Salisbury. federation,” as his latest and most authoritative biographer puts The wayward genius and vaulting ambition of Joseph Chamber- it, as an alternative to home rule. Chamberlain’s political style lain, the Liberal Party’s nemesis in the 1880s, and the Conserva- was harshly rebarbative. He was a confronter, by nature, not a tive Party’s in the early 1900s, have a steely intransigence about conciliator; a splitter not a unifier. There was a noble grandeur them which no present-day political leader can emulate. Lesser about Gladstone’s Damascene conversion to Irish home rule. members of the cast list—Cardinal Manning, austere Catholic It is all too easy to see Chamberlain’s response as spiteful and convert and hammer of employer exploitation, Kitty O’Shea the opportunistic; and Gladstone’s admirers then and since have fatal love of Parnell’s life, and even her squalid husband, Cap- seen it in just that way. tain William O’Shea—all seem larger than life. And Gladstone’s The truth is more complicated. Chamberlain had won his extraordinary combination of oratorical force, single-minded spurs as a reforming Mayor of Birmingham, immersed in the will-power, charismatic inspiration, profound religious faith, nitty-gritty of slum-clearance, water supply, road-building and capacity for self-deception, institutional and political creativity, park provision. This “gas and water socialism”—the vigorous high ideals and low cunning has no equivalent today. Colin Mat- and constructive use of public power to improve social condi- thew, who edited most of Gladstone’s voluminous diaries, wrote tions on the ground—was Chamberlain’s apprenticeship. He that they described Gladstone’s “strivings to harness his will and approached national politics with the same impatient energy. his passions to the service of God.” It is hard to think of any mod- His famous “Unauthorised Programme,” designed to “grapple ern politician—or indeed any other leading politician in the 19th with the mass of misery and destitution in our midst,” as he put century—of whom that could be said. it, was avowedly socialistic. All this was anathema to Gladstone. The story is extraordinarily convoluted. To tell it in full He was viscerally hostile to anything that smacked of social- would need a substantial volume. The most I can do here is ism. He was for a limited state, not an interventionist one; partly to pick out a few central themes. The first and most obvious because of this, he gave a higher priority to the national griev- is the leaden weight of Irish history that shaped the assump- ances of the Irish than to social grievances in England and Scot- tions and behaviour of all the participants. In the 18th century, land. Temperamentally, politically and philosophically, he and Ireland was effectively a colony, whose native population—the Chamberlain were chalk and cheese. Catholic Irish—were kept down, ultimately by force, but more To me, at least, Gladstone is a much more attractive figure immediately by cruel and humiliating penal laws that effectively than Chamberlain. But Chamberlain saw—much more clearly deprived of them of civil rights. Catholics could not bear arms, than Gladstone did—that the only sure way to bind Ireland into then an essential attribute of gentility; they could not practise the union was to treat the Irish question as one element in a law; and they could not vote in elections to the Irish parliament. much wider British question: to reconstruct the British polity The penal laws had gone by the middle of the 19th century, but on federal lines, making Ireland a state within a British fed- the Irish famine of the second half of the 1840s inflicted a demo- eration alongside Scotland, Wales and England. Chamberlain graphic catastrophe on the country more terrible than anything did not discover federalism during the struggle over Gladstone’s in the preceding century. Memories of it festered in the minds of first home rule bill; he had toyed with federalist ideas as far back the Irish diaspora in the United States and were revived by the as the early 1870s. During the crisis over the home rule bill he lesser famine of the 1870s. told a radical colleague that he thought the Westminster parlia- Not surprisingly, opposition to British rule frequently took ment should be responsible for foreign affairs, the army, navy, PROSPECT JUNE 2014 UNITED STATES OF BRITAIN? 31 post office and customs; that subordinate legislatures in Eng- too far. In the end, the 1886 home rule bill kept Irish MPs out. In land, Scotland, Wales, perhaps Ulster and the rest of Ireland doing so, it split the Liberal Party, ensured the defeat of the bill, should deal with their own internal affairs; that a Supreme turned Chamberlain into a bitter and deadly foe of the British Court should adjudicate on conflicts between the centre and the liberal tradition, led to 20 years of Conservative hegemony, and states; and that the House of Lords should be abolished. thrust hopes of British federalism into a deep freeze in which In terms of the day-to-day politics of the moment, this was they still languish. It is time to switch the freezer off. patently not a runner. Gladstone was Prime Minister, in close What would a federal United Kingdom look like? The touch with Parnell. He and his future biographer John Morley inspired opening words of the US Constitution—“We the peo- were preparing a government bill that, as Colin Matthew put ple”—point the way to the answer. The founding fathers of the it, turned “a slogan into the fine print of legislation.” He was American republic faced a conundrum: how to marry executive not about to give way to an insubordinate minister peddling power to republican liberty. Their solution was to locate sover- remarkably inchoate and confused new slogans. Gladstone’s eignty in the whole American people; and to ensure that the ideas developed slowly, through serious reading and long reflec- people could exercise their sovereignty both on the state and tion. But once he had reached a conclusion, his mind locked on the federal level. Power would check power and the threat of onto it like the jaws of a man-trap. According to his biographer executive aggrandisement would be held at bay. Last, but not Richard Shannon, a visitor to Gladstone’s home at Hawarden in least, the package was codified and transparent. UK federalism the winter of 1885-6 found him: would not follow the American example in every respect, but the three great pillars of American federalism—codification, checks so excited when he talked about Ireland, it was quite fright- and balances and popular sovereignty—would be of its essence. ening. He ended the conversation by saying, “Well it has In one crucial respect, however, the framers of a federal con- come to this, we must give them [the Irish] a great deal or stitution for the UK would face a problem with no American nothing.” And I answered with some warmth “then noth- counterpart: the problem of an overmighty (or perhaps just ing.” Upon which he pushed back his chair with his eyes overweight) England. England contains almost 84 per cent of glaring at me like a cat’s, he called to his wife that it was the UK population. Scotland has just under 8.5 per cent, Wales time to go out. just under 5 per cent and Northern Ireland just under 3 per cent. There are wide variations in the state populations in Ger- ew people could prevail against Gladstone’s glaring many, and still more in the US, but no German or American cat’s eyes, and an insubordinate Chamberlain was not state towers over the rest in the way that England does. One one of them. But it doesn’t follow that Chamberlainite possible solution would be to divide England into regions with federalism could never have been a runner in any cir- the same powers as those of the non-English nations. But that Fcumstances. A crucial question is whether Parnell and his party solution pays too much heed to symmetry and too little to sen- would have been satisfied. Of course, there is no way of telling. sibility and self-understanding. The Scots and Welsh are not But it is worth noting that on the touchstone issue of whether the only ancient peoples to emerge from under the carapace of Ireland would continue to be represented directly in the “impe- the British state: the English have done so too. The Campaign rial” parliament at Westminster, Parnell seems to have had an for an English Parliament, which is now a feature of the land- open mind. For Chamberlain this was the crux of the home rule scape, and the proliferation of St George’s flags at appropriate dispute. If there were no Irish MPs at Westminster, if Ireland moments in the calendar are signs of that. A federal United would be the only part of the UK without representatives in the Kingdom with four states, one of them much more populous “imperial” parliament, Chamberlain’s federalist solution to the than the other three, would be an oddity. But it would reflect the home rule crisis would be dead in the water. Ireland would fol- odd history which has made this country what it is. If the peo- low its own path—a path that would sooner or later lead to Irish ples and political classes of the United Kingdom want to make it secession from the UK. But if Irish MPs remained at Westmin- work, they will. If they don’t, break-up is inevitable. ster, with a separate Irish legislature in Dublin dealing with domestic Irish affairs, the Irish settlement might pave the way for a federal United Kingdom. Originally, Gladstone wanted to retain Irish MPs at West- minster, but he blenched at the implications, notably what we know today as the “West Lothian question.” If Irish MPs sat in the House of Commons, and if they were allowed to vote on all the matters that came within its purview, a serious imbal- ance would result: Irish members would be able to vote on spe- cifically English (and Scottish) matters, though English and Scottish MPs would not be able to vote on the equivalent Irish matters since they would have been devolved to the Irish leg- islature. But if Irish MPs were allowed to vote only on “impe- rial” matters and not on English ones, a majority on “imperial” questions might be a minority on English ones. Collective and individual ministerial responsibility to the House of Commons, a fundamental principle of the Westminster model of parlia- mentary government, would be fatally undermined. The logi- cal answer was federalism, but for Gladstone that was a bridge “We’re waiting for the Chilcot report.” 32 PROSPECT JUNE 2014 Make your own work Most new jobs created since the recession have been in self-employment— and Britain is the shape of the future hamish mcrae

e are so attached to the idea of get- ence is that there has been a surge in the growth of the informal ting and having a job that it is hard for economy following the VAT increase to 20 per cent, with people us to grasp the scale and speed with doing much more work for cash rather than reporting it to the tax which labour markets are changing. It authorities. If true, that would explain a lot about what has been is possible, indeed probable, that peo- happening: why, for example, has consumption been so strong Wple entering the workforce today in the world’s developed and why did the amount of notes and coin in circulation jump economies will spend half or more of their working lives not in suddenly when VAT went up? steady jobs but being self-employed. If we can miscount the economy by such a large percentage This is a social and economic transformation as significant it is hardly surprising that it is tough to find answers to nebulous as the expansion of tertiary education in the 1960s and, more questions such as whether the shift to self-employment is volun- recently, the shift to flexible retirement ages. The trend is dis- tary or not. A survey last month for the Resolution Foundation cernible in several advanced economies, including the United think tank found that 72 per cent of people who had become self- States (where one should include “proprietors” in the figures, employed in the past five years preferred their new status, while because otherwise the numbers look very low). But things are 28 per cent would rather have remained in a job. It might be that changing fastest in the UK. Not only do we have the highest pro- people are initially forced to become self-employed, but then find portion of self-employed people in the workforce since the Sec- they rather like it once they have become used to it. ond World War—15 per cent, slightly higher than the US and What we can do is to draw up a list of the various forces at considerably higher than Germany or France—it is also probable work, even if it is impossible to weight their importance with any that during the life of the next parliament there will be more self- precision. Here are a dozen. Their sheer number shows why this employed people than government employees. trend is more pronounced in Britain than in many other coun- The growth of self-employment in the UK since the recession tries, and why governments are struggling to respond. has been remarkable. The government celebrates, with some jus- One: increasing longevity. The ageing of our society, cou- tification, the fact that there are more people working in the UK pled with the improved health of older people and lower-than- than ever before. But 83 per cent of the new employment created expected pension returns, has certainly pushed more people to since 2007 has been in people working for themselves. About half remain in the workforce beyond normal retirement age. While of that gain has been in people working part-time, with women this would not necessarily lead to a rise in self-employment— accounting for a larger proportion of the gain than in previous there is no reason why such workers should not remain in employ- periods. Historically, they have accounted for about 30 per cent ment, maybe on shorter hours—in practice it is often simpler for of the self-employed, but they account for 60 per cent of the people to become self-employed. It gives freedom both to the increase in self-employment since 2007. worker and the employer and it changes the nature of the rela- Many of those who have become self-employed regard them- tionship in ways that many older people prefer. It is easier to say selves as under-employed, because they are working for fewer no: to negotiate work on one’s own terms rather than be tied in as hours than they would like. But the increase in self-employment an employee. is not simply an effect of the recession—levels of self-employment Two: the shift to services and in particular the changing bal- were rising beforehand, too. That said, the reasons for the shift ance of activities within the service industry. Demand for labour to self-employment differ depending on the economic climate. in growing service industries, such as the hospitality business, In bad times, people who have been made redundant pick up is particularly for flexible labour. The need to staff up to meet whatever work they can get, whereas in good times they have the increased demand, or staff down if business is slack, is obviously confidence to set up on their own. But the striking thing is that much less predictable than in manufacturing, but it is also less the growth in self-employment has been remarkably persistent. predictable in growing service industries than in shrinking ones. There are now some 40 per cent more people self-employed than For example, a hotel manager will have a general feeling for the in 2000, but only about 7 per cent more in jobs. likely trade on any one particular night, but will only really know Why? Surprisingly there does not seem to be much compa- how full his establishment is a couple of days beforehand. A bank rable international research on this. There are bits and pieces, manager, by contrast, knows how many tellers he needs on any including an excellent study last month from Morgan Stanley, particular day. The hotel trade, however, is growing, while bank written by the economist Charles Goodhart. It suggested that the branches are being shut. UK economy might well be 4 per cent larger than the published It is quite possible to meet shifting demand for labour by offer- GDP per worker figures recorded. The explanation for the differ- ing so-called zero-hours contracts (where employers do not offer employees guaranteed hours), and of course that is happening. Hamish McRae is an Associate Editor of the Independent But if you operate a rota of self-employed people you arguably PROSPECT JUNE 2014 MAKE YOUR OWN WORK 33 © VETTA have even greater flexibility than you do when using zero-hours Less obviously, new technologies enable employers, or rather contracts. would-be employers, to manage a freelance workforce more effec- Three: the squeeze on the public sector. Quite aside from the tively, contacting people automatically wherever they are, as and mathematical impact on the proportion of self-employed by the when they are needed. decline of people employed by the state, government agencies Five: there are technical innovations, such as eBay, that offer including the NHS need to get the work done, which will some- easy entry for would-be entrepreneurial traders. The UK has the times involve hiring the services of self-employed people. highest proportion of online sales of any large economy, at 13.5 per cent. our: technology. Communication technologies ease the Six: the fashion for entrepreneurship. Political support for path to self-employment in a number of ways. Most obvi- business creation is cross-party, pushed as much by Gordon ously they enable people to work at home and communi- Brown as by the coalition. It is, so to speak, the acceptable face cate with other workers and while in theory homeworkers of capitalism for people to form a business and to be successful Fcan be on payroll, in practice self-employment contracts usually at it, as opposed to being successful in a job and being rewarded work better. In other words, technology facilitates outsourcing. with a bonus. This is reflected in the popularity of television pro- It also reduces the cost of entry into service businesses, because grammes such as Dragon’s Den and The Apprentice. a new business can market itself globally from a laptop on the Seven: labour legislation. If a company can buy in a skill kitchen table. Comparable data is hard to find but it looks as rather than have to increase its fixed costs by employing some- though the UK has a higher proportion of teleworkers than any one extra to do it, it has a powerful incentive to do so. Additional other country, at around 10 per cent of the total, with 20 per cent burdens on employers, such as paternity leave for fathers, further doing some part of their work on screen away from the office. boost the trend to self-employment. 34 MAKE YOUR OWN WORK PROSPECT JUNE 2014

Eight: tax. Anyone self-employed, either as a sole trader or as a long period when crafts were in decline and the mass pro- the proprietor of an incorporated business, should pay tax just as duction society still rules. But as lower-waged countries have an employee would. But quite aside from the greater scope for tax come into mass production, it has become clear that one of the evasion—which, if those estimates noted in the Morgan Stanley competitive advantages of the UK is in craft production: top-end paper are right, is considerable—there are practical advantages bikes and watches, for example. Instead of throwing away, you to self-employed status. These include the ability to leave funds in repair. Craft workers may be on payroll, but they are just as likely the business and borrow against them, and to withdraw income in to be self-employed, whereas mass production workers are invar- the form of dividends rather than salary, thereby cutting national iably employed. insurance contributions. And finally, twelve: the rise of the portfolio worker. The division between core workers and portfolio workers was first identified by “By 2045, one-third of the the business writer and teacher Charles Handy in 1989 in The Age of Unreason. The idea was simple enough and it was his genius to workforce could be self- spot it. It is that people increasingly spend the early part of their employed—a huge shift. careers as core workers; that is, working full-time for an employer, usually jolly hard. Then at some stage in mid-career, perhaps in Policy will have to adapt” their 40s or 50s, they would have built up the competence and the contacts to enable them to set up on their own, working for a vari- Nine: the growth of creative and cultural industries. It is nat- ety of different firms. They then have a portfolio of part-time jobs ural and normal in these “new” industries for people to work for rather than being employed full time by anyone. What was just themselves. Indeed, there is really no secure employment. So as becoming evident a generation ago is now quite normal. the balance of activity shifts towards this, it would be normal and These are not the only forces driving the shift to self-employ- natural for the balance between employment and self-employ- ment. Anyone thinking about it, or maybe setting up themselves, ment to shift too. could doubtless add a few more. There may, for example, be an Ten: the celebrity culture. This is associated with the growth in association with immigration and with inequality, though you have the creative industries. We have created a huge demand for celeb- to be careful about which way round the relationship works. (For rities and there is a huge churn in their numbers. Large numbers example, does the rise in self-employment lead to greater inequal- of people, particularly the young, are moving in and out of this ity, or does greater inequality create more opportunities for the space, or providing services to would-be or established celebrities. self-employed? Maybe both.) But what is beyond dispute is that Eleven: the growing importance of craft skills. We have had self-employment is rising, and that seems unlikely to reverse any

Work longer and for yourself Another valuable feature of the trend— lower than employees doing similar work. Bronwen Maddox which I’d put more weight on than does Philip Coggan, who writes the Buttonwood Hamish in his analysis—is that women are column for The Economist, suggested in our The sharp rise in the numbers of people proving particularly adroit at using self- recent debate with economist Jim O’Neill who work for themselves is a phenome- employment to secure an income and flex- that this was one reason why productiv- non, and one in which Britain appears to ible hours. The number of women entering ity—output per worker—was failing to rise, lead other countries, as Hamish McRae the building industry, from civil engineer- another current economic puzzle. describes. Is that good news? Broadly, ing to building trades, has risen by 22 per And too many people claim to read in yes, although a fistful of qualifications cent in a year, four times more than the fig- these numbers a flowering of national should be scattered over that conclusion. It ures for men. This is important in help- entrepreneurial spirit: the transformation reflects big social changes, some of which ing more women enter and remain part of of Britain from a nation of shopkeepers are not just desirable but necessary if the the workforce, potentially raising family into one of start-up impresarios. Drag- country is to prosper and British people income and making it more stable. on’s Den, the BBC series, has done much are to live the lives they want. It is right, Is the change forced on people, for lack to encourage–and romanticise—the small though, that there is an undercurrent of of other work, or chosen? This goes to the business life, but skates over the fact that nervousness about this quiet revolution. heart of the controversy about whether we most fail. The most important change is that should welcome it or not. Caution is well- On the other hand, there are plenty people are finding a way to keep working placed. The self-employed lack layers of of signs that for many, this is a choice. In beyond the traditional retirement age. Out rights and protection that employees enjoy, the last three months of 2013, when self- of the 367,000 people who became self- from working hours, minimum wages, sick employment rose particularly fast, the employed between 2008 and 2012, 84 per pay, or maternity or paternity pay, to take economy was recovering, and job vacan- cent were over 50 years old. just a few items from a very long list. They cies also rose strongly. The proportion of Prolonging working life is essential if find it harder to get mortgages, loans and self-employed workers is also highest in people are going to be able to shore up their sometimes insurance. The personal finance the booming economy of London (18 per standard of living in old age. Basic arith- industry is decades out of date in accom- cent), according to the Office for National metic shows that Britain—and many other modating these changes; successive gov- Statistics, and lowest in the North East (11 countries with ageing populations—can- ernments have given almost no attention per cent). not afford to pay future pensioners as well to the implications of the changes. It is a sign of how fast profound changes as they have those of the past; the same What is more, many self-employed peo- in the way we work can happen—far out- appears true for many companies. How- ple can find it harder (and more time-con- stripping the ability of political parties to ever, if people work just a few years longer, suming) to get the work than actually to do respond. those sums look much less threatening. it, meaning that their income can be much Bronwen Maddox is the Editor of Prospect PROSPECT JUNE 2014 MAKE YOUR OWN WORK 35 time soon. That leads to two further questions: how far will this and the harder to avoid. run? And what are the implications for policy? The next set of challenges are those for the rest of the private To begin with the first question, it is at least conceivable sector. Services are designed for sizeable companies and for peo- that having doubled over the last 30 years the proportion of ple in jobs. Anyone self-employed who applies for a mortgage self-employed workers could double again over the next 30. By will have a much tougher time than someone in an apparently 2045, one-third of the workforce could be self-employed. A much secure job. Professional advisory services—accountancy, legal, higher proportion is likely to be self-employed at some stage in fund management, and so on—are readily available but they are their career. If this is right, it will be a shift as big as the ending expensive. The challenge will be how to give effective advice that of the jobs for life culture a generation ago. Even if the growth people can afford. It is a huge opportunity, but given how difficult tapers off at a quarter of the workforce, policy will have to adapt. the relations often are between small businesses and their bank- At present, the tax system and labour market legislation are ers, it will be a tough one. both built around the jobs model, not the self-employment one. There are inevitably implications for politics but we should Something as simple as the minimum wage is based on the idea not assume that the trend naturally benefits the right, despite the that someone is working for someone else and not for themselves. usual caricature of the government-hating small businessman. Concern about zero-hours contracts is based on the assumption The new generation of self-employed may have rather different that jobs should specify a number of elements, including the attitudes from the last, and there is no reason why the left should hours to be worked and the timing of payment for that work. Par- not be its champion. Still, when that tipping point is reached and adoxically, efforts to pin down the hours worked may actually fur- there are more self-employed than state employees, the impli- ther the shift to self-employment. A rota of employees would be cations for politics will be profound. Trade unions face a serious replaced by a rota of the self-employed. challenge too. Perhaps the most interesting thing, though, will be the impact o how do you rethink policy? the shift has on wider social attitudes. It is not just that a larger A good starting point is to make people aware of the proportion of the workforce will be self-employed at any given need to save. It may well be that, in practice, being self- time. Society will be reshaped by the fact that most people will be employed is actually more secure for many people than self-employed at some stage in their lives. The experience will be Sbeing in a job—there are now no safe jobs. Better to have several pretty much universal. But if the experience is universal, then we customers than a single employer that may go bust. But it does will all accrue some of the skills and attitudes that have to learnt mean that people need a larger cushion of savings than they would during that time. For example we may become more self-reliant. if they had job rights with a solid employer. So there is an educa- We may become better at finding customers, or at least at han- tion task to be done. That extends from principles, such as the dling our personal finances. And we should understand the world need to have a nest egg, to practicalities, such as thinking in terms of business better if we have all had to run one, however small, at of building transferable skills, the practicalities of running a busi- one time or another. ness, and the responsibilities that people working for themselves People have different responses to the shift to self-employ- have to take on that would hitherto have been managed for them. ment. For some it is another aspect of rising insecurity, Quite how you do this is another matter. Is basic financial man- and one to be regretted. For others it marks the triumph agement something that should be taught in schools? Or does of the little man, and especially woman, over adversity—a the accountancy profession have a role to spread skills beyond its response to tough times. For still others it is a celebration of practitioners? Is this a new vocational option? The point is that independence, freedom from the grind of working for someone there are a number of things that employees take for granted else. But whatever your attitude you have to acknowledge that that people working for themselves have to learn. This this is a seismic shift in the way we live now, and it is happening market will function better when a greater proportion of self- more swiftly and more obviously in Britain than just about any- employed workers know what they have to do. where else. Pensions are another obvious area. It is a huge issue and one that goes far beyond the elf-employed. Our company pen- sion system has been undermined, some would say destroyed, by a combination of government policy and poor investment returns. We can’t yet see to what extent the latest reforms will enable it to be rebuilt. What we do know is that pensions should be attached to the person rather than the job and that they should be constructed on the basis that everyone is likely to have a period of self-employment at some stage during their lifetime. As for taxation, here the pressure will be for simplification. If a smaller proportion of government revenue comes from PAYE, and a larger proportion from self-assessed income tax and cor- poration tax, government revenues will become more lumpy and less secure. Governments will be troubled by that—understand- ably so. They have to protect revenue and there will inevitably be rising tension between the need to encourage business (including the self-employed) and the need to collect the money. However, the simpler the taxation system the easier it will be to understand “Oh! Look at him enjoying a few months of debt-free life.” 36 PROSPECT JUNE 2014 The lonely rationalist Nick Clegg is calm and reasonable. Much of Britain is, too. So why isn’t he popular? edward docx

sit down opposite the Deputy Prime Minister just as the politics. They tune in and out of it a bit, and actually, most peo- Prime Minister calls. We’re on a Great Western train ple take political decisions when they vote on quite big judge- from Bristol to London. Outside, the English afternoon ments. So you might as well aim big anyway.” is passing by in a blur of Betjeman and Brunel. We have “But surely,” I say, “these leaks affect the relationship. I cups of tea. Over the fields are massed a flotilla of Boris mean leaking stuff like this is very… dirty?” IJohnson clouds—vaguely alarming, bulky and off-white. “Yes, it is. And silly. It’s juvenile.” This is early May and the has just published “So it must inhibit you in Cabinet, in government?” leaked private correspondence between Nick Clegg and Danny He grimaces a little. “You just have to be very broad-shouldered Alexander, his party colleague and Chief Secretary to the Treas- and thick-skinned. I think there’s a real problem for both the ury, that shows that the Liberal Democrats are “resisting” Tory Conservative and Labour parties; these are majoritarian par- plans to introduce mandatory sentences for knife crimes. When ties, who are struggling desperately to understand that they’re he arrived at Paddington, I heard Clegg say that he was “pissed now operating in a plural political universe. And what has hap- off,” but now the tone of his phone conversation with the PM pened is that the Conservatives—almost by accident—have is cordial and congenial—a business-like conversation between found themselves sharing power because they worked out that two mutually well-disposed brothers-in-law discussing how best if they didn’t, they would have no power at all. They are still to deal with an upcoming wedding anniversary at which a great labouring under the delusion that it’s a small interruption deal of fighting is envisaged between the variously insane rela- before normal service is resumed and the pendulum swings tives of their very different families. There is a fair bit of “OK, back.” David, I’ll call you over the weekend… Yes, let’s talk it through... “So?” We should… No, that would be good.” “So this is a sign of that. When they’re under pressure and I have been following Nick Clegg for several months. I first when elections loom, they resort to really grubby politics, which met him in person at a private dinner back in January. Today, I you can do if you don’t care whether you have to build alliances am with him as he travels round Gloucestershire. We will catch later. They’re so inescapably wrong. I think people will look up again at Chevening, the grace and favour residence in the back and see that this was a really important, early laboratory Kent countryside that he shares with William Hague, the For- experiment in plural politics, however much it might have been eign Secretary. From the gallery of the House of Commons, rough at the edges and not always ideal. And this is why it’s actu- I have also been watching his exchanges with Harriet Har- ally very important that I swallow my pride, grit my teeth and man at Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions. I find his position clip on the armour every day and make sure this coalition is seen remarkable—in terms of the history of the Liberal Party and its through to the end.” successor the Liberal Democrats, in terms of the deal he man- “Do you lose your tempers with each other?” aged to strike after the 2010 election and in terms of the day- “Very few times, there’s been a bit of…” He doesn’t finish to-day running of the coalition government. As a person and this sentence. “I mean, [Cameron] is under no illusions about a leader, he is extraordinarily resilient and—in every sense— how incredibly silly I think this is. But look, you have to keep central to contemporary British politics. Most of all, I want to the channels of communications open. That’s very important. I understand how a man of centrist convictions leading a centrist think, where things go wrong is when the two people at the top party in a country whose political instincts are broadly centrist stop communicating.” should now find himself fighting a return to the margins. “Can’t you just say to him: ‘Stop it, please?’” When the phone call ends, I ask, “How can you proceed like “Yes.” this? How can you discuss and govern if private conversations “You do say that?” and letters are going to be leaked?” “Of course I do; and he does to me. Candidly, sometimes he Clegg draws a breath. “I mean, this sounds foolhardy, or even can and sometimes he can’t. We are leaders of political parties, defeatist,” he says. “But it’s quite the reverse. Bizarrely, the we’re not religious leaders of sects… But at the end of the day, longer I’m in politics, the more I actually think sticking with you’ve also got to look after your own side, your own tribe, your big ‘P’ politics is what, in the end, wins out. You know, you can own values, and we do that. On the whole, we are quite respect- waste so much time trying to duck and weave, trying to be tacti- ful of not forcing either of ourselves into impossible corners. But cal… But actually, people aren’t stupid. They kind of sense that look, we have wings of our parties, they’ve got to pull us in dif- it is inauthentic and it looks artificial. Most people don’t listen to ferent directions. So sometimes we have some pretty ferocious debates, but you’ve got to punch through that. And actually we Edward Docx is an Associate Editor of Prospect do. Which is very British.” PROSPECT JUNE 2014 THE LONELY RATIONALIST 37 © PETER MARLOW/MAGNUM PHOTOS © PETER MARLOW/MAGNUM “Sometimes the Prime Minister and I have pretty ferocious debates,” says Clegg. “But you’ve got to punch through that. It’s very British”

he first time I met the Deputy Prime Minister, the furore But he was also thinking of large factions of his and Cameron’s caused by allegations about the behaviour of Chris respective parties. Rennard, the Lib-Dem peer, was at its most intense Since then, I have come to think that their personal rela- and threatened to tear the Liberal Democrats limb tionship is the coalition. The week that follows our discussion Tfrom limb, never mind the wider coalition. Given the kind of on the train sees a damaging series of leaks and counter-leaks day he must have had, Clegg was remarkably calm. The talk was between Tories and Liberal Democrats over education. Osten- of holding things together. Interestingly, he said that he could sibly at issue is a shortfall in the funding of the government’s count the times that he and Cameron had lost their tempers on policy to provide all pupils in the first years of primary edu- the fingers of “less than one hand.” He also indicated that he cation in England with free school meals. The policy was admired the Prime Minister and outlined how the risks faced piloted by the Liberal Democrat schools minister David by the Conservative leader going into coalition were somewhat Laws. When, at the end of the week, I catch up with Laws similar to those he faced with his own party. I got the strong and Clegg, they both express the strong wish that the govern- impression that one important pillar of their public, political ment could go about big “P” politics without all the distract- relationship was this personal and private recognition of what ing and time-consuming little “p” stuff. Neither man, though, the other guy was undertaking “against a backdrop of suspicion questions the fundamental principle of the coalition. Cer- and near total negativity.” In this, Clegg was talking about the tainly, the rancour and the disputes are real. But they do not press, who didn’t believe the coalition would last five minutes. emanate from the centre; rather, they have their origins in 38 THE LONELY RATIONALIST PROSPECT JUNE 2014

the agendas of outlying Tory fiefdoms. Clegg and Laws seem is adamant that he will be the leader of the Lib Dems after the concerned to stay as focused as possible on the implementation election. If Labour wants to negotiate, it will have to be with of the policy in question. By the end of the weekend, a conver- him. sation has taken place at the top. And this is what returns the “Will you be fine with Labour as well? Is that OK for you?” frothing dogs to the kennels, although the barking continues. “It’s not a question of ‘it’s OK’,” Clegg says quickly. “If you I end up impressed by Clegg and Cameron’s stubborn resolve to really must know, the more I do this job, the more I’d love to be see their agreement through. Indeed, one of the many paradoxes Prime Minister, but I don’t think that’s going to be an instant of the moment is that the worse it gets around them, the more prospect.” He continues more coyly: “Look, if the British people these two men are going to need each other—Clegg, because he were basically saying ‘the only way in which you can govern this badly needs coalition to be seen to work for the future of his party; country is with Labour,’ then of course, I’ll try and see if that’s Cameron because a collapse in the Lib Dem vote helps Labour. possible. It might not be possible. Who knows?” “What do you want to do in your second term?” lose up Nick Clegg isn’t so much groomed as spruce. He smiles at my tone but takes the question seriously. “I He smells of soap. Either he is going grey interestingly think the unfinished business for me, the most important thing late or he uses one of those shampoos that “targets” of all, is clearly that the shadow of 2008 looms much longer and grey. His features seem at times to be deliberately darker and larger than we first thought.” Cinexpressive. He’s paler than he looks on television—pasty “So continue with the economic recovery?” even—and has the slightly compressed smile of a man forever “Yes. It was easier to explain in 2010 in the aftermath of the running for office. George Eliot would have him as an ambitious shock that we needed to do pretty extraordinary things. It is family doctor. Charles Dickens maybe would have seen some- much, much more difficult when the original catastrophe has thing appealingly boyish and risk-taking in his demeanour—a started fading from memory. So I think it’s going to be very, very clever lawyer with obscure expertise to whom the protagonist tricky in the next elections. Which is why, by the way, I just don’t is inexplicably bound. In private, his manner is engaging, elo- believe this idea that the minority is going to be able to pull it off. quent, genial and quick. He wants to joust and follow the con- You need a strong government with a clear narrative.” versational muse. He is a very warm father and he would make a good friend. “The more I do this job, the During the course of our day together, though, I notice that in public Clegg responds best to plans, ideas, argument, more I’d love to be Prime proposals. Either he finds the more Blairish effort of trying to make a personal “connection” with voters cringingly false Minister, but that’s not going or it’s just not uppermost in his nature. Of all the politicians to be an instant prospect” I have met, only Bill Clinton pulls this approach off convinc- ingly when encountering a wide variety of people. A slight intel- Could a Labour-led coalition government preside over con- lectual impatience seems to hover in the coulisse of Clegg’s tinued spending cuts? public character—something that is entirely absent from the “Yes, you can be a progressive and also oversee a prolonged private man. retrenchment of the state. And of course this is where I think Clegg’s father, also Nicholas, was chairman of United Trust Labour have gone completely wrong—totally wrong ideologi- Bank and awarded a CBE. On this side of the family he has Rus- cally… They think: ‘Oh, can’t we just put Humpty Dumpty back sian, German and Ukrainian ancestors, which is why he scrupu- together again?’ And they still believe that good policy is syn- lously pronounces the capital with the stress on the first syllable, onymous with a big spending policy. But actually if you think “Kee-ev”, as they do in the country itself. His English grandfa- public spending has a sort of innate virtue to it, then you can’t ther was editor of the British Medical Journal for 35 years. His make sense of the next parliament. In fact, I just don’t see any mother, meanwhile, is Dutch. evidence that Labour understand what it is to be a post-2008 Clegg and his Spanish wife Miriam, whom he married in progressive. They cannot expect to be in government without… 2000, are raising their three sons as Catholics—she is a Roman understanding that [it] can no longer be about the governance Catholic—but Clegg, who studied archaeology and anthropology of extravagance in public spending. And that would be my cen- at Cambridge, has said publicly that he does not believe in God. tral challenge. I really would not be confident at all of entering As the train approaches Swindon, we get on to next year’s into coalition with a Labour Party that doesn’t understand that general election. None of the Liberal Democrats I’ve spoken to breaking the bank is a deeply regressive thing do to.” (MPs, peers and party activists) thinks the number of Lib Dem I ask Clegg about fighting alongside Labour if a referendum MPs will go up. They have 57 seats now. One MP said, “35 seats is called on Britain’s membership of the European Union would be my guess.” The consensus within the party seems to be “Yes, I don’t think there’ll be any problem. I don’t actually that Labour will win, but without enough seats to govern alone. think the issue is so much whether the Liberal Democrats and (These conversations took place before several opinion polls Labour will be able to find common cause on Europe. We’re both recorded a Tory lead for the first time in two years). Most believe pro-European. I mean they are supposed to be an international that the party is therefore preparing the ground for negotiations party…” He starts laughing at what he perceives to be Labour’s with and his colleagues. don’t-ask-me-guv act over Europe. “But they’re failing to make Not that these would necessarily end up with the two parties the case. No, actually, funnily enough I think the fault line with forming a coalition. As the same MP said to me: “It is less easy [Labour] is the same as the fault line with the Conservatives: it is to go into coalition with them because Miliband is less gener- about this distinction between ‘open’ and ‘closed’.” ous than Cameron.” Meanwhile, in private and in public, Clegg This “open-closed” idea is one that Clegg returns to on 40 THE LONELY RATIONALIST PROSPECT JUNE 2014 ©REX FEATURES

several occasions in our discussions. “The old distinctions by ful to Clegg personally, I think, because the obvious implication which politics is still organised in the hands of a lot of commen- of his “open-closed” idea is that the party should be appealing tators are just so out of date,” he explains. “They’re still stuck as often as possible to the younger “EasyJet” generation. And in [questions like] is it state or market? Is it north or south? Is it the perception of the tuition fees episode among young people east or west? Is it communism, capitalism? Is it employer versus is undeniably damaging. employee? Actually, the big thing, the big dividing line, increas- ingly, in politics is about how identity politics responds to the very unsettling effect of globalisation. Because globalisation is “I think our liberalism is most creating a sense of powerlessness.” in tune with modern Britain. “Is there a generational aspect to this?” “Yes. Those who are most comfortable with what I’d rather But we have to work harder loosely call ‘Open Britain’ tend to be younger and those people who feel that Britain is no longer the country they feel comfort- to get our message over” able with, and also, who are not comfortable with the world in which we find ourselves, tend to be older. And that’s, in a sense, As the train nears Reading, I ask him how he would explain the greatest challenge for my party. Because exactly at the time to those young Britons the point and purpose of being a Liberal when I think our liberalism is most in tune with modern Brit- Democrat today. He says: “What distinguishes liberalism is a ain, younger Britain… Because of all the things we’ve had to do, passionate optimism in the individual, in a belief that there is because of the controversies around tuition fees and all the rest something sacrosanct about each individual, there is something of it, we have to work a lot harder to get our message over.” good and wonderful and beautiful in each individual, and that He’s touching here on what he freely admits is his greatest the role of politics, above and beyond everything else, is to allow mistake: abandoning the Liberal Democrat manifesto pledge individuals to fulfil themselves to the greatest possible extent. to stop tuition fees being raised—and then the handling of the And that is crucially based on the idea that the state is not there subsequent apology. This is painful to his party for all the obvi- to enforce a pattern of behaviour on the individual, still less of ous reasons and because it means that the other major mani- a pattern of belief. festo pledges which have been achieved cannot be celebrated “Liberalism does not believe that where an individual hap- as evidence of a pattern of delivery. But it is all the more pain- pens to be born is where they should belong. This is different PROSPECT JUNE 2014 THE LONELY RATIONALIST 41

David Cameron, left, with Nick Clegg outside 10 Downing Street a hearing, he tells me, they can get votes. He mentions the rais- ing of the threshold at which people start to pay income tax from left and right. Because the left is about the emancipated and argues that this is “huge because it’s a massive movement power of the state, using the state as a battering ram to deliver of money from one part of the tax system to another part of the collective public goods to society; meanwhile, the right, the con- tax system and in no way would that have happened without us.” servatives are—as the name implies—about the view that there Close behind this comes the “pupil premium” which channels is something sort of innately satisfactory about the status quo, money towards the most disadvantaged children. “These are not there’s something innately wise about the pecking order.” policy tweaks, they’re seismic shifts. And I can’t see them being There are two striking things about this. First, that Clegg is reversed.” absolutely a Liberal and not, as is sometimes suggested, a cov- When I ask about his election strategy for 2015, he says: ert Conservative. Second, that the outlook he describes is surely “The general election will be fought, in many respects, through shared by a large portion of the British people. labour-intensive battles—so that’s why I think we are going to do Here we come back to my earlier question. How is it that better than people predict.” He means a “by-election strategy” a centrist party with a centrist leader should often be seen as whereby the Liberal Democrats contest their winnable seats belonging to the fringe? If you set aside the “brand values” asso- as though each were a by-election, focusing on local issues and ciated with the various parties and asked people if they would deploying party activists who are well-established on the ground. vote for a party that championed the freedom of the individual, Broader than this, what he hopes will happen is that “more social mobility between classes and free trade yet also believed people will look back on the fundamental purpose of this gov- in a strong non-conformist secular society that promoted civil ernment, which was to pilot the country through an unprece- rights and social justice, I think many of them would say, “Dude, dented period of economic turmoil.” He thinks that “the more sign me up.” The big central chunk of the electorate, the voters people see that we’ve managed that, the more people might who actually decide general elections, are far more liberal (and accept that we took our decisions for good reasons, the more Liberal) than they realise. Yet the Liberal Democrats are hover- they might acknowledge the part we have played as Liberal ing around 9 per cent in the polls and it is highly likely that they Democrats.” will lose seats in 2015. Why? But it is the coalition itself, or rather getting British people used to the idea of coalition, that Clegg considers to be his great- iberalism as a political philosophy is a creation of the est political achievement. “Let’s remember,” he says, “the most Enlightenment—the period when, for the first time, valuable thing politically about this coalition is that it explodes sections of society sought to challenge the primacy of the myth that we can only be governed by one party. It com- religion and tradition with the power of reason, evi- pletely demolishes that, and that is a bazooka politically, with Ldence and logic. Enter science and medicine and all the devel- a far greater effect than sort of pea-shooter tactics of whether opments that allow us to live as well as we do today. What strikes you leak a letter here or there. And that’s what I keep holding in me focibly about Clegg is that he is animated by the mental hab- my mind. And that’s why I have greater pride in being Deputy its and attitudes of the European Enlightenment—the rational- Prime Minister than people think. It is amazing what we have ism, the atheism, the preference for debate over dogma, reason done and what we have had to do—everyone has had to accept, over rhetoric, negotiation over intransigence. Add to this his private or public, less wages and tougher times. And yet we’ve study of anthropology, which fosters an understanding of the got through all of this with a minimum of social unrest. All we role of ritual, myth and tribe in human societies, but which also can do is keep going.” requires an intellectual distance. And his difficulty becomes The greatest thing about Britain today is that we are, for the clear: Clegg the archetypal liberal is powered by reason, but most part, moderate, fair and tolerant. And so if you want to run modern British politics is powered by emotion. our country, you have to convince the centre. Clegg has a year Listen closely to the language that he used in the debates with to find a way to appeal to the heart of an instinctively liberal, Nigel Farage and you can hear him constantly charge the Ukip modern nation. leader with peddling a “fantasy,” his underlying point being that Farage’s position is not a rational response to our circum- stances—it is a fiction, fantastical, a fairytale. Let’s leave aside the politics and observe that Farage’s argument is principally emotional with some supporting reasons while Clegg’s argument is principally rational with some supporting emotions. Likewise, whenever I have watched Clegg at Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions, it is quickly apparent that he does not believe in the drama of the occasion; he finds it false and somewhat silly. But the House of Commons at question time is an emotional place. Antiphonal. Built for conflict and disposed towards drama. And though Cameron and Miliband may also be aware that any given subject is being distorted or misrepresented, deep down they are convinced that the other side will screw up the country in the interests of themselves and their tribe. Which, of course, is how millions of people vote. As we head back into London, Clegg is positive about his par- “I hope your parents appreciate the effort I make to ty’s chances and its achievements in office. Where they can get get dressed and leave the house.” © SIMON POTTER/CULTURA/CORBIS Y 42 Will Self’s newnovel,“Shark,”willbepublished inSeptember Will Self’s but wholehearted approvalbut wholehearted of the new shelf and its bog boys (as atory cistern, and you, I can assure had I expressed anything was informed that the brackets to hold up used a Victorian lav featuringets, dancing boys out of their teased wrought iron. I high up above the work surface, by supported two ornate brack the other ledge, was positively mosaic-encrusted baroque—a shelf in the pantry to but hold those troublesome pickle jars; of these wasOne fairly utilitarian: a simple additional narrow to discover that two new shelves had in the appeared kitchen. I hope, eventually printed, be and require published, shelving), after a few days working (one book on a which will, of contention.a source I arrived week home last my where household, shelves are a hot topic and shelf are greatly exaggerated—at if you least visit ou might think that of rumours the death of the Death of the shelf In the age ofbroadband and the cloud,willourwalls bare? be will self - - least theleast early period. modern very lynchpins ofaform of bourgeois domesticity dating from at d’êtreson to is both contain and display—are, I would argue, the more than paintings, or other furniture, the shelves—whose rai the public and the private, the practical and the decorative. Far shelves are the knitting joinery together the and the past present, our invitees have and open continuous If you access. like, the individual chambers within palace a memory to which we and thetics. The application of shelving to makes our rooms of them eitherconsider to of importance be for its use-value, or its aes admit to the house, what we know, what we like, and what we the that we artefacts indicate possess to ourselves, and those we repository of culture-in-view. along Ranged our shelves are all in our early fifties—who revere the shelf.is, The shelf us, for the domestic. I immediately termed them), there would’ve a domestic been My wife and I are of a generation—late baby-boomers, now

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At Skara Brae, the Neolithic village in Orkney that remained expensive and crafted the shelf is an insecure place to house intact beneath a sand dune until being spectacularly and prov- them—after all they may be knocked off. But between the 1860s identially revealed by a storm in the winter of 1850, you can see and the 1880s these artefacts become cheaper and widely avail- Stone Age houses with fireplaces, beds and shelving systems that able, so shelves are put up to house them. Culture ceases to be have endured for rising 5,000 years. On these petrified brick-and- an aristocratic matter of congenital acquisition, but instead an board units (so suggestive of the neo-functionalism of the 1970s), attribute it is possible to acquire off the peg—from WHSmith or are grouped small pots, domestic implements and other tools; Whiteleys and show off on shelves supplied by Maples or Heals. and while it’s the merest speculation as to whether the inhabit- Writing half a century later, Walter Benjamin notes of this ants viewed their arrangement and display in the same way my era: “The middle-class interior of the 1860s, with its giant side- wife does the new kitchen shelf, with its assemblage of differ- boards heavy with woodcarving, the sunless corners where the ent-sized coffee percolators and cafetières, I think it reasonable palm stands, the bay window with its shielding balustrade, and to imagine they did. Certainly there are plenty of depictions of those long corridors with the singing gas flame, proves fit only shelves in pre-modern contexts which indicate exactly this dual- to house the corpse.” Benjamin’s idea was that the great writers purposing of the presentational and the practical; and by the anticipate the environments within which their narratives will time the Renaissance arrives the shelf is fully integrated into take place; and that the golden age of logical-deductive detective pictorial space as a representational trope: a painted figuration fiction began with Edgar Allan Poe’s proto-Sherlock, C Auguste of three-dimensional stone that, along with pediments, niches, Dupin, at a time when these interiors had yet to crystallise. entablatures and other architectural detailing, serves to impose Dupin’s solution of the case in The Purloined Letter, hinges cru- the manmade on the natural and even the heavenly: the Pietà cially on concealment—in escritoires, behind books on shelves— and the Madonna Lactans are both often to be seen shelved. and what Benjamin points us towards is the integration into the But arguably it is only in the 19th century that the domes- domestic space of information: the detective’s method is to tell tic shelf becomes fully ideologically articulated. Somewhere us, via an analysis of objects, about the homeowners’ taste. in the functionalist-decorative fault lines between the Bieder- meier, the Belle Époque and the Arts & Crafts a different, dis- his is not to suggest that the book in particular wasn’t tinctively modern and emphatically middle-class shelf is put up. viewed as a decorative object prior to the late 19th The capitulation and recapitulation of the craftsman-like as the century. However, just as the size, weight and cost of decorative exists in paradoxical relation to the onset of the mass early codices demanded dedicated furniture—such production of a whole range of objects: lest we forget, William Tas flat reading tables and storage shelving—so the library itself Morris funded his socialist-aesthetical dreaming off the back of remained a specialised room. By the time Virginia Woolf writes a hugely successful wallpaper business. A Room of One’s Own, the invention of offset printing has made I would argue that so long as books and bibelots remain highly it possible for the lowliest Pooter to have a shelf of books in his In a digital age, there are we bought fewer books last year once again, social media sites that allow us to display a the total falling almost 10 per cent to just constantly updated stream of photographs, few things more analogue under 184m—about three for every person songs, articles, thoughts and conversations. Andy Davis in the country. We know that hardly any- This is where most of the action and atten- one buys CDs anymore, but how about the tion is nowadays, while dust silently settles A few weeks ago we took the last box of fact that 20,000 songs are added everyday to across the unoccupied expanses of polished DVDs to the charity shop, a fair few of the the online music streaming service Spotify? wood. remaining books went to Oxfam or a fund- Boxset used to signify something that lived I’m overstating things, of course. The raising sale at the children’s school, and the in a box. Nowadays it simply means any shelf is not going to die out entirely, at least last machine in the house that dates from series that I can watch whenever I like on not yet. There will still be piles of objects lit- the age of the CD departed for the dump. Netflix, LoveFilm or BBC iPlayer. tering our house. Shops will still need a place The digital media revolution—if you can still Where once shelves displayed the cul- to stack breakfast cereal, shoes or Lego kits, call it that after all these years—rolls stead- tural paraphernalia that we liked to be at least until they are vaporised in their turn ily on, vaporising the objects that used to reminded of and that we liked our visitors and replaced by more distant shelves of stuff, surround us. Now, as I wander through our to notice, today ours hold a few framed hidden in some online distribution centre house, I look at the shelves and wonder what photographs of relatives, one or two dusty next to a motorway. they are for these days. Are we witnessing the ornaments and an ill-assorted collection of I’m still surprised, in retrospect, at how death of the shelf? oddments that have come to rest in bowls (a easily I let go of so many of the physical In a digital age, there are few things kind of antechamber to the wheelie bin). So objects that I used to value so highly and more analogue than a shelf. All my adult this is what life has come to for the shelf. It’s that populated those shelves, and how cer- life I’ve lived with at least one Billy book- now a slightly better substitute for the floor tain I am that I will never again go back to case, lugged home from Ikea and assembled as a place to corral objects of no fixed abode the old ways. without sufficient reference to the instruc- and a slightly more convenient substitute for Something has to take the place of these tions. How many Billy bookcases will Ikea the walls as a way to display pictures. things, but what? Having fallen back on the be selling in a decade’s time? Aside from the In its battle for survival—if it is to sur- easy answers—books, CDs and films—for so shelves in the children’s bedrooms, cluttered vive—the shelf will have to overcome its long, the time is fast approaching when I will with brightly coloured pre-school books, the invisible enemies and draw our gaze back have to work out what else I have to display rest are beginning to look like so many trees to the world of solid, physical objects. The and to suggest to me and others who I am in winter. things that attract our attention and project and what I value. For the moment, I have to The steady demise of the objects they our personalities to the world now mostly sit confess, I have no idea. existed to hold is unmistakable. As a nation on the digital age’s successor to the shelf— Andy Davis is an Associate Editor of Prospect 44 DEATH OF THE SHELF PROSPECT JUNE 2014 living room (or drawing room as he’d probably style it); and while Woolf was just as afflicted by the snobberies of the era as others of her class, her ready assumption that all her readers will have a mental picture of a book-lined domestic interior readily to hand is suggestive of all the egalitarian, DIY shelves that are to come. Woolf uses the recurrent image of retrieving books from shelves (or returning them) nine times in her essay; she not only pictures herself fetching down volumes, but also imagines her female literary subjects doing the same—these are, if you like, shelvings-within-shelving. It’s not only books that are so treated—jars are as well, and in proposing the necessary liber- ties for the nurturance of female literary talent, I believe Woolf is unconsciously integrating the female workplace of the time—the kitchen—with the locus of literary production. The omnipres- ence of the shelf for Woolf may also be a suppressed echo of the taunt commonly flung at bluestockings such as her at a time when marriage was still considered the apotheosis of women’s lives: You’ll be left on the shelf. The arrival of the Victrola with its heavy 10-inch shel- lac discs requiring storage; the inception, shortly after- wards, of the radiogram as a distinct item of furniture; the spread of full-colour printing and the long-playing record after the Second World War—by the mid-20th century, the full integration of the decorative and the informational within the home, and the fullest expression of this symbio- sis, is the multi-platform shelving unit. This is a combination of flat open surfaces, racks, containers and niches that can hold everything from pot plants to television sets, with a few books—possibly a set of leather-bound encyclopaedias— providing a weighty, traditional ballast. It is these shelving units that dominated the reception rooms of homes for the next four decades; sometimes they were denser, more modular and glass- fronted, pressed into the corners and pinioned to the walls—as carpets are to floors—so as to provide a total coverage. At other times the units became airily insubstantial, seemingly position- ing their contents in mid-air, so creating a sort of net, from either side of which the guests at Abigail’s party could volley the shut- tlecock of their pretensions. And when the shelf first, as it were, began to ail, it was these shelving units that started to appear on the pavements outside the houses and blocks of flats in my neigh- bourhood: pathetic outcasts, like objectified old Inuit, thrust from the tribe of chattels so its other members may move on into the future unencumbered. This would’ve been, I think, in the late 1990s or early 2000s, but I was finding it difficult to let go of the shelf. My father, -hav ing emigrated to Australia 20 years previously, died in 1998, and although he left his books to the university where he taught, I went to the trouble of shipping a selection of his shelving all the way back to London; two enormous freestanding oaken book- shelves, and an equally vast rotating library shelf. It was at around this time that my wife cried: Ça suffit! My own principle when it came to the acquisition of books was: bring ’em on. Give me your tattered old Pelicans, your dog-eared copies of Rose- mary Conley’s Hip and Thigh Diet, your bound back numbers of Popular Mechanics—for me there was no volume too lowly or unreadable to be unworthy of shelving. Her view, by contrast, was robustly practical: there isn’t any more space in the house to put up more shelves. I understand where my own passionate involvement with the shelf originates—and it isn’t altogether in a love of literature. In our three-bedroom semi-detached family home mine was the SOURCES: EMARKETER; BPI; SPOTIFY; IKEA; NIELSEN BOOKSCAN; NETFLIX PROSPECT JUNE 2014 DEATH OF THE SHELF 45

back bedroom that had once been my much older half-brother’s, and when he went to university (and my other brother and I still shared a room), my father’s study. It had ended up as a reposi- tory of books and all sorts of other impedimenta, spread over a series of mismatched shelving units. I spent my time between the ages of eight and 17 either staring at these shelves or rearrang- ing them: interspersing books with things and things with books. When I was little I set up complicated string pulley systems link- ing one shelf with another, so my toys could zip-wire from Her- bert Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man to John Updike’s Couples. I also lay on my bed and read and reread Alice in Wonderland, par- ticularly taken by her long, safe fall down the shelf-lined well: “First, she tried to look down and make out what she was com- ing to, but it was too dark to see anything; then she looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled with cupboards and book-shelves; here and there she saw maps and pictures hung upon pegs. She took down a jar from one of the shelves as she passed; it was labelled ‘ORANGE MARMALADE,’ but to her great disappointment it was empty: she did not like to drop the jar for fear of killing somebody, so managed to put it into one of the cupboards as she fell past it.” In a very important sense, I think I’m still falling down that well: the shelves in the room where I’m writing this piece con- form—at least in my imagination—to the ones Alice fell past: a higgledy-piggledy assemblage of objects, pictures and books overflowing from a series of wooden compartments and surfaces. It helps, I think, that the measurements I gave to the joiner who built the desk-cum-shelving-unit were woefully inadequate: the actual book shelves are too low for hardbacks and too deep for paperbacks, so they tend to be stacked horizontally two piles deep, or pushed to the back leaving plenty of room for clutter to accumulate at the front. The very idea that I should be able to put up a shelf myself is, of course, preposterous; and when I look back to the shelving of my youth, the intersection between bour- geois bricolage and bien pensant revolutionary dreaming is prob- ably best exemplified by the pseudo-artisanal functionalism of brick-and-board shelving. By the same token, the Ikea flatpack is the three-dimensional analogue of a planned social democracy. But anyway, I digress—back to the clutter! There are mobile phone chargers and bottles of mouthwash, tobacco pouches and azimuth compasses, reading glasses and plastic bags of tea; old photographs and postcards are propped up here and there, while glass paperweights, little metal skele- tons and a small Tinguelyesque machine given to me by my chil- dren (that features a severed arm that hammers a bit of tin when you crank a handle) all have their place. I could go on—and on. To inventory the shelves would take days, and one time a cele- brated mnemonist visited me here, and helped me learn the 43 (at the time) US presidents using as an aide memoire the objects ranged on a single shelf. There has never really been any justification for the small clay bust of an ape, or the plaster one of Robert Schumann with a speech bubble attached to it reading “Take me to the bridge!” But now I’m beginning to realise there’s less and less require- ment for the shelves at all. It may well be that the shelf is alive and well Chez Self, but the new kitchen one is the shape of shelves to come: in the future they may support either objets d’art, those that have use-value, or those that mix the two cate- gories together, but what they won’t do is integrate these modes with the third and most crucial one: the informational. The old shelving units in the road were followed in the early 46 DEATH OF THE SHELF PROSPECT JUNE 2014

2000s by still more pathetic cast-offs: CD towers and the occa- to pluck something from one, but that there’s really very little sional forlorn magazine rack. Neither the cassette nor the VHS point, because after all: I’m falling. tape ever really aspired to its own specialised shelving (except, I’m dying and the shelf is dying with me. As I say, I don’t it has to be said, in our shelf-mad domain, where we had a whole doubt that shelves of the mosaic-encrusted bog-boy variety will wall of VHS shelves built that have since been repurposed for continue to be put up: an exhibition this year at the Serpentine DVDs and are now moribund); but the CD was adopted with suf- Gallery in London featured shelves of just this decorative kind. ficient zeal, and was of a significantly different format to require But the shelf as an omnipotential cultural platform is a thing of a whole range of alternative housings. Now they’re in the gutter, the past: the digital library is upon us, and whatever the nostal- leaning lopsidedly, pathetic stained-wood menhirs marking the gic, the conservative and the downright reactionary Luddite may sites of the old religion of recorded sound, while overhead scuds say, there’s no turning back a clock that doesn’t even have hands. the great crackling, emphatically digital cloud. I do mourn the passing of the shelf, because I think that the spatial and aestheticised arrangement of the informational is a y rights there should be a fair number of bookshelves physical analogue of the canon itself. To reach up and get a vol- out there on the pavement as well, but while we do see ume down from a shelf is to see, smell and touch the form of these being discarded there doesn’t appear to be the collective understanding, an apprehension that has no equiva- same mortality rate. In part this must be because of lent in the virtual realm. The great Argentinean fabulist Jorge- Bthe sheer social and cultural embedding of the codex: half a mil- Luis Borges anticipated the digitisation of all knowledge in his lennium as against the CD’s mere 20 years. In part it’s due to story The Library of Babel, which hypothesises a universe that is architectural considerations: the bookcases are often inbuilt— itself an illimitable library. Borges is quite particular about the they’re bulkier, and will take more in the way of killing off. But physicality of the library. The infinite range of hexagonal galler- there are also the haptic, tactile and other sensory aspects of the ies are described as follows: “Twenty shelves, five long shelves codex: for people who read, the book is something they have held per side, cover all the sides except two; their height, which is the on to for a very large portion of their lives; letting go of it will be distance from floor to ceiling, scarcely exceeds that of a normal a wrench. It’s been a wrench for me, but perhaps five years ago bookcase.” As to the shelves themselves: “There are five for each when my wife deemed that total shelf coverage had been reached of the hexagon’s walls; each shelf contains 35 books of uniform in our fairly large house, she began a book pogrom. At first only format; each book is of 410 pages; each page, of 40 lines, each duplicate titles and obvious clunkers were got rid of, but soon line, of some 80 letters which are black in colour. There are also enough perfectly good books were being consigned to the obliv- letters on the spine of each book; these letters do not indicate or ion of the local Mind charity shop. prefigure what the pages will say.” Having fought hard against the purges, once they were under- This is information decoupled from anything but the most way I became, if not a willing accomplice, at any rate a functional functionalist aesthetic, and ordered by no architectonic save that one. I suspect I’m like quite a few people reading this piece: the of the silicon chip. Needless to say the contents of the infinite vol- onset of digital reading coincided with my own very analogue umes are randomised: a few make sense, but the great majority intimations of mortality. On the one hand there was the supera- are gobbledegook. And of course, there’s nothing on this heav- bundance of books available via the web, on the other there was ing multiplicity of shelves but information—no tobacco pouches, the chilly apprehension I had—looking about me at volumes I’d no little metal skeletons, and no propped up postcards. There is shelved a decade or more before, and promised myself annually this consolation for those of us who are dying in tandem with the that I’d read one day—that I already owned more than enough shelf: we will meet our fitting apotheosis, when the urn contain- physical books to last me out three, four, even five score and 10. ing our ashes is carefully inserted into one of the columbarium’s As for the delusion of legacy that had caused me to drag around shelves. aged copies of Herbert Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man and John Updike’s Couples from habitation to habitation for a lifetime, as if they were my own meagre version of a presidential library, well, my four children are all very lovely in their ways, but none of them is what I would call a voracious reader. I remain a voracious reader, but again, like many of us, with the advent of bi-directional digital media, I’ve become more of snacker than a hearty literary eater. I still read codices, but a tendency to read multiple texts concurrently that was well- advanced before e-books, has now become near-pathological: I really am reading about 100 books at the same time. Of the two digital reading apps I have on my phone (yes, phone, it really doesn’t bother me), I favour the Kindle I now realise, because it doesn’t feature a skeuomorphic representation of a bookshelf. When you click on a book in the iBooks application the “volume” shoots towards you from this “shelf,” seemingly opening in mid- air to reveal the text. Every time it does this I give a little shud- der—it’s as if I can feel angry out-of-work librarians walking over my grave; and I also shudder when I look about me at the over- flowing shelves of my writing room, sensing that I have fully met- amorphosed into an Alice who’s falling past them slow enough Raft of the Luddites E ©AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN/ABACA/PA IMAGES phone surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA). in American history,secrecy exposing the extent of internet and he committed what might have the been largest breach of state the hyperconnected of the isolation internet, and in June 2013 in protest against the Mexican War and slavery. Snowden lives in withdrew to on Walden a cabin Pond, and to he refused pay taxes at any time what I think right.” Thoreau tion which Ihave a right to is to do assume for muchso as the right. The only obliga todesirable cultivate for a respect the law, in “Civil not “It is (1849): Disobedience” plar was Henry David Thoreau, who wrote settled the New World inthe 17th century. eloquent exem Itsmost - 48 Unwinding: An Inner History oftheNewAmerica”(Faber)Unwinding: AnInner History PackerGeorge isastaffwriter for theNewYorker. Hislatestbookis“The In the famous hotel-room interview inHong Kong that revealed Intoxicating conviction goes back togoes the English Protestant dissenters who ownhis regardless of where it takes him. The type vidual religion conscience, whose is and who follows time an old Americansame type—the indi solitary dward Snowden a child of is the internet and at the The errorsofEdward Snowden and GlennGreenwald - by Luke Harding (Guardian Faber, (Guardian by LukeHarding £12.99) The SnowdenFiles (HamishHamilton,£20) by GlennGreenwald No PlacetoHide george packer - a badge of honour, to but one has admit that the of mass issue this ethic and the uncompromising Thoreauvians who wear it as “the ethic of responsibility.” There are many to criticise reasons aVocation,”as “the called ethic of ultimate incontrast with ends,” toand himself be. imagined But what matters more that is this the is hewanted kind ofperson ity of a long jail term, Snowden fled sought toand Russia asylum. true—instead of returning to the US to face trial and the possibil the outcome As things is.” turned out this proved not to quite be night after watching your shows.”sounds like It - the quietdespera tively little work, against the public interest, and go to at sleep can go to work, you your can collect large pay for cheque rela of us are, it’s the human nature—you can get up every day, you fortably something is you’re willing to accept—and I think many identityhis on video, Snowden “If living said: unfreely but com Not caring the about outcome what is Max Weber, in “Politics accept any and itdoesn’t risk matter what “you that realise you might willing be to conviction by taking radical action, then until you’verest the tested courage ofyour low men. But if, like Snowden, you can’t tion Thoreau attributed fel of his to most

PROSPECT JUNE 2014PROSPECT - - - - PROSPECT JUNE 2014 INTOXICATING CONVICTION 49

Left, Snowden addresses the American Civil Liberties Union in March

bag of familiar libertarian opinions. He supports gun and mari- juana rights, opposes social security, belittles high unemployment, votes for Ron Paul for President in 2008 (though Paul belongs to a more traditionally conservative, far-right strain), contributes money to Paul’s campaign in 2012, and is outraged when Presi- dent appoints a former politician, Leon Panetta, as director of the CIA. In 2009, TheTrueHOOHA was incensed at the New York Times for revealing details about American and Israeli plans to sabotage Iran’s nuclear programme. But four years later, preparing his epic leak, Snowden refused to deal with New York Times reporters because, he thought, the paper is too timid and beholden to the government. Luke Harding, a Guard- ian correspondent and the author of The Snowden Files (which cov- ers some of the same ground as Greenwald), tries to explain this contradiction as a matter of consistent principle. Harding accepts Snowden’s claim that he opposes leaks that could betray opera- tional security, like the story in the New York Times. But the trove of now-public documents disclosed by Snowden includes accounts of American hacking of Chinese computers, a presidential direc- tive for cyberwar against specifically named countries, and details of surveillance used for drone strikes in Pakistan. What’s constant isn’t Snowden’s scruples about leaking, but his contempt for the New York Times. The shifting reasons matter less than the abiding distrust of the leading newspaper in America. Defending the American people is the one power that most lib- ertarians readily accord to government. Snowden supported the Iraq war and enlisted in the Army in 2004 at age 20, only lasting a few months before a training injury ended his military career. He surveillance in America would not have come to public attention went on to become an information technology specialist in various without a type like Snowden. A troubled but basically loyal offi- agencies of US intelligence. But in his eight years among Ameri- cial who passed his concerns along internal channels would have can spies, Snowden came to see their world as just as corrupt and been turned aside, as others before Snowden were. The dire conse- dangerous as that of politicians and journalists, if not more. quences for disclosing top secrets would have deterred anyone who hadn’t arrived at the Manichean either/or that drove Snowden to bove all, Snowden is a soldier of the internet, “the most plan his massive document leak methodically over many months. important invention in all human history.” He has said The scale of it—nearly two million documents, by some accounts— that he grew up not just using it but in it, and that he is a measure of the purity of his conviction. No particle of nuance learned the heroic power of moral action from play- could be allowed to adulterate it. He has been accused of grandios- Aing video games. “Basically, the internet allowed me to experi- ity, but nothing short of that would have done the job. ence freedom and explore my full capacity as a human being,” Politically, Snowden’s views fall into a related American tra- Snowden told Greenwald when they met in Hong Kong. “I do not dition, going back to Thomas Jefferson and the even more radi- want to live in a world where we have no privacy and no freedom, cal founders, though in a distinctly contemporary form. Snowden where the unique value of the internet is snuffed out.” Through- is a libertarian whose distrust of institutions and hostility to any out the past year, Snowden has continually returned to this theme, intrusion on personal autonomy place him beyond the sphere in more often and more passionately than to the idea of constitu- American politics where left and right are relevant categories. A tional liberties. His utopia is not an actual democratic society, let temperament as much as a philosophy, libertarianism is often on alone the good life in a three-bedroom bungalow outside Hono- the verge of rejecting politics itself, with its dissatisfying but nec- lulu, but cyberspace. When he saw that his employer, the US gov- essary trade-offs; it tends toward absolutist positions, which grow ernment, was invading the free and private place where he had best in the mental equivalent of a hermetic laboratory environ- become himself, the effect was of a paradise lost. ment. Libertarianism has become practically the default posi- Snowden’s leaks can be seen, in part, as a determined effort tion of young people who work in technology, especially the most to restore the web to its original purity—a project of technology precocious among them. It also reflects, though not completely, rather than law. “Let us speak no more of faith in man, but bind the political outlook of Glenn Greenwald, the former Guardian him down from mischief by the chains of cryptography,” wrote columnist whom Snowden chose to receive the files, and who has Snowden, in an early message to his collaborators. In March just published his account of the story, No Place to Hide: Edward of this year, appearing remotely from Russia on a robotised Snowden, the NSA, and the US Surveillance State. In Greenwald, screen onstage at a TED talk in Vancouver, Snowden said that Snowden found the most sympathetic conduit for his secrets. the single best solution to the NSA’s abuses is stronger encryp- Snowden’s early writings on the online forum Ars Technica, tion: “The internet that we’ve enjoyed in the past has been published under the pseudonym TheTrueHOOHA, reveal a grab exactly what we, as not just a nation but as a people around 50 INTOXICATING CONVICTION PROSPECT JUNE 2014

the world, need.” In taking nearly two million highly classified Although Greenwald and Snowden have suggested that the most documents from the US, he was grabbing back the key to heaven. explosive revelations are yet to come, no recent story has had any- The story of the disclosures has become so familiar that it’s thing like the force of the original disclosures about the NSA’s close to a legend: the anonymous emails sent to Greenwald and bulk data collection from phone and internet companies. What his friend, the filmmaker Laura Poitras, in late 2012 by “a sen- the documents in Greenwald’s book reveal is the larger picture of ior member of the intelligence community”; their encrypted an agency ravenous for every piece of data it can collect. exchanges; Snowden’s flight from Hawaii to Hong Kong the follow- The value of No Place to Hide lies elsewhere. It’s the only ing May, with four supersensitive laptops; the pole-dancing girl- account we have by one of the main characters, an ex-litigator for friend whom he left behind and in the dark; the Rubik’s cube he whom prose narrative is another form of political combat. (Green- held in one hand at the prearranged meeting point, next to a plas- wald has called The Snowden Files “a bullshit book” because Hard- tic alligator in the Mira Hotel, so that the reporters would know ing has never interviewed the protagonist, and because he thought him; the long hours in Snowden’s hotel room; Greenwald’s sen- that, in quoting TheTrueHOOHA to reconstruct Snowden’s early sational and serial revelations in ; Poitras’s 12-min- adulthood, Harding was tarnishing the source’s reputation.) ute video of the calm, articulate, extremely pale young man in From Snowden’s first overtures, which Greenwald essentially the grey shirt introducing himself to the world; Snowden’s sudden ignored, to their encounters in Hong Kong, the story is grippingly reappearance at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. told. Greenwald also makes a powerful case—all the more so for There’s an inherently thrilling quality to this story—a tiny being uncompromising and absolute—for the central role of pri- group of people, strangers to one another, meet in an out-of-the- vacy in a free society, and against the utilitarian argument that, way place in possession of an enormously important secret that since the phone companies’ metadata on Americans hasn’t been the rest of the world is about to know. Harding’s The Snowden Files seriously abused by government officials (not yet, anyway), none moves high-spiritedly through this, with extensive focus on data of us should be too worried. In a chapter called “The Harm of Sur- sharing between the NSA, Britain’s GCHQ, and the telecom and veillance,” he cites Justice Louis Brandeis’s famous opinion on the internet giants whose fibre-optic cables are secretly tapped by the basic “right to be let alone,” and writes: “The desire for privacy two agencies. There’s a detailed account of the Guardian’s role is shared by us all as an essential, not ancillary, part of what it in the story, from Greenwald’s first conversation about the files means to be human. We all instinctively understand that the pri- with Janine Gibson, the Guardian US’s editor in New York, to the vate realm is where we can act, think, speak, write, experiment, forced destruction—under legal pressure from the government— and choose how to be, away from the judgemental eyes of others. of computers and hard drives in the basement of their London Privacy is a core condition of being a free person.” headquarters. For much of the story, Harding’s only sources are But the book’s greatest interest lies in what it reveals about dis- his colleagues, and stretches of the book have the feel of a hasty sent and the dissenter in an age when democratic institutions are in-house version of the Snowden affair, like the regimental history in disarray. Greenwald and Poitras have a clear political agenda, of a great battle. Government officials are “hobbits,” “a plummy- which is why Snowden, with his deep distrust of the institutional voiced Labour MP,” and “a flunkey in a gold chain.” Guardian per- press, chose them. Sean Wilentz, in a New Republic essay on the sonnel are “imperturbable,” “honest,” “innovative,” musically politics of what he calls “paranoid libertarianism,” points out gifted, and frequently witty. “She didn’t budge. She was ramrod,” that, when it comes to domestic programmes such as Medicare a Guardian reporter tells the Guardian author about a Guardian and social security, Greenwald’s views are those of a more conven- editor’s conduct under White House pressure. tional liberal. Where he and Snowden converge is in their zeal to The fact that the year’s biggest scoop in American news was expose the illegitimacy of the American “surveillance state.” broken by an anti-establishment columnist in a left-wing British Greenwald believes that the US government uses monitoring paper led some prominent US journalists to downplay or attack to suppress internal dissent in an era of economic pain and politi- the story (others quickly saw its importance). Harding has a dim cal anger. “Mass surveillance” keeps the public docile by instilling view of American journalism. “With little competition,” he writes, fear of a ubiquitous government that doesn’t just watch people’s “they are free to pursue leads at a leisurely, even gentlemanly, every move but “kills dissent in a deeper and more important pace.” It’s quite true that the Washington press corps is far too place as well: in the mind, where the individual trains him or her- cosy with the powerful people it covers, but the pursuit of scoops self to think only in line with what is expected and demanded.” in print and digital outlets around the country is fierce. Even if the The economic crisis began in 2008, while the NSA programmes picture of US journalism as a country club lulled to sleep by the date back to the years following 9/11—but chronology is only the First Amendment were accurate, it’s hard to think of an American most obvious flaw in this vastly overblown argument. By Green- reporter who would piece together a book about national security wald’s reasoning, he himself is responsible for making the public with just one government source of his own, relying extensively on afraid by exposing the breadth of the NSA’s monitoring, which had testimonials and in-jokes from his colleagues. previously remained unknown and therefore incapabale of creat- ing widespread fear. He also wants to use the story to show “the reenwald’s No Place to Hide was embargoed until 13th corrupting dynamics of establishment journalism.” The Snowden May, and every page of my copy is stamped “CONFI- files immediately appeared useful to both ends. DENTIAL,” with a legal agreement enjoining me to When, on their long flight to Hong Kong, Greenwald and Poi- treat the manuscript as “highly secret” and take no tras read the contents of the thumb drive she had given him in Gnotes on it. I can’t write without taking notes, so, like Snowden, I had New York, with the sensational NSA files, the two couldn’t contain to violate that part of my oath in order to serve a higher purpose. their delight. “I would pop up out of my seat and we’d stand in the As it turns out, the book contains no major scoops. (The most open space of the bulkhead, speechless, overwhelmed, stunned significant disclosure might be that the NSA intercepts and bugs by what we had,” writes Greenwald. He gave Harding a more can- network equipment before repackaging and shipping it overseas.) did account (before cutting short their interview): “We would just PROSPECT JUNE 2014 INTOXICATING CONVICTION 51 KIN CHEUNG/AP/PA IMAGES © KIN CHEUNG/AP/PA A protest outside the US Consulate General in Hong Kong, 2013: “Mass surveillance” is an attempt to “kill dissent,” believes Greenwald cackle and giggle like we were schoolchildren. We were scream- follow the line, not the other way around. ing, and hugging and dancing with each other up and down,” until In Greenwald’s case, the result is a pervasive absence of intel- the pair woke up the passengers around them. Far from being dis- lectual integrity. The examples in No Place to Hide are too numer- turbed or saddened by the revelations, Greenwald and Poitras ous to catalogue, but here are a few characteristic ones. were ecstatic: they’d got the goods on the surveillance state, noth- —Greenwald asserts that Snowden “had not taken all possible ing was lost and everything gained. steps to cover his tracks because he did not want his colleagues to On the same flight was a veteran Guardian reporter named be subjected to investigations or false accusations.” But he doesn’t Ewen MacAskill, assigned by the paper to help the columnist mention the Reuters article showing that Snowden borrowed and filmmaker with this complex and sensitive story. MacAskill’s logins and passwords from colleagues in order to gain access to addition to the trip enraged Poitras. “Who has vetted him?” she more files. The article reported that “A handful of agency [NSA] demanded upon learning that a third person would join them—as employees who gave their login details to Snowden were identified, if reporters have to be checked for their views before they can be questioned and removed from their assignments.” allowed to work. Greenwald saw MacAskill as harmless, “a long- —He scoffs at the Washington Post for hesitating to send a time company man.” These are characteristic attitudes. Green- reporter to meet Snowden in Hong Kong out of concern that their wald’s contempt for journalists of the “establishment media” is conversations might be monitored by Chinese state intelligence. limitless: “like all courtiers, they are eager to defend the system But when Poitras won’t speak openly in a Hong Kong taxi for fear that vests them with their privileges,” he writes. Meanwhile Poi- that their driver might be an undercover US agent, Greenwald tras—an immensely talented filmmaker, whose My Country, My thinks that she could be right. Country is the best documentary about the Iraq war—retreats —John Burns of the New York Times writes an unflattering deeper into self-isolation. profile of Julian Assange, the Wikileaks leader, whom Greenwald Greenwald and Poitras argued so fiercely about MacAskill that intensely admires. Burns is described as “pro-war reporter John she threatened to cancel the trip, until Greenwald came up with Burns.” But Snowden is never “pro-war leaker Edward Snowden”; a solution: “I proposed that we ignore Ewen and freeze him out... nor indeed is Greenwald ever “pro-war columnist Glenn Green- Laura and I were cordial but cold, ensuring… that he had no role until wald,” though the preface to his first book says that he did initially we were ready to give him one.” This astounding lack of profes- support the war in Iraq, before changing his mind after the inva- sionalism only subsided when MacAskill proved his bona fides in sion. (In a paragraph of agonised qualifications, he wrote that “to Hong Kong, demonstrating that he shared their view of Snowden. the extent that I was able to develop a definitive view, I accepted Greenwald has no use for the norms of journalism. He rejects his [the President’s] judgement that American security really objectivity, as a reality and an ideal. “‘Objectivity’ means noth- would be enhanced by the invasion.”) ing more than reflecting the biases and serving the interests of —But unlike Burns, Steve Clemons of the Atlantic, who tweeted entrenched Washington,” he writes. “All journalism serves one about overhearing four intelligence officials at Washington’s faction’s interest or another’s.” This is hardly a new notion, but Dulles airport declaim that Snowden and Greenwald should be it’s also a destructive one. Of course everyone has biases, which “disappeared,” is “well-regarded” and “quite credible.” is exactly why the effort to think and report in spite of them is —The New York Times, the Washington Post, and other news important. Without objectivity as an aspiration, the correctness of organisations are spineless servants of power—unless Greenwald a political line comes before a fair consideration of facts: the facts is using their work to undercut the NSA, which never changes 52 INTOXICATING CONVICTION PROSPECT JUNE 2014

or even complicates his fixed view. Similarly, the US government spied on by NSA.” The sense of oppression among Greenwald, Poi- is determined to frighten and punish critics like Greenwald and tras, and other American dissenters is only possible to those who Poitras—an idea that doesn’t budge, even after they arrive unmo- have lived their entire lives under the rule of law and have come to lested at John F Kennedy airport to pick up journalism prizes. take it for granted. Some of the instances are more subtle than others, but spread In the year since the first NSA disclosures, Snowden has drifted over the several hundred pages of this book, they reveal a mind a long way from the Thoreauvian ideal of the majority of one. He that has liberated itself from the basic claims of fairness. Once has become an international celebrity, far more championed than the norms of journalism are dismissed, a number of constraints reviled. He has praised Russia and Venezuela’s devotion to human and assumptions fall away. Critical distance from the source disap- rights. His more recent disclosures have nothing to do with the pears. Greenwald and Poitras “vowed to each other repeatedly and constitutional rights of US citizens. Many of them deal with sur- to Snowden” that their actions would honour Snowden’s choice. So veillance of foreign governments, including Germany and Brazil, Poitras is outraged when the Guardian violates Snowden’s wishes but also Iran, Russia, and China. These are activities that, wise or by sharing his files with the New York Times, as if the Guardian unwise, fall well within the NSA’s mandate and the normal ways were a vehicle for Snowden’s purposes. And Greenwald attacks the of espionage. Snowden has attached himself to Wikileaks and to New York Times, which had received thousands of documents from Assange, who has become a tool of Russian foreign policy and Wikileaks, for highlighting Julian Assange’s troubling behaviour, has no interest in reforming American democracy—his goal is to as if the paper owed its source the benefit of clergy rather than embarrass it. Assange and Snowden are not the first radical indi- its readers a full picture. Greenwald treats his source as inviolate. vidualists to end up in thrall to strongmen. Snowden looked to the internet for liberation, but it turns out or Greenwald, Poitras, and Snowden’s other supporters, that there is no such thing as an entirely free individual. Cryp- the Obama Administration’s determination—fitful over tography can never offer the absolute privacy and liberty that time—to arrest and prosecute Snowden is a violation of Snowden seeks online. The internet will always be a space con- his rights. Because the disclosures revealed government trolled by corporations and governments, and the freedom it pro- Fwrongdoing, Snowden should be immune from the laws he broke. vides is of a limited, even stunting, kind. No one lives outside the Greenwald points out that the majority of Americans both oppose fact of coercion—there is always a state to protect or pursue you, the NSA’s data collection programmes and also want Snowden whether it’s Obama’s America or Putin’s Russia. prosecuted. He finds these opinions “inconstant,” which is only The NSA revelations have tapped into the disenchantment with true if politics is higher than the rule of law. This view betrays the established institutions that is widespread around the world, from demanding but necessary principle of civil disobedience—from Istanbul to Bangkok to Athens. Are they still worth reforming? Thoreau to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King—which Can democratic norms, including those of the press, restore them- requires that conscientious dissenters who act against an unjust selves to health? Can a proper balance be found between liberty law must be willing to pay the price. and security? Or should the whole effort be dismissed because the In the same way, Greenwald believes efforts by the US and surveillance state has no interest in setting limits? British governments to recover leaked documents are illegiti- One valuable model for reform appeared last December, in mate, because of what those documents revealed. Last August, “The NSA Report” of the President’s Review Group, a far-reach- Greenwald’s Brazilian partner, David Miranda, was held and ques- ing set of recommendations for constraining data collection by the tioned for nine hours at Heathrow airport by the British authori- US government. Obama largely ignored it, perhaps counting on ties under an anti-terrorism law. Miranda was transporting some the waning attention of the American people. So did Greenwald, of the Snowden archive from Berlin, where Poitras lives in self- who doesn’t believe in reform. “There are, broadly speaking, two imposed exile, to Rio, where he and Greenwald live. Miranda’s choices,” he says. “Obedience to institutional authority or radical electronic devices, including files from the Snowden archive, were dissent from it.” Putting it this way is, in itself, a choice. But fair- confiscated. Greenwald initially told the press that his partner minded public opinion will always see a need for state secrecy and was being held to intimidate him from continuing his work on the intrusion, so Greenwald’s choice, which excludes reform, can only NSA disclosures, but did not mention the purpose of Miranda’s make institutional authority stronger. trip. The application of the terrorism law was opportunistic, and the law itself prone to abuse, but Greenwald seems to think that a citizen of a foreign country passing through a British airport in possession of highly classified documents taken from the British government should be beyond the reach of any law. If Greenwald and others were actually being persecuted for their political beliefs, they would instinctively understand that the rule of law has to protect people regardless of politics. The NSA disclosures are disturbing and even shocking; so is the Obama administration’s hyper-aggressive pursuit of leaks; so is the fact that, for several years, Poitras couldn’t leave or re-enter the US without being questioned at airports. These are abuses, but they don’t quite reach the level of the Stasi. They don’t portend a total- itarian state “beyond the dreams of even the greatest tyrants of the past,” as Greenwald believes is possible. A friend from Iran who was jailed and tortured for having the wrong political beliefs, “If I don’t make it through this, I want you to take my phone... and who is now an American citizen, observed drily, “I prefer to be ...and clear my browser history.” 54 PROSPECT JUNE 2014 Blood and bones Performance artist Marina Abramović has starved and cut herself for her art. Can she survive celebrity? hephzibah anderson © ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES © ANNE-CHRISTINEPOUJOULAT/AFP/GETTY Marina Abramović in The Biography Remix, 2004: “Her critics accuse her work of being exhibitionist and narcissistic. That is to miss the point”

t takes a particular skill to turn a mineral tablet into a blocks of ice, having first carved a Yugoslavian red star into her feast, but that’s exactly what Marina Abramović manages stomach with a razor (she still has the scar). as I sit across from her in her office. “It’s so These works have won her acclaim and notoriety. Her fame good. This is a chocolate taste. Mmm,” she says in her plan- is such that she attracts the kind of meaninglessly overblown gent Slavic accent. descriptions that attend celebrity. According to the BBC’s Will IIn preparation for her summer exhibition at London’s Serpentine Gompertz, she is the “Picasso of our day,” and in April, Time mag- Gallery, she is on a cleansing diet that requires her to fast every azine named her one of its “100 Most Influential People.” The weekend for a month. On weekdays she’s allowed a meal at noon fact that her entry was written by the actor James Franco, plays plus “snacks.” At 5pm that meant two almonds, which she ate on directly into the hands of critics like Blake Gopnik, for whom the hour, and the tablet, which she remembered only seconds ago. “Abramović, the daring and experimental young outsider… has “Oh my god, it’s already 5:25!” now become a histrionic grande-dame artiste.” Abramović is performance art’s high priestess—or warrior, as At 67, she looks more warrior-like than ever. She is tall—push- she would have it. Anything but grandmother. “I said this like 20 ing six foot—and full-featured, with a youthful complexion that years ago and it was just a joke, then everybody uses it. I’m more appears almost waxen. The tensile leanness of her younger years warrior. I really go for it, you know?” has yielded to diva-ish solidity. She often wears couture. In person, During her 40-year-career, “going for it” has entailed driving she projects messy charisma: she hugs, she swears, she laughs at a van in circles for 16 hours, starving herself for 12 days in a gal- herself in great gulps as if gasping for air. It doesn’t feel contrived lery, masturbating in a museum, scrubbing clean 1,500 maggot- but nor does it feel quite like warmth. Her hazel eyes—so impor- infested cow bones, and reclining naked on a crucifix made of tant to her art—are placid behind thick-rimmed glasses. Surprisingly, the Serpentine exhibition will be her first solo Hephzibah Anderson is an Associate Editor of Prospect show at a UK public institution. It will consist of a single piece. PROSPECT JUNE 2014 BLOOD AND BONES 55

Titled 512 Hours, it takes its cue from The Artist is Present, her per- easier and mentally harder. Halfway through The Artist is Present, formance at the (MoMA) in 2010, where she decided to remove the table. For 512 Hours, there will be no for three months she spent six days a week sitting silently at a chairs, either. While the MoMA piece was accompanied by other table. Gallery-goers participated by sitting opposite her for as long rooms filled with photographs and videos, and reperformances of as they chose. Some stood in line or even slept outside the museum earlier works by artists and dancers, 512 Hours will stand alone. for the privilege. The performance was physically exhausting— “The one work is nothing, is no work. Is like emptiness,” she Abramović sat, not moving anything except her head, for seven tells me gleefully. Expert manipulator of her image though she hours each day. 716 Hours, it might have been called, and it set a is, it’s hard to believe that her increased fame won’t corrupt the record for the longest durational work ever mounted in a museum. purity of her encounter with the public. The piece’s success or fail- In all, more than 15,000 people sat with her and 750,000 saw the ure seems to rest upon a single question: having endured outland- exhibit, many of them moved to tears by the experience, inspir- ish ordeals of her own devising, can she now survive celebrity? ing a Tumblr titled “Marina Abramović Made Me Cry.” There was also a Facebook support group for “sitters,” a book of photo- hen she’s not performing, Abramović’s life is graphs, a feature-length documentary and a video game. minutely managed. She loves routines. Her three With that exhibition, Abramović ascended—or descended, favourite places in the world, she says, are prisons, depending on your viewpoint—to a new level of pop culture influ- monasteries and sanatoriums, “because of regu- ence. An earlier work, The House with the Ocean View, had already Wlarity.” We’ve already been chatting for some minutes when she been referenced in Sex and the City. Now, Sharon Stone, Rufus decides to impose order on our interview. “OK, let’s start from the Wainwright and Lou Reed all came to sit across from her. So did beginning,” she declares, adjusting her posture and draping her Lady Gaga, who’s since become a kind of disciple. Post-MoMA, raven hair over one shoulder. “I am ready.” Abramović has been photographed alongside Kim Kardashian, The beginning could be many places. It could be when she first danced with Jay-Z, and modelled for Givenchy. She’s even collab- became disillusioned with painting as a student, while lying in the orated with a Park Avenue restaurant on a $20 dessert called Vol- grass studying clouds and watching military planes draw their own cano Flambé, an ice cream and meringue concoction that came lines across the sky—a “spiritual realisation,” she calls it. (After- with gold-leaf decoration and an MP3 player pre-loaded with an wards, she went to the military base and asked if they could give Abramović talk. And then there is her planned Marina Abramović her 15 planes to make a drawing with. They declined.) It could be Institute, where pilgrims will be trained in the “Abramović when she met Ulay, the German performance artist with whom Method,” which will enable them to better appreciate—and per- she lived and worked so intensely in the 1970s and 80s, or when form—long-durational art. they broke up 13 years later, after he got their Chinese translator Much of Abramović’s work is about surrendering control. In pregnant. They marked their break-up with a work that had them Naples in 1974, she famously gave an audience six hours to do meet halfway along the Great Wall of China. It could even be when what they liked to her, using any of 72 props. These included lip- she moved to New York in 1999 with an Italian sculptor 17 years her stick, alcohol, a saw, matches, chains, a bullet and a gun. This junior whom she would eventually marry—and divorce—finding last prop was loaded and aimed at her head at one point. Titled herself triumphantly alone in a city that is, she says, made for her. Rhythm 0, it was her first long-durational work. Really, though, it should be Belgrade, where she was born to Abramović makes herself vulnerable to allow viewers to open two Yugoslav Partisans, who fought against the Nazis in the Sec- up to the experience. It’s this that worries her about the Serpen- ond World War. “Crazy” is how she describes her background. Her tine show. “I have to know that I am dealing with British public, mother, an army major and later Director of Belgrade’s Museum which is very cynical, and incredibly suspicious about everything of the Revolution and Art, came from an affluent, bourgeois fam- and also very easily bored. And I am not there to entertain them.” ily; her father, a philandering commander, from humbler stock. Does she feel she’s failed before? Both slept with loaded pistols, even after the war. Until she was six, “Oh yeah, I’ve done some shitty works, definitely.” Abramović saw them only on weekends and lived with her grand- Though she began talking with Julia Peyton-Jones, the Ser- mother, whose piety dictated the rhythms of their life together. pentine’s Director, 17 years ago, the idea for 512 Hours came only Once, when Abramović was very small, her grandmother had very recently. “About two months ago, I wake up during the night to leave her home alone. She sat the child down with a glass of and I got this idea and I couldn’t sleep the rest of the night. I said, water and told her not to move. When she returned two hours my God, oh God, I have to do this.” Abramović likes ideas that later, Abramović was in exactly the same position, the water “shake my body completely,” she explains. Her plan is that every untouched. That stamina was honed at the hands of her discipli- morning, she’ll unlock the gallery space and let the public in; every narian mother. Further lessons in pain management came with evening, she will lock up. What happens in between is largely down the crippling migraines she suffered in adolescence, and she came to the public, who will be able to take turns standing opposite her. to view pain as the threshold to another form of consciousness. “It’s so simple,” becomes a refrain as we chat and in this instance Yet whatever she lacked emotionally, the family was mate- it’s true. While her performances have always been a collaborative rially comfortable. They holidayed in villas owned by Josip process with her audience, imagery and props and her own strict Broz Tito, wartime leader of the Partisans and communist rules have lent them structure. This time, it will just be her stood President of Yugoslavia from 1953 to 1980. At art school, she was in the gallery space, moving around and “working” with the visi- able to afford larger canvases than the other students, painting tors. She will not reveal anything else at this stage. huge images of car crashes involving communist trucks. It will be her first major work since MoMA, which left her legs Living under Tito and with her devoutly religious grandmother swollen, her back sore, and her whole body in such poor shape that (all those icons) made her acutely aware of the power of images she was unable to remove her scarlet robe at the end of each day and personality cults. She also loved El Greco, Joseph Beuys and without assistance. The Serpentine, she thinks, will be physically Yves Klein. And then there’s Vida Jocić, whom she met through 56 BLOOD AND BONES PROSPECT JUNE 2014

Marina Abramović, Rhythm 0, performance at Studio Morra, Naples, 1974

her mother. As James Westcott explains in his thorough biogra- short while into our conversation, Abramović becomes phy, When Marina Abramović Dies, Jocić witnessed a friend beaten distracted by a flurry of activity in the outer office. to death by guards in a concentration camp. The woman’s cheek Clothes have arrived for a collaboration with Adidas left its imprint in the mud and when they carried her body away, and her young staff have flocked to see. “You could die Jocić tried to lift it from the ground. It disintegrated, inspiring her Ain this,” enthuses an Italian with smoky blue eyes and a compli- career as a sculptor. For Abramović, it was an introduction to the cated haircut. Lifting a layer of gauzy sports fabric, Abramović notion of immateriality, so crucial to performance art. takes a different view. A product of the 1960s, performance art embodied a rejection “What is this shit? I can’t wear this, it’s too sexy!” of materialism and the commodification of art. You can’t hang Which brings us back to the question of her celebrity. It seems performance art on a wall. Visceral, sometimes childish, occa- to have become just another mode of provocation for her. She sionally extreme in its use of self-harm, it bound performer and delights in telling me, for instance, that’s she’s soon off to Necker spectator in a real-time experience that provoked revulsion and Island to meet with Richard Branson and the founder of TED. titillation in equal measure. By the 1970s, Chris Burden was cru- But does she not worry that in becoming an art icon she’s interfer- cifying himself to the roof of a Volkswagen, and Joseph Beuys was ing with the public’s reaction to her work? “Oh listen, I don’t at all, spending time caged with a coyote. because my success came so slow. You know, ’til I was 50, I didn’t Performance art is challenging for both viewer and performer. have any money at all. Performance was not even considered as Most of Abramović’s contemporaries have since burnt out or any kind of art. I spent all my life fighting for that position.” turned to other media. Some died before their time. It’s so varied Context and intention, she’s always maintained, are what dis- that formulating a critical opinion can be tricky, and it’s absurdly tinguishes her actions from a 21st-century teen filming self-harm- easy to parody—check out the spoof website “Marina Abramović ing and putting it on YouTube or a flagellant making his way Retirement Fund of America.” But if its messages can seem liter- through the streets of medieval Europe. Although journalists no alistic (when Abramović brushed her hair until her scalp bled, she longer ask Abramović what makes her work art, it’s a question was challenging notions of beauty), then so, too, can her critics, she’s been asking herself as she puts together her passion project, who have accused her work of being exhibitionist and narcissistic. the Marina Abramović Institute (MAI). That is to miss the point. In a way, Abramović’s oeuvre is about “Is this art, what I’m doing? I really think it’s art because it’s the dissolution of self. She hands over her body to the service of in context of art. If I will be baking the bread and have the most art, becoming a conduit in the manner of an oracle. There’s cer- incredible taste and it will change everybody—you know, con- tainly something of that in the way she describes her process and sciousness is just eating piece of great bread—I still will not be art- role as an artist. ist, I will be baker. Context makes the difference,” she says. “It’s really strange how ideas come to your head. I really, truly She intends to house the institute in a building in Hudson, two believe that your only job as an artist is to be receiver and sender, hours north of New York City and close to the star-shaped home but for that you have to clear yourself. I always think it’s very where she does most of her work. There is, as yet, no date of com- important for an artist to go to the places of solitude, to go to the pletion in sight. Abramović bought the building in 2006 as a stor- rivers or ocean or mountains. Nature really is the huge healer and age facility for her archive (ironically for an artist whose work is also messenger,” she says as blaring horns drift up to the 10th floor immaterial, she throws nothing away—costumes, films, photo-

PHOTOGRAPH: DONATELLI SBARRA, © MARINA ABRAMOVIC. COURTESY OF MARINA ABRAMOVIC AND SEAN KELLY GALLERY, NEW YORK. DACS 2014 DACS NEW YORK. GALLERY, SBARRA, © MARINA ABRAMOVIC. COURTESY OF ABRAMOVIC AND SEAN KELLY DONATELLI PHOTOGRAPH: from the street below, at once heckling her and proving her point. graphs, notebooks.) In 2010, the response to her MoMA show PROSPECT JUNE 2014 BLOOD AND BONES 57 persuaded her that she had a mission greater than her own per- Frenchman who met Abramović in 1997, when he saw her Ven- formance projects. The institute, she is quick to point out, is not a ice Biennale performance and sent her a fan fax. Shortly after, he temple to her but a platform for long-durational art in all its forms quit his job as a trader in Hong Kong to open his own gallery in that merely bears her name. Even that, she hopes, will eventually Paris. When she asked him to close it and move to New York, he be subsumed, as works by others fill its space and “MAI” comes to accepted immediately. stand for the Many Artists Institute. Spending time in her downtown office, with its crystals and It will, however, be a centre for the advancement of the so- white roses and her tribe of beautiful young assistants, can feel called Abramović Method, a distillation of all that she’s learnt a little like induction into a New Age commune. She speaks of about consciousness on her travels, spending time with Aborigi- “energy flow” and of letting the spirit wander, and sketched me a nes, Sufi mystics, Buddhist monks, and most recently a female diagram as she laid out her idea of the digestive system as a wash- shaman in Brazil. Visitors will sign a contract, pledging to stay for ing machine. She believes strongly enough in numerology that she six hours, stow away their belongings—mobile phones in particu- took her first New York apartment based on its street number. lar—and don white lab coats. By spending an hour drinking a glass “It’s not a cult,” Le Borgne laughs when I ask if working for the of water or half-a-dozen counting grains of rice, they will become institute has changed his way of being. “Basically, I think that we better able to experience or perform art. are really all like her. We have the same kind of sense of humour “It worked for me, so this is what I’m giving as a present to any- and concerns and interests,” he adds. Which really does sound a body else who wants to try. I’m giving possibility to go back to self. little cult-like, now that he mentions it. We can’t change the world if you don’t change consciousness,” But Abramović is right to note how afraid we’ve become of she says. That combination of hubris and humility is typical of “spiritual connotations” in art. Art’s most important function, Abramović, who speaks rapidly and often dispenses with the past she believes, is to convey a “transcendent element.” Ultimately, tense, creating a perpetual present. the most striking aspect of her practice isn’t its naked gore and Along with art and spirituality, she hopes to make space for sci- extremes of endurance, it’s the gravity of her intentions, and her ence and technology at the MAI. In their exploration of empa- old-fashioned belief that art can change people and shape soci- thy and endurance, her works have long seemed like social science ety. With pieces like The Artist is Present, she’s shown her fearless- experiments but lately she’s become interested in the hard stuff. ness when it comes to making work that evokes the intangible, that And so one room will contain a project called the Compatibility cannot easily be compressed into catalogue copy. People respond Racer, designed by a Princeton neuroscience graduate student, to her work emotionally. Lauren Silbert, and her sister, an architect. A dinky two-seater Yazmany Arboleda, a multimedia artist who got up early on cart, it harnesses participants’ brain activity to create motion. his 29th birthday to queue outside MoMA and sit with Abramović Abramović is fond of calling the MAI a Bauhaus for our age for 70 minutes, talked of a “mysticism” to the experience when we (she has also described it as a “cultural spa”) but at present, there spoke by phone. “Sitting with her was almost like a hallucination. are some doubts as to whether it will ever see the light of day. A At some point I thought that her hair was growing, and that it was Kickstarter campaign, in which Lady Gaga appeared naked in a flooding the gallery floor because we had been sitting for such a forest in order to practice the Abramović Method, snagged over long time. Later, I thought there were flowers growing from her $600,000. But a further $31m is required to realise the architec- dress. The lighting washed her out—made her look like a saint.” tural design by Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas, which was There is certainly some sorcery to her work, and it inspires a unveiled two years ago. kind of hushed reverence in those around her. A few weeks after I visited the site on a recent weekday morning. The former my afternoon with Abramović, a press release from the Serpen- theatre, turned antiques warehouse and indoor tennis facility, is tine arrived, noting that 512 Hours will feature props after all. This abandoned, its tall white pillars seemingly rotting at their wooden was not something she mentioned. What sort of props will they be bases. The inside of the building is no better, having been torn and how numerous, I asked her assistant. “My darling,” he replies up from asbestos tests, with electrical cables tangled up every- by email, “when you work with immateriality, everything becomes where. Built in 1929, it’s one of the larger buildings in a town set- quite unpredictable.” tled by 18th century merchants and whalers, and known as the birthplace of the Hudson River School art movement. Predictably, on one of the building’s boarded-up doors someone had sprayed, “Is this art?” in yellow paint. The graffiti is not the only sign of a backlash. In Matthew Akers’ HBO documentary about Abramović, her ex-partner Ulay reflects on her career trajectory following their split. “She got into theatre productions—because there was money,” he says, theatre being the ultimate insult in performance art circles. Abramović’s restaging of past performances—her own and other artists’—has scandalised many. “The Day Performance Art Died,” declared online art magazine Hyperallergic in one headline. There have been rumours, too, of artists and dancers being asked to perform gruelling tasks for very low wages. But the truth is that there are many people willing to work for her for free, beginning with the interns at the MAI, which is headquartered back in New York City, just across the hallway from Abramović LLC. Its Executive Director is Serge Le Borgne, a middle-aged “Barbie broke through the glass ceiling.” PROSPECT JUNE 2014 INFRASTRUCTURE 59 Special report Infrastructure investment

June 2014 The money’s not the problem

It is the government’s hesitance, of economic, employment and transport not a lack of investment, that benefits each year. Significantly, while Crossrail is funded on is hampering new infrastructure the public sector balance sheet by a consor- projects, say Mark Dooley tium of Transport for London, Network Rail and the Greater London Authority, there and Dan Wong was also the clear possibility of using the pri- vate financing model. The UK is the global centre of expertise in private infrastructure ince the financial crisis of 2008, London’s enormous Crossrail project finance; a sprawling network of builders, attention has turned to infrastruc- stands as a clear example of what can be lawyers, accountants, technical and finan- ture investment as a means to spur achieved when well-conceived national cial advisors, lenders and investors whose economic growth and fund employ- building projects trigger large-scale invest- market-leading capabilities take them into ment. Could the same Keynesian ment. With a £16bn spend over six years, projects all over the world. Would the UK Salchemy that fueled recovery in post-depres- Crossrail is generating the equivalent of government tap into that capacity to deliver sion America and in postwar Britain stimu- 55,000 full-time jobs. Once fully-opera- a surge of infrastructure investment? late economic growth once more? tional, analysis suggests it will add £1.24bn The UK chose a more cautious path. © CROSSRAIL/REX London’s Crossrail under construction: “With a £16bn spend over six years, it is generating the equivalent of 55,000 full-time jobs” 60 INFRASTRUCTURE PROSPECT JUNE 2014

Without renouncing the possible bene- and turned into a fully-funded project in fits of investment in government projects, March 2014. What does this say about the policy emphasis was given to debt reduc- availability of capital to fund new infrastruc- Political tion and intricate financial reform. And so ture investment? a neutral position has emerged: there has Since the financial crisis there has been been no investment spending for the sake a flight to what are seen as safe investments projects of stimulation but equally there is a desire in a low interest rate environment—this has to see those projects that emerged from the brought investors round to regarding infra- Politics is hindering usual political, bureaucratic and planning structure as another asset class in which to processes proceed. The government’s incli- invest. Pension funds, insurance companies infrastructure nation to release projects has also been ham- and sovereign wealth funds the world over investment, says pered by anxiety that, post-crisis, the private have been steadily increasing their portfolio Paola Subacchi financing markets could not support new allocations to direct infrastructure invest- projects anyway. ment. Australian and Canadian pension The analysis does, however, tell a some- funds commonly allocate 10-15 per cent— Having been long neglected, investing in what reassuring story. Where government the rest of the world is just getting started. infrastructure is back on the policy agenda. provides clear policy direction in favour of This wall of infrastructure capital has enliv- It is featuring prominently in debates ahead investment, industry and capital markets ened the infrastructure market, although of this year’s G20 in Australia, and is seen as find a way to deliver projects. The flip side a way to unlock the potential of many devel- is that where policy lacks direction, and “The constraint since the oping countries. Institutional investors and crucially, where no investment projects are financial crisis has not pension funds tend to favour long-term pro- released for tender, no amount of govern- jects, such as infrastructure, because of ment-backed funding initiatives can cause been the availability of their potential to generate a steady revenue investment to occur. capital, but the flow of stream over several years—essential to meet Energy is, perhaps, UK infrastructure’s pensions providers’ long-term liabilities. Is success story. Against the backdrop of a deals in which to invest” there a way to unlock this money and meet looming energy deficit—attributable largely the demand for building new infrastructure to a fleet of coal-fired power stations about only a small number of investors are willing and maintaining existing ones while, at the to fall foul of modern environmental regula- to take on the risk that comes with new-build same time, supporting economic growth? tion—the shift from carbon-producing gen- projects. Notwithstanding this, there are Infrastructure projects are necessary eration to wind power, both on and offshore, numerous well-funded specialist investors not only to a country’s long-term develop- solar, biomass and waste-to-energy has pro- (including the new UK Pensions Infrastruc- ment but also to modernise its economy. duced around 9,000MWs of new, renewa- ture Platform) in construction projects. The Up-to-date, well-maintained and efficient ble generation capacity. What’s more, all of constraint since the financial crisis has not infrastructure—from transport to commu- this was installed between 2008 and 2013. been the availability of capital—it has been nication networks—increases productivity Approximately 20 per cent of the nation’s the flow of deals in which to invest. and improves the standard of living. Building generation capacity will be retired by the There is a similar picture in relation to and maintaining infrastructure also has an end of this decade—the need for further the availability of lending for infrastruc- impact on economic growth and job creation. investment is strong. ture. With their stable cashflows and long But there are downsides. Political consid- The threat of EU sanctions and the real asset lives, infrastructure projects have been erations can distort the efficient allocation of risk of energy blackouts later this decade heavy users of the debt markets. While the resources and projects may be selected not has spurred the government to incentivise financial crisis and the ensuing regulatory on overall merit but for their narrow politi- investment in green energy. Where these storm have taken many traditional bank cal worth. There are too many unnecessary schemes have created a fundable business lenders out of the project finance market, bridges and empty airports. Public funds case, the private sector found the capital and there is still a diverse market of traditional have been wasted on projects with no eco- made the project happen. project finance banks, new entrant institu- nomic or social value, but which delivered a In contrast, social infrastructure (schools, tional lenders (insurance companies and short-lived boost to growth and jobs. hospitals and so on) and transport infra- pension funds), specialist infrastructure In addition, building physical infrastruc- structure (road and rail) have not been sub- debt funds and a resurgent, deep bond mar- ture can often result in a considerable loss of ject to such a clear imperative. Because ket. The bond market is aided by the inter- welfare for some groups, especially local res- there is less perceived urgency, proponents vention of public initiatives such as the UK’s idents. Balancing costs and benefits is politi- of investment programmes in these sectors Treasury guarantee scheme and the Euro- cally difficult and often results in huge delays have found it harder to be heard over the pean Investment Bank’s “project bonds” in bringing a project to completion. philosophical debate on privately-funded product. The combination of this suite of Because large infrastructure projects infrastructure. funding options gives restored confidence tend to be publicly funded, budget con- The recently closed Mersey Gateway that even large projects can be funded. straints and political considerations have cre- project tells an interesting story. A £600m With the volumes of investment in the ated a serious infrastructure gap in the UK. bridge project was procured by Halton energy sector and with Mersey Gateway According to the National Infrastructure Borough Council (HBC), one of the UK’s demonstrating that this can also be delivered Plan published at the end of last year, this smaller local authorities, using an innova- for transport infrastructure, it’s clear that gap is at least £375bn. New infrastructure is tive transaction model and pioneering fund- there are ample pools of debt and equity cap- needed in many sectors, not least in the roads ing structures. HBC pressed on with their ital to make projects happen. The ball is in system: the Department for Transport esti- procurement through the depths of the cri- the government’s court. It must bring more mates that by 2025 road congestion in Eng- sis and attracted an impressive field of first projects to the market. land will be 27 per cent worse than in 2003, tier international contractors, investors and Mark Dooley is Head of Greenfield Infrastructure with a 12 per cent rise in time spent travelling. lenders to their process. Three fully under- and Dan Wong is Head of Infrastructure & Real Since 2012 the National Infrastructure written bids were submitted in April 2013 Estate, both at Macquarie Capital Europe Plan has had only modest success, limited PROSPECT JUNE 2014 INFRASTRUCTURE 63 in scope and scale due to balance sheet con- ena and other factors will drive demand for capacity from manufacturing to infrastruc- straints. Of the current projects it sets out, new and improved infrastructure. ture projects reflecting the role of project 90 per cent are in energy and transport. HS2 According to McKinsey Global Institute, development in trade. The Export-Import is identified as one of the 40 top priority pro- $57 trillion of global investment is required Bank of the United States, for instance, has jects. The UK Guarantees Scheme and the in the world’s roads, railways, airports and increased the proportion of infrastructure Pension Investment Platform have been utility lines between now and 2030. We need projects in its portfolio significantly in the created to ensure that infrastructure pro- to be spending $3.7 trillion a year (4 per cent last five years. Sovereign wealth funds have jects can raise the necessary funds. These of global output) to reach this target, and at also increased investment in infrastructure are positive steps but they are not enough. only $2.7 trillion a year we are a long way from projects, with approximately 56 per cent of It is necessary to ensure that projects are big achieving this. The nascent, fragile and long- sovereign wealth funds currently investing enough—usually around £80m—to meet the awaited recovery underway in the UK and the directly or indirectly in infrastructure. This requirements of large institutional investors. US will only accelerate demand. Bridging the figure is up 16 per cent from 2011 and is show- In addition, political issues need to be dealt gap between infrastructure demand and the ing no signs of slowing down, according to with before fundraising, especially for pro- capacity to deliver it will require vision and London-based research company Preqin. jects that are attractive to investors—those innovation from politicians, regulators, engi- Perhaps the most interesting develop- with the potential to deliver the steadiest neers, financial institutions and citizens. ment and greatest hope for infrastructure return, such as toll roads and airports, but Infrastructure is a fascinating sector finance is the involvement of pension funds. are also politically the most controversial. because it is fundamentally about realis- Infrastructure provides some unique attrib- To promote and support infrastructure, ing the most basic needs of society—clean utes that are attractive to pension funds: they policymakers need to set up a framework air, water, transportation and energy—that match long-tenured assets with the long-ten- that allows the public and private sectors to can support economic growth. But it is also ured liabilities within pension fund portfolios work together on big projects, and enables aspirational because infrastructure is about and can provide stable long-term cash flow. institutional investors to unlock funds for developing new cities, and enabling iconic The level of direct investment by pension them. Clarity, predictability, transparency sporting events and the legacies that can suc- funds in infrastructure finance is still small, and governance are all crucial. Investors need ceed them. We see this today in the legacy left with only about 1 per cent of pension funds to understand the risk and how to manage it. by the 2012 Olympic Games in east London. invested directly, according to the OECD. Taxpayers need to see that public funds are Delivering this infrastructure requires Pension funds are raising infrastructure being spent efficiently, in well-chosen pro- the adroit application of physical science to funds at a historic rate. Many seem will- jects that will enhance collective well-being. design and construct, but also of social sci- ing to play a vital role in bridging the gap Those adversely affected by the building ence to agree the consents required by reg- in demand and capacity that is necessary to of new infrastructure need to be closely ulators and citizens. It is true that the global increase economic opportunity and improve informed about how decisions are being recession significantly deferred infrastruc- quality of life globally. The key question will made and the wider benefits it may bring. ture demand but it also altered the terms of be which nations can develop the frame- The challenge is to create a circle of effi- the debate about infrastructure. works required to enable these investments cient investment, sustainable economic Over the past five years in Europe and to move forward quickly. The introduction of expansion, productivity growth and healthy the US, the stimulative implications of infra- this financing is welcome and timely, but the finance. Llewellyn Consulting estimates that, structure projects have been debated as dynamics of traditional infrastructure plan- if the National Infrastructure Plan were fully much as the physical utility of roads, railways ning, design, construction and operation implemented, it could generate more than and power plants. John Maynard Keynes has must evolve to accommodate this investment. £400bn, or 25 per cent of UK GDP. Infra- been invoked by both supporters and critics Until this is realised, the true extent to structure investment on this scale would of fiscal stimulus. Among the many bene- which this financing approach can have a provide support for long-term growth as fits of the recovery, however regionalised and positive impact on the way we fund global opposed to short-term speculation and help fragile it may be, is that it enables us to view infrastructure will not be fully understood. to increase financial stability. these projects in terms of their physical per- This potentially inhibits the growth needed Paola Subacchi is Research Director in formance, their capacity to support growing to bridge the gap we have in infrastructure International Economics at Chatham House economies and to improve quality of life. investment, if we are to reach the 2030 target The main question being asked in response of $57 trillion of global investment, and thus to this is: how to pay for it all? The capacity avoid potentially damaging long-term soci- of the traditional financiers of infrastruc- etal and environmental impacts in both the Building ture—namely governments, utility custom- developed and developing world. ers and commercial banks—is inadequate Mark Fallon is European Regional Managing to meet the demand. Governments across Director for engineering firm CH2M HILL bridges the world are becoming more constrained from increasing deficit spending. The role of banks in project finance under Basel III— Who will finance the reforms of financial regulation set by the infrastructure now? Bank for International Settlements that are asks Mark Fallon currently being implemented—remains to be seen. However, we can predict that the cost of securing letters of credit, important tools for It is a fact that a gap between the need for project finance, may well increase. global infrastructure and the capacity of tax There are signs that some institutions are and tariff payers to finance it is increasing. willing to take up some of this slack in infra- Investment in infrastructure among OECD structure finance. Export credit agencies— nations has declined in recent decades. which help provide finance for domestic Urbanisation, population growth, manage- companies to operate overseas—are shifting “We’re too scared to get rid of him in case ment of high consequence natural phenom- some of their direct loan and credit insurance he’s doing something useful” 66 PROSPECT JUNE 2014 Arts & books What good are literary prizes? 66 The afterlife of Thomas Malthus 68 The benefits of war 70 James Joyce and me 72 Books in brief 76 Winners and chumps Literary awards lend a little drama to an occupation whose daily pursuit is dull, says Lionel Shriver

Lost For Words The Elysian Prize is sponsored by “the which I will quote generously. by Edward St Aubyn (Picador, £12.99) Elysian Group,” which doesn’t flog alter- Of the Trainspotting genre, wot u starin at native investment management but “the is a work of “gritty social realism” that begins: Literary circles so routinely garner a repu- world’s most radical herbicides and pes- tation for back-biting, back-stabbing and ticides.” Retired from the Foreign Office, “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” back-scratching that it’s a wonder writers nonagenarian Sir David Hampshire serves Death Boy’s troosers were round his have any skin left below the shoulder blades. on Elysian’s board and hand picks the prize ankies. The only vein in his body that These same flayed specimens judge literary jury. Judges include a former girlfriend of hadna bin driven into hiding was his prizes, which have, in turn, garnered a repu- Hampshire’s, Penny Feathers, who writes cock. tation for caprice, corruption, arbitrariness, thrillers—bad thrillers, it should go without “I told yuz nivir ivir to talk to uz when and an inbuilt propensity to crown the dread saying—and Hampshire’s godson, Tobias Aym trackin a vein,” snarled Death Boy. “compromise” candidate—everyone’s second Benedict, an actor whose sole qualification choice on which a feuding, factionalised jury for judging a literary prize is having been “a The searing portrayal of life on a Glas- can at least agree. All told, it’s a wonder that fanatical reader ever since he was a little boy.” gow housing estate continues later: we take the baubles so seriously. The chair, Malcolm Craig, is a backbench Regarding the big prizes, the explana- MP who fancies power even of such a mod- “Wot u starin at?” sais the red-haired tion is money. Never mind the purse; in the est variety, and hopes to curry favour with a cunt at the bar. 12 weeks on either side of Vernon God Little’s senior colleague by getting the man’s novel, “Ay wasna starin at anythin,” said 2003 Man Booker win, sales of DBC Pierre’s written under a pseudonym, on the short- Death Boy. novel increased by nearly 5,000 per cent. For list. Malcolm is sure of manipulating Penny, “Listen, mate,” sais Wanker, who wasna all the healthy cynicism with which readers and Tobias also, if only because the latter in the mood for a fight, being skag-sick, might view awards—suspecting that judges never comes to the meetings. That leaves and pissed at the world on account of his favour friends and punish rivals—the suck- two judges as mere annoyances: Jo Cross, a AIDS test comin back positive, “there’s ers still go out and buy the winning book. columnist obsessed with “relevance,” and nae cunt staring at Authors also face a dilemma. If they have Vanessa Shaw, an Oxbridge academic inter- nae cunt.” been neglected by the jury, writers who pooh- ested in “good writing.” When pressed to pooh a prize risk the stain of sour grapes. The be more specific about her enthusiasms, A “richly textured portrait of Jacobean Lon- winner has the standing to dismiss an award, Vanessa clarifies, “especially good writing.” don,” All the World’s a Stage is written by a but also the most to gain from promoting the Of the 200 novels submitted for the Ely- New Zealander from the point of view of Wil- exercise as one of probity and discernment. sian, the judges read almost none of them. liam Shakespeare. It contains dialogue like, Besides, not everyone takes prizes seri- Given the former Booker judges I have met “Indeed, the tears lie in an onion that should ously. Edward St Aubyn doesn’t—or so he who have destroyed their eyesight in a sin- water that sorrow,” and this, when Shake- might have us believe. His own Mother’s Milk gle year, on this point St Aubyn may do real speare is asked to produce a sonnet: was shortlisted for the Man Booker in 2006, book-prize judges an injustice. and now the author of the distinguished Pat- The authors, too, are a motley crew. Kath- “Why, tis in my codpiece,” said rick Melrose novels has published a piss-take erine is a femme fatale carrying on with three William, “for a man is a fool who aimed specifically at the Booker. (For dis- men at once; she may have talent, but we’ll keeps not a poem in his codpiece, and cussion: whether Lost for Words would have never know, since her editor submits not her a codpiece that hath no poem in it is appeared quite so irresistible a project if in new novel but an Indian cookbook to the Ely- indeed a foolish codpiece.” 2006 St Aubyn had triumphed.) sian by mistake. Sonny, the cookbook writer’s “It is a naughty codpiece,” said John, From such an accomplished author, Lost egotistical Indian nephew, is indignant at his “for it hath naught in it.” for Words is a slight novel. Its tone wobbles, aunt’s eventual shortlisting, having written “Ho-ho,” said goodly Master Jonson, and some of the humour falls flat. Its broad his own 2,000-page opus, The Mulberry Ele- draining his tankard of sack, “a battle of comic timbre—just shy of farce—sacrifices phant, which still lacks a British publisher. wits!” any genuine emotional investment in the Didier is a French intellectual who flies into cast. Thus attempts at characterisation and ecstasies of paradox. St Aubyn takes marvellous mickey out of subplots that have little to do with the novel’s I made a note on page 69: “I predict X nature writing (“…the yarrow with its feath- central target leave the reader impatient to will win.” Though I was right, I’m not sure ery white and pink flowers and the bright get to the good bits. But there are many good the telescoped ending matters. The delicious red berries of the poisonous baneberry bits and, on occasion, inspired ones. passages of this novel are its parodies, from bush…”), and has a wonderful time with Edward Aubyn’s St new novel onthe asatire is world but,says ofliterary prizes, Lionel Shriver, aslight itis work by writer anaccomplished PROSPECT JUNE 2014PROSPECT ARTS &BOOKS 67

© JANIE AIREY 68 ARTS & BOOKS PROSPECT JUNE 2014

Didier’s pretentious deconstruction. Cap- St Aubyn’s scepticism. My fellow judges book buyers. The imprimatur is simply italism, writes the Frenchman, offers “the weren’t scheming or malign, but the pro- another recommendation, one probably as consolation of its own pale triumvirate: the cess did feel arbitrary, the standards applied reliable as a thumbs-up from a fellow book- producer, the consumer and the commod- helter-skelter, the choice of winner a little club member. Yet the modest gamble is no ity. Thanks to advertising, the producer sells cowardly (correct inference: I did not get greater than the purchase of any other book. the commodity to the consumer; thanks to my way). I’ve won a single literary prize of In the main, literary awards lend small- the internet, the consumer is the commod- moment, and at that time I was surprisingly pond drama to an occupation whose daily ity sold to the producer. This is the Utopia of keen on the exercise. Since then, I’ve been pursuit is dull. They provide the year a more borderless democracy: a shift of the signifier shortlisted numerous times for prizes I did mountainous topography, otherwise a dreary in the desert of the Real. … [I]n the absence not win, experiences curiously less entertain- plain. They sell a few copies, and supply the of the hidden object, we cannot see what we ing. Having entered the less-than-charmed industry bursts of publicity. As Lost for Words see, because we have abandoned the need to statistical world in which the chances of illustrates, they are tempting to pillory, but search. As for searching, let our engines do beating four or five other candidates are no pretty harmless overall. it for us!” better than 20 per cent, I would approach For most of us, book prizes are just a To the extent that St Aubyn advances an yet another shortlisting with mild dread. It great excuse for a party. Thus I nurse a sole argument, it seems to be voiced by a guest at seems impossible to resist getting your hopes regret about the year I won the Orange: my the Elysian Prize dinner: “If an artist is good, up, and impossible to cultivate a perfect acceptance speech went on forever. I failed nobody else can do what he or she does and indifference. Yet runner-up shortlisting con- to appreciate how fiercely the audience therefore all comparisons are incoherent. sumes a considerable amount of energy and was chafing to snag another glass of free Only the mediocre, pushing forward a com- time, at the end of which you’ve nothing to champagne. Give me a second chance by monplace view of life in a commonplace lan- show. You feel like a chump. forking over that capricious, corrupt, hope- guage, can really be compared.” Despite widespread dubiety about the lessly arbitrary Booker, and I promise to I’ve judged only one major literary award, selection process, it’s easy to see why big keep it short. and that peek behind the curtain jibed with awards like the Booker continue to entice Lionel Shriver’s latest novel is “Big Brother” The lure of the apocalypse Thomas Malthus was wrong that population growth would lead to famine, says Clive James. Why are his ideas still popular?

Malthus: The Life and Legacies of an you could start telling the story before it hap- say that I have no qualifications in science Untimely Prophet pened and burble on until it did. Underneath myself. What I know something about is the by Robert J Mayhew (Harvard, £20) this perception lurked the assumption that use and abuse of language; and I know quite it never would, but nobody wanted to hear a lot about the mass media, having worked In 1798 the cleric, scholar and political theo- about that. Normality is never news. in that area all my life. In my experience, rist Thomas Robert Malthus became famous Malthus’s principle only ever held true when people with a shaky grasp of the lan- for enunciating a single principle: since the locally. Globally, the population kept on guage come to write about something scien- population increases geometrically but its going up, and in the course of not too much tific, they will have a shaky grasp of that too. food supply increases only arithmetically, time it became apparent that he had been For example, in the countless press articles famine is inevitable. As a consequence, any quite wrong about the food supply being lim- and official statements on the subject of cli- period of apparent prosperity would lead to ited. Successful experimentation with new mate change, anyone who calls carbon diox- a breakdown because of limited resources: crops ensured that there would be plenty of ide “carbon” plainly knows nothing about human progress was “condemned to a per- food if it could be fairly distributed. Fam- either language or science. petual oscillation between happiness and ines and wars might arise out of the failure But let me commend Mayhew for his out- misery.” Later on, as Robert J Mayhew to do that—famine, indeed, has several times line of how the famous writers of the 19th relates in the first part of his new book, Mal- been deliberately employed as a political century reacted to Malthus’s big idea. Wil- thus elaborated his position with some sub- weapon—but in principle, as it were, there liam Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, tlety, but people had already heard from him was no longer any Malthusian principle Robert Southey and Lord Byron despised it. all that they thought they needed to hear. worth talking about. Nevertheless the talk Of all the famous writers, William Hazlitt They had heard about imminent disaster. has gone on, and is especially fervent today, attacked Malthus hardest. On page 90 of his In all shades of millenarianism since the when all the statistics agree that the main book, Mayhew gives a summary of Hazlitt’s year dot, imminent disaster had featured as crops will be abundant for years to come. The “arguments that it was political organisa- a theme. But this time the prediction was sci- statistics might say so but the mass media tion, not nature, that limited population entific, or sounded that way. The mere sound would rather say that the world will starve. size, and that there were still large tracts of was enough. With what we now call the mass It’s a more interesting story, even though it’s land that were all but uninhabited.” This media already growing, there was an appetite not really a story at all; it’s only a conjecture. summary belongs in a better book, and is for stories about catastrophe; and the advan- Mayhew is not very good on the techni- enough to make you sorry that Hazlitt is not tage of a catastrophe that lay in the future, calities of food production. As a professor alive now, so that he might construct a ver- instead of the present, was that there was no of historical geography and intellectual his- bal pillory for Al Gore. reason ever to stop reporting the news. If a tory, he knows something about econom- Charles Dickens incarnated his opinion volcano, such as Krakatoa, were to blow its ics in general, or he would never have dared of Malthus in the figure of Scrooge. William top, there was only so much that the news to start his book, but he seems not to know Cobbett denounced as criminal the Malthu- media could say. But if civilisation was due much about farming. A pity, because farm- sian idea that the poor should not be helped. to destroy itself in some apocalyptic event, ing is science in its raw form. I hasten to In Sartor Resartus, Thomas Carlyle called PROSPECT JUNE 2014 ARTS & BOOKS 69

Malthusianism “a madness”; and although against the threat of cold. Lately he prates ning of the fad has been an unfailing source he was talking about something else when about the threat of heat. Common to both of alarmist propaganda, has now issued a he called economics “the dismal science,” he these views is his alarmism. I can remem- report that softens and even nullifies many certainly called Malthus dismal, as well as ber how, more than 40 years ago, he was on of its previous claims about what damage dreary and stolid. a BBC Two television programme telling us global warming might currently be causing, On the whole, the great names found that the world would soon run out of copper. and will therefore soon cause even more of. something hard to stomach in Malthus’s pic- Also appearing was a quietly spoken, unspec- Stuck in its ways, the IPCC launched this ture of the future. It seems fair to guess that tacular expert on metal trading who said that new report with the usual clamour about what they found wrong with it was its futurol- copper could never run out, because of the the approaching inferno, but for anyone ogy. To present conjectures as facts is to hoist price mechanism. We never heard from the who actually looked inside the report—there language automatically into the realm of the metal trader again, but we kept on hearing were even some operators in the mass media abstract. Precise writing and large projec- every night from Ehrlich. who did so—the emphasis had clearly shifted tions about what might one day happen do from mitigation to adaptation. This shift not mix. It has to be admitted that Charles “To present conjectures as counts as a relief to all of us who thought that Darwin thought highly of Malthus, but Dar- replacing power sources that work with other win was probably glad to have the support of facts is to hoist language power sources that only might work was a an economic theory that seemed to favour automatically into the dangerous plan and perhaps even ruinous, the concept of the survival of the fittest, a although we could see how the idea of ruin term devised by Herbert Spencer, but for realm of the abstract” might be attractive to anyone who thought which Darwin became famous. Since Darwin that the world had too many people. undoubtedly represented science, it was per- The mass media, whose operatives quite Mayhew seems not really to believe in haps not surprising that Malthus emerged possibly didn’t believe Ehrlich’s spiel for a the concept of global overpopulation. When into the reputation he enjoys today as some- minute, thought that he talked a good game. you read between the lines of his book, he is how having been an explicator and prophet Some of us language experts thought that he not much of a Malthusian. But, like the sci- of the planet’s terminal crisis. actually talked bad English. But he was great ence itself, he has been infected by the cheap In the 20th century, HG Wells was in on camera. The deplorable final sections of glamour of media sensationalism, so he can’t favour of (his words) “the euthanasia of the Mayhew’s book weakly concede that Ehr- help sticking with the current bloodcurdling weak and the sensual.” George Bernard lich and his many successors in the climate prophecy—current for now, at least—that if Shaw, even more shamefully—because Shaw, change business might just have something. climate change is allowed to rage unchecked, unlike Wells, was not entirely a prancing For the layman informed by nothing except somewhere between “200m and one billion enthusiast—thought along the same lines. the media drum-beat, it is hard to believe people” could be “displaced” by 2050. Both lived long enough to find out that Hit- that they haven’t. And in fact quite a few sci- The last time the UN warned us about ler had been thinking along the same lines entists, especially if they are being asked to a flood of climate refugees—it was back in as well. Aldous Huxley was ardently in comment outside their special field of exper- 2005, and there were supposed to be 50m favour of population control. John Maynard tise, are likely to reveal that they view the of them by the end of the decade—none of Keynes, unfortunately, endorsed Malthus world through what Mayhew calls “the new the refugees turned up. But who knows? The to the extent of regretting that the popula- lens of climate change.” next flood might. While we’re waiting, we tion would increase. Keynes being so bright, They might be right. There are scientists can perhaps consider the lonely heroism of the fact that he had time for Malthus made among my immediate acquaintance who are the climate scientist Tommy Wils, who said, it look as if Malthus might have had a point. still convinced about catastrophic anthro- in the most resonant of all the Climategate From then on, public intellectuals much pogenic global warming and I wouldn’t emails of 2007: “What if climate change less bright than Keynes have felt free to want to insult either their expertise or their appears to be just mainly a multidecadal nat- canoodle with the idea that the world is bur- sincerity. Only a few years ago, when, in a ural fluctuation? They’ll kill us, probably.” dened with too many people and must there- family context, I speculated aloud that the No, they won’t, but they are unlikely fore face catastrophe. Malthus’s big idea has famous 97 per cent consensus among scien- to forget just how confidently some of the become so firmly engrained that Malthus tists was perhaps only a consensus among prophets announced a timetable. Gordon scarcely needs to be mentioned anymore. climate scientists, there were several peo- Brown, in the brief lull between his lowering And indeed his name scarcely showed up in ple close to me who were prompt to point of the value of our pensions and his being either Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 headline-creating out that my views endangered the planet’s replaced as Prime Minister, said that there book The Population Bomb or in the 1972 Club future. Among people I didn’t know, the reac- were only 50 days left for mankind to agree of Rome manifesto, The Limits to Growth. But tion was even sharper. On the few occasions on the action that would save the planet Malthus was there in the background of both when, in the face of heavy editorial trepida- from doom. Though the hundred months those deliciously apocalyptic documents, tions, I managed to question the existence allowed us by Prince Charles to ward off the which assumed that the world had scarcely of such a consensus in a BBC Radio 4 Point planet’s appointment with catastrophe are room enough for anyone except you and me. of View broadcast, several professional envi- still ticking away, an elementary computa- In the mortal prose of Mayhew, Malthus was ronment experts in the newspapers said that tion on one’s fingers reveals that there is not “hidden behind the door hinges of intellec- I was “denying the science.” One of them said much time left before his Aston Martin will tual history.” I think he means hidden behind that the only reason I could hold such cal- have to be hauled by a team of horses, if the the door. lous opinions was that I was an old man who human world really does face certain death. To say that Ehrlich was less smart than would soon die. It seems more likely, however, that what we a man like Keynes should have been to state But lately there seems to have been a face is uncertainty: the thing that scares so the obvious. Ehrlich was clearly fit only to change of tone. While the publicists for a dire many clever people into sharing Malthus’s anchor small-town television commercials future continue to be vocal, the actual scien- fondness for a nice big imminent disaster from a used-car lot. But he dominated the tific part of climate science is making much we can blame somebody for, even if it has media through the relentless fluency with less noise about its predictive powers. Even to be us. which he could warn the world about oncom- the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Cli- Clive James’s translation of ”The Divine ing mass death. He started off inveighing mate Change (IPCC), which since the begin- Comedy” is published by PanMacmillan © FINE ART IMAGES / SUPERSTOCK practice even when are not scarce. resources are warriorstribespeople who like to keep in reluctant to the recognise obvious—that against all. Many anthropologists have been there was instead the perpetual war of all or evil politicians to provoke wars, periodic professional bellicose industries, soldiers cal state. Before there were military greedy development of civil society or the politi in the “state of nature”—that before is, the ing away the delusion that could peace exist by at Stanford,archaeology clear starts a third world war during the War Cold years. nuclear weapons, and they alone, prevented over recent centuries. My own that is belief for responsible is cess” the inviolence decline that Elias the Norbert “civilisingologist pro thereprises celebrated argument of the soci plain historiography Morris passion). (his by way profession) (his of archaeology and of primate to studies the of 2013, headlines drawing examples from the pre-prehistory this achieved been has the across millennia, Morris explores the different ways in which in one way or another. new In his Ian book, to bring by peace ending deadly quarrels Everyone knows that the of war purpose is by IanMorris(Profile, £25) War: WhatIsItGoodFor? by Vasily of Siberia The Conquest Surikov, 1895: “Wars cannotbring without peace victory, won and cannotbe by clever stratagems alone” What explains the ofviolence over decline Nuclear recent weapons, decades? says Edward Luttwak ofwarIn praise 70 Mead’s of Age Coming bestselling in Samoa in theularised 20th century by Margaret ing the peaceful-savage mythology pop That allows Morris to have fun debunk whoMorris, and a professor is of classics ------gist, however,gist, Morris remains firmly focused theirmise power. As a practicing archaeolo an entire superstructure ideological to legiti and beyond. former imperial in subjects the Middle East have many been post-imperial wars between topeace exist within them. there Indeed, exile war to their thus peripheries, allowing India),with empires of pre-British the Rajas that a multitude of smaller allows states (as of nature, instead of the multitude of wars war of all against all that exists in the state But that the precisely is point: instead of the to protect, or further expand, their frontiers. war, even if they continue to wage wars either modity—even if empires acquired are first by purveyorswholesale of the com precious greater attention to They empires. are the monopoly offorce, butMorris rightly devotes very existence of any state delimited is by its ety the peace, because inproducing domestic governed state to do worse than tribal soci ing them machetes.) the Yanomamis violent all by himself, by giv (Chagnon was even of having accused made lence of the Yanomamö tribe of the Amazon. overrecorded many years the habitual vio A Chagnonleon out of academia for having the scandalous attempts to throw Napo US rule and had US law). Morris nails also (at the time Mead was there, Ta’u was under a higher crime rate than Detroit at its worst (1928). The island Mead Ta’u, studied, had Empires, more than smaller states, need moreEmpires, than smaller need states, It takes an exceptionally unlucky or mis ARTS &BOOKS ------empire outlasted by a millennium. ern Roman empire, which Roman the East no different for the Ming than for the West howis it was for empire after empire, and sions that any repelled cannot be more. That raids from beyond the frontiers, then inva too, by way of rising banditry, then looting imperial decay, the imperial decays peace more from the treasury, on. and And so with displays of wealth that cause officials to steal prosperityhereditary; triggers competitive earn such acclaim that theirbecome offices ing, devoted officials rose who by merit alone weakbecomes through inaction; hard-work the strong army that ensures the long peace very of empires success that their is undoing: alwaysciency is under attack. is it Often the revenue-spending machines effi whose nated orassimilated—they are tax-collecting, can endure no matter what extermi unless thatand on. Indeed how is empires happen. erating yet more taxable prosperity on and so can conquer more land for the empire, gen over time, thus paying for who more soldiers prosperity that allows revenues to increase extraction.resource them are flattened by same iron of the rules Roman, all the diversities immense between ryan, Han, Kushan and Tang, well as the as Assyrian to the Americanby way ofthe Mau- empires that Morris surveys range from the bytion of resources While tax collectors. the on the material of empires—the extrac basis But, second, empires areBut, second, not nations that the First, generates imperial itself peace PROSPECT JUNE 2014PROSPECT ------72 ARTS & BOOKS PROSPECT JUNE 2014

Morris adds up the benefits of imperial tai, such as Socrates, who wanted to finish the thesis—to which Morris subscribes— peace by quoting Cicero, loyal army majors the fight as soon as possible to go back to of Norbert Elias’s influential book The Civ- and others, but he seeks numbers whenever Athens and philosophise some more. That ilising Process. “Since the Middle Ages,” possible to demonstrate mounting prosperity was the tactic that shocked the Persians at writes Morris in summarising Elias’s argu- (fore example, the number of shipwrecks as Thermopylae in 480 BCE and Plataea the ment, “upper-class European men (who had testimony to the rise of navigation). year after, especially when meeting the best- been responsible for the lion’s share of bru- Morris looks at the other side of the drilled Spartans. tality) had gradually renounced the use of ledger too: the casualties inflicted by force, and the overall level of violence had empire-conquering and empire-keeping. “Genghis Khan, and his declined.” Elias first published the book with The Spanish, Portuguese, British, French, very unfortunate timing in 1939, but in spite Belgian and Italians killed millions and the sons and grandsons, of the Second World War and the Holocaust, epidemic diseases they brought with them probably killed more Morris deems Elias’s argument vindicated by killed even more millions, before the sur- people than the colonial post-1945 events, little wars notwithstanding vivors could begin to enjoy the long years (there was no Somme in Iraq or Afghanistan, of peace assured by the colonial empires. empires combined” no El Alamein either). Yet Genghis Khan and his sons and grand- This is where I disagree with Mor- sons, as also Mao and Stalin individually, This same manner of fighting would later ris: he attributes the decline of war to the probably killed more people than all the shock the Aztecs and Inca, Siberian tribes- civilising process, adducing other testimo- colonial empires combined in what Morris men, Mughal and Manchu when Spanish, nies too, whereas I give the credit to the calls the “500 years war” of 1415-1914. Dur- Russian and British solders fought them in nuclear weapons that are too powerful to be ing this period Europe almost conquered close combat. This was the straightforward useful, and thus inhibit all warfare between the world—only to give up its colonies reason for the tactical superiority of western nuclear powers. because its own democracy undermined forces in the five colonial centuries, which But this disagreement did not reduce colonial rule. had to offset the logistical disadvantages my enjoyment in reading this book—which War, imperial or not, cannot bring peace of fighting very far from home. (Think of is something of a multimedia experience, without victory, and wars cannot usually the Cossacks on the Amur River in the 17th with photographs, drawings, charts and be won by clever stratagems alone (a per- century, 5,000 miles from Moscow, fighting maps. But it is the book’s elegantly succinct sistent Chinese delusion responsible for against Manchu troops. At that time it would prose that will most captivate readers. It is countless defeats). They require both fight- have taken at least 250 days to supply them a book filled with lucid explanations of the ing strength and operational skill to win bat- with just one more musket.) most recondite questions, with many reveal- tles. Morris follows the eminent classicist For good or ill, that western ferocity is still ing quotations and witty asides. Morris ends and military historian Victor Davis Han- with us, and is manifest even in the mere skir- the book with one more paradox: “If we really son in identifying a “western way of war,” mishes in places such as Mali. For what it is want a world where war is good for absolutely which is distinguished by its ferocity in seek- worth, it was our only advantage in my own nothing, we must recognise that war still has ing decisive fights. This manner of fighting only serious experience of war, in the 1960s. a part to play.” originated in pre-classical Greece, between We sought the hand-to-hand fight, and the Edward Luttwak is a military strategist and 700 and 500 BC, with the head-on charges enemy tried to avoid it by flight. historian. His latest book is “The Rise of China of armoured spearmen—the citizen-hopli- But that kind of violence runs against vs the Logic of Strategy” (Harvard) You can’t ignore the bastard Dubliners was published 100 years ago but James Joyce still casts a long shadow over Irish life and literature, says Julian Gough

I grew up, the son of an Irish fireman and thing equal weight and attention, including burning pages of scandalous Dubliners. Now, nurse, in a house with few books. We had a what had previously been taboo. He didn’t they are cast in bronze and set into modern nursing manual, packed with astonishing look away as Bloom entered the backyard cement pavements. You tread on his words photographs of extreme, untreated diseases; jakes, or fade to black as the lads entered the at pedestrian crossings. He footnotes the city. a Collier’s Encyclopedia, bought from a door- brothel. Shocking. But exciting. Liberating. But Joyce entered your life very differ- to-door salesman (to educate, by osmosis, me I skipped the bits I found boring (I was ently in rural Ireland in the early 1980s. and my brother); and a lot of paperback Dick young; there were many). But Leopold Back then, he still existed outside the offi- Francis racing thrillers. But, right beside the Bloom’s pub conversation with the Citizen, cial system. Too difficult, too scandalous encyclopedia (where the Bible would have and Molly Bloom’s internal conversation for school. It was still possible for teenagers been, a generation earlier), there was one with herself, blew my teenage mind. The to read Joyce as an act of rebellion against anomalous, thick, squat, hardback novel. sex, sensuality, swearing; the language, its teachers, government, church. You read I grew obsessed with this 1967 Bodley energy, its invention; but, above all, the elec- Joyce the way you listened to late punk, or Head edition of Ulysses. And not just because tric honesty. early rap. His leading public champion in my father had thoughtfully marked “the Joyce’s first work of fiction, Dubliners, was the Irish media was Senator David Nor- dirty bits” in the margins in blue biro, so you published 100 years ago this month: there ris (elected by the liberal and mischievous wouldn’t have to reread the whole book to are now statues of Joyce in Dublin, and his Trinity College Dublin), the only openly find them. face stares down at you from the walls of half gay man in official Irish public life. And, as My father’s considered opinion of James the city’s pubs, hanging where the picture of far as I could tell, the only man in Ireland, Joyce was, “That man is obsessed with the Pope used to be. His words once floated apart from my dad, who had read Ulysses. shite.” I disagreed; Joyce simply gave every- in smoke above Dublin, from the heaped One lunchtime at school, my best PORTRAIT OF JAMES JOYCE BY ROBERT BALLAGH, COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN scale, Joyce spent several months a pupil as fatherhis drank the family down the social of the Pale. their author. empathy His fails at the edge they reflected the unexamined prejudices of Congo. Icameto think that, with as Conrad, Shannon waves,” you’re practically in the youAfrica—once “the cross dark mutinous ofacters the speak in Conrad interior of of the interior of Ireland the way char Charactersside Dublin. in Joyce speak cal world. Joyce feared the Ireland out ple, my world. felthimself a nervous contempt for my peo Joyce, the more I came to believe that Joyce father; but the more I read by, and about, by afictional character, on Joyce’s based own Mud?” Sure, I paused. the line was spoken Is it withdamned! Paddy and Mickey Stink the Jesuits, saying “Christian Brothers be Stephen Dedalus’s dad vows to him to send Nenagh, Co. Tipperary. When, in Portrait the working-class Brothers, Christian in ing by to at a state educated, school, be sive fee-paying in Ireland; I school was fail byeducated the Jesuits, in the expen most tening to David Bowie on Top of the Pops. hard fiction, and science had epiphanies lis physicsstudied in order to read American on the I wasbeach; the kind of teenager who and hadto epiphanies read walking Ibsen, of teenager who Norwegian studied in order didn’tagonies resonate. Joyce was the kind religious But his andin response. spiritual those were mighty My lines. stirred soul I shallgion. try to fly OK, by nets.” those You talk to me of nationality, language, reli nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. of a man in this born is country there are “When the The lines: boredom. soul nised between incandescent excitement and ago the mockers, with glee. tle boy named baby tuckoo…” He mocked coming down along the road met a nicens lit along the road and this moocow that was time itwas there was amoocow coming down time and a very good Man the Artist a Young as of A Portraitpages of out the ied opening Kevin told us he’d cop for it,cautiously. Then a rhythm. up I stood It was musical, it had deliberately stupid. why. It was stupid, but it and didn’t know and him. But I liked the others mocked it, a story he’d written; 15, showed a few of us friend Kevin, aged 74 Most of his biographers agree that, as biographers of that, his Most agree as My world; social and my geographi worldsOur were Joyce too far apart. was I read : “Once upon a : “Once upon a A Portrait of the Artist - , lurching , lurching ------, relationship became complicated.relationship became Now, As a reader, I withdrew my consent. Our life. He wouldn’t admit to having shared it. Brothers. Christian ure,” Joyce laterhe’d denied ever to the been eras a“class-conscious as recently described Cremins But,College). in what Robert an English Clongowes public school, Wood a charity in Ireland’s case, imitation odd of him (and him for educated rescued free, as of the Brothers, Christian before the Jesuits A six-foot ofJames Joyce portrait displayed at University face “His Dublin: College Wow, I thought. He was of my ashamed stares downstares atyou from the walls of half the city’s pubs” ARTS &BOOKS

- to hit each other. they got and tired, then let you all outside, The teachers would hit you until in class could only pro-bullying called be policies. I found myself which in schools had what was a joy. School dresses. in Ireland, Back nuns, with of humour, a sense in mini- KindlyCatholic in London. young school punishment. Brothers in the years school last of corporal intellectual world Christian of an Irish world, the extraordinarily violent and anti- into I did disappear thatbecause under underworld. Yet denial offended his me, Joyce into disappeared had the almost ultimately nauseating.” are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, & ing man, & we all know how distressing they to me: theseems of a self-taught book work her diary, “An illiterate, it book underbred intopages Ulysses muchvided protection. Virginia Woolf, 200 Not that improved his CV ultimately pro of early 20th-century English publishing. ence, it had through to pass the filters class on my parents’ tickets. systematically harvested the adult library dren’s library, twice, and then, underage, of a country yourwayoutof this ignorantand write shithole from Joyce was this y message: thing important most my teenage got self got a new . off andwiped the blood, kept it. I’dAt least did, they did nothing. I removed it myself, buttock. No teacher even or if they noticed; gleaming sticking up compass steel from my and left on beingthe ground stabbed a with ual. A few incidents out. I remember stood beatings after a while, more of a rit weary breakfast. Not as evenable bad particularly day; boring, itbecame routine, unremark as categoryspecial and status, beaten up every with anEnglishschool accent, Iwas granted savagery;besian the and as only boy in the The playgrounds were of Hob scenes I had, till I was seven, gone to a liberal Like Dickens in the blacking factory, Books were more thanBooks sometimes ameta- Perhaps I hadAnd books. at least the . I read everything in the chil in August 1922, wrote in early work to an audi gowes, when, to get his a product of Clon to claim to purely be movea politically wise might have thought it thatI can see Joyce to firmly. repress need of trauma you might yes, it was the kind terror of that descent; Joyce;precocious the to ers the fastidious, of the Broth Christian understand the shock 30 years later, I can PROSPECT JUNE 2014PROSPECT And, looking back, And, looking back, ou can read ou can read ------

PROSPECT JUNE 2014 ARTS & BOOKS 75 phorical refuge. One day, I refused to go, as a eyed portraits of hemales and shemales, ning). But a chance of finding an audience. supporter, to an inter-school hurling match. destroying themselves with drink in Lon- Of keeping me alive. A teacher hit me with a hurley until I got don and New York. “How Soon Is Now” and Jude in London came out the year the on the bus. When we arrived at the game, “This Charming Man” by The Smiths ache Booker judges wanted thrillers, and easy I stepped off the bus, climbed the impos- with youth’s agonies as exquisitely as Joyce’s reads. It received polite, slightly bemused ing, open, iron gates of the ground, got up story “Araby.” I’d say Joyce, as a man who reviews, mostly just summarising the plot. onto the flat top of the concrete gatepost, wanted to be a professional tenor himself, Nobody dug up the treasure I’d so carefully some 15 feet in the air, turned my back on would be happy enough with that legacy. buried. Waterstones ordered three copies of the pitch, and read my book. My own class- History has done little damage to the mass market paperback. Not three cop- mates threw stones at me, until the puzzled Ulysses, and no damage at all to Finne- ies per shop; three copies for the entire chain. teachers from the other school stepped in. gans Wake (which seems to exist outside of By then, I was living in Berlin, hav- Embarrassed, my teachers finally got my time entirely), but it has slapped Dubliners ing emigrated, on Ryanair, for a euro (plus classmates to stop. around a bit. These stories, so shockingly, applicable airport taxes). I was broke, in If you want Joycean epiphanies, this was refreshingly new at the time (Chekhovian, exile, and writing novels that nobody under- one. As the stones bounced off the back of but grittier), felt old to me when I encoun- stood or liked. And I realised Joyce, too, had my head, and off the book which was pro- tered them at university. They had been become a net, which I had spent the last tecting my face and glasses, I felt an exqui- ripped off too often. Localised versions had decade caught in. The cultural moment for site joy. After the stones ceased, my teachers been mass-produced in writing workshops, layered, difficult, referential, complicated, called on me to come down. I ignored them, worldwide, for decades. (The New Yorker egotistic, insistent Irish novels had passed. and stayed up there in the sunshine, my back still regularly runs the template Joycean Literary modernism is 100 years old. Let it to the pitch, until the end of the match, read- short story, set somewhere exotic, like Haiti, go, let it go. ing my book. I may never have been happier. or Kansas, or Queens: Grim bit. Dull bit. I plugged myself back into the 21st century. It would suit this essay better if I had Depressing bit. Epiphany!) They were good, I got over Joyce. Over the anxiety of influ- been reading Joyce on the pillar that day, but not that good. I felt strangely relieved. ence. I got over the dream of the Great Novel but I wasn’t. I can’t recall the title, but it He was mortal. Containing Everything. I got over myself. was science fiction. I needed to escape to After university I sang for a few years The next thing I wrote was the narrative somewhere further away than Dublin. And in a band. Writing lyrics. Tuning up. But I at the end of the computer game Minecraft. I didn’t trust Joyce any more. He had denied gloomily knew that, when I began to write With no ego in the aftermath of Jude in Lon- me thrice. novels, I would have to engage with Joyce. don, I wrote, in a pure, dreamy flow, all the Looking back, I have tremendous sym- You couldn’t ignore the bastard, he was too things I wished I’d known as a teenager. pathy for those angry, unloved, savage boys. good. Those 1,500 words cleared all the debts I Many had alcoholic parents, and came to I dodged him with my debut, a very pri- had accumulated writing my obscure nov- school in the same clothes every day, faces vate book. I only really went for it, and els. The game sold 20m copies, and hoo- tan and shiny with unwashed dirt. Paddy engaged with his legacy, in my dementedly vered up every award in the world. Of course, Stink. Mickey Mud… And it could have been ambitious second novel, which I later broke Minecraft’s success was entirely due to the much worse. My primary school headmas- into three parts. Part one (Jude in Ireland) game itself, and to Markus Persson, its devel- ter was jailed last year for sexually abus- was meant to recapitulate the early history oper; but that modest finale, to my surprise, ing a nine-year-old boy. The vice principal of the novel. Part two was meant to engage triggered electronic epiphanies on every con- had already been imprisoned for similar with modernism, and with Irishness, and tinent. I still get fanmail, passionate fanmail, offences. Some of my schoolmates have since Englishness. And the anxiety of influence; on Twitter, through my website, about those committed suicide. Joyce haunts many of its longer passages. few hundred words. “You changed the way I University in Galway, studying English Beckett and Flann O’Brien also turn up and see life.” “Thank you thank you thank you.” and philosophy, was quite an improvement. do a pirouette, as do many other loves; JG They’d found their treasure in my trash. And I finally got round to reading Dublin- Ballard, John Sladek, Morrissey, Marvel It’ll do. ers. I went to see The Smiths, in Leisure- Comics, PG Wodehouse, Borges. And lan- Julian Gough is the author of “CRASH! How I land in Galway, age 18, with a copy sticking guage was the hero. That, I got from Joyce. Lost a Hundred Billion and Found True Love” out of my back pocket. “Oh man,” said their At the heart of the book, a character sweet-natured guitarist, Johnny Marr, after from Tipperary spends 24 hours wander- the gig, “Morrissey practically has that book ing London, much of it through a vast pub tattooed all over himself.” He introduced me of excessive Irishness; a tragicomic, post- to Morrissey. We talked about James Joyce; modern meditation on modernism, on exile, Morrissey told me Dubliners was his favour- on my relationship with London, the city ite book. where I was born; and on Ulysses. The sur- That made a lot of sense. Our generation face shimmers with reflections on Joyce. In formed bands, wrote songs and albums, not the depths, I buried villanelles and song lyr- stories and novels. The Irish heirs to the ver- ics, language games and computer games, in bal exuberance of James Joyce are, by and layer after layer. Gold bricks and plastic toys. large, not the writers of literary fiction. They Treasure and trash. are the great, exiled Irish lyricists; Morris- Years vanished. I went broke, again, writ- sey; early, good Elvis Costello; Johnny Rot- ing it. Went a smidgen nuts. When it was ten (John Lydon) of the Sex Pistols and PiL; done, the head buyer for Waterstones said Shane MacGowan of the Pogues (who spent “I could sell a lot of copies of this, if it wins his pre-London childhood on a farm outside the Booker.” And my publisher and I really Puckane, only a few miles from our house). did think, for a couple of mad months, that MacGowan’s “The Old Main Drag” and it had a good chance of making the Booker “Fairytale of New York” are postmodern longlist, and a reasonable chance of mak- pop-stories worthy of Joyce; brutal, clear- ing the shortlist (and no chance at all of win- 76 ARTS & BOOKS PROSPECT JUNE 2014 Books in brief

Baghdad: City of Peace, City of Blood Much of the book is devoted to defending lenge fuzzy liberal dreams of African success. a definition of faith as an “attitude of open- The National Museum, supposed repository by Justin Marozzi (Allen Lane, £25) ness to meanings” that you could imagine an of Nigeria’s history and culture, is a mud- Baghdad was founded by atheist like Dworkin endorsing—this is not, dle of incompetence and falsification, white- the Abbasid Caliph Man- as Scruton says several times, a work of reli- washing the crimes of the country’s previous sur the Victorious during gious apologetics. However, he does begin military leaders. the early Arab conquests of with a brief salvo directed at atheist “public Though the narrator’s view doesn’t extend the 8th century, on a bend intellectuals” who treat religion as if it were much beyond the middle classes, the reader of the Tigris. The city flour- a comprehensive explanation of the world in is left in no doubt as to the scale of the coun- ished. Its first inhabitants competition with the natural sciences. try’s problems. If the anger and frustration called it City of Peace and There’s a difference, suggests Scruton, that fuel Every Day For The Thief occasion- for 200 years it grew into a fat jewel of wealth borrowing a distinction from the American ally stray into polemic, Cole’s attention to and hedonism and scholarship; the origi- philosopher Wilfrid Sellars, between the “sci- individual moments makes the novella some- nal of orientalist fantasy, the setting for 1001 entific image” of the world, on the one hand, thing quieter and more powerful, revealing a Nights. Justin Marozzi’s Baghdad is a richly and the “manifest image,” on the other. In world beyond the kidnappings and bombings researched chronicle of a city that was once the latter, human beings relate to each other that make headlines. the learned capital of the world, but whose not just as animals “swimming in the cur- Hannah Rosefield dizzying apex gave way to a long and mis- rents of causality,” but as persons respon- erably bloody decline. By the time Marozzi sive to reasons and moral norms. Learning The People’s Republic of Amnesia: visited after the American invasion of 2003, to respond to other human beings in this Tiananmen Revisited much of Baghdad’s rich heritage had been way requires a kind of “discipline” that goes by Louisa Lim (OUP, £16.99) looted from the national museum. beyond merely respecting their rights. Scru- His book is a litany of calamity: inva- ton clearly thinks this idea is best captured The title of this book by sions, massacres, plague outbreaks, floods. in Christian doctrine, but one needn’t accept NPR’s Beijing correspond- Razed by the Mongols and then the Tartars, that conclusion to find many of his argu- ent, Louisa Lim, undersells by the time Europe was struggling into the ments about the limits of the scientific world- its scope and ambition. Lim Enlightenment, Baghdad was under Otto- view convincing. does not simply revisit the man control and continuously marauded Jonathan Derbyshire Tiananmen Square student by the Persians. Palace intrigues entwined protests of 1989, although themselves with competing empires. “Ruling Every Day is for the Thief she vividly describes how the Baghdad,” Marozzi writes, “has more often by Teju Cole (Faber, £12.99) events unfolded, beginning in April with stu- than not required an iron fist.” The last hun- dent sit-ins and ending with the June massa- dred years of British mandate and Ameri- In his essay “The White-Sav- cre by the army, which left hundreds, possibly can occupation has not bucked this trend. iour Industrial Complex,” thousands, of civilians dead. Instead, the real Baghdad’s history is not a happy one, but it the Nigerian-American subject of the book is the legacy of Tian- is fabulous and ghastly and fascinating. Ulti- writer Teju Cole criticised anmen over the past 25 years, from a new mately it is the story of how the metropoli- Americans who see Africa emphasis on nationalism in the school cur- tanism of a cosmopolitan city was devoured, as a problem for enthusias- riculum, to the economic freedoms citizens first by imperialism and then by nationalism tic white individuals to solve: are now permitted, to the intense levels of and finally by the sectarians who remained. “If we are going to interfere censorship and surveillance that persist. As Wendell Steavenson in the lives of others, a little due diligence is a for the Tiananmen protests themselves, the minimum requirement.” Ill-informed enthu- Chinese Communist Party has managed to The Soul of the World siasts could do worse than read Every Day Is reduce the event to a footnote. Younger gen- by Roger Scruton (Princeton, £19.95) For The Thief, which portrays Nigerian cor- erations have almost no awareness of what ruption and inefficiency as specific, intracta- happened, while those who remember have In his final book, published ble and endemic. generally learnt to stay silent. last year, the late Ronald Cole’s travelogue-novella was first pub- Lim tells this story elegantly, focusing Dworkin argued that peo- lished in Nigeria in 2007; now, thanks to the each chapter on an individual character, such ple share a “fundamen- success of his 2011 novel Open City, it is being as Bao Tong, a senior official who witnessed tal religious impulse” that published in the UK. The narrator, like the internal party disputes about the protests, expresses itself in various narrator of Open City, is a mixed-race Nige- and Chen Guang, a soldier-turned-artist ways, and not necessar- rian in the early stages of a psychiatry career traumatised by the violence. One of the best ily in the form of beliefs in in New York. Returning to Nigeria for the chapters centres upon Wu’er Kaixi, the char- the existence of an intelligent supernatural first time in 15 years, he travels around Lagos ismatic student leader who escaped to Tai- being. Although Roger Scruton comes from a and other parts of the country looking for wan. Lim captures the poignant situation of very different political and philosophical tra- “what it was I longed for all those times I political exiles whose lives are inevitably fro- dition, and unlike Dworkin is a Christian, he longed for home.” Bribery, apathy and vio- zen in the past: “They were adored and invin- makes a similar case in The Soul of the World. lence complicate his every move. The places cible until suddenly one day, the new exiles “Many people who might call themselves which give him hope—a thriving western- realised that the cameras and the adulation agnostics or even atheists,” he writes, “live style concert hall sponsored by Shell and were all gone.” the life of faith.” Accenture, a Nigerian fast-food chain—chal- David Wolf 78 PROSPECT JUNE 2014 Fiction Lydia Davis

Lydia Davis is an American writer, celebrated “I write a story in whatever form seems to be for her very short stories, which are sometimes demanded by the subject matter, and that is no longer than a sentence. Reviewing her new why some are so short,” Davis has said. “How collection, Can’t and Won’t, for Prospect last much, really, can you say about this fly on the month, Adam Kirsch praised Davis for “the wall of the bus or this notice in a hotel room? sheer oddity of her prose [and] her refusal to Some of my thoughts… are very brief, and conform to the usual expectations of storytelling.” their brevity is part of what I enjoy about them.”

Letter to the president of the American biographical institute, inc

Dear President, “Woman of the Year” award. I was pleased to receive your letter informing me that I had been Could it be, then, that what your research produces is a list of nominated by the Governing Board of Editors as WOMAN OF women who have accomplished enough so that they may believe THE YEAR—2006. But at the same time I was puzzled. You say they do indeed deserve a “Woman of the Year” award and yet are that this award is given to women who have set a “noble” example not intelligent or worldly enough to see that for you this is a busi- for their peers, and that your desire is, as you put it, to “uplift” ness and there is no real honor involved? Or are they women who their accomplishments. You then say that in researching my have accomplished something they believe is deserving of honor qualifications, you were assisted by a Board of Advisors consist- and are intelligent enough to know, deep down, that you are in this ing of 10,000 “influential” people living in seventy-five countries. only for profit, yet, at the same time, are willing to part with $195 Yet even after this extensive research, you have made a basic fac- or $295 to receive this decree, either plain or laminated, perhaps tual mistake and addressed your letter, not to Lydia Davis, which not admitting to themselves that it means nothing? is my name, but to Lydia Danj. If your research has identified me as a member of one of these Of course, it may be that you do not have my name wrong but two groups of women—either easily deceived concerning com- that you are awarding your honor to an actual Lydia Danj. But munications from organizations like yours or willing to deceive either mistake would suggest a lack of care on your part. Should themselves, which I suppose is worse—then I am sorry and I I take this to mean that there was no great care taken over the must wonder what it suggests about me. But on the other hand, research upon which the award is based, despite the involvement since I feel I really do not belong to either of these two groups, of 10,000 people? This would suggest that I should not place great perhaps this is simply more evidence that your research has not importance on the honor itself. Furthermore, you invite me to been good and you were mistaken to include me, whether as send for tangible proof of this nomination in the form of what you Lydia Davis or as Lydia Danj, on your list. I look forward to hear- call a “decree,” presented by the American Biographical Institute ing your thoughts on this. Board of International Research, measuring 11×14 inches, limited Yours sincerely. and signed. For a plain decree you ask me to pay $195, while a lam- inated decree will cost me $295. Again, I am puzzled. I have received awards before, but I was Judgement not asked to pay anything for them. The fact that you have mis- taken my name and that you are also asking me to pay for my Into how small a space the word judgement can be compressed: award suggests to me that you are not truly honoring me but it must fit inside the brain of a ladybug as she, before my eyes, rather want me to believe I am being honored so that I will send makes a decision. you either $195 or $295. But now I am further puzzled. I would assume that any woman who is truly accomplished in the world, whose accomplishments “to date,” as you say, are out- standing and deserve what you call top honors, would be intel- Learning medieval ligent enough not to be misled by this letter from you. And yet your list must consist of women who have accomplished some- history thing, because a woman who had accomplished nothing at all would surely not believe that her accomplishments deserved a Are the Saracens the Ottomans? No, the Saracens are the Moors. From “Can’t and Won’t” (Hamish Hamilton, £16.99). © Lydia Davis 2014 The Ottomans are the Turks. 80 PROSPECT JUNE 2014 Life

issuing from the rosebud lips of the under- tens. I understand that it is a moral abomina- tion to have sweary children, and we should work to discourage it. But at the same time Life of almost nothing makes me laugh more. That Leith on life is perhaps why South Park—with its crew of the mind potty-mouthed eight-year-olds—is so utterly Sam Leith Anna Blundy winning. We live in a swearier age The comedian Sarah Silverman got her Good mum/bad mum start, she has said, because her dad taught “Oh,” said my four-year-old daughter, con- her to swear. When his drinking buddies I have a patient who is breastfeeding her first templating the water from her knocked-over came round he’d get her out of bed to make child. I take glowing (though unwarranted) glass spreading across the kitchen table. “Oh them laugh: an angelic little girl in her credit for this. A year ago she wasn’t sure bladdy hell.” nightie, swearing the place blue. In an inter- she wanted a baby, thought she might hate My wife looked at me. I looked at the floor. view not long ago Silverman père recalled him or her. She said she didn’t feel pregnant “BLADDY hell,” repeated Marlene with that when Sarah was about four his mother and was going straight back to work after the more emphasis and a world-weary shrug. brought round a tray of brownies and Sarah birth. Basically, she has spent most of her life Alice’s eyebrow went up. “She didn’t learn told her: “Shove ‘em up your ass, Nana!” “It trying as hard as possible to be a man. Now that from me,” she said. was terrific!” he said. she was facing up to being a female mam- “Well she didn’t learn it from me, either,” mal and she didn’t like it. Understanding I huffed. “If she was copying me she would why seemed gradually to allow her to accept have said ‘****ing ****ing ****ing ****’!” “I understand it is a moral being female. “Not in front of the children!” Alice abomination to have For the birth she went abroad to stay with exclaimed, which was a fair point in the cir- her only female friend, mainly so she could cumstances. And her other point was fair, too, sweary children. Yet avoid her abusive mother. The older friend if I’m honest. Whatever I might say, Marlene almost nothing makes was nurturing and my patient allowed her- undoubtedly had picked up “bloody hell” self to be looked after for the first time in her from me, because I’m the only person in the me laugh more” life. During the Skype sessions we had while house who uses that locution. When I’m not she was away she even looked different— swearing like Viz magazine, I’m swearing like The urge to deplore is just slightly less softer in the face and, basically, more femi- a character in an Alice Thomas Ellis novel. strong, at this point, than the urge to imitate. nine. A month later, back at home, she was It is, to be honest, something of a mira- As Billy Connolly has pointed out, “fuck off” very lonely, desperately missing her friend at cle that “bloody hell” is all she has so far is “such a lovely pair of words—and it’s inter- the same time as fighting her mum. picked up. I am already dreading the sum- national.” Swear words are not hate speech. I suggested to her that she was think- mons to primary school to have a solemn and No swear word has ever drawn a drop of ing in very black and white terms about the awkward discussion with a schoolteacher 15 blood. And the days in which we believed that women—one idealised mother who was per- years younger than me about my daughter’s to say “’Zounds” was, literally, to tear the liv- fect in every respect and one demonic mother “inappropriate”—that’s the epithet that will ing body of Christ in heaven are long gone. who was solely destructive. Lurching into be used—use of language. So I try. I know that when my children are in appalling unprofessionalism (I imagine my My own parents were, if I recall, pretty their early teens and swearing freely and poor supervisor wringing his hands; talking good about not swearing all that much in deliberately and for real I shall find it tedi- theory to a patient never helps) I told her front of us. They must have been, because ous and ugly. But just now—when they are about Melanie Klein’s good breast and bad otherwise I would not recall with such young enough for the profanity to be star- breast. The baby, unaware that these two unmixed pleasure the expression on my tling, and issued in innocence—let me have items belong to the same person, hates the mother’s face when—thinking herself alone my fun. Isn’t it better, on the whole, that withholding breast that doesn’t come when in her study and having just dropped a full my four-year-old greet some mild setback he or she is hungry and loves the nice milky cup of coffee on the carpet—she shouted with an exclamation of “Hellacious frigging one that does feed him or her. Realising that “Shit a fucking brick!” only to see the eight- bumgravy!” than that she play with Body these are two aspects of the same person year-old me emerge from under her desk. Dysmorphia Barbie or Build Your Own Mili- and managing to feel ambivalent is a huge Even in my first year at university, I con- tary-Industrial Complex Warplanes? developmental hurdle, one that many peo- fess to blenching a little whenever I heard As I watched Marlene say “bladdy hell” ple never make. (People who see the world in anyone drop the C-bomb. But we live, these I felt not repelled but a little enchanted and a binary way—for example, remaining con- days, in a swearier age. That unpalatable even, sneakingly, proud: the adult cadence vinced of their narrow views and certain that monosyllable is everywhere—and it caused in the voice, the borrowed worldliness of the anyone who opposes them is evil). only a mild-to-mid level moral panic when, gesture, the sense of her imitating with pre- The following session, she told me about in Kick-Ass, the screenwriter Jane Goldman cision but no more understanding than a her baby. “He isn’t feeding,” she said. “He put it into the mouth of a 12-year-old girl. parrot. Children can swear, it occurs to me, will feed from the right breast, but not from And yet and yet. I’m a little bit torn on the precisely because they don’t yet have any the left breast.” I was astonished but stayed subject of children and swearing. Many peo- sense of the obscene. silent. “Actually, at night he feeds from both,” ple are appalled by the sound of profanities Sam Leith is an Associate Editor of Prospect she said. “But during the day if I try to give © GMNICHOLAS / ISTOCK PROSPECT JUNE 2014 LIFE 81 him the left breast he screams as though I crept up the scale that I had stopped step- for cream and no pastries and cakes. For por- am trying to poison him.” She was very upset ping on for a whole year. Squashy crescents tion control, I put about two-thirds of what and I gave some trite interpretation; “You were escaping over the top of my jeans, I I would normally eat on my plate and don’t feel you are giving him something toxic in could barely get into the dress I bought have seconds. Exercise is harder to figure out: your interaction with him.” I probably should three years ago, and when I lay in the bath I cannot abide gyms, I don’t own running have given a transference interpretation— my tummy stuck up out of the water like shoes, but I have a bicycle, so I am now bik- interpreting everything as a communication an island. I was, like pretty much everyone, ing a half-hour looping detour to my morn- about our relationship: “I think you feel that a stone heavier than I wanted to be. More ing coffee. half of what I say is toxic.” She continued to importantly, I didn’t feel good about it and I Generally I cook meat or fish with veg- talk about how she was trying to work from didn’t feel good about myself. etables for myself, tend to order soups and home at the same time as looking after the Finally, last month, after eating ramen salads in restaurants and eat only half the baby with no help. noodles three times a day for a week, some serving of a big American entree. It takes, We were both aware of how surreally lit- kind of self-control switch clicked—stop! And they say, three weeks to establish a new rou- eral the theory seemed to have become and so, for the past four weeks, I have been on tine. I found the first couple of weeks a bit realised between us that the patient really “the Wendy diet.” The other kind of diet, the hungry, a bit tough, but not too miserable. was good mum/bad mum for the baby since one where you don’t eat. Very much. There are tricks, there are snacks. Have a she had gone back to work. At night she There is so much written about what- banana. I like pineapple chunks and slivers was slumbery, sweet, soft, peaceful mum, to-eat-what-not-to-eat. Overwhelming and of fresh coconut to stave off a mid afternoon the more feminine person she’d been at her conflicting screeds, quackery, government crisis-pang. Packets of instant miso soup pro- friend’s house. By day she was now more brit- guidelines, revised government guidelines, vide a quickie filler if I am about to go to a tle, her work voice probably unfamiliar to experts, advice, admonishment. Five serv- reception with nibbles. baby, her body less receptive to him. She had ings of fruit and veg a day—no scrap that, Thinking about leaner food makes me become two separate people and baby had a) seven. Eggs cause cholesterol, don’t eat mer- instinctively veer towards Asian. I make a noticed and b) expressed his preference. cury tuna or hormone beef. Go gluten free, dressing of sesame oil, soy, yuzu juice and When I had the same feeding problem stop eating dairy. Carbs are bombs! Sugar is chilli and this gets very happily sloshed many years ago someone suggested honey. I evil! Salt will kill you! And then, of course, over almost everything from rare beef to couldn’t help myself. “Of course, part of you the headline is overturned by another study. raw salmon, green beans, broccoli, tofu. I wants me to give you practical solutions like Butter is suddenly announced to be good made a killer papaya and raw cabbage slaw putting honey on that breast, while another for you again; organic makes no appreciable with thinly sliced red onions doused in fish part of you wants me to help you understand difference to your health. And lets not even sauce and tons of lime juice and sprinkled what’s going on.” get into the weight-watching diet-industry with black sesame seeds. Cooking for one Later in the week but before the next ses- maelstrom. is always about flavour and speed: store- sion she emailed me. “Honey worked!” But I can’t bring myself to subscribe to the bought rotisserie chicken torn up in a bowl I suspect it was a combination of honey and fear-mongering or the fads. I cannot bring with globs of miso paste, sloshes of sake and understanding. myself to demonise any food except steamed mirin and rice vinegar and liberal handfuls Anna Blundy is a writer training to be a courgette, which is plainly disgusting. But of coriander. psychotherapist. The situations described are still, the time has come, again. The last time And then there is the most important composite and confidentiality has not been I went on a proper diet was 10 years ago and thing of all: extremely good dark chocolate. breached I devised a regimen that was reasonable and After all, I need to be rewarded. I am allowed possible for me. Over two months I dropped two squares a day; sometimes I have more. 15 pounds. I offer the following—not as any The tummy island is very slowly sinking back prescription, because we are all different and into the bathwater. I have lost five pounds. I one size or one lifestyle certainly does not fit feel good. all—but just as a thought. Wendell Steavenson is an Associate Editor of Matters of The Wendy diet is simple: no white flour, Prospect no white sugar, portion control, one glass of taste wine a day (not always strictly adhered to), Wendell Steavenson and a little bit of exercise. I don’t think bread is especially fattening and sugar is frankly The Wendy diet not as mega-calorific as advertised. But these two ingredients tend to encourage the slath- There are two kinds of diet: the one where ering use of the thing I am really trying to you eat and the one where you don’t eat. The cut down on: butter. one I practise everyday is the everything diet. I will, alone, just No food is bad, no food is forbidden or taboo. me at home, go I am lucky: I have a steady metabolism, no through half allergies, no particular cravings, nor a sweet a kilo a week. tooth. Farm fresh or junk, both are beloved So no bread and happily scoffed. I am very fond of Fraz- to spread zles bacon-flavoured crisps, especially when butter on, no paired with Lucozade, but I almost never buy pasta begging prepared or processed food in the supermar- ket. I will go through a phase of eating peas “In my usual diet, with mint and raw apples, and yet I often sing no food is forbidden. the praises of McDonald’s. Farm fresh or junk, But, you get a little older, you get a little both are beloved and thicker around the middle. Stealthy pounds happily scoffed” 82 LIFE PROSPECT JUNE 2014

system. With his exceptional ability to taste to making me think differently. from the barrel he predicted that the 1982 On the other hand, liberalisation of the vintage would be outstanding, even though pension rules has greatly increased the chal- others considered it over-ripe. Years later, lenges facing DIY investors and made the when re-tasting the wines, experts came range of knowledge and skills they will need Wine round to Parker’s opinion and the markets to succeed much greater. Barry Smith soon followed him. It is thought that some The life cycle of pension saving falls into of the Bordelais even started adapting their two parts: the accumulation (saving) and The wines that won’t be tasted wines to attract high Parker Points—a trend decumulation (spending) phases. Up until that is gradually being reversed. Ironic, then, now, DIY investing has been concerned How many of the world’s truly outstanding that Parker helped to create such a frenzied almost exclusively with the first—how to save bottles of wine will never be tasted? Too many wine market when he saw himself as democ- and invest money to build up capital during of them. They become trophy wines, valued ratising wine for the ordinary consumer the decades of one’s working life. This is hard not for the purity of their fruit and the devel- through his simple scale. enough to accomplish in practice, but is at opment of their tannins, but for their ability Parker had less influence in Burgundy. least relatively easy to understand in theory. to deliver a guaranteed return for an inves- The wines are less easy to comprehend or enu- But the spending phase presents many tor. Even in tough economic times, the prices merate. Few vineyards are singly owned and challenges, particularly if you decide to exer- of the world’s most sought-after bottles have top producers can turn out very small quan- cise your new freedoms from April 2015 and remained stubbornly high. As the financial tities of wine. Inevitably, handmade wines ignore the hitherto default option of taking crisis led to a decline in demand for fine wine from small vineyards lead to high prices: the out an annuity, otherwise known as an insur- in the west, Russia, China and India became combination of scarcity and quality ensures ance policy, which guarantees you an income important regions for collecting and trading. it. Ordinary wine lovers should worry that for life based on how much you have saved. It is not just collectors and speculators wealthy Chinese are now taking more inter- This approach has recently produced much who have put these vessels of desire beyond est in red Burgundies, potentially driving less attractive levels of income for new annui- the reach of ordinary wine lovers. High- up prices further. But, where in the past the tants but retains the benefit of being a simple end restaurants adorn their lists with tro- Chinese bought mainly as a sign of prestige, (if inflexible) solution to a big problem—out- phy wines that serve more as status symbols many have now developed a genuine appre- living your savings. than real choices—although, of course, some ciation for these wines. We may not be able If more people are now to move away from people have deep pockets. A city trader once to taste them, but I hope that someone will. annuities as a way to fund their retirement, told me that he’d had a wonderful wine at his Barry Smith is Director of the Institute of they are very likely to end up having to decide favourite restaurant. What was the wine, I Philosophy, University of London on the merits of more complex products with asked. He thought about the wine list for a more moving parts. And if they plan to try to moment, then said, “Bottom right.” manage the gradual spending of their savings How are trophy wines created? Paradoxi- over the years of retirement for themselves, cally, it is the desires and appreciation of wine they will face even more challenging invest- lovers that help to make legendary bottles— ment problems than when they were accu- such as the 1990 Chateau Margaux and 1961 DIY mulating their fund. Chateau Haut Brion—so sought after. The In the absence of an insurance policy, the higher critics rate them and the more we long investor only other way to fund your retirement is to to taste them, the more they will be snapped Andy Davis leave your capital invested and live off a com- up by investors and planted in dark cellars to bination of the income it produces and a por- grow in value. Sadly, many of these bottles Challenge of a lifetime tion of the capital itself, the idea being that will never be opened. They become too val- over the years your remaining fund grows uable to drink and will be repeatedly traded Will 2015 be the Year of the Lamborghini? to some extent, helping to offset the erosion until they are well past their best; a heart- You could be forgiven for thinking so, follow- as you progressively spend it. The catch, of breaking outcome for those who laboured ing the changes to pension rules announced course, is that you can have no idea how long lovingly on the vines and in the cellar. in the Budget. These were clearly intended you are going to live. Bordeaux wines are sold every year “en to signal a big shift towards individual con- (As an aside to those who think buy-to-let primeur”—an age-old system where wine trol over how we use our pension savings and property is the answer, the inconvenient truth merchants buy the wine before it is bottled, away from the effective obligation to buy an is that rental properties require ongoing tasting it unfinished from the barrel. In the annuity sometime after reaching 55. With investment if they are to remain capable of past, the idea was to secure an early allo- that necessity removed, several hundred generating worthwhile income, so you will cation of the best wines at a reduced price. thousand people per year will be free to man- need significant capital aside from the prop- However, the system is now close to collapse age their retirement income as they see fit, erty itself in order to maintain it.) as current opening prices are unsustainable which includes investing in premium Italian Drawdown, as it is called, is an extremely and buying en primeur is no longer a bargain. automotive engineering. complex process to get right. Experienced What sets the price of each vintage? Cyn- I feel torn about this. On the one hand, I’m investors know that forecasting even over ics say hype, but it is critics’ ratings. Assess- all in favour of people having greater scope short periods is all but impossible and that ment from the barrel is hard: the wines are to take control and do things for themselves. the only thing that enables them to recover young and tannic, and it used to be diffi- DIY investing is gaining popularity, and from setbacks is the passage of time. Both cult to convey the potential of a given wine other Budget moves to encourage it, such as these difficulties become more acute during to a prospective buyer. Then came Robert the new £15,000 annual ISA allowance, will drawdown—it’s impossible to forecast how Parker, a US critic who rose to fame when add to this. Equally, I’ve been put off pension long their money will have to last and they commodity trading was at its height in the saving ever since I left full-time employment: have less and less time to recover from any 1980s. Traders did not know how to assess the loss of employer contributions removed mishaps. Investment challenges don’t get or describe fine wines, but Parker gave them a big slice of the incentive to tie up money in much tougher than that. an easy index of quality based on a 100-point this way. These changes have gone some way Andy Davis is Prospect’s investment columnist PROSPECT JUNE 2014 WWW.PROSPECTMAGAZINE.CO.UK/EVENTS 85

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12 Barry R Clarke

13 Professor Neuron was stuck on a rather sticky problem. Three boxes—A, B and C—each contain a number of chocolates. There are three different 14 15 16 types of numbers as follows: 1. An odd number that is not square

17 18 19 2. An even number that is not square 3. A square number that can be odd or even.

20 21 Initially, box A contains type 1, B has type 2, and C holds type 3. Two chocolates are now moved from B to A, then three from C to B, and then 22 23 24 25 26 one from A to C. Before and after each move, the

27 28 29 following two conditions must be satisfied: (a) there is always one type of number in each 30 31 32 33 34 box with no two boxes containing the same type; (b) each box contains a number from 1–9

35 36 37 inclusive.

How many chocolates were initially in boxes A, B, 38 39 40 and C?

Last month’s solution The green pot contains 9/34 litres of green, 1/17 litres yellow, and 41 3/17 litres red paint. When 1/4 litre of green paint is poured into the yellow the mixture obtained is 5/4 litres. Half of this mixture is tipped into the red pot to produce 1/8 litre green, 1/2 litre yellow, and 3/2 42 43 litre blue, a total of 17/8 litres. However, only 1/4 litre, or 2/17, of this mixture is poured back into the green pot to restore it to 1/2 ACROSS Rupert Goold is currently its 5 Vanuatu, formerly (3,8) litre. This amounts to 2/17x1/8=1/68 litres of green paint which Artistic Director (7) together with the 1/4 litre of green left in the pot totals to 9/34 1 Like parrots (10) 7 The eight eastern US litres. For the yellow we have 2/17x1/2=1/17 litres and for the red 36 In Australia, a swagman (7) universities of academic and 6 National cultural event taking we have 2/17x3/2=3/17 litres. place this year in Llanelli, from 37 UAE member-state with ports social prestige (3,6) 1st to 9th August (10) at Port Rashid and Mina Jebel 8 Outstanding effort or 13 Do things that you advise Ali (5) performance (4,2,5) others to do (8,4,3,6) 38 Handel’s aria Ombra mai fui 9 Çanakkale Bogazi (11) How to enter from his opera Xerxes (5) 14 Inspire the mind (5) 10 Manchester-born US-based 15 Slate caverns near Blaenau 39 Novel about a rector’s novelist who wrote The Secret The generalist prize daughter as governess with Ffestiniog offering the Garden (7,7,7) The winner receives a hardback copy of “Victorian Mine Tours” (9) the Bloomfield and Murray Parliament: The Biography, Volume I by families (5,4) 11 Removed water from, 16 City in Nimrod’s kingdom in chemically (10) Labour MP Chris Bryant (Doubleday, the land of Shinar (5) 40 Sheath formed from two stipules united round a stem 12 i.e., in German (3,6) £25). This first of two volumes tells the 17 River flowing through Cottbus (5) story of parliament from its earliest days in (5) 23 “The Wonder of Wales” for 41 1949 film in which Alec whom Noel Coward created the the 14th century, through the Wars of the 18 The composing of poetry (7) Guinness plays eight members role of Ada Cockle (6,5) Roses, the English Civil War, and up to the end of the 18th of the D’Ascoyne family 19 Flower of the iris family named 24 What will be, will be, in Brescia century, when it began to take on its modern form. “This (4,6,3,8) after a German physician (7) (3,4,4) is a wonderful, wry view of the history of parliament ‘from the 42 Johor, Kedah, Malacca, Brunei 20 Birthplace of George Gissing in 26 The mayfly family (11) inside.’ Chris Bryant is a great myth-buster”—Mary Beard. the Rhubarb Triangle (9) and Oman, eg (10) 27 The largest area of fresh water 21 Its provincial capitals are Bo, 43 The “laughing philosopher” Enigmas & puzzles prize best known for his physical in the world at 94,747 sq miles Freetown, Makeni and Kenema One winner receives a copy of Math Bytes: (6,5) speculation, especially on the (5,5) atom theory (10) Google Bombs, Chocolate-Covered Pi, and 22 In civil law, usury consisting of 28 Clothes and linen collected by receiving compound interest a bride (9) Other Cool Bits in Computing by Tim (9) DOWN 29 Small cups of black coffee (10) Chartier (Princeton University Press, 25 Duster flown by British 1 Plant of the wintergreen family 31 Shop assistant in the Parisian £16.95). Chartier, associate professor of merchant shipping (3,6) with leaves yielding a substance fashion business often out to maths at Davidson College, shows how 30 White wine from a town in the used as a diuretic (10) lunch? (9) maths and computing relate to everyday life, including Rheingau near Bingen (11) 2 Engineer of the Great Western 33 US singer—“the man who how to do calculus using a bag of chocolate chips and how 32 Rhetorical figure producing a Railway (8,7,6) invented casual,” according to to prove the Euler characteristic by doodling. vivid impression by extravagant 3 Page containing a book’s name Bing Crosby (5,4) exaggeration (9) recto and editions verso (5,4) 34 Successor of the Home Service Rules 35 325-seat theatre in Islington; 4 That’s life, in Toulouse (4,2,3) (5,4) Send your solution to [email protected] or Crossword/Enigmas, Prospect, 5th Floor, 23 Savile Row, Last month’s solutions Across: 11 Oak-apple 12 Tepid 13 Eeyore 14 Cranesbill 15 Generalist 16 Diagraphs 19 Keyboardist 22 Nelson 23 London W1S 2ET. Include your email and postal address. Maryland 25 Assai 27 Asmodeus 29 Aeneas 30 Deben 32 Degas 34 Finnac 35 Short leg 37 Ibsen 38 Una corda All entries must be received by 9th June. Winners will be 40 Leasow 42 Voix celeste 45 Danny Kaye 47 Adar Rishon 49 Italicised 52 Dromoi 53 Artic 54 Ab initio announced in our July issue. Down: 1 Ram-raiders 2 Naan 3 EPOS 4 Lewisham 5 Itala 6 Apogee 7 Aden 8 Retreat 9 Eyelid 10 Grass snake 17 Gasconade 18 Arnhem 20 Bonhams 21 Armagnac 24 Lonicera 26 Sweet talk 28 Soignée 31 Toulon 33 Last month’s winners Embroidery 36 Epoxy resin 39 Amadavat, or Avadavat 41 Legitim 43 Xeroma 44 Tenuto 46 Zilch 48 Haaf 50 1914 51 1812 The generalist: Jacqui Sohn, Norfolk Didymus’s note: “The 40 perimeter letters beginning in the bottom left-hand corner and reading clockwise Enigmas & puzzles: Monique Hawkins, Surrey commemorated my son’s wedding on 24th May” Download a PDF of this page at www.prospectmagazine.co.uk © BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY all our Christian greatall our Christian cities.” publicly as andand more sold infamously in an eye to evil. In my opinion, they are bought ant. But you’ll men buy object, women with value than to any our salaries ordinary serv but they give them yearly clothes to a higher over the world. true ’Tis they have no wages; in my opinion, no worse than all servitude they are never and their ill-used, slavery is, the humanity of the Turks to these creatures; before me. But I cannot forbear applauding the horror same other have Christians done me half a Turk when I don’t of it with speak of the slaves;particular and you will imagine “I know you’ll expect I should say something writes to the of Countess Bristol: sador—to Constantinople in 1717. She herhusband—thenies new ambas British WortleyLady Mary Montagu accompa shooting forth an arrow.” if they as gestures, were drawing a bow and again theysometimes merry perform certain theysometimes hold them their about heads, theytimes contract compass, them inalesser their far they arms as as can in length, some swiftness, sometimes for theystretch out strangeing the as is as continuance of their hour at the The form least... of their danc for the space of one whole turning This tors. they kept admiration in all the specta in a corner struck no small years of age, that turning one little boy twelve of some Amongst the there rest, was but admire it. not choose ible swiftness, that I could and with turned - such incred they their redoubled force of themmidst all; afterwards the Law turning gently inthe turn the about Interpreter of began by little and little to all uncovered,breast they of themsome having their theiraside upper garments and and bare-footed, casting updenly bare-legged rose two and fifty sud dervishes, fivesome and twenty of the than ordinary, whereupon muchcians sounded louder “Upon a sudden the musi in 1613: Galata the whirling in dervishes visiting Coryat describes English traveller Thomas 88 She visits aShe bath visits “I believe house: in the - - - A seraglio—living quarters forA seraglio—living quarters Ottoman wives—by John 1873 Lewis, Frederick Extracts from memoirs and diaries, chosen by chosen Extracts Ian fromandIrvine memoirs diaries, Western views ofTurkey - - - - - the Turkish barges met us there to us carry thereached Dardanelles in eight or ten days; wind continued“The in our favour, and we arrives in Constantinople in the 1740s: Giacomo Casanova, Venetian adventurer, their hair.” girls of 17 or 18) were employed in braiding cushions while their slaves (generally pretty and manysherbet, negligently lying on their working,some others drinking coffee or fine women were naked in differentpostures, by the of Guido pencil or Titian... many So ever as proportioned any was goddess drawn amongst them... the wanton least gesture smile or immodest beauty or defect yet concealed, there was not in plain English,is stark naked, without any allbeing intheand dress, state ofnature, that behind them, but without of rank distinction and on the ladies, theirsat second slaves withered onwhich cushionsand richcarpets, ing, very charming.’sofas The first were cov Uzelle, pekuzellewhich nothing is but‘charm- fashion. They repeated over and over again thatbody appears not exactly is in dressed that never when fail any in our assemblies those disdainful or satyrical smiles whispers whole there were 200 women and yet none of “There were“There many among them exactly as The waywewere

- - Golden Horn.” Golden vating and of Bosphorus influences the the selves by turning their backs on the ener of their They past. have revitalised them selves off from the pantomimic splendours future of their nation when they cut them no doubt,can be did the thing correct for the and pavilions? its tiled But the Turks, there world more romantic than the Old Seraglio or Venice.Rome Is there anywhere in the Beethoven symphony concerts. which luckily proved untrue, of compulsory their new alphabet. There was even arumour, sitting learning in corners classes, poorer great due measure to him. sent happy relations with the Turks are in confidence of Kemal Ataturk, and our pre had won Sir George ties. the friendship and this was the of brilliant scene balls and par genial of ambassadors, andmost hospitable to thetransported Bosphorus. Barry, a Pall which resembled Mall club palace, by designed Renaissance [Charles] the Turks. in was a embassy Our housed in competition with one another to impress The Great Powers had built huge embassies Turkish capital from to Istanbul Ankara. “Istanbul is as beautiful, as is “Istanbul it may be, as “I remember Turks, belonging to the “Under Clerk, the the of Sir George aegis than in the change of the this have more evident been altering, can but in no post ways“The of diplomacy are journal in 1951: everell Sitwell writes in his and music critic Sach Art Byzantium.” Rome prediction, he left for theto secure fulfilment of his the whole world!’ and inorder of theproper seat empire of he exclaimed, ‘Here the is beauty that of its position, struck with the wonderful antium was by much so sea, the Great, arriving at Byz empire. Greek Constantine Roman, and of the of the rise the cause of the fall of the that splendid view which was any of the world. part It was rama found cannot be in a more magnificent pano wonderful; and I believe that of truly a league is distance offered by that city at the to Constantinople. The sight PROSPECT JUNE 2014PROSPECT ------