The truth you’ll never hear from a politician

The only debate genuinely supportive of a just and sustainable world is the only one you will never hear from a politician or journalist. 

Post election media ‘coverage’ has pivoted around blame – Corbyn, antisemitism, Brexit, the media and the manifesto. The underlying message behind this narrative is that electoral defeat is always a matter of strategy. For the overwhelming majority of politicians and the commentariat, truth and morality are for losers. Winning is everything.

Contemporary political analysis is about manipulating a majority into thinking that you serve their parochial self interest. It is widely accepted that all the promises are a web of lies – but the truth is not important. Like a tacky TV talent show most vote for the personalities and the stories that support individual prejudice and selfish economic advantage. 

Many opinions are expressed about the ‘right’ way to vote and what would represent a ‘good’ outcome for the nation – but you will never hear any politician or media hack discuss the nature of goodness itself. If one pauses to think about this (and almost nobody does) it does seem extraordinary – how can anyone choose well in an election if they don’t even know what goodness is?

Our societal norms about goodness are so dominant as to be conceded as axiomatic. Most simultaneously (and chaotically) insist that goodness is a purely subjective matter of individual preference but define goodness nevertheless in material terms as though that were objective. 

Much of what we regard as newsworthy revolves around material economic indicators – what global trading markets are doing, figures for GDP, inflation, employment, house prices, fuel prices, car sales, interest rates and consumer spending. Decreases in even the rate of growth of the materials economy are seen as disastrous – fixes and fiscal stimuli are swiftly applied.

We measure success in monetary terms – a person making money is deemed to be ‘getting on’ and ‘doing well for himself’. A financially successful business is said to deliver the owners ‘a good living’. If we gain enough money to live a luxurious life without any need to work we are said to have ‘arrived’ (at the promised land?).

Global society generally speaking is a ‘democracy’ of populist values. Without any shared debate or intellectual structure with which to rationally evaluate goodness – that which is easier and more seductive inevitably holds sway.

This is why our species stands on the brink of self-annihilation, why climate change talks are a pointless sham, why the materials economy expands every year and why thoughts of material restraint are culturally tantamount to treason.

Have you ever heard a TV debate that dealt with the nature of goodness? Do you talk with friends and family about what truly makes for a fulfilled life? Where in all the dogmatic and divisive debates about Brexit was goodness even mentioned?     

If goodness remains normatively aligned  with materialism then only appeals to that presumed good can even be heard. Even the allegedly ‘hard left’ agenda of ‘comrade Corbyn’ was basically a recipe for a continuance of the status quo – economic growth with a different pattern of distribution and ‘green growth’.

Much hot air in the months and years ahead will be wasted by ‘the left’ in the search for a golden strategy to defeat the tories. I submit that those engaged in this search have already lost. As long as our  understanding of goodness remains ring-fenced within subjective materialism then the tories will always be best placed to speak to it.

Now is the perfect time to re-examine our most fundamental assumptions about right and wrong. Nobody can rationally ‘fight the good fight’ during the next five years of a tory government if they don’t understand that most people basically share the same understanding and measures of goodness…

…as the tories themselves.