The End of a Promising Career
My twenty years in parliamentary politics taught me that, contrary to the opinions of many, most politicians pursue a political career for other than exclusively self-serving reasons. Most genuinely want to serve their fellow citizens or believe that they can make a real contribution to improving the way our society works.
I concede, though, that there are some politicians who could properly be called “careerists” – the term is not intended as a compliment. These are people who see politics as a path to fame and fortune, and they tend to be found – without wishing to make a party political point – more on the right of the political spectrum than on the left.
A careerist will often be ambitious for promotion and preferment and will feel that destiny calls. That is not in itself a crime but it can all too easily become a conviction that destiny is not to be frustrated by the usual rules of good behaviour. Someone who believes that he or she is on the threshold of great things may be impatient of those of apparently lesser ability, more cavalier about observing the requirements of law or morality, and more arrogant and driven by chutzpah in pursuing his own interests at the expense of others.
At the extreme, someone of this personality type – and particularly one who enjoys at least a modicum of success – can develop what might be called a “Messiah complex”. Perhaps the leading example of this syndrome was Tony Blair; his conviction that he was destined to save the world led him into the ill-fated invasion of Iraq, and the world he thought he was saving has paid the price ever since.
These thoughts were brought to mind as I contemplated the saga of Todd Barclay. A young man of undoubted ability, he must have been excited at inheriting the safe parliamentary seat vacated by Bill English, then the Deputy Prime Minister.
His youth and impatience led him, however, to a fractious relationship with the staff in his electorate office, and thence to a course of action which involved him in the criminal offence of recording another’s conversation without their knowledge or consent. In what is a sadly familiar downward spiral, he then compounded the error by falsely denying that he had done any such thing. As so often, it is the cover-up, rather than the original offence, that causes the real problems.
His problems multiplied when his lack of honesty implicated the Prime Minister who appears to have knowingly supported him in his denial of a now admitted truth. His resignation merely of course delayed the inevitable. But that ignominious outcome is far from the end of the story, which now involves not only the career prospects of a single (and misguided) individual but important principles of public life.
It is also significant that his departure has been arranged in such a way as to maintain his eligibility, as a retiring rather resigning MP, for all the advantages accruing to one who leaves the parliamentary scene with plaudits for a job well done, rather than in disgrace.
If proper standards are to be maintained, we must now ensure that an elected representative cannot use his status to avoid being held accountable for his actions, and that others who have connived at the attempt to achieve precisely that are also held to account.
That means that the Prime Minister must recant his earlier attempt to obscure the truth and protect his protégé. It means that the police must – following the admission that what appears to have been a criminal offence had been committed – re-open their prematurely foreclosed investigation as to whether that was so; they were, after all, very keen to pursue Bradley Ambrose, the cameraman who inadvertently recorded John Key’s conversation with John Banks in the 2011 election campaign.
Most of all, it requires that others should learn the lesson that Todd Barclay overlooked – that public life in New Zealand demands that its practitioners should tell the truth.
Bryan Gould
21 June 2017
What Does Inequality Look Like?
What does inequality look like? In a society where the gap between rich and poor has widened significantly, what evidence of that gap would one expect to see?
A dramatic and painful answer to that question was provided to us this week with the shocking image of the burning London tower block. If we ever wanted evidence of how – even in a society that is relatively affluent – the poor can be disregarded while the rich pursue their own interests, this was it.
The “towering inferno” occurred in one of London’s most affluent boroughs. While around 120 poor families were crammed into Grenfell Tower, a 24-storey tower block, most of the borough comprises leafy suburbs and million-pound houses.
The borough’s elected local authority apparently saw it as its first priority to lift property values in the borough and, as a necessary step to that end, to corral the poor into limited locations, getting them off the streets, out of sight and out of mind. The residents of Grenfell Tower, it seems, sensed that this was the case – a perception borne out when the concerns they repeatedly expressed about the safety of the tower block were ignored.
We all saw the consequence of that neglect. It is already clear, even before the necessary inquiries into the tragedy have been set up, that the building was unsafe and had been from the moment that the first tenants had taken up residence.
There were, it seems, no fires sprinklers. The fire alarms were inadequate. The building design made no attempt to inhibit an outbreak of fire and on the contrary ensured that flames would spread rapidly. Worst of all, it seems that the cladding attached to the building when it was refurbished a little time ago was of “limited combustibility” – and we now know that any degree of combustibility was too much.
These manifestations – literally of “care-lessness” – reflect an order of priorities that should have no place in a civilised society. The local authority seems to have been more concerned with saving the ratepayers money, avoiding “unnecessary” regulation, and promoting the interest of the wealthy in seeing property values rise, rather than in providing a safe living environment for those who could not afford to buy their own homes.
We might have hoped that the democratic process would have ensured that the interests of the poor could not have been so easily swept under the carpet. But, sadly, the western world offers many instances of how democracy can be diverted to serve the interests of the already powerful. In Donald Trump’s America, for example, the President is celebrating his “achievement” in denying health care to 23 million Americans so that he can deliver billions of dollars in tax relief to big corporates.
In New Zealand, we like to think that we are spared such excesses. We know, because we read about it, that there are people who are homeless – living in cars and garages – and that there are many children growing up in poverty, suffering ill-health and inadequate education as a result.
We read about it, but it fails to make an impact on us, because our own lives are relatively comfortable. It is someone else’s problem – the government’s – and when we cast our votes to elect a government, we are more concerned with how much tax we pay than about the cold, damp rooms, the overcrowding, the wheezing lungs and the empty tummies.
Thankfully, these attitudes do not produce by way of consequence – or have not done so far – anything remotely as dramatic as a flaming tower block. We do not, after all, have many tower blocks available to test out degrees of combustibility – or culpability.
But the damage we do to ourselves – as a society and to its individual members – can be just as serious as the fire at Grenfell Tower. The flames that engulfed so many were a demonstration – cinematic in its power and intensity – of what inequality can mean. We have persuaded ourselves that we can live with the less dramatic but no less lasting penalties that we choose in effect to impose on our fellow citizens.
We may not force them to jump out of burning windows. We simply condemn them to a lifetime of disadvantage.
Bryan Gould
16 June 2017
The Many, Not The Few
The British general election has produced an impressive list of casualties. Theresa May may survive for the time being but her gamble on a snap election so as to increase her majority – and her authority, especially in the forthcoming Brexit talks – has spectacularly misfired. Even with the support of the Democratic Unionist Party from Northern Ireland, it seems unlikely that she or her government will survive a full further term.
Other casualties were even less expected. The Scottish National Party’s losses seem to have put paid to any talk of a second referendum on Scottish independence. And the loss by Nick Clegg of his seat in the House of Commons demonstrates the price that has been paid by the Liberal Democrats for the coalition arrangement Clegg took them into with the Tories.
That leaves for consideration the political leader who was widely expected to come a cropper. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, did not of course win the election – though, under an MMP voting system that would surely have produced more seats for smaller parties, he might have had a good shot at forming a minority or coalition government.
But he did out-perform all expectations and could justifiably be regarded as the stand-out figure of the campaign. He achieved this, despite being dismissed as lacking personality, charisma and relevant experience, and as being as a consequence unelectable. He achieved this despite the most vitriolic campaign of vilification against him by the right–wing press who used banner front-page headlines to accuse him of being unpatriotic and of being a jihadist sympathiser. Even BBC journalists conceded that he had been very unfairly treated by the media.
He achieved this, despite the repeated efforts by the “New Labour” or “Blairite” wing of his own party in parliament to unseat him as leader, and their constant efforts, both in public and in private, to undermine him.
Imagine what he could have achieved if he had had a united party behind him and a fair go in the press!
So, what did he have going for him? What explains the unexpected (and admittedly comparative) success that he and Labour enjoyed?
What seems to have attracted voters is that he was willing to talk to them, not as a politician but in human terms – in marked contrast to Theresa May, who was so robotic that she attracted the nickname “Maybot”. Jeremy Corbyn, by contrast, attracted huge crowds, and seems to have particularly enthused young voters.
What did he talk to them about? He talked to them about what a good and decent society looks like, about how its members should treat each other, about government’s responsibility to ensure that no one gets left behind and that everyone has a fair chance of achieving what they want and are capable of – in other words, he described “a politics for the many and not just for the few”.
This meant, he said, that there must be an end to “austerity” which was merely a clever way of saying that the many must “go without” while the few made fortunes. He said that pubic services – like the railways or the health service – should not be privatised and run (often inefficiently) for private profit, but should be truly “public” – owned by and serving “the public”. It meant that taxation should be paid fairly by those who can afford it so that the country could deliver good health and education for all, as well as effective policing, defence and security.
He said all this, despite the warnings – even from within his own party – that it would mean electoral suicide. He understood that if politicians commit only to what will win the approval of the few, then the voters will quickly understand that the interests of few will always prevail, and that those of the many must then come much further down the list.
Corbyn’s readiness to talk about the issues that matter to most people struck a chord with voters who had been told for years that he was a no-hoper. Bernie Sanders had already demonstrated much the same thing in the US presidential primaries. Left-of-centre parties around the globe – and not least in New Zealand – might at last take note.
Bryan Gould
10 June 2017
Abdicating Responsibility
America versus the world! For Donald Trump, it seems, the battle against global warming is a conspiracy against the US concocted by those who wish to do them down. “I am the President for Pittsburgh,” he declares, “not Paris”.
It does not seem to occur to him that the US – and Pittsburgh – are part of the world, and that if the battle to restrain global warming is lost, there will be no “get out of jail” card which will exempt the US from the consequences which the rest of us will also suffer.
By pulling out of the Paris accord, the country which has emitted more greenhouse gases than any other is saying that it accepts no responsibility, and will pursue what it mistakenly sees as its own interests, irrespective of the damage done to others.
As many of Trump’s critics, including Arnold Schwarzenegger – a fellow Republican and the former Governor of California – have pointed out, reducing greenhouse emissions is not a barrier to economic growth and employment, but is actually helpful to it.
Trump’s decision, in other words, not only looks like a denial of the available scientific evidence about the causes and seriousness of the issue but is also a miscalculation of what is really in American interests.
A United States that – joined only by Syria and Nicaragua – refuses to take action on climate change will not only be reviled around the world for its selfishness but will also be doing itself considerable economic damage. Countries that apply themselves to finding alternative ways of going about their business without polluting the atmosphere will secure a long-term advantage over those that do not.
So why has the American President arrived at what looks like an extremely short-sighted decision? The most likely answer is also a very depressing one.
Donald Trump secured his unexpected election victory by making a series of improbable promises to the American electorate. The underlying theme of those promises was that they would supposedly “make America great again” by putting American interests first and hopefully, as a consequence, producing a growth in the number of American jobs.
The uncertain and faltering start Trump has made to his Presidency, and the controversies that continue to swirl around the Russian involvement in his election, have made it all the more important, from his viewpoint, that he should be seen to be taking decisive action to fulfil his promises – and one of them, of course, was that he would pull the plug on the Paris accord, which he insisted was costing American jobs, particularly in the fossil fuel industries.
Reneging on the climate change deal, unlike for example building the wall or the attempted ban on mainly Muslim arrivals, can be achieved by Trump simply deciding that it should be so. Whatever the downsides, in other words, it has the great advantage that Trump cannot be deterred – and he can then proclaim that he has achieved one of his promises.
We are forced to the unpalatable conclusion therefore that the new American President cares more about fulfilling campaign promises, however ill-advised, and in due course being re-elected, than he does about securing the best interests of the country he was elected to serve – to say nothing about the damage his decision will inflict on the rest of the world for generations to come.
The focus of the Trump Presidency is, so it seems, to put Donald Trump and his own personal interests – both commercial and political – first, second and third, front and back, and anything else nowhere. Whatever pleas might be made by those who know what is at stake, the new President is not for turning. It is his own survival that matters to him, not what serves the interests of those who elected him – to say nothing of those who will find themselves paying the price around the globe.
New Zealand’s interests will count for little, but that should not deter us and our government from expressing our concern at the first opportunity. That opportunity is likely to occur when the new US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, visits us in the coming week. He, and Donald Trump, should be left in no doubt as to where we stand on the issue.
Bryan Gould
3 June 2017
A Naughty Boy
We have been able to obtain a recording of a telephone call recently made by an early childhood educator (we’ll call her Miss X) to the parent of a newly enrolled small boy who was just completing his first day at his new pre-school. The following is a transcript.
Miss X: Is that Mrs Trump?
Mrs T: Yes
Miss X: This is (Miss X) from the NATO/G7 pre-school. We met briefly when you dropped Donald off this morning.
Mrs T: Oh yes (pause). Is everything all right? I hope he hasn’t been any trouble.
Miss X: No, no. He’s fine. But I thought you might like to know about some of his behaviours that might cause you – and us – some concern if they continue.
Mrs T: Oh dear. I thought that might be the case.
Miss X: Don’t worry – it’s nothing too serious. The problems – such as they are – will probably resolve themselves as he becomes more familiar with sharing and thinking of others. He’s an only child, I assume?
Mrs T: Yes – I’m afraid he’s used to getting his own way. What’s he been up to?
Miss X: Well, he’s quite big boy for his age – so there’s been a bit of pushing and shoving which has upset some of the smaller children. And he seems to think that everything is there for him and him alone. He tends just to grab what he wants. Oh! (speaking past the telephone) Donald, don’t do that please.
Mrs T: Is that Donald? What’s he done?
Miss X: He’s sitting on Charlie. Donald, let him go, there’s a good boy.
Mrs T: Oh dear.
Miss X: Donald, give it back.
Mrs T: What’s he taken?
Miss X: He’s eating Billy’s sandwich. Donald, that’s Billy’s. You wouldn’t like it if someone took your sandwich, would you?
Mrs T: Oh dear. I thought he’d learn to socialise quite quickly. He promised me he’d behave. Should I come and get him?
Miss X: No, no need. He’s just a bit aggressive. If he doesn’t get his own way, he tends to lash out. And I’m sorry to say that he has a tendency to tell tales on the other children, not always truthfully – probably at times to shift the blame. I’m sure he’ll – Donald, why did you hit James? He was only trying to play with Jane. Donald – oh dear! (Sound of a child crying).
Mrs T: What’s he done? Is he getting violent?
Miss X: No, not really. Donald, Jane is a little girl. You must treat her gently. No! Donald! You can’t put your hand there! I’ll have to put you in the naughty corner.
Mrs T: He doesn’t have much experience of girls. He seems to think that they are a different species and are just there for him to play with. It’s not his fault really.
Miss X: Donald – ouch! (Sound of a scuffle).
Mrs T: What’s he done?
Miss X: He’s bitten me on the leg. Donald, naughty boy. I think, Mrs Trump, that perhaps you had better come and get him. Some of the other children are in tears – and I’m not far off tears myself. I’m a bit concerned about possible complaints from other parents. Perhaps he can start again when he’s a little more able to conduct himself properly. He’s a bit too disruptive at present. No Donald! (Her voice sounds more distant). Give it back. (The line goes dead).
Bryan Gould
29 May 2017