Just why do we think it is a Litigation Culture?
It strikes me as one of the oddest myths, that we live in a litigation culture. - That I can sue the council if I am too stupid to notice that a paving stone is uneven – or that a tree is about to fall down. Or a curry house if the curry is too hot, or my children if they keep me awake, or God for just being. Everything has a cause – a fault, someone and something to blame – and we can sue the lot! Now this game of ‘compensation culture’ is a bizarre one. Not only is it utterly self-referential – with the media organisations that call for mass ulitilisation of blame and compensation, being the same organizations as actively condemn it; but also it is fairly clear that the entire myth of a compensation culture – is exactly that – a myth. Put simply, there isn’t one (any more than we live in more violent times than ever before, or for that matter more prosperous times). This of course does not mean that sometimes it isn’t easier to sue, it is – but rather that a blanket myth – ‘we all sue, we all blame’ is, as most simplistic myths are, wrong. Nothing is ever likely to be that simple! What is more, and what is for me so bizarre about the plea ‘compensation culture’ – (or the increasing violence of the streets, or the apparent collapse in morals of young people) is the evident joy with which those who dish out the blame put forward their erroneous hypothesis.
The point of the analysis is not any kind of serious engagement with reality (indeed the entire discourse is as far removed from the nasty world of real statistics as possible, and in the fictional world of the anecdote). Its purpose is then not so much truth, as entertainment. It is part of that never ending story of how things are always changing for the worse – of how things are or were better in ‘My Day’ – which is indulged in by both young and old alike. Perhaps one might go further – the collective myth of misery – of things getting worse and worse (Christmas being more commercial, uncertainty increasing in the world) must be the single most important ritual which everyone in our society still shares. A certain kind of joyous gloom is surely our dominant myth – a myth that unites rich and poor, old and young, and one that has certainly appeared to replace the weather in popular conversation. We appear to bond through our stories of misery – and chortle through our tales of woe.
Seen from this perspective the government is almost emblematic of our collective attitude. At present few really seriously doubt that New Labour will win the next election (perhaps the only force capable of stopping them is the loathing they have inspired in many of their party activists which will surely make campaigning very difficult) and yet Blair is deeply mistrusted and unpopular (and indeed was, to a lesser extent, so back at the time of the last election in 2001). Which raises the question how and why is he going to win? This is of course where our collective myth of misery comes in. The point of a government is not to rule - no one seriously thinks that they have very much real power anyway, - any more than it is actually the real role of a newspaper to report news. Its role rather in modern life is surely not to rule – but rather to contain hostility – and to provide us all with a convenient focus for our mutual disgust. Of course when it comes to this job, Blair is supremely able (and the fact that he appears utterly unaware that this is his role makes it all the more funny, and he so much better at the job). We all know what New Labour stands for – not politics, but rather a way of cocking up, and being corrupt in ways we all really rather like. New Labour then benefits from the simple single most important fact of modern government. One does not win or lose elections because one is liked, (as no political party is likely to be genuinely liked) but rather – one wins elections because one is despised in the right way – and provides the clearest and best locus of despising.
What is wrong then with Howard – is that the kind of despising that he inspires in us – is I suspect too dangerous. The (to be quite frank) fascism of his policies on asylum seekers inspires too much passion and absolutely genuine anxiety and hatred. That is, he has not learnt the gentle art of being unpopular. Something of the night clings about him - but we have not yet learnt to enjoy that night.
Likewise the minor parties are stymied because thy fail to understand the hierarchy of unpopularity. The poor old Liberals might well be liked, and perhaps likeable – but this very fact makes them unelectable. They inspire genuine feeling, and society cannot be run on genuine feeling. Genuine feeling is in fact dangerous – people might actually become political – might actually make demands for real changes in the world – a fact that would quite pull apart the myth of society and social unity we try so hard to create for ourselves in moaning. Likewise to actually take the moaning seriously is to miss the point. That is, to be anti-Europe (and or racist) is to mistake the point of the misery. Its point is never that it is real – and actually nothing is worse than someone actually accepting it as real (nothing is more scary that someone actually saying your fears are genuine after all), The point is that the loathing must be done gleefully. And Blair will win because quite undeliberately he has managed to be unpopular in just the right way.
It is worth noting here that the use of opinion polls is critical in this process. Political parties have undoubtedly become over the years more and more obsessed by opinion polls. And yet reading them is very problematic. To gain from opinion polls it has never been simply enough to slavishly follow what is given in the opinion poll. The point about the moans registered in opinion polls is that they are just that – moans. They are not meant to be that serious – and indeed not to be taken that seriously. Now this is again where Blair is a past- master (and absolutely in spite of himself). His partial (and sometimes clearly unwilling) acquiescence to the public mood – a public mood that he then utterly fails to ride – and moving off in a new and happily contemptible direction of his own (and thereby providing yet new ways to joyfully disdain him) is a veritable ‘pleasure’ to behold. In short Blair (like Thatcher before him) wins because he is contemptible in the right way – and can be provoked to actions that make him even more loathed – but still in that way we wish to loath.
In short, in a sense modern politics is always about bullies and bullied. The bullies are the people (through their agents the ‘media’) – the bullied are the politicians – who so want to be liked. The game of being a successful politician is always to provide a collective axis in which and thorough which one can be loathed – and in which one can be perpetually harassed. It is to be able to endlessly respond to this loathing in ways that produce new ways that one can be hated – and new pleasures. I.e., if the role of the novelist is to define affects that have never been defined before - the role of the politician is to invent new and ever more enjoyable ways through which they can be despised, in some kind of anti-morality play – where in the plot, the villain, the person who we love to hate, actually always steals the show.
Or to put it another way (and at the risk of sounding like some sad Marxist) politicians have become a very important part of the opium the people take to deaden misery. Societies are never so much about building utopia, as about managing disaffections. A society can function, and function well if all its parts hate in the same way – and enjoy that hating. The game of political modern life is then to manage that hating, and ensure that it is never too destructive. The consequences of when this goes wrong are evident to us all. Politician’s role (like insurance salesmen and journalists) is to be hated – and to provide a collective series of myths to express disaffections, and petty loathing. In our gleeful misery we take an opium – an opium of misnaming. All the petty disaffections and small loathing of which our lives are made, and which are potentially so destructive to society, become absorbed within a mutual game of blaming. There is no compensation culture; crime is not going up, and the health service is just as bad as it always was (or as good) – but that is not the point. By being there – by being things which can be grumbled at – and by having ‘political masters’ who can be safely blamed, we contain a whole series of different potential animosities, which are all safely rolled up together into one great and glorious game of blame. In short in our modern society there is a ‘compensation culture’ not because somehow everyone sues every one else (they do not), but because the way in which we run society has become (or perhaps always was) a game of ‘safe blaming’ - of ensuring that the right figures are loathed - and in the right way. Every figure in the ‘public eye’ (presumably as the proverbial mote?) is then open to this blame – and succeeds not because they are liked, but only in that they provide us with yet another person to gleefully blame.