Portrait of Concord and Disdain


  It is one of those old wayside scenes – the ruins in a garden of a folly by a bridge, very eighteenth century. In the centre there is a figure, bearing a lighted candle, and a rather masculine and smug look on his face. The candle is shielded against the wind, and yet its light is spreading everywhere. One could get the impression if one looked at the painting twice that all the light in the world is actually coming from this candle, and not the pale moon in the dark southern sky that is oddly cold and very distant, and certainly not where the shadows flow from. This figure is arranged in best mock classical drapes, with possibly a Latin inscription or two, and even a roman helmet, the look is every inch the warrior. And yet somewhere, perhaps in small letters on the chemise is the single word, ‘peace’. A word that is at odds with the business-like sword at their side.

  Moreover at first glance this figure appears alone in the garden. And yet everything is alive if you look a third time. Lurking in the dark, waiting perhaps, are figures or eyes or disjointed moths licking their lips. Scraps of sentient darkness that blink at the light. More than that there is evidence that a storm is brewing somewhere, hints of lightning, not actually present appear in the cloud and the shadow of rain to come, and around these hints and shadows there are whole multitudes of eyes within, waiting and willing. The figure then appears really rather vulnerable, to those looking on. And yet there is something in it that remains apparently cocksure and confident in its singular power, as if its beefy confidence was enough, and the power of its light enough to shield it against the power of all lightnings to come. A power which it feels makes the world valid.

  An allegory perhaps for our post-Coalition Britain. An alliance not of equals or like minds made against the storm, so much as a desperate move made against the darkness. In this case the storm was not the forces of darkness (and their many watching eyes) so much as a combined enemy of New Labour, world recession, and the voting public. These combined to create a perfect conundrum – an apparently impossible alliance between longterm political foes. An alliance that would, if it worked, spell the end of one entire skein of post-Thatcher politics, a skein that saw the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrat Party feel themselves to be natural allies against the all-conquering Tory Party of the nineteen-eighties. For the Coalition to get going at all, the romance of this old alliance has had to be snapped, much to shock of an entire generation who had come to accept it (and so beating the Tories) as an end in itself. This snap is all the more weird as the Tories under Cameron in their policies (if not in their mood-language) are very much Thatcher’s children. They were at university during the heady days of Thatcher, and assumed that the Tories would govern forever. They have then found opposition a tricky cross to bear, and are now BACK. A parallel that is made all the more apposite by the fact that the press has swung back to the Tories sharply, and the election campaign had all the bad natured Labour bashing features of campaigns of yesteryear. It is weird that the Liberal Democrats have chosen this moment to break cover, and shatter forever that old post-nineteen-eighties pact. Perhaps time has been long enough for them to forget? Perhaps the promise of power was enough? Be that as it may, in the ruined landscape of the painting there is a genuine sadness or even shock. Or bewilderment. It is as if the forces in the dark cannot quite believe that the light has come to harry it. For the voices in the dark had thought that their presence and many voices ought to be enough to keep that light at bay. More than that, if you look behind the figure there appears following it a trail of eyes and mouths, hidden in the shadow of the figure, and yet arranged as if an army.

  What is more there is a real complex recidivism in this move. One of the achievements after all of New Labour was that it  increased the diversity of Parliament and the faces and voices of those within it. The effect then of The Tories being back in power and the Liberal Democrats, (often a rural party) backing them is that the diversity of faces is lessened. Or perhaps the story changes. It becomes not about the fact that there are more voices in Parliament as a whole, so much as that there are more faces in the Tory Party. So that at the same time there is less diversity in our actual leadership, one element in the patchwork of Parliament can claim to be doing better - namely the Tory Party. The entire issue of toleration then becomes the Tories’ own personal journey. A move that is finely balanced. For it is true that for Britain to genuinely to become an inclusive and tolerant society the Tories need to change, and yet one wonders if that change is made at the initial cost of losing diversity, where will it itself end up? Will it be the ‘big change’ and the ‘New politics’ or merely the subtle return to day of yore (with a few concessions made to the ‘diverse’ amongst us). The robes then of the figure, who no doubt represents Concord are themselves problematic – calling up as they do the politics of the past that we of the dark might not want.

  If one then turns to look at Concord himself, one becomes immediately aware, of two things. Firstly there is a lot of Latin written on its garments, and secondly the words themselves are giving it its power. In the allegory the former of these harks back to what is clearly the bond that unites Cameron and Clegg. They both are essentially prefects (possibly head prefects) in major public schools. They have then the easy and arrogant authority of having the entire establishment (its authority but also its history) behind them all the way. They are then given an absolute power to police their fellows, and feel that power (and its responsibilities). More than that they feel that this power is enough to create a bond that will allow them to transfigure their past differences, and form a single union against the forces of the dark. Sharing a common background and a common take on authority ought to be enough. In addition every public school boy knows that you want both head and deputy head prefect. For then not only will each represent their own house, but also they can use that fact to prevent the entire politics of the school becoming too tribal (i.e. linked to those school houses). If you have two heads, then both must bring their houses with them, and so the wider school; a fact which actually (in part) grounds authorities’ trust in them! Not only this, but also every public school boy is told cooperation across otherwise competitive relationships is itself always good….A fact that probably was true when the old master was first painted, and yet looks more problematic in a multi-voiced world, where the authority of the head prefects might very well be not so much questioned as ignored.

  But this is not Concord’s sole feature, for one gets the feeling that those words really do matter. It is the words after all that are somehow holding the garments together. It is the union of the manifestos that makes Coalition work. A union based on the fact that those manifestos were written against the same series of forces of the dark, namely an incumbent government (and Prime Minster seen as an encumbrance), debt, and global meltdown. Forces that are of course strong enough for individuals naturally to come together in the common interest, an interest that the dark itself essentially creates. It is no wonder that those involved in the Coalition feel that they have worked together for a long time. In a sense they have - for they have both been opposed to the same set of things. Nor is it any wonder that a set of policies can be pulled out of this unholy union.

  The trouble of course is, (and the lips being licked in the dark know this) that the problem of government is that it needs to respond not just to events so much as issues to come. It is issues which suddenly come from almost nowhere (global financial meltdown and the rest) that destroy. The problem that any coalition (or any party) faces is always how one responds to these issues. The mere creation of unions of manifestos is easy; and if the task of government was merely the implementation of a manifesto then of course any idiot could to it. But Government does not consist of this easy task alone, but rather is all about the responding to issues that were not forecast at the time of the election, and yet for which a policy must quickly evolve, a policy which takes the entire government with it. The problem then of any coalition is how one responds to these issues. A problem that all coalitions find so hard to solve, and it catches them up in a twin danger: That either in the face of such issues they have to pull together, and therefore start to unite into a genuinely single party; or else they need to keep their differences and accept then in five years time or so, that they will have to move part, and accept possibly rather different electoral fates. The future is then what destabilises unions in the present and not the past. The union is faced with the unlovely choice as often as not of becoming permanent or else tumbling apart. A fact that all the bon homie at the start makes even more bitter and problematic as the splits emerge. A problem that all the pre-government pacts in all the world cannot prevent. No wonder then that those in the dark lick their lips, and look to storms to come.

  However there is an escape clause to this discord. The candle remember that Concord holds up, is lighting the dark: It is the force that allows us to see the dark in the first place, and as long as it controls that light source it is unified and concordant. Political influence is always defined in being able to define all opposition in terms of a single set of enemies, enemies that one then sets oneself against. Thatcher therefore blamed the unions, and Blair the forces of conservatism (which painted both the self same unions and the rightwing with the same brush). It is then these easy lazy tags that keep all political parties and all coalitions together. It is therefore the skill of a political leader to name as a single ‘other’ all the events and all the issues that tumble into their in tray. Moreover these easy enemies will emerge in time and across issues. And if this is the case for any one party in power, one suspects that it will be all the more the case for a government of conflicting parties. One needs very powerful others, to collect all the issues and complexities together to dance a single tune, and be there to sweep up not only nations, but party members. It will no doubt be the role of the twin head prefects that are Concord to keep the candle bright, and keep the enemies in the foreground, for if it loses the right to name the dark it will falter.

  If one then turns to the dark, one gets a strange feeling that beyond the fear and sudden anger everywhere apparent there are two other feelings. Firstly there is something very habitual in it. One gets the impression that it has always been here. It feels itself to be the true owner of this land, its true master. Maybe it is a thing returning to a land, and finding a new figure within the landscape. Maybe then it is the one retuning to its own kingdom (and finding another within it). It captures then the odd feeling ripping across the left wing in Britain - the feeling beyond the outrage, of blind and impotent acceptance. We have all been here before. We are locked in that old nightmare, the nightmare of opposition. The nightmare where only our principles guide us (principle not seen in government overmuch), and where they guide us, government or perpetual opposition is not clear. All we know is that the past bitterness is back, and tingles this time with a feeling of treachery. A dark and possibly impotent shiver runs across all the darkness and the story to come.

  And yet there is a strange sentiment also lurking in the dark: Progressive Coalition, and agreement, was after all its own language. Is it not the custodian of a thousand voices? And yet it is perhaps aware in a way that Concord is not a thing of the moment, that there are different sorts of agreement, as there are different kinds of thought. There are those agreements that political parties are meant to represent (and in part do), where individuals come together to form a common purpose, and goal. That is where things are genuinely pooled and ideas generously shared one with the other. Then there are those coalitions where individuals remain individual points of power, which form then a strange union. A series of points of view, who assess each case differently, and vote accordingly, and always as different individuals. The problem then that is lurking in the dark is that it knows these two very different forms of democracy are rather easy to confuse.

  The trouble is that if the former demands the latter dance its own tune, then it will in effect enforce its own will (which it feels to be the only genuine one) on the minds of others - in an act of tyranny – big or little. Or else if the individuals become by themselves the sole perspective which matters, then the result is that the world decomposes into a thousand sliding greeds.  

  Coalition and cooperation exist then in a paradox, and the dark always wants to ask of the light, what kind of light it is?  Does it accept its difference? And can it accept that difference in the face of the storm to come? Or will it slide into one of those two alternatives that have up until now been the ruin of all previous concords and certainly are already haunting this one. For the dark knows of many concords and their fates.

  Finally everywhere in the portrait there is a threat of some kind of change to come. One gets the feeling that the garden has been ruined by forces beyond the darkness, perhaps those storm winds blowing in from God knows where, harrying also the dark. The Concord’s fate is not in its own hands. What it controls for a while is a source of light. The problem is, what it will choose to illumine. Will it then show a country that is genuinely ruined, in the sense that it is no longer a ‘first world country’, a major player, but is rather now what it always used to be four hundred years ago or so, a bit player in a far bigger, more dangerous and more important picture? Or will it carry on the make-believe and fight fate as best it can and with whatever it can? Will it then seek to blame the darkness that is caught up in the same storm winds for all their fate? Or will it hack King Lear-like at the ruins themselves in a madness to come upon that heath? Or will it simply falter as concords tend to do? - A portrait on the brink of being painted. A portrait that will come to capture us all up, one way or another.