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We all take our unique place on the spectrum from neuro typical to raving mad. At times we shift our position when our lives lead us or we lead our lives into places and actions that trigger exaggerated response. We all know a great deal about this although we may think and speak of it in different ways. Touchy-feelyness speaks of reaching out, feeling the pain, knowing where you’re coming from, stressed out; more formally we may speak of empathy, kindness, sympathy, understanding, anger, or exhaustion; and as we respond to others we automatically assess and adjust to their condition and the effect it might have on their normal position. This response is part of an innate capacity - a theory of mind, what is called social cognition. It permits interaction with the rest of the world in real time so fast that responses can begin even before the concious mind notes them.
There are people so far along the spectrum from the majority cluster of neuro typical, positioned there at all times and moving rapidly towards the other extreme when circumstances other than tranquility confront them, that neuro typical people recognise their difficulties instantly and respond - sometimes kindly and making allowances but, depending on circumstances, sometimes with contempt, or even worse cruelty; always with circumscription at lesser or greater levels.
We pick up deviance and measure it consistently and irresistibly ; it is our nature. Sometimes it does not matter; sometimes, it has been argued, specifically for this kind of difference there are benefits where narrowness of focus, high detail attention and the imposition of logically constructed models onto very diverse data is required and contributory.
What spectrum position does political leadership call for? The fastest, universal understanding of complex, and differently ordered and weighted, inputs; intuitive grasp of the slightest of given signals in face to face contacts; the ability to construct diverse scenarios and imagine outcomes; infer hinterlands of reasons and aims; the capacity to understand - not to construct a model of others’ behaviour derived from a list of recognised inputs for a set of situations and generate a model specific response - to understand and respond to another’s viewpoint.
When we see for ourselves, on the national and international stage, a candidate for our highest political office ungroomed, unkempt, ill-dressed, unable to control the most florid symptoms of obsessive behaviour, and we are told by ranking officials, by civil servants who of their professional nature are the most discreet of people, by political colleagues who have every interest in promoting their party, that what we see displayed publicly is privately more and worse displayed in every aspect of official and private interaction, then we must speak out.
Horses for courses.
Gordon Brown cannot be a politician at the level of a country’s leader in a pluralist democracy.
What he would be is what he is; and he is the stuff of a dictator.
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14 comments:
Just so, HG, Just So.
Lilith, these are formal ways of expressing incandescent rage with the last ten years of wasted selfishness.
No, self-seeking, fantasist destructiveness.
The raving mad end of the spectrum is sooo attractive it's less destructive of me to set it out formal dress.
Or I should say 'for me'to set it out in formal dress.
Incandescent rage, HG? Delivered with admirable calm, then.
Speaking out? Clearly, several in high positions, ministers and civil servants, have felt the need to do so, it's that bad. To what avail? Blair never had the courage to sack him (and Blair/Clinton is surely the embodiment of the occupant of the "spectrum position [that] political leadership calls for" you define).
You have offered a measured diagnosis and chilling prognosis. Others express hatred, scorn, dismay. From the sidelines, the best I can manage is jeering and mockery: scarcely even gnat-bites. What do we do when he succeeds?
Is there a viable Caine Mutiny scenario - can the Monarch make such a judgement?
Finally, how did we get here? Blair's cowardice, yes. But whenever we see a Brown or a Livingstone, these unreconstructed dictatorlings so securely entrenched, we can only reflect on the damage to Conservative credibility wrought by the corrupt Aitkens and Archers, the buffoon Hamiltons, even the cynical Portillos.
And Edward Heath, ND, who accepted any price to enter the Common Market, and hid not just the price but his goals.
I cannot put a reasonable case for why Brown was not moved by the Prime Minister to where he could be prevented from doing so much damage.
Everybody knows about him; the BBC reported on a letter about his inappropriate behaviour as a figurehead student electee when he was an undergraduate at Edinburgh University, from their Vice-Chancellor to other university heads, so he's always been recognised for what he is.
puzzled of Hatfield
Lillith what can you mean ?
Yes I am lolloping behind you HG but eventually I get there. I think the problem you describe ios not confined to Gordon Brown though . How often do we casually accept polticians behaving inways none of us would , ways that seem like borderline personality disorder .
I think it is the "Getting on " Phenomenom as described cruelly by J Paxton of all people. It is a somewhat inhuman stance from the off and Gordon Brown is an especially bad example
I fear Cameron is only better at hiding it though as are most of them. William Hague is often described as clubbable but I would saw both of my buttocks off varnish them and have them sold in a provincial gift shop before being stuck in a pub with him.
You , by way of contrast ,are utterly and entirely charming
XX
and I am going to read your community schoools piece tommorow . Been out house hunting and things
(pinched the gag)
It is difficult to know what to do with the fury, is it not HG. But I love how you do it. Brown is exposed for who he is and we sleep walk towards his premiership. 350,000 people are leaving the country each year.
Lilith, it would be easier to be right of centre, 'what did we expect, always thus.....'
As it is Mr HG silently places the bottle of absinthe and the mac on the dinner table and goes for a walk in the garden with the cat.
What do you know about mazes? I'm sure Mutley could advise, as he's good on canals and the universe, but a gardener's eye would be good.
Puzzled asks,
"why Brown was not moved by the Prime Minister"
A philosopher (stoned) writes:
Brown's behaviour, let alone character, amply justifies being 'moved'. So we do indeed need an explanation. Since we're in theory-of-mind mode, here's a few of suggestions towards what is a complex answer: several are mundane, but, heigh-ho, that's life.
> the desire for a quiet life / avoiding certain types of confrontation (usually of the 'domestic' sort) is a character-trait of many otherwise dynamic & strong men
> a certain type of strong man (your Nelson, not your Stalin) likes to feel they can preside over a coalition of other strong men
> Blair & Brown clearly reached an accommodation. Blair may actually be quite honorable, after his own lights, laughable though that may sound
> the bench-depth of true NuLab is very thin indeed, & always has been (though superbly camouflaged). So practical political weakness on Blair's part plays a rôle
> Blair has never been a details man (nor understood economics), and Brown presumably entrenched himself very quickly behind vast quantities of barbed-wire entanglements within a few months in office
> similarly, for quite a while Blair has been preoccupied with foreign adventures
> Blair has certainly been thwarted 'behind his back' by the cunning Brown (particularly on the €), but at the same time he has always been able to beat the cringing Brown back into his kennel at any given confrontation
> the worst of Brown shows up the best of Blair
> après moi ...: given that he is unable to secure a true NuLab dynasty (see above), part of Blair won't much mind a déluge to follow
Are we getting warmer, do you feel ?
So Brown never confronted Blair on central-for-Blair issues - like his 'post modern reconstruction of the British Empire' activities (except in ways not immediately apparent like denying adequate military funding to our Blair-comitted forces). This last makes Brown so wholly loathsome; he acceded in the sending of men and women into harm's way while politically and deliberately denying the means of war, or even self defence. The mind shies away from the disgusting calculations he engaged in there.
As well (as if that is not enough) there is the relationship between the Labour party and its control, and the holding of political office. Brown was a trotskyoid apparatchik and that structure still is spun across the Labour party activist base, Kinnock's boast that he cleansed the party is merely a boast, not an achievement. In the end, Blair is being brought down by party power (if Yates is ignored). He had reason to fear it, it turns out. Nu-Lab bench depth - you are right.
Strong man psycholgy is not me. I do wonder if Blair thought that Brown is so obviously wrong it was inconceivable he'd hang on; after all, I hold that view too, it's not unreasonable.
I don't subscribe to the 'terrible secrets' held over Blair scenario. Do you?
1) I share your disgust (& rather personally, as a former soldier. Not a new phenomenon though, our history is replete with British armies being sent ill-equipped into the field; it is time I had a go with Kipling)
2) Yes, brought down by the Party (typical Labour, not as efficient in regicide as we Conservatives). The Party had better watch out, though, the tiny NuLab rump is armed to the teeth and creatively spiteful with it
3) Terrible secrets? no, me neither (it's *ahem* Cameron/Osborne I worry about on that score)
4) Not sure I have parsed your penultimate sentence correctly. We may not need to hold our breaths much longer but I'm sure Blair has mulled over all the scenarios for hanging on longer (and he still holds all the reins of incumbency...), ditto for dishing Brown. The correct analogy is with Macmillan / Butler. There may yet be some surprises in store.
Final thought: Brown may well be a bleak fatalist / pessimist, and as such could (as he has himself hinted) be satisfied with a short period in office (which is just as well). If his elevation is indeed inevitable, I am looking forward to the 1st Hundred Days. He will have no reason to hold back whatever he thinks he's got.
After that, the Brown-baiting will be enough to turn the stomach. Not sure British politics will be the better for it.
Alas HG, I know nothing of mazes, except "how to find your way back from a broken heart".
When Blair came to power the un-electability of any remotely Socialist Government was far greater than it is today when ways of hiding the slither to the left have been so well perfected.
The Cameron project was described by Nic Boles as grabbing the centre and then ( ie subsequently and in government ) moving it leftwards). Labour have done the reverse
Brown needed Blair either ( as Bill Deedes says ) to cover the Old Labour reality they shared , or as an ideological act of reapolitik which I think more likely
Both views require the supposed moderate Blairs to be powerful in the country so as to control the Party . This is why the Blair faction has vanished like the dew when the Polls tuned nasty . There was never any power base in the party.
I tend to the view that Blair genuinely wanted a centre left Party if only because that way lay power but having won the election/s he was always back among the Old timers who would not budge . He was frustrated on domestic Policy around the Frank Field issue and that is why he became so keen on meddling abroad. The lack of funds to do so reflects the split in the Party. You might say the left hand didn’t know what the centre left hand was doing.
That’s my reading of it anyway
So you don't think there's any disgraceful secret hold either N. Disappointing though, isn't it. I had real hopes when Frank Field spoke of not letting Brown out of the attic.
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