On Ideology
Why claiming to be “non-ideological” is actually deeply ideological
“From now on, you have a government unburdened by doctrine.”
Keir Starmer’s first speech as Prime Minister, 10 Downing St, 5th July 2024
“There is no such thing as Starmerism, and there never will be!”
Keir Starmer, as reported in Get In by Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire
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We have a government that defines itself by being non-ideological. Leaving to one side the relationship between this and the growing consensus that the government is devoid of vision and has failed to define itself or what it is trying to do, these claims are worth scrutinising because this anti-ideological disposition is central to the government’s self-identity and how it projects itself.
Last year when Carys Roberts said: “He [Starmer] almost has an allergy to ideology” she was Executive Director of the Institute for Public Policy Research. Now she is a Special Advisor in Keir Starmer’s Downing Street Policy Unit.
Regardless of whether it would theoretically be a good thing or a bad thing for a government to be entirely devoid of ideology, in the real world it is not actually possible to be non-ideological.
Claims to be non-ideolgical and pragmatic are guilty of taking as read and accepting the current proposition or status quo, from which an apparently “non-ideological” conclusion, decision, or non-decision (ie the continuation of an inherently ideological status quo) follows.
Take the Environment Secretary Steve Reed, who earlier this week claimed that the government was taking a “rational not an ideological approach” to the water industry.
A review of the water industry was established with the strict condition that the review could not consider whether the model of privatisation has failed. This decision is obviously and self-evidently ideological. As Fergal Sharkey put it, a wide-ranging re-examination and complete reset was turned into “an exercise of nothing more than shuffling furniture around”.
In the case of the water industry being “non-ideological” means accepting and cementing the status quo, something which is of course in and of itself deeply ideological when it involves defending and protecting Thatcher’s least popular and most nonsensical privatisation project.
The supply of water is a natural monopoly (unlike for example supermarkets, current accounts or mobile phone companies) so a customer cannot exercise choice in a free market. If we are dissatisfied with our water provider we can’t switch who pumps the water into their taps and indeed pumps their shit into local rivers to another provider.
The same principle applies to trains. You can switch from Halifax to Natwest if Natwest offer you a switching bonus and better interest rate but if you’re sick of Avanti’s dreadful service you can’t get a Thameslink train from London to Manchester because it doesn’t exist - our railway is a natural monopoly. No government Minister has explained why the logic that applies to trains doesn’t apply to water, or indeed why the logic that applies elsewhere doesn’t apply in England and Wales - the only countries in the world to have privatised its entire water and sewage system.
In any event, Fergal Sharkey and Richard Murphy have explained this folly much more eloquently and expertly than I ever could. The point remains that the continuation of a system that has permitted £84bn to be paid out in dividends whilst companies have been loaded with £74bn in debt whilst our rivers have become open sewers and bills have are soaring is ideological - and it is insulting to our intelligence for government Ministers to suggest otherwise.
This same logic can be applied instructively to the BBC or any other media outlet, some of which are openly ideological and some of which are obligated to the upholding of impartiality. Again the point here is that ideology is not just something that is proactively and explicitly communicated, for example by a correspondent or an interviewer, but implicitly reinforced by the terms of the debate and how issues are presented in the first place. The BBC doesn’t make any explicit comment on privatisation and nationalisation, but in its reporting of the Cunliffe Review failed to challenge or scrutinise Steve Reed’s claims or indeed the premiss of the report itself. That is how ideology is reinforced, masquerading as non-ideological, impartial pragmatism.
The definition of premiss is: “A previous statement or proposition from which another is inferred or follows as a conclusion.”
This is the key point about implicit ideological statements and decisions, illustrated peerlessly by Noam Chomsky during an exchange on the BBC with Andrew Marr.
“I’m not saying you’re self-censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you say. But what I’m saying is if you believed something different you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.”
In other words: in the media ideology is not reinforced and reproduced through explicitly biased reporting or editorialising - the reality is far more inherent and insidious than that.
So beware of anyone claiming to be non-ideological, and consider whether in fact this is in and of itself deeply ideological.
These questions are worth considering when we have a government openly contemptuous of ‘big ideas’ as ‘performative politics’, whilst at the same time not considering whether this anti-ideological anti-intellectualism is a contributing factor in why backbench MPs don’t trust Ministers, why the government is itself governed by the Office for Budget Reponsibility and why Downing Street is being buffeted by events, forced into U-turns and unable to even define - nevermind deliver - the promised change upon which it was elected.