Is Theresa May .. Stalin?

Dominic Lawson

Dominic Lawson's op-ed in The Sunday Times today:

"In truth, this secretive, politically friendless and yet virtuous woman has a surprising lack of self-confidence. It accounts for her evident shyness and the lack of spontaneity that so exasperates reporters — not that it matters what journalists think, as long as the voters respect her.

"The lack of intellectual confidence is in some respects a refreshing change from her predecessor’s excess of it: Cameron would make promises he couldn’t keep, in the belief that he could somehow bend the facts to his will — or just busk it.

"But a lack of intellectual confidence in a leader can have the unfortunate consequence that she (or he) finds it impossible to accommodate first-class minds in her top team. May’s replacement of Michael Gove with Liz Truss as lord chancellor is an example. Gove, admittedly, had already fallen out with May when she was home secretary; but Truss has now demonstrated the limitations of craven careerism as head of a judicial system that requires an intellectually rigorous grip at the top. ...

"Theresa May, to her credit, chairs countless cabinet committees and by all accounts does it well, taking account of arguments based on solid evidence and being prepared to change her mind. ...

"... the British public has always liked the idea of a strong leader who says what she’ll do and then does it. Mrs May is gaining enormous electoral traction by appealing to that tradition. Let’s hope such a mandate gives her the confidence not to run a cabinet of fearful mediocrity."

We used to live in Maidenhead, where Theresa May is MP, and once attended a hustings where all the parliamentary candidates made their pitches.

Theresa May - UK prime minister and ISTJ

It was clear that Theresa May was by far the brightest and most competent of those up for election. On the other hand, she did not impress me as scintillatingly bright. She's exactly how you would imagine a high-calibre ISTJ: no surprise that she's patronised by NT intellectuals .. and rather admired by ordinary folk.

It's early days. Too early to determine whether the reaffirmed PM will select a cabinet of the best intellectual talents (those signed up to the mission of course).

Robert Heinlein on Democracy

Robert Heinlein from "The Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love".

"Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something. Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again too. Who decides?"

In Robert Harris's novel "Archangel", I recall a scene after the death of Stalin where the secret police chief, Beria, tries to manipulate his colleagues to ensure his own succession. He has a cunning plan but it does not end well.

A politburo colleague observes that Beria, like many very smart people, assumes that more average people will never figure out what he's up to. But that's to mistake the nature of average folk: it's not that they can't get there - they can; it just takes them a little longer.

That's why I'm not that worried by the left-hand side of the bell-curve getting the vote.

The not-so-super-smart are usually not au fait with the niceties of public policy options, but they tend to be pretty expert on whether things are working out well for themselves. And in the end, that's a recipe for a stable and productive society: keep the punters reasonably content.

If you disenfranchise swathes of the population, you reserve political power to the vested interests of those who retain the vote. Naturally public policy will be captured (in the economics sense of regulatory capture) by such vested interests.

In the long run, this is seldom a good thing.

Sentimental, moralistic platitudes about the 'ethical superiority of democracy' don't do it for me.

No, I'm strictly functionalist. Democracy should be supported because it's the only system which provides a regular and universal protocol to "kick the bastards out".

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Note: if you want Robert Heinlein's considered view as to how to make democracy work, you should read "Starship Troopers".

Tl; dr - voting should be restricted to those prepared to defend society, so no votes for parasites. Basically you do your military service, indicate your willingness to put your life on the line for your country .. and then you get to vote.

The Ant and the Grasshopper

Aesop's fable:

The Ant and the Grasshopper

"The fable concerns a grasshopper (in the original, a cicada) that has spent the summer singing while the ant (or ants in some versions) worked to store up food for winter. When that season arrives, the grasshopper finds itself dying of hunger and begs the ant for food. However, the ant rebukes its idleness and tells it to dance the winter away now."

I met some ants in the land of the grasshoppers. The latter were exuberant and showy, artistic and theatrical. By comparison, the ants were low-key and drab, even boring.

I asked an ant why his kinfolk gave the grasshoppers such a hard time:

"You say that when winter comes, the grasshoppers will starve while you have all worked hard and conscientiously, and put stores aside for the bad times. But here, in grasshopper land, there is no winter.

"You are parochial, judging solely by your own standards which don't happen to apply here. You judge the grasshopper to be a very poor ant who needs to try harder, but don't you see? Here, you ants are very poor grasshoppers."

The ant had no idea what I was talking about, but was very sure that I had condemned myself out of my very own mouth as an enemy of the people.

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I have just read Julian Barnes' latest novel, "The Noise of Time" which recounts the savage lifelong treatment of Dmitri Shostakovich in Stalinist Russia.

It's not hard to identify with the protagonist, a shy intellectual who spends his life in chronic anxiety, intermixed with episodes of extreme terror. Not at all without cause. The author is empathically non-judgemental - we who have not been tested - but there is always the illusion of the introvert, that statements and actions made with self-consciously ironic intent will be understood that way, at least by those around us capable of such understanding. Barnes reminds us: not so.

But the elaborated fable above is not solely about that.