![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
[Politics] Responsible is the new fair
Jul. 2nd, 2014 10:36 amLong-term readers will probably know that one of the many, many, many things which has annoyed me about politics over the last decade or two has been the increasing importance of a bland political language designed to offend as few people as possible.
I suppose it was inevitable; after the major ideological battles of the C20 were won and lost in the 1980s politics stopped being about battling camps and became about a battle for the majority, fighting from the centre. Couple this with the emergence of 24 hour rolling news which demands content (and political gaffes are tremendous space-fillers), and you've got an environment which rewards fine-sounding but meaningless discourse.
The most obvious example of what I'm talking about is the word "fair". It's a fantastic political word, as it means both everything and nothing. Everyone has their own definition of what would be fair, and so when a politician promises fairness then absolutely everyone can read their own definition into this. David Cameron encouraged the Conservatives to embrace the "Fairness Agenda", Nick Clegg told the LibDems to "Fight for Fairness", and the Labour party went the whole hog and made "A future fair for all" their 2010 election slogan.
As a result of this I've been saying for a while that the word fair has been devalued to the point of meaninglessness. As it can mean anything to anybody within political dialogue, it's value as a mechanism for communicating ideas beyond "I have little but contempt for my audience" has been destroyed* - and as a result I was interested when my gimlet eye alighted upon a piece of research recently carried out by the Fabian Society, which said:
"When asked to reflect upon why responsibility was so appropriate, in one particular group responsibility was actually seen to be an acceptable way of talking about fairness. This was because fair was seen as ‘whiney’. This hints at a wider problem that participants had with using the term fairness... Responsibility, on the other hand, was taken to have much of the same meaning as fairness. In some senses, it was almost a gateway concept to the use of fairness. Furthermore, one participant said that responsibility was appropriate to mean fairness but that the reverse did not hold"
It's interesting but not surprising that this sort of analysis into words and how they are used takes place, and it's also interesting that the Fabians have come to the same conclusion as me - "fair" is dead as a concept. The new political buzzword will be "Responsible", and that'll get used until it's completely devalued too.
So, here's a prediction: one of the political parties will use the phrase "Responsible Government" - or a near variant of that - as their manifesto title for the next election.
You heard it here first.
*I've yet to meet anyone who claimed they want a fairer world who I genuinely believed thought they'd be worse off in that world. As such, it's a word which absolutely anyone can use in the happy, confident knowledge that any downsides to the concept will only apply to other people. Perfect.
I suppose it was inevitable; after the major ideological battles of the C20 were won and lost in the 1980s politics stopped being about battling camps and became about a battle for the majority, fighting from the centre. Couple this with the emergence of 24 hour rolling news which demands content (and political gaffes are tremendous space-fillers), and you've got an environment which rewards fine-sounding but meaningless discourse.
The most obvious example of what I'm talking about is the word "fair". It's a fantastic political word, as it means both everything and nothing. Everyone has their own definition of what would be fair, and so when a politician promises fairness then absolutely everyone can read their own definition into this. David Cameron encouraged the Conservatives to embrace the "Fairness Agenda", Nick Clegg told the LibDems to "Fight for Fairness", and the Labour party went the whole hog and made "A future fair for all" their 2010 election slogan.
As a result of this I've been saying for a while that the word fair has been devalued to the point of meaninglessness. As it can mean anything to anybody within political dialogue, it's value as a mechanism for communicating ideas beyond "I have little but contempt for my audience" has been destroyed* - and as a result I was interested when my gimlet eye alighted upon a piece of research recently carried out by the Fabian Society, which said:
"When asked to reflect upon why responsibility was so appropriate, in one particular group responsibility was actually seen to be an acceptable way of talking about fairness. This was because fair was seen as ‘whiney’. This hints at a wider problem that participants had with using the term fairness... Responsibility, on the other hand, was taken to have much of the same meaning as fairness. In some senses, it was almost a gateway concept to the use of fairness. Furthermore, one participant said that responsibility was appropriate to mean fairness but that the reverse did not hold"
It's interesting but not surprising that this sort of analysis into words and how they are used takes place, and it's also interesting that the Fabians have come to the same conclusion as me - "fair" is dead as a concept. The new political buzzword will be "Responsible", and that'll get used until it's completely devalued too.
So, here's a prediction: one of the political parties will use the phrase "Responsible Government" - or a near variant of that - as their manifesto title for the next election.
You heard it here first.
*I've yet to meet anyone who claimed they want a fairer world who I genuinely believed thought they'd be worse off in that world. As such, it's a word which absolutely anyone can use in the happy, confident knowledge that any downsides to the concept will only apply to other people. Perfect.
