Events | 2010.01.30
The trouble with the A word | John Harris
\'Aspiration\' is worse than just a vapid bit of rhetoric – it betrays an insidious cross-party con trick
Several centuries ago, when I began my writing career in the music press, a moment of revelation arrived one slow Wednesday morning – when a colleague pointed out that too much of our magazine\'s copy was riddled with hackneyed words that no one in the real world would even think about using. Instead of "carry", writers would use "brandish"; instead of "name", we thought there was something inexplicably clever about "moniker"; it pains me to recall that books were occasionally described as "tomes". The result: thousands of readers who must have thought they were reading the work of people who were either eccentric or downright weird.
A lot of people must feel similarly about that tired cliche "aspiration". Beyond either politicians or people who work in marketing, you will almost never hear the word uttered by anybody – but it decisively entered politics during the 1990s, and the entire Westminster class has never looked back. In his new year message , David Cameron assured anyone who was listening that "because we are progressives … we will support aspiration". Nick Clegg may not be quite so keen, but his cuttings file is still peppered with warm words about "mobility and aspiration". And just look at the rambling but much-hyped speech Brown gave to the Fabian Society the weekend before last, which set out Labour\'s election stall – "aspiration" versus Tory austerity, in a nutshell – with the aid of the usual boilerplate: "People\'s aspirations are on the ballot paper … I believe in an aspirational Britain … Labour is backing Britain\'s aspirations."
Less strident than "ambition" – although in another desperate moment, Brown launched an aborted "age of ambition" in March 2008 – the "A" word has been part of the New Labour lexicon from the off. A good place to start is The Unfinished Revolution, the New Labour history written by Philip Gould, which finds Blair, Brown et al soaking up a new "politics of the middle class" from Bill Clinton\'s Democrats and, circa 1994, Blair reassuring his public that "your aspirations are our aspirations". By way of backstory, Gould angrily recalls his party\'s supposed abandonment of "ordinary people with suburban dreams, who worked hard to improve their homes and their lives; to get gradually better cars, washing machines and televisions; to go on holiday in Spain rather than Bournemouth". Brown reprised much the same spiel when he spoke to the Fabians, describing people\'s "dreams" as a matter of "owning a bigger house, taking a holiday abroad, buying a new car or starting a small business".
And of course, a lot of this stuff seems perfectly reasonable. On the left, it reminds more hair-shirted types of the great popular quest for security, comfort, and material advancement; on the right, it underlines the fact that deference is long dead, and – Cameroons take note – post-Thatcher Conservatism must always at least partly speak with a thrustingly arriviste accent. But in its modern context, aspiration also has a more mendacious aspect: as the catch-all justification for politicians\' refusal to do anything convincing about concentrations of wealth and privilege at the top.
It\'s no coincidence that talk of aspiration has returned just as ministers have apparently served notice that the new 50p tax rate should be temporary (Mandelson most pointedly, though Alistair Darling seems supportive); nor that in sticking to plans to cut inheritance tax for Britain\'s richest estates, the Tories bemoan a "tax on aspiration". Such is a cross-party con-trick that you also hear from the commentariat: an imagined unity of interest between millionaires and the "aspirational" residents of Gould\'s suburbs, usually expressed in very strange terms indeed.
Not that long ago, having obviously never visited the place, one unnamed senior Labour figure expressed the curious view that "£150,000 isn\'t a lot in Reading". Just last week, in a piece mocking Brown\'s sudden reconversion to the politics of aspiration, a newspaper columnist close to the more Blairite elements in the cabinet equated the UK\'s social middle with "ballet classes and Sicilian olive oil". A salient fact, while we\'re here: when the 50p rate was introduced, one poll found 57% of people – including, one would imagine, the residents of scores of Middle England marginals – in favour, with only 22% opposed. Among the latter group, it soon transpired, was the increasingly wealthy and assuredly aspirational Tony Blair, who reportedly thought expecting slightly more from people earning £150,000 or over "unacceptable". Funny, that.
Worse still is another one of the "A" word\'s most insidious connotations: that aspiration is the preserve of the relatively affluent. Here, the reporting of Brown\'s recent manoeuvres tells you a lot: one recent interview with Mandelson, for instance, repeated the claim that he had won the battle over whether Labour "should focus on its core vote or aspiration". The pretty outrageous implication, echoed down the years by Labour politicians who should really know better, is that what remains of the working class has surrendered the ethos of self-improvement to people higher up the scale.
But again, some statistics spring to mind: at the last count, for instance, more than 80% of even the most deprived young people wanted to stay in education post-16, and over half hoped to go to university. The big issue, to resume a seemingly endless argument, is not the absence of aspiration, but that lowly share of the national cake that far too many politicians want to avoid talking about.
And so to one last point. If we really have to talk about aspiration, we\'re going to need a rather more fleshed-out definition. Albeit for only two sentences, Brown\'s Fabian speech also talked about aspirations that "go beyond the material concerns", and made reference to how we feel about "the environment we share", and "the pressures they feel in balancing work and family life". But here\'s the problem: quite apart from its brevity and half-heartedness, none of this seemed to have been included in the pre-speech briefings, an omission which pointed up how awkwardly it sits with Labour\'s current pitch to voters.
Ignore those sides of people\'s lives, and you end up with two difficulties. First, you get the kind of arid, almost meaningless politics that reduces parties to retailers, as seen in 2005, when Labour pledged to help more people "earn and own", and reduced its offer to a set of individualist bullet points: "your family better off", "your child achieving more". Post-crash, that will surely cut precious little ice – though an equal danger is the prospect of politicians, like bad music hacks, speaking a contrived and cynical language unique to themselves. And even if 2010 supposedly presents us with the most important political choice in years, who will listen to that?
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]labour-aspiration-gordon-brown
