How the Tory right bids to control our political discourse

Conceived in the 1940s, this occasional series made fun of lazy writing and lazy thinking with O’Brien’s signature combination of sarcasm, cynicism and “controlled absurdity”. O’Brien’s absurdity wasn’t ­always that controlled – but he had a keen nose for other people’s daftness too.

By day, he was a civil servant – a field of work which is even more bedraggled by ­official babble today than it was a half ­century ago – but journalism and politics are two social practices that thrive on cliché. I’m tempted to argue they’d both be unrecognisable without it.

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The arch literary objection to writing in bromides is that it’s all too tired and too familiar. Whatever metaphorical power a given combination of words or images once exercised has been dulled by overuse.

But we underestimate the social utility of these vapid expressions at our peril. Even more so given the demands of 24-hour news and instant reportage seven seconds after every event of note has happened.

Journalists tend to be quick with the repartee, but the human brain simply doesn’t have the capacity to service the growling hunger of this great, all-consuming beast in original ways time and again. Cliché to the rescue! You don’t have to construct a new sentence word-by-word. Just take down an old one from the shelf – tested and tried.

There’s a real art to this. If you don’t believe me, try listening to your favourite sports commentator. Turn on the nightly news or turn over your average paper every morning, and you’ll encounter a succession of news stories rendered in comfortably stale terms.

Clichés are a timesaver for the reader and the writer both. Intellectual shorthand, if you like. But clichés are dangerous ­precisely because they stop us thinking about what we’re reading. O’Brien defined a cliché as a “phrase that has become fossilised, its ­component words deprived of their intrinsic light and meaning by incessant ­usage,” suggesting only half-jokingly, that “a sociological commentary could be compiled from these items of mortified language.”

As ever, Flann’s not far wrong. Our ­clichés can tell us a lot about the current state of our society. How the authorised clichés change over time is also telling. In politics, language can be as faddish as the latest unavoidable Netflix sensation.

A new buzzword is suddenly everywhere and – just as suddenly – evaporates from everybody’s lips before most of the people who’ve been using it have even begun ­defining their terms. British pols love stealing the latest American poli-sci voodoo.

An old debater’s trick is not accepting the premise of a question you’re asked – but one of the bigger challenges for a thinking person in the modern age is to resist all the brain-deadening clichés which have invaded insider dialogues about politics.

The memeification of political debate in Britain is now more or less complete. In recent years, we’ve had the squeezed middle and the red wall, the levelling-up agenda and the just-about-managing. We’re routinely invited to nod along with these now hackneyed slogans as if they’re ­substantial political ideas with material consequences rather than the ­meretricious marketing hokum a well-fed confidence trickster has been able to sell one of the big UK political parties.

Mainstream commentators and reporters feel duty bound to incorporate them into their own analysis just in case they come off as gauche outsiders who don’t understand the agreed verbal formulas of the special circle of British public life which completely dominates parliament, the airwaves and the print media.

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Because clichés quickly become ­shibboleths – watchwords signifying you’re one of the gang and know how to talk the talk about what’s happening in British politics – even if they’re wholly unanchored in any kind of external or ­objective political or economic reality. The discourse makes them real.

Last week, an academic colleague of mine pointed out that “extremism as a framing device is fast-replacing ­terrorism” in British public discourse. And the ­observation got me thinking.

In ­Scotland at least, the Prime ­Minister’s (below) latest visionary speech ­outlining the ­collective doom that awaits us if he isn’t returned to Number 10 principally prompted ire by conflating supporters of Scottish independence with a range of reactionary, bigoted and authoritarian forces at work in the world.

But I wonder if it isn’t the language of extremism we should be turning a more jaundiced eye over and asking a few more basic questions about what this mutation in the political dialogue and emerging cliché of our politics is really designed to achieve.

I’m also old enough to remember when terrorism was the political ­obsession du jour. Well, the New Labour ­political ­obsession of years and years, really. ­Between 2000 and 2015, the UK ­Parliament passed something like 13 ­different ­terrorism Acts – defining, proscribing, extending, and redefining the coercive powers available to the police and to ­successive secretaries of state.

There were real threats faced by ­Britain during this time. But the modish terrorism discourse stretched way beyond that – much like the current language of ­extremism-obsessing Whitehall.

The core definition of what should count as terrorism proved only slightly less elusive than contemporary UK Government havers about who is and is not an extremist. This defined the idea as the use or threat of action designed to influence government or “intimidate the public” of a “section of the public” for the purpose of advancing a “political, religious, racial or ideological cause.”

Although these definitions were criticised for their vagueness throughout the noughties, the terrorism ­legislation at least focused on real actions and ­behaviours, concerned with ideologies serious violence, property damage, and conduct which endangers life.

But the ­language of extremism – and its goal to banish certain almost completely ­undefined ideas beyond the pale of ­political debate – is considerably more malleable than terrorism obsessions of the mid-2000s. And because of that, even more sinister.

For example, Michael Gove’s recent definition helpfully explains that “most extremist materials and activities are not illegal and do not meet a terrorism or national security threshold”.

Lots of things are lawful but undesirable – most Tory social and economic policy, for example – but the ruling party appointing itself as the arbiter of what conduct or political ideas should be treated as illegitimate but not illegal is profoundly troubling. Notice too, it never applies to their own edgelords and crackpots.

In Gove’s (above) new guidance on extremism published in the spring, he stressed: “This definition is not intended to capture, for example, political parties that aim to alter the UK’s constitutional makeup through democratic means, or protest groups which at times may cross into disruption but do not threaten our fundamental rights, freedoms, or democracy itself. Lawful expression of one’s beliefs, for example advocating for changes to the law by Parliament, exercising the right to protest, or expressing oneself in art, literature, and comedy, is not extremism.”

That reassurance didn’t last long because the Conservatives can’t help themselves.

Not content with disagreeing with their opponents, for decades, the party has routinely attacked the patriotism and legitimacy of its opponents, ­giving pious speeches deploring the menaces ­of authoritarianism abroad, while ­cheerfully ­appointing themselves grand inquisitors at home, ably assisted by the press who’re always prepared to bring the tar up to temperature with a bag of feathers on hand to help the people of Britain identify who their ideological enemies ought to be.

It is a useful reminder – if it were ­­really needed – that language is at once the ­purest and most sincere way we can ­express ourselves, and untrustworthy, slippery, and prone to manipulation.