Consensus: why it matters

We become far less civil when it's missing

Forty-five years ago this summer, I submitted a doctoral thesis on, as it turned out – the best result of fundamental research is that its conclusions can be as big a surprise to the researcher as the academic peer group at which it is directed – consensus. I uncovered (the details hardly matter and are, frankly, in this context, arcane) a truth I still hold to: that society is best run, and to everyone’s advantage, when a broad consensus about the nature of human co-existence not only exists but is actively pursued, by you, me, by civil society and by government.

At base, it means there are rules – rights and responsibilities – within whose comforting and entirely necessary framework we conduct our daily lives. Everyone, unknowingly but willingly, buys into this; infants are socialised by it; otherwise chaos and carnage reign. I could delve here into the history of just about everything but, suffice it to say here, such a consensus existed in the UK from 1945 (some would date it from 1918), until it was systematically dismantled after 1979. The consequences have been dire and are to be observed all around.

Last week, our prime minister continued along this rocky and dangerous path of non-consensual madness when he talked about us potentially living on ‘an island of strangers’. Starmer, ever the lawyer, who another commentator (Marina Hyde) has likened to sitting so firmly on the fence of ‘on the one hand this, on the other that’ he has become glued to it, chose for once to jump down on the side of anomie and alienation when discussing immigration. It was not a pretty sight and, unsurprisingly, he fell into a quagmire of filth, the same swamp happily inhabited by the likes of Farage and Tice, two pigs in a trough. Except, pigs are surprisingly and fastidiously clean animals, unlike their human counterparts.

If there is one thing rotten in the state of affairs right now it is this: without a broad consensus – and like democracy, it needs constant attention and for the public to be reminded that, without it, all else is doomed to fail – we’re all in the shit.

One way of looking at this mess, outside arguments about process or, indeed, governance, is to hold up British society to the mirror of history and say: look, this is what happens when consensus is trashed. More broadly, it’s happening worldwide, with the junking of a rules based international system, and the subsequent nightmare of might equalling right, be that power or money or both. It’s corrupting and not just in a venal sense; lack of agreement within the confine of measured debate, erodes humanity.

One of the ways this country dealt with seemingly intractable problems was to set up carefully constructed public enquiries, the weightier of which were Royal Commissions with serious legal powers. They disappeared because their conclusions, always set within a consensus, drawing on membership from a wide selection of society, were deemed to be too consensual. Into the dustbin, then.

The current Covid enquiry ought, by the old measure, to be a Royal Commission: the issue is serious enough to merit it, because we’re going to be facing a similar pandemic any time now. But even those set beneath such august bodies in the hierarchy of official inquiries, such as those, like the Annan Committee on broadcasting of the late 1970s, had heft and their deliberations were significant. (Annan was responsible for the foundation of Channel Four, a shining gem in the diadem of terrestrial broadcasting).

By rights, there ought, nine years on from the catastrophe of Brexit, to be a Royal Commission on the economic, social and political consequences of such a pivotal moment in this nation’s history. That there is not speaks volumes about the consequent failures we daily endure, and it shouts, once more, of the utter misery caused when consensus is junked in favour of an increasingly fractured and broken society, riddled with division and ghettos of extreme opinion, disguised as debate.

Here’s Andy Becket, a Guardian columnist, with a few choice words discussing, in effect, the political situation when consensus is absent from public discourse.

‘The increased pace of British politics over the past decade, with extra general elections, parties frequently changing leaders and ideological directions, and sudden electoral surges and collapses, suggests that politicians have become more scared of voters – and that voters have become less deferential towards them. The long, sometimes too-forgiving relationships between voters and parties that existed for most of the 20th century, and the patience shown by many voters towards their Westminster tribe when it was in power, seem to be disappearing for good.

‘One way to picture a healthier democracy is as a place where voters and politicians have frequent clashes but also a degree of mutual respect – and an awareness that they are co-creators of a political culture. It may be optimistic to expect grumpy old Britain to become such a country, not least because so much of our media has a vested interest in voters angrily believing that they are badly governed. For right-wing, anti-state editors in particular, a sour public mood produces better stories.’

Without consensus, all you get is shouting, then fighting, finally – and I am being quite serious – civil war.

I’ll end this week with a poem (written this past week) from Michael Rosen, who once worked for me when I was editing a section of The Guardian, just shy of 40 years ago. I’m glad to say, he’s the same basically forthright, decent man I knew and, as is his particular talent, hits the nail of hypocrisy, which ran like a thick vein of ugly prejudice from our allegedly Labour prime minister in his speech, smack bang on the head. If you didn’t know already, he was a survivor from a Covid ITU.

I lay in bed
hardly able to breathe
but there were people to sedate me,
pump air into me
calm me down when I thrashed around
hold my hand and reassure me
play me songs my family sent in
turn me over to help my lungs
shave me, wash me, feed me
check my medication
perform the tracheostomy
people on this ‘island of strangers’
from China, Jamaica, Brazil, Ireland
India, USA, Nigeria and Greece.

I sat on the edge of my bed
and four people came with
a frame and supported me
or took me to a gym
where they taught me how
to walk between parallel bars
or kick a balloon
sat me in a wheelchair
taught me how to use the exercise bike
how to walk with a stick
how to walk without a stick
people on this ‘island of strangers’
from China, Jamaica, Brazil, Ireland
India, USA, Nigeria and Greece.

If ever you’re in need as I was
may you have an island of strangers
like I had.

This week: Tim re-read John Buchan’s Castle Gay, one of his short series of novels about his magnificent anti-hero, Dickson McGunn, one time Glasgow grocer and fierce supporter of the Gorbals’ Diehards who, in this tale – having once been the homeless children of the slums – have grown into impressive young men, aided by McGunn’s largesse after their first meeting and joint ad hoc adventures in Huntingtower. Buchan is a master of lyrical bucolic descriptions of the Scottish Lowlands, which never descend into a maudlin sentimentalism; quite a feat. He also relishes broad Scots accents and words: you have to ride with this conceit but it is well worth the effort. Pure delight as a mildly tongue-in-cheek, often comic, tale, tinged with old-fashioned romance – perfect bedtime reading.

Quote of the week: ‘War fierce war I see: and the Tiber foaming with much blood’, Virgil in the Aeneid and quoted by Greek and Latin scholar and British politician, Enoch Powell, whose casual but doubtless deliberate misuse of an ancient text about the Trojan Wars became a notorious part of an earlier, ugly scrap about mass immigration. Now we have Keir Starmer rabbiting on about us ‘living in a land of strangers’, the origin of which phrase remains a mystery. But, it might be contrasted with this: ‘The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself’. Leviticus, not a book from the Christian Bible normally known for its humanity towards folk who do not conform to its tightly framed social norms. But, hey, not a bad sentiment to have and to hold. What is the matter with this Labour Government? Oh, yeah, they have no passionate principles to consult, just unnamed or nameless fears for a distant future defeat.

Music of the week: Vaughan Williams ambitious First, the Sea, Symphony, using words from Walt Whitman’s Passage to India; indulgent, supremely musical and deeply romantic with the climax at ‘Oh, thou transcendent, nameless the fibre and the breath’ with its crashing chords following the tenor, soprano and choir’s incantation of Whitman’s mystical vision of a sea voyage into the unknown. An astonishing achievement for a young unknown composer, as Vaughan Williams was when he composed it. The version on EMI’s 1989 recording, with Bernard Haitink, the London Philharmonic, Felicity Lott and Jonathan Summers with the London Philharmonic Choir is highly recommended.