Musculature

Alex Andreou writes:

Question: What is a beleaguered prime minister to do in a crisis, when all else fails? Answer: chair a meeting with a cool-sounding name, like Cobra. Then tweet about it.

Nothing has actually changed; nothing has been done; the savage budget cuts to the Environment Agency – which many have been warning for a long time will affect flood management – have not been reversed.

It is cynically designed to make people feel better. Make people feel as if they're being listened to.

Government reaction to the floods in Somerset brings into sharp focus a central conundrum for any rightwing, neoliberal administration. It is the battle of populism versus ideology.

An emergency on this scale requires them to behave, quite simply, like socialists. It requires a well co-ordinated, firm, top-down response, and the spending of tax revenue to alleviate misery, on the strict basis of need rather than worthiness.

At the same time, every ideological fibre in a neoliberal's soul must rebel. What he wishes to say is: "Caveat emptor. You bought property in an area constantly hit by floods. You should be prepared for this. You should have expensive insurance that covers you."

They dare not, for fear of being politically savaged.

The net effect of this internal conflict is that it makes a government reactive, rather than proactive; it is the sort of dithering we have witnessed over the last few weeks.

There is a simple reason for this. Crisis prevention requires a well-funded, paternalistic state. Crisis management requires a muscular state. Dealing with the effects post-crisis requires the redistribution of wealth.

Springing into action when required to is difficult when, as a government, you state openly that your objective is to shrink the state to the smallest possible size, to step out of the way and let the free market do its stuff, to reduce taxation and cut services as much as possible.

And it is not just extreme weather that can bring on this sort of conflict.

The same effect was observed during the horsemeat scandal – decimate the Food Standards Agency, then be terribly surprised when it all goes wrong.

The same was observed during the England riots, as grandee after grandee grudgingly trudged back from their holiday to deal with the plebeians while a city burned.

Emergency situations like these make crystal-clear the duality at the core of rightwing politics; people who crave being in power but whose stated aim is that they should have hardly any.

This is a government which has spent its time in office restructuring the Environment Agency and cutting staff levels by a third, taking a butcher's knife to local authority budgets, slashing the numbers of military personnel.

It should be blindingly obvious to all but the most naive that it will face significant difficulties when it needs to call on the very same bodies to help it.

It is no coincidence that George W Bush, a self-professed shrinker of federal government, displayed a similar inability to spring into action and faced fierce criticism in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina.

Lacking musculature cannot be a total surprise when one has spent one's entire time proudly fostering atrophy.

The same principle extends to larger policy areas.

I have asked myself why it is that so many climate-change deniers are gathered on the right wing of politics. The explanation of large sponsorship from industry goes some way to explaining this, but I believe it is not the whole story.

The rest of it is ideological.

Environmental management requires long-term strategy which may not be profit-maximising; it requires outward-looking international co-operation; it requires taxation and state intervention.

Such attitudes are anathema to a neoliberal. They refuse to believe there is a problem because the ideology to which they are devoted could not possibly begin to deal with it.

So when action is required, all that is left is empty posturing. Because, in truth, everything in this government's behaviour during its almost four years in power has laid the ground for ideologically endorsed inaction.

In truth, the battle has been lost before it has even begun. This is simple cause and effect.

If I vote for a party on the explicit promise that they will shrink the state, cut taxes and step aside, at the crucial moment when I need help, I will be faced with a state which lacks the size, resources and co-ordination to do anything meaningful, let alone prevent the problem.

All they can do is to look as if they're doing something. Chair a Cobra meeting. Manage expectations. Play Fruit Ninja. Say they're doing their very best. Look busy.

A flaccid government, pretending to be up to the task.