The Social Distance
Between Us: How Remote Politics Wrecked Britain
Darren McGarvey
(Penguin)
It would be possible to
fill the library of a small university with books outlining the problems
besetting twenty-first century Britain. Most are written by journalists,
academics, or politicians, all of whom occupy a space that is at one remove
from issues at hand.
Darren McGarvey
provides a diagnosis of our multiple ills from the yawning inequality gap and
the trauma induced by contact with the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of the welfare
state, to political disengagement and social isolation that is as cogent as it
is shocking. The difference between his book and that of other would-be social
commentators is that he does so from a basis of proximity, painful lived experience
of being outside the charmed circle of middle-class life.
Proximity and its
importance to understanding where we are and how we got there is central to the
argument he makes. It is something the ‘political class’, ‘metropolitan
liberals’, the ‘establishment’, or any other catch all definition lack. They inhabit
a world of privilege and comfort that makes it near impossible for them to
imagine let alone empathize with the challenges facing many working people.
He lays out just how
overwhelming those challenges are in forensic detail, detailing amongst other
things the hoops benefits claimants are forced to jump through and the
prejudices inherent within the education system. In doing so he raises the
critical and often malign influence of something that other commentators fight
shy of mentioning in the drawing room of current political discourse, class.
Behind the problems we
face now and the bigger ones waiting just around the bend is a concerted and
decades long assault on the working class by those at the top of the pile. It
has infected every corner of national life from the high table of politics
through a corrupt and debased media to the legions of petty bureaucrats
bustling around our town halls.
This is not though an
internet rant extended to book length, McGarvey, rightly savages the Tories for
inflicting harmful austerity policies on the most vulnerable people whilst feathering
the nests of bankers and corporate raiders. He also turns his fire on the Left,
both the mainstream version represented by the Labour Party, which after winning
a landslide majority under Blair in 1997 squandered the chance to bring about
real change, and the radical Left for preferring arcane internal disputes and intellectual
posturing to doing anything genuinely revolutionary.
Refreshingly McGarvey
does all this not from the lofty heights of personal certainty, he writes with
painful awareness about the compromises and not infrequent faux pas he has made
as someone from ‘humble origins’ trying to make his way in a social landscape dominated
by middle class sensibilities. If only other pundits were willing to show as
much vulnerability and humility our public discourse would be a lot less
fraught.
McGarvey has been
likened to George Orwell and it is a comparison I am sure he is flattered by; however,
he would likely point out one massively important difference. Orwell was educated
at a public school, for all his compassion for the suffering of working people
his voice, both spoken and on the page is the RP one of an insider, so despite
his best efforts was his mindset.
Darren McGarvey represents
something else entirely, something that is shamingly almost unique in the
babble of political commentary, the authentic voice of the person on the
street. Sometimes bluntly to the point of being rude, often hauntingly eloquent,
and always painfully honest. That is what makes what he has to say worth
listening to.
Good Reads, Thursday
18th January 2024
