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Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Blair?
The style jamboree for the French at Canary Wharf said it all
There are those who think Peter Mandelson is the dark and secretive force behind New Labour thinking. I'm not sure this is right. A much more sinister figure is the man known as Perri 6. Why is he known as Perri 6? Hasn't he got a proper name? It used to be considered very bad manners to titter at people with silly names - after all, it was their parents who were to blame. However, now that we are all supposed to be obsessed with image and presentation, and now that people choose their own names, we are entitled to judge people by their chosen style.
It is hard to take seriously anyone who calls himself Perri 6. It's hard to avoid feeling that anything he says will probably be as silly as his name. Nomen est omen, as the saying goes. This wouldn't matter, of course, except that Perri 6 is extremely important to New Labour thinking. He is the Director of Policy and Research at Demos, the Prime Minister's favourite think tank, and involved with most of Demos's pronouncements.
I'm not suggesting that all its pronouncements are silly. Some are interesting, and radical in a useful way.
Perri 6's own study on young people and drugs, published last week by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, struck me as extremely interesting and entirely plausible. Many young people who take drugs, he argues, are not antisocial losers or "problem users"; in fact they tend to be quite normal, but possibly more independent and less extrovert than those who don't use drugs for fun. Besides they tend to grow out of regular drug use in their mid-20s. "Problem users" have problems with drugs for social reasons. I entirely agree, though I think it is very unwise to say such things loudly and publicly. Great public outrage was expressed, but I didn't share it.
What I do find absolutely outrageous about Perri 6 and Demos generally, and all those who think in Demos terms, is their underlying attitude, which is a deep and uncritical commitment to one of the silliest ideas of this century - the assumption that everything is a matter of image, packaging and public relations. Recently Demos put out a pamphlet called "Britain TM", all about Britain's poor brand image and what to do about it. The author offered profuse thanks to Perri 6, and also particularly to Wally Olins, head of a leading "brand and identity consultancy". What they recommend is a very ambitious and expensive stylistic remaking of the country, from tarting up airports to marketing street festivals.
It is shocking that these very influential people think this country ought to have its "identity shaped" or "renewed and revitalised" or "reimagined" by anybody, let alone a bunch of third-rate spin doctors with silly names, and least of all by the Government. I hate the idea of a collection of busybodies deciding who or what Britain is. This country is many different things, most of them entirely unfamiliar to trendy young metropolitan stylists who seem to know nothing of Britain outside big cosmopolitan cities, and have no wider sense that what we are is a subtle, various, changing thing which cannot be tweaked and titivated into what they, in their presumption, think we ought to be.
Many of us, starting with me, do not share their vulgar vision of what Cool Britannia ought to be. We are proud of things they are ashamed of, and unimpressed by what they admire. In itself that doesn't matter. What does matter is the conviction that any Government has any right to choose the image of this country, and to promote it, with taxpayers' money. The Demos pamphlet solemnly recommends that the Prime Minister should chair a Vision Group, to agree and oversee the British brand. They say he should have a "promoting Britain unit" in the Cabinet Office to track the performance of the British brand.
I feel that the Prime Minister entirely agrees. That is perfectly obvious from the style jamboree laid on at Canary Wharf last week for the benefit of the French. And I feel a real despair about this. It is the old statist mentality, risen from the tomb like Dracula, to suck our blood. Margaret Thatcher failed, for all her efforts, to drive a stake through its heart.
Whatever New Labour may say, they still have Old Labour dirigiste responses. They still think it is the business of government to interfere in every aspect of our lives. Otherwise they might have the modesty to leave things alone, and to understand that culture is not something that can be packaged. They would know that it can hardly even be defined, and can only be damaged, if not destroyed, by attempts to market it. What is even more depressing is that the New Conservatives seem to be going the same way.
The Sunday Telegraph | Sunday, November 09, 1997
