From Blair and Britpop to Starmer and the Oasis comeback: why character, not personality, matters

We get both the leaders and entertainers we deserve.

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

Tony Blair talks to a member of Oasis at a reception.

Number 10.

Last time we had a new Labour prime minister, there were no Partygate fears in Number 10. Quite the opposite. Tony Blair’s Cool Britannia project threw its front door open to the likes of Britpop overlord Noel Gallagher of Oasis at a bash in 1997. Inheriting a rising economy, things for New Labour, as well as for Oasis, could only get better.

This time around, Sir Keir Starmer has “tough decisions” to make, such as trying to deny a universal winter fuel allowance to most pensioners. Blair arguably never had a really tough decision to make, until his Iraq war nemesis. Since then, Oasis has turned into an unacceptable face of capitalism, as the Gallagher brothers’ reunion tour next year turns into a Ticketmaster greed-fest of “dynamic pricing”. Diabolical pricing, more like.

Starmer and Blair both aspired to usher in an era of change and renewal. The similarity of their circumstances ends there. Nearly 30 years on, Starmer is in a different world. And the transformation of Oasis is totemic of that – from the joys of Britpop to the horrors of rip-off.

That times change is axiomatic. The nineties had busts and booms; the UK’s Black Wednesday currency crisis was of the former, the snarky underclass anthems of Oasis a paradigm of the latter. Now, in the 2020s, there are only busts. Like the note left in the Treasury drawer in 2010 joked, there really is no money left now. Except, apparently, for Oasis.

Which brings us to the false idols of politics. Since personality, rather than policy, became the political trump card it’s inevitable that we would get Trump. Or someone like him.

An engaging question arises as to how the two Labour PMs were and are equipped spiritually for the times in which they lead. The spiritual state of Oasis is a linked matter, which I’ll get to in a moment.

Blair’s government famously didn’t “do God”, though it turned out he did privately, converting to his wife’s Roman Catholicism almost immediately after leaving office in 2007. Perhaps he had a priest hole in the family flat above Number 11. He consistently denied claims that he prayed with American president George W. Bush before or during the Iraq war.

Starmer doesn’t do God rather more formally, as a self-declared atheist. We can conclude that prayer is not a resource that he needs as he faces a more challenging immediate political future than Blair’s early days as PM. I only wish Starmer would appear in a T-shirt with the slogan “No Prayer, Like Blair”.

Arguably the spiritual life doesn’t matter for any leader. The job of PM is all about simple competence, mostly in money management. To paraphrase the pithy quip from Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign (on which Blair’s so strategically relied), it’s all about the economy, stupid.

So the worship is of mammon rather than God. Here the current and former PMs might care to track the career trajectory of the two Lords Gallagher of Oasis from Blair to Starmer. In 1997, they were in their pomp as authentic Mancunian working-class heroes. Today, the brothers have to make up and go back on the road to subsidise Noel’s £20million divorce settlement. A rather different demographic.

There’s perhaps no great political lesson there for political leaders, but it’s almost Faustian in its scope. See what happens when you bank only with mammon.

Which brings us to the false idols of politics. Since personality, rather than policy, became the political trump card it’s inevitable that we would get Trump. Or someone like him. It doesn’t matter, to his core vote, what he’s done or what he’s incapable of doing, Only who he is. He’s an idol, a cult image, a golden calf. Trump’s bull is sacred, whatever he does.

The UK thankfully hasn’t had one of those yet (though there were warning tremors in Boris Johnson). But it’s telling that Blair is said to have developed a messianic tendency after his premiership’s early intervention in Kosovo during the war in former Yugoslavia. At the termination of hostilities, crowds there sought to touch his clothes as he passed.

Strange that being touched should make him feel untouchable. But that’s the way of messianics. It can be the same with rock & roll stars. Live music, at its best, can offer a transcendent sense of communion. At its worst, it’s the adoration of stage idols that sends them a little mad. Or mad for it.

Oasis’s Liam Gallagher isn’t in this together with his fans anymore. He’s turned into a Marie Antoinette figure online in response to the ludicrous prices charged to watch him from Ticketmaster. He substitutes “Shut up” and “£100,000 kneeling tickets” for “Let them eat cake”.

He and his brother are warnings of what can happen in so short a period between the ascendancy of Blair and that of Starmer. True, pop stars aren’t as dangerous as someone such as Trump. But they do show us that we get both the entertainers and the leaders we deserve.

Article

Assisted dying

Comment

Justice

15 October 2024

5 min read

Will clinicians and carers objecting to assisted death be treated as nuisances?

The risk and mental cost of forcing someone to act against their conscience.

Henna Cundill

Henna is a researcher with the Centre for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

A tired-looking doctor sits at a desk dealing with paperwork.

Francisco Venâncio on Unsplash.

After a formal introduction to the House of Commons next Wednesday, MP’s will debate a draft Bill to change UK legislation on Assisted Dying. Previously, a draft Bill was introduced in the Scottish Parliament in March 2024, and is currently at committee stage. Meanwhile, in the House of Lords, a Private Member’s Bill was introduced by Lord Falconer in July and currently awaits its second reading. These draft Bills, though likely to be dropped and superseded by the Commons Bill in the fullness of time, give an early indication of what provision might be made on behalf of clinicians and other healthcare workers who wish to recuse themselves from carrying out a patient’s end of life wishes on grounds of Conscientious Objection.

There are various reasons why someone might want to conscientiously object. The most commonly cited are faith or religious commitments. This is not to say that all people of faith are against a change in the law – there are some high-profile religious advocates for the legalisation of Assisted Dying, including both Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain and Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. Even so, there will be many adherents to various faith traditions who find themselves unable to take part in hastening the end of someone’s life because they feel it conflicts with their views on God and what it means to be human.

However, there are also Conscientious Objectors who are not religious, or not formally so. Some people, perhaps many, simply feel unsure of the rights and wrongs of the matter. The coming debates will no doubt feature discussion of how changing the law for those who are terminally ill in the Netherlands and Canada has to lead to subsequent changes in the law to include those who are not terminally, but instead chronically ill. The widening of the eligibility criteria has reached a point where, in the Netherlands, one in every 20 people now ends their life by euthanasia. This troubling statistic includes many who are neurodivergent, who suffer from depression or are disabled. It is reasonable that, even if a Conscientious Objector does not adhere to a particular religion, they can be allowed to object if they feel uneasy about the social message that Assisted Dying seems to send to vulnerable people.

“You will often find that legislation that provides a right to conscientious objection is interpreted by judges these days in a way that seems to treat conscientious objectors as nuisances”

Mehmet Ciftci

Conscientious Objection clauses can themselves send a social message. A response to the Scottish Bill produced by the Law Society of Scotland notes concern over the wording of the Conscientious Objection clause, as it appears to be more prescriptive in the draft Bill than in previous Acts such as the Abortion Act of 1967. In the case of any legal proceedings that arise from a clinician’s refusal to cooperate, the current wording places the burden of proof onto the Conscientious Objector, stating (at 18.2):

In any legal proceedings the burden of proof of conscientious objection is to rest on the person claiming to rely on it.

The Bill provides no indication of what is admissible as ‘proof’. Evidence of membership of a Church, Synagogue, Mosque or similar might be the obvious starting point. But where does that leave those described above, who object on grounds of personal conscience alone? How does one meaningfully evidence an inner sense of unease?

The wording of the Private Member’s Bill, currently awaiting its second reading in the House of Lords, provides even less clarity, stating only (at 5.0):

A person is not under any duty (whether by contract or arising from any statutory or other legal requirement) to participate in anything authorised by this Act to which that person has a conscientious objection.

Whilst this indicates that there is no duty to participate in assisting someone to end their life, there remains a wider duty of care that healthcare professionals cannot ignore. Thus, a general feature in the interpretation of such conscience clauses in medicine is that that the conscientious objector is under an obligation to refer the case to a professional who does not share the same objection. This can be seen in practice looking at abortion law, where ideas around conscientious objection are more developed and have been tried in the courts. In the case of an abortion, a clinician can refuse to take part in the procedure, but they must still find an alternative clinician who is willing to perform their role, and they must still carry out ancillary care and related administrative tasks.

Placing such obligations onto clinicians could be seen as diminishing rather than respecting their objection. Dr Mehmet Ciftci, a Researcher at the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics and Public Life at the University of Oxford comments:

You will often find that legislation that provides a right to conscientious objection is interpreted by judges these days in a way that seems to treat conscientious objectors as nuisances who are just preventing the efficient delivery of services. They are forced to refer patients on to those who will perform whatever procedure they are objecting to, which involves a certain cooperation or facilitation with the act.

This touches everyone, even those who (if the Bill becomes law) will still choose to conscientiously object. Therefore, it is important to consider that the human conscience is a very real phenomenon, which means that facilitating an act that feels morally wrong can give rise to feelings of guilt or shame, even if one has not been a direct participant.

Psychologists observe that when feelings of guilt are not addressed, if they are treated dismissively or internalised, this can significantly erode self-confidence and increase the likelihood of depressive symptoms. But even before modern psychology could speak to the effects of guilt, biblical writers already had much to say on the painful consequences of living with a troubled conscience. In the Psalms, more than one ancient poet pours out their heart to God, saying that living with guilt has caused their bones to feel weak, or their heart to feel heavy, or their world to feel desolate and lonely.

If the Conscientious Objection clauses of the new Bill being proposed on Wednesday are not significantly more robust than those in the draft Bills proposed thus far, then perhaps that is something to which we should all conscientiously object? There is much to discuss about the potential rights and wrongs of legalising Assisted Dying, but there is much to discuss about the rights and wrongs of forcing people to act against their consciences too.