Nuclear weapons good, chemical weapons bad

As Jeremy Corbyn recently discovered, you cannot expect to be taken seriously in British politics if you are not prepared to use nuclear weapons. The hail of abuse and incredulity, and his own senior colleagues' scramble to distance themselves, drum-home the principle: A responsible leader must rule out nothing in the defence of their people, their homeland. When it comes to defence of the nation, all rules are off.

The odd thing, however, is that they don’t and can’t really mean this. There exist plenty of weapons which they themselves would rule out, at least if they don’t want to end up in The Hague. Chemical weapons for one. If a responsible leader is one who would truly stop at nothing, then that would include chemicals. I’m sure our journalist-philosophers can assist by conjuring ludicrous scenarios wherein the judicious state-use of Sarin saves the inhabitants of London from certain death – heaven knows, they manage it often enough with nuclear weapons.

Perhaps as part of Laura Kuenssberg’s next interview with David Cameron, or indeed Hillary Benn, she can press them to confirm whether or not there are any circumstances in which they would be prepared to use nerve gas? She can use the exact same lines of incredulous hectoring that she used on Corbyn:

“So yes or no, you would never push the chemical button?”
“And that’s more important than the protection of this country?”
“Do you acknowledge that there is a risk that it looks to voters that you would put your own principles ahead of the protection of this country?”

No doubt Kuenssberg would dismiss this argument as irrelevant, as chemical weapons are already illegal. We have signed an international treaty saying that we won’t use them, or even threaten to use them. But that only begs the question, why not nuclear too? And that is Corbyn’s point – the same rules should apply to nuclear as to chemical. They should be stuck in the same ‘under no circumstances’ box that already exists for chemical weapons, biological weapons, rape as a weapon. And note that we have unilaterally rejected chemical weapons. We are fully aware that some other states (more evil than our own) still possess them. But we don’t use that as an excuse not to uphold the ban on ourselves. With chemical weapons we are proud to lead by example.

In truth, Kuenssberg’s hope was to identify a moral gulf between Corbyn and those politicians more to her taste: Whereas Cameron and the Blairites would do anything to protect us, Corbyn is prepared to endanger us to protect his own principles. But the ban on chemical weapons proves that Cameron has his limits too. It’s not that he doesn’t draw a line, it’s just that he draws it in a different place, still far short of ‘anything goes’.

So why draw a line before chemical but beyond nuclear? Surely not for humanitarian reasons. The consequences of a chemical attack are a gasping, writhing, twitching, burning, agonising death. The consequences of a nuclear attack are instant bodily vaporisation (for the lucky ones) plus every conceivable range of fatal and non-fatal burn, plus a decades-long legacy of birth defects and cancer. Maybe it’s my moral naivety, but I can’t see much to choose between them. However for the British political establishment they are moral binary opposites: If you threaten to use the former you are clearly a monster, and can expect a visit from the RAF. But if you refuse to use the latter you are a dangerous idealist who puts their principles before the safety of their people.

To account for this distinction, some less than moral reasons spring to mind. Firstly, as the US is the only country to have actually employed nuclear weapons, ipso facto such weapons cannot be fundamentally immoral. Indeed there’s no reason to doubt that if the slaughter in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been chemical rather than nuclear those currently defending nuclear would be singing a different song. Establishment historians and cab drivers alike would be informing their captive audiences that “The chemical attacks on Japan actually saved lives, they brought the war to a close more swiftly.” I can hear Margaret Thatcher booming, “Mr Day! Sarin has kept peace in Europe for forty years.”

Another reason is national vanity and prestige. Much as no patriot wants to be party to the break-up of the union or the dissolution of the monarchy, they get nauseas at the thought of losing of our ‘independent nuclear deterrent’ (an Orwellian title if there ever was one.) So what if we can’t afford it? So what if it protects us against nothing, and has no conceivable use other than as a minor contribution to a global holocaust? It matters because it makes us great, a world power.

Aside from the childishness of this desire, a moment’s reflection reveals that this is no way to meet it. We only need ask ourselves, do we respect the French more because they have nuclear weapons? Do we hold them in awe over their arms cache, rather than their cooking? I don’t recall anyone saying so.

In truth no other country gives a damn whether or not the British waste their taxes on WMD. If anything it probably serves to confirm our reputation as self-deluding post-imperialists. Because of course, aside from the similarly self-deluding post-imperialist French, no other country in Europe indulges in this nonsense, this ‘who’s got the biggest willy’ contest. Are we really supposed to believe that the citizens of Spain, Italy, Demark and Sweden live under the shadow of shame, and a greater sense of insecurity than the UK? Is Angela Merkel a naïve and dangerous idealist for not spending taxes on enriching plutonium, and instead squandering them on education, healthcare and reliable, affordable public transport?

Finally of course we mustn’t forget the influence of those who profit financially; the owners, managers and shareholders of the companies who will share-out the £20 billion-odd booty, if Trident is replaced. It’s no small sum, and it is surely not paranoid to note that many of those who would benefit are politically well placed.

Rather than labour the point, and risk being called a conspiracy theorist, it is instructive to look outside our own bubble and into someone else’s. We British are quick to scorn, despair, and perhaps even chuckle, at the way the US gun-lobby scares citizens into buying firearms. To us, it is obvious that the consequences are a more dangerous society, a more frightened, paranoid, volatile, citizenry. It is blindingly obvious that the only people gaining are the arms manufacturers.

Well we shouldn’t laugh too hard. This is exactly the same tactic our own arms manufacturers use on us: They stoke fear and paranoia to get us to buy things that in fact make things worse. Like the handgun lobby they maintain deeply unhealthy affiliations with government and media. Like the handgun lobby, they claim to defend freedom then sell their wares to time-served oppressors. In their reckless pursuit of profit they stretch the rules of who can make a purchase, and surprise surprise, Monday’s responsible purchaser often becomes Tuesday’s serial killer, albeit state serial killer.

In the face of this barrage of greed, vanity and propaganda it’s astonishing that a full quarter of adult Britons polled (and nearly half of Scots) want the whole thing scrapped. We might ask Laura Kuenssberg what representation those citizens were being given when she conflated her own pro-nuclear outlook with the opinions of British voters? Without such propaganda perhaps a great many more citizens would wander over to join the sane lobby. Given time, Britain might become a country where advocating the ownership of nuclear weapons rendered a candidate deluded and unelectable, and a threat to national security. We’d never look back.

The Paris attacks were not a consequence of the invasion of Iraq

If the rise of ISIS was a consequence of the invasion of Iraq, it would be difficult not to conclude that the recent atrocities in Paris were, to some degree, a consequence of the invasion of Iraq.

If that was the case, further uncomfortable conclusions would be unavoidable. Those who actioned and abetted the 2003 invasion would, in some sense, be rendered culpable for what just happened in Paris. Of course this is very different from suggesting that they desired this outcome. Children may enjoy playing with matches without any suggestion that they desire to burn their homes down. Nevertheless, that sometimes is the outcome, and we should note that their despairing parents will feel no compunction about yelling at them straight – ‘you burned the house down!’ They won’t feel the need to qualify this assertion, and factor-in the child’s actual desires when they played with the matches, after being implored, time and again, not to do so.

Similarly, if the Paris attacks were a consequence of the invasion of Iraq, surely doubt would be cast on the appropriateness of the current response. If the merciless attack on Iraq led to the merciless attack on Paris, should we not despair of leaders who pledge a ‘merciless’ counter-attack? Shouldn’t the cycle of mercilessness stop here, better late than never?

Indeed, if Iraq led us to Paris, wouldn’t it be time to stop taking advice from the politicians and journalists who led us into Iraq? Shouldn’t their opinions be mud by now? Shouldn’t we be listening to alternative thinkers? Wouldn’t all those Labour MPs currently standing shoulder to shoulder with a Conservative government be better advised to find themselves a leader of their own – perhaps a politician who has a track record of better judgement in such matters? Perhaps one who campaigned against the 2003 invasion, and isn’t scared to mention the names of those funding ISIS? Any suggestions?

Clearly, many well-placed people would have a lot to lose if such a connection was established. Various strategies are currently at play to prevent this from happening. The simplest is omission. History is presented as beginning with the Paris attacks: Civilisation was minding its own business when the barbarians breached the city walls and began the carnage. Of course this strategy won’t work with everyone, some people do insist upon remembering stuff. So the next best gambit is to deny any causal relationship – no mean feat given the succession of events:

2002 Iraq is a functioning country – deeply troubled – but functioning;
2005 Iraq is a pile of rubble and corpses;
2006 Islamic State in Iraq arises amid the carnage.

It’s hard not to see a chain of causality there. Here’s a popular but rather weak attempt to break the link:

You can’t say that ISIS is a product of the invasion of Iraq because they are just a bunch of savage lunatics.

The suggestion here seems to be that because the aims and objectives of ISIS cannot be seen as a cogent or meaningful response to the invasion then the invasion cannot be said to have led to ISIS’s creation. But then no one is suggesting that the specific nature of ISIS was forged by the invasion. Of course ISIS didn’t have to turn out exactly like ISIS. But considering what was done to Iraq it was all but certain that something hellish would be sucked-in. ISIS was certainly a more likely outcome in Iraq than a network of sewing circles, or for that matter, a stable, representative democracy.

This is the sense of ‘caused’ John Pilger alludes to, drawing parallels with Cambodia in the 1970s. I hope the following ‘only connect’ doesn’t oversimplify his argument:



To put it another way, if you turn an earthly landscape into a Hieronymus Bosch landscape you shouldn’t be too surprised when it becomes populated by axe-wielding skeletons. That is the sense in which, some would argue, Iraq led to ISIS, and so led to Paris.

Importantly, we should note that this sense of ‘caused’ also stands up to a key counterfactual. What if there had been no 2003 invasion? Let’s say it was shelved due to lack of international support, and the persistently-unfortunate citizens of Iraq still suffered under Saddam. Obviously the world would be a very different place. Indeed, knowing the fickleness of western power, by now Saddam might well have been rehabilitated, and joining hands with the US in the destruction of, say, Iran (stranger things have happened – Gadhafi, Mao, Stalin.) For all that uncertainty, one outcome seems vanishingly unlikely – the rise of Islamic State within Saddam’s Iraq. That is surely a crucial sense in which the invasion can be said to have led to the creation of ISIS.

In the face of all this you can understand why some commentators find it easier to throw in the towel, and admit the causal connection. Not that this heralds any change in strategy, of course. The answer to bombs must always be more bombs. Denial of a connection only changes to, ‘so what if there is a connection? Who cares how we got here? – ISIS are an existential threat and we must do something!’

Along with the owl-eyed ‘Well what would you do?!?!’ ‘do something’ is of course code for ‘kill people’. Blood for blood, regardless how many innocents are killed in the process, regardless of whether it further enflames the situation, regardless of whether it increases the likelihood of reprisals in our own cities. And when, in league with Assad, we’ve finished with ISIS, we can then move back onto…..Assad. And when we’ve finished with Assad, we can deal with whatever demonic acronym has been sucked into the vacuum left by him.

This is why it is so important to deny any connection between Paris and Iraq, or failing that, deny the relevance of that connection. Because if we did consider the record we would be forced to contemplate the unthinkable. We would be forced to doubt our previous conduct and consider change.

Why is Jeremy Corbyn Unelectable?

As our media and political establishment continue to impress upon us, the Labour Party has no hope of entering office with Jeremy Corbyn at the helm. Whatever the truth of this claim, it needs unpacking.

It could mean that his politics are so intrinsically unattractive that even if they were presented dispassionately to the voting public he would remain unelectable. We might call this the democratic reason to call him unelectable. On the other hand it could be taken to mean that certain people, more powerful than the average voter, simply will not tolerate him being elected. They will strive to misrepresent him and his agenda, so that the public will be dissuaded from voting for him – not least by ceaselessly impressing upon us his un-electability – who wants to back a loser? We can fairly and dispassionately call this the undemocratic reason he is judged unelectable – a transparent case of power usurping democracy.

A clue can be inferred from his opponents’ focus on the personal and irrelevant. If his policies are so unattractive why the need to concentrate on his beard, or shoes, or reluctance to sing patriotic songs, or pledge commitment to acts of genocide against as yet unformulated enemies? If his social and economic policy is intrinsically abhorrent, and such a sure turn-off to the public, why not concentrate on that? He’d be very happy to discuss it, and presumably dig his own grave that way.

Indeed the sheer ferocity of the attacks against him don’t suggest complacency on the part of his critics, not as one would expect if there really was no chance of him winning. He can’t be hopelessly unelectable and the most dangerous man in Britain. So let’s assume he could win. Let’s imagine that, given a fair hearing, the public really might vote him into office. Why then the campaign to write him off?

First there are his obvious enemies. As a man of the left, we can assume that he is opposed by anyone significantly to his right (as equally we can assume that almost everyone to his left supports him – beggars can’t be choosers.) Obviously this includes default enemies of Labour – the current government and any other rival political parties. In addition, given his economic plans, much of the world of big-business and finance; companies benefitting from tax avoidance and zero hour contracts; companies benefitting from a cowed and demoralised workforce. He will certainly find few friends in the boardrooms of those industries he has earmarked for renationalisation, or amidst our large and happy band of arms manufacturers. Membership of CND, Stop the War and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign conjures a wide range of highly vocal adversaries. Likewise, humble flag-wavers from Alf Garnet to Lord Helpus will see him as a threat to all they hold dear. Last but not least, there is the corporate world’s mouthpiece - the corporate mass media.

Trickier to untangle are the motives of the enemy within, within the Labour party that is. We can again usefully divide these nay-sayers into two distinct groups. First there are those who oppose him ideologically, for many of the same reasons as above: Those who remain wedded to the Thatcher/Blair economic project; Atlantic patriots, those pro-NATO pro-Trident diehards who can’t abide the idea of the UK losing its long-lost world player status; and of course there are those who directly assisted Blair in his war crimes. The last thing they can stomach is being led by someone who had the good judgement to oppose the disaster from the start.

Finally, we move onto potentially the most interesting group – those within his party who secretly agree with his policies but oppose him for reasons of political expediency. While many of them first joined the party in the hope of enacting policies well to the left of anything Corbyn would dare to suggest in 2015 they now see him as a threat to their seats and a threat to the party gaining office. After years of campaigning against project-Thatcher presumably they now see its consequences as irreversible. Too much has already been privatised, the unions have been crushed, and the mainstream media are uniformly satisfied with the consequences. Maggie won - there is no alternative.

The choice as they see it then is electoral disaster with Corbyn, or another stab at Thatcherism-lite under the leadership of one of the translucent figures to his right. It’s certainly a schizophrenic strategy. They find themselves shouting down their own political convictions, coming as they do from the mouth of someone braver than themselves. All this in the hope that they can get themselves and their party re-elected on an agenda contrary to their true desires.

The great shame is that the one thing that certainly will render Corbyn unelectable will be lack of support from within his party. Labour’s opponents can be relied upon to continue the blitzkrieg of slander and smears – politics as usual. But if those within his party won’t struggle to deflect and correct the misrepresentations, and argue the benefits, it really will be game over. A sad irony for those who secretly support his policies.

Honest Politics

What’s the quickest way to get a politician off your doorstep? Easy - tell them that you intend to vote for them. This curious reflex tells us something about the nature of electioneering. Politicians only canvass those voters who don’t share their beliefs. Unlike most political discourse, which consists of preaching details to the converted, election campaigns must ignore the saved and focus on the heathens.

It follows then that electioneering is always an attempt to convince people that you know their interests better than they do; you know what’s good for them, better than they do:

Knock knock “Can we count on your vote? We can? Wonderful, do have a nice evening.”
Knock knock, “Can we count on your vote? We can’t?” (ugh!) “I see. But are you aware that by not voting for us it is very likely that X will occur?”

…with ‘X’ being whatever issue that party is fielding as vital to the constituent’s interests. By declaring their intention to vote for somebody else the voter has demonstrated a lack of awareness about the dangers or benefits of ‘X’. Fortunately the canvasser is there to lift the scales from their eyes.

Of course the canvasser needn't truly believe in the stated ‘X’. A false or irrelevant ‘X’ can be cited to frighten or attract constituents into voting for agendas quite contrary to their interests. Benefit-claimants voting UKIP do look rather like Turkeys voting for Christmas. UKIP is a party born of disgruntled right-wing Tories, quite open in their desire to destroy the welfare state. Openly stating such intentions on claimants’ doorsteps is unlikely to win their votes, so UKIP canvassers keep a more palatable ‘X’ up their sleeves - immigration.

Not all false ‘X’s are cynical, at least not in intent. There is also room for the benevolent false ‘X’. A canvasser might view this one false ‘X’ as a small price to pay for all the greater goods that would be bestowed upon the voter if their party wins office. Again we can frame this using UKIP canvassers. While some might despise claimants, it’s possible that others see themselves as the claimants’ saviour. If they were free to speak their minds on the doorstep it would probably run something like: Your benefits need to be cut because that will force you into work. Not only will this will give you back your dignity, it will allow us to cut taxes so the economy can expand. Everyone will win.

Regardless of intent, hardly a vote winner. So for the greater good the well-meaning UKIP rep must reach for a benevolent false X, such as: If you don’t vote for us hordes of Romanians will arrive and infect your family with AIDS. Or some such.

Fortunately not all parties stoop so low. By nature less cynical, Greens are less inclined to employ false X’s. Less fortunately, openness is even less likely to win them the claimants’ vote. A reasonable desire of the poor is to not be so poor. In capitalist countries this has traditionally been achieved by expanding the economy and thereby creating more jobs. By contrast, a core tenet of Green politics is to apply the brakes, shrink output, and encourage us all to make do with less.

Presumably their doorstep arguments focus on the long-term: If we lower output and invest in less damaging industries we will all win in the end – assuming the survival of our species is taken to constitute a victory. But long-term goals are not well suited to election campaigns. If, as suggested above, electioneering is a matter of convincing people that you know their interests better than they do, the Greens have a job on their hands. The oft-heard claim “I would actually welcome an economic slow-down, even if it does eat into my income” is surely a luxury of the comfortably-off. It’s a very difficult dream to sell to the impoverished.

Finally, alas, there is more to electioneering than policy. Against sounder judgement, we also tend to vote on the basis of personality. Vacuous from the outset, this aspect of electioneering is highly prone to falsehood. It’s little more than an arms race between competing ad agencies, with no relevance to political acumen – surely the only aspect of personality that should concern us.

Pretending to like bacon sandwiches or Cornish pasties or Aston Ham (or was it West Villa?) are false X’s of this kind. The aim is to conjure an illusion of fraternity between the Eton educated politician and those voters who genuinely revel in such masculine activities. All colours of politicians can content themselves with the thought that these too are benevolent false X’s, white lies for the greater good.

On the face of it, it might sound like honest politics is impossible, or dead, or was never alive in the first place. I hope to close with something less hackneyed. I would argue that honest politics can and does exist, but it is forced to exist at some remove from the ‘politics’ that that is presented to the electorate. It is simply not possible for someone hoping to gain office to consistently air their true beliefs. While some of this disjunction can be put down to cynicism of a Machiavellian kind, much of it is an unavoidable consequence of our political system. Perhaps it is true of all political systems, but in a mass democracy informed by a corporate-owned mass media it is necessarily the case.

First then, to clarify what is meant by honest politics. These are simply those views politicians genuinely hold – the opinions that actually reside in their heads; the subject matter discussed in confidence, with friends, family and other party members, behind closed or slightly-ajar doors.

It is important to note then that honest politics in this sense has nothing to do with virtuous politics. It has no necessary connection with fairness or kindness or even accuracy. The only intrinsic virtue of honest politics is that they are honestly believed. Even Hitler and Stalin had honest political beliefs in this sense. That those beliefs were false and despicable has no bearing on their honesty as beliefs.

Here then are two reasons why such honest political beliefs cannot always be aired in public. Both stem from the need to pretend that one-size can fit all. Firstly our political system requires parties to be unified over policy. That is to say, it requires entities composed of a multitude of human minds to pretend they are of one mind. This is particularly true at election time, when these aggregations of notoriously opinionated humans are obliged to rally round a single document – the manifesto – and act as though they agree with every word of it.

If you want to gain power you don’t have much choice. The alternatives are to either publicly disagree with the manifesto and become a dissident within your party, or publicly disagree with the manifesto and remain within the party fold, in which case the media will say that the party is split on policy, and therefore unelectable.

Secondly, to secure a large enough vote, parties are obliged to present their policies as if they will be of benefit to a larger section of the electorate than possibly can benefit. Manifestos can admit no losers; aside from paedophiles and illegal immigrants, every section of society must be assured that it will win.

In the real world of course this is just not possible. The most important political changes often are zero-sum. One person’s tax break is another’s tax hike, or loss of state benefits. One company’s freedom to invest abroad is another’s bankruptcy.

We can now understand, if not forgive, many of the false X’s that are presented on the doorstep. Canvassers really are in a bind. Frequently, they themselves have no faith in the policies they have been assigned to promote. Even when they do, they know damn well that those policies may work to the detriment of the voter they are addressing.

If lying is too strong a word, a great deal of tiptoeing is inevitable (never a wise practice on a doorstep). There will be a strong incentive for omission, steering the discussion away from policies that jar with the canvasser’s heart or the voter’s best interests; masking and shaving and gilding of policy; stealthy downplaying and up-playing of relevant consequences. And when the uncomfortable stuff is thrust upon the canvasser, and discussion becomes unavoidable, presumably some honest lying does take place – for the greater good, of course.

Like one-size-fits-all shoes, one-size-fits-all politics are not a practical possibility. The hearty endorsements and claims of total comfort have a hollow ring. The smile of the bearer, like that of the wearer, is more of a twisted grimace. So what is to be done? Perhaps not much. It may just be my lack of imagination, but I can’t envisage any democratic system where what politicians say matches exactly with what they think. Perhaps the best we can hope for is to minimise the gap between honest politics and declared politics. But how to go about that is another matter.

A different approach would be to learn to live with the gap, but critically. If we resign ourselves to inevitable falsehoods perhaps we can better distinguish between the cynical and the forgivable lies. Instead of joining-in with the media’s feigned shock and disillusionment each time an untruth is revealed we would do well to pause, and assess the motives. Was this a Machiavellian lie to facilitate unwanted political change? Or was it the regrettable consequence of a political system that demands an impossible level of political unity.

Of course such judgements are themselves politically charged. I judge the falsehoods that led to the invasion of Iraq as firmly Machiavellian. Conversely, while I’m no fan of Bill Clinton, I see his lies about his sex life as inconsequential. He lied about something politically irrelevant so as to stay afloat in a political culture that places a premium on the irrelevant. So what? People of a different political persuasion see it differently, I’m sure.

The Net Effect of Writing for the Mainstream Media

Is it possible to use mainstream media to mitigate environmental disaster? It’s an important question, and bone of contention. Here's the quandary: You don't have to be Noam Chomsky to realise that a corporate-owned, or corporate-wedded, mass media is an odd place to rally against corporate practices. Clearly there are limits to the degree one can criticise, say, the car industry, within a publication whose existence depends upon revenue from car adverts. You also have to question the motives of the organisation publishing your work. If they want to make money by selling advertising space to car manufacturers why would they also want to have you there, raining on the motorcade?

On the other hand, as the mainstream media by definition encompasses all the wide-reaching media outlets, how else is the environmentally concerned writer ever going to get their message across to enough people make a difference? The writer is left with a grim choice. An unholy alliance with the very forces they are criticising, or the relative, perhaps absolute, obscurity of writing outside the MSM. At some level of consciousness the morally motivated writer needs to make a calculation: What will be the net effect of my writing for the MSM? Will it serve to mitigate or exacerbate environmental damage? We can only assume that The Guardian's George Monbiot is confident that his writing achieves the former – otherwise he would depart and write elsewhere. Equally we can assume that the editors at Medialens suspect the latter – he would be more use to the world if he jumped ship.

These different conclusions stem in part from different interpretations of how news media works on us, the public. At first glance it seems obvious that Monbiot is performing a useful role. Even if The Guardian is chock-a-block with features on jet travel, and adverts for 4x4s, at least his features serve to challenge and shame these excesses. It’s like an ideological tug of war:  One pull dulls our critical faculties, the other re-sharpens it; sometimes Monbiot discredits the adverts and infomercials, sometimes they undermine or dilute the power of his arguments. Viewed this way, it would be disastrous for him to leave.

However, opponents would argue that this isn’t a zero-sum game. To see this, we have to consider why corporations advertise in liberal/left periodicals in the first place. Obviously to increase their profits, one way or another. One particularly insidious way is through ‘greenwash’ – something Monbiot is well aware of. This is the practice of using marketing to create the impression that a company’s products and antics are greener than they seem. Obviously this tactic would be misplaced in some markets. It would be a waste of revenue to run a campaign like Beyond Petroleum at The Daily Mail or The Spectator. Indeed fans of Melanie Phillips and Dominic Lawson might well boycott BP if they thought it was back-tracking on the West’s inalienable right to slash and burn.

Rather, the appropriate target for greenwash is people who worry about the environment. Rather than lying to the converted, greenwash needs to source environmentally concerned people – like many readers of The Guardian and The Independent – so it can corrupt them.  From this perspective the MSM environment columnist looks less eco-saviour and more Judas Goat, leading the target audience into the pen for indoctrination. They tempt-in the worthy and concerned, only for them to then have their critical faculties Shanghaied by the corporations.

While it seems reasonable to assume that both of these pressures are at play to some extent, calculating net effect is another matter. But here’s two content-based factors that must surely swing the scales. Firstly the content of the writing itself. Secondly its framing in the paper as a whole – its prominence, and ratio of column inches against those of articles and advertisements that deliver an opposing message.

The content and angle of an article is obviously vital. There is a huge difference between an article on shrinking ice sheets which sits meekly and obliviously amongst Ryan Air adverts, and an article on the same subject that denounces those adverts – dares to blame them for stoking this crisis. The former article might generate a helpless sigh (oh! the state of the world) before the page is turned. The latter article might really have some effect - awaken the reader to the hypocrisy of the situation. But of course that would be the Judas Goat biting the hand that fed it. It would soon find itself banished from the Eden of Guardian.

The subject of weighting and prominence is nicely illustrated by an old Viz cartoon, parodying the cigarette adverts of the day. On the side of a bus in a huge font, it read – “Smoke Tabs!” then in tiny writing underneath “HM Government warning: Don’t smoke tabs.” Advertisers are well aware that the relative ratios of such contradictory messages determine which one is likely to hit home. It’s no coincidence that now that the heath lobby have got the upper hand on the tobacco lobby the message ratios have swapped. A visiting smoker from the 1980's could be forgiven for thinking they’d been sold a packet of diced road-kill rather than twenty Rothmans.

If the ratio of worthy print/destructive print is a measure of net effect then George’s arguments barely register. Like the rest of the 'quality' press, The Guardian is heaving with saliva-inducing incitements to luxury and overindulgence. Monbiot's articles appear more as a confusing footnote. Forty pages of “Buy! Buy! Buy! - Fly! Fly! Fly!” punctuated with the occasional “PS. This is killing us.” And if you think an occasional ‘PS’ is better than nothing, well perhaps it isn’t. Presumably some environmentally concerned people get a nice warm glow from knowing they buy the paper with the ‘sound’ environment column, regardless of its overall effect on their spending choices. Perhaps without that environment column they wouldn't buy the paper in the first place, and wouldn't be exposed to its mass of environment-unfriendly content.

Lastly we mustn’t forget that there may be more influences at play than morality when a writer calculates the net good of their writing. Rather than keep making examples of George Monbiot I’ll make one of myself. What if The Guardian offered me a payment for this piece? – we are close to April 1st after all. Would I assent? Hopefully, I would first try to weigh-up the net effect. On the pro-side I could tell myself that content-wise that this is exactly one of those ‘owners-hand-biting pieces’ - so it might end up as a net good. Or perhaps I might frame it in my mind as just one little evil, but one that might then seed interest in all the other supposedly worthy things I might write in the future.

The danger of course is that this could all just be my ego, formulating excuses. It could be that like most people writing outside the MSM I’m just gagging for exposure, and would be flattered by the invitation from such an venerable publication (the paper my parents 'took' for all those years, wouldn’t they be proud?....etc.) And the money wouldn’t hurt either. So when it came to assessing the net moral worth of accepting this hypothetical offer, perhaps I wouldn’t be in the best position to judge.

The French Politician’s Prerogative

If democracy is a level playing field, then the belief that you deserve more than one partner is undemocratic, a throwback to less democratic times and places. I’m not referring here to promiscuousness amongst the single, or indeed consensual promiscuousness between the paired. These alternatives to monogamy come with their own problems of course - as does monogamy - but you can’t call them undemocratic. Unwise perhaps, but not unfair.

Similarly I’m not talking about falling out of love with one partner and into love with another. At a stretch, I’m not even talking about those who strive to be loyal to one partner but just can’t keep their trousers on when alternatives arise. For all the hurt, at least these transgressions allow for regret: “I’m so sorry it didn’t work out” in the former, and the snivelling “please take me back and I promise it will never happen again” in the latter.

No, what I’m talking about is when one partner thinks that they have the right to more than one partner, without extending reciprocal rights to their partner. Such arrogance is not exclusively French, nor the preserve of politicians, but if we refer to it as the French Politician’s Prerogative I think we capture the spirit of this mind-set, and cultural fossil.

Although this is not an exclusively male form of selfishness, tolerance of such behaviour is strictly for the boys. While some women, particularly powerful women, might exercise the same dubious ‘right’, social acceptance is reserved for men. There is no male equivalent to the ‘mistress’ to refer to the kept man, presumably because the role is too rare and too perverse to merit a name. The ‘inevitable appetite’ of men would be ‘sluttishness’ in women. In polite society male infidelity is only to be expected, female infidelity is whorish effrontery.

The belief that you deserve more than one faithful partner necessarily implies a sense of superiority. Even those who try to excuse their behaviour as ‘natural’, a product of evolution, must be doing-so from the perspective of being a winner in this great game of life. Given a 50/50 sex ratio it is not arithmetically possible for all men to have multiple faithful partners. Presumably some lesser men must make do with one, and others with none at all. The grounds for such feelings of superiority and entitlement are varied but obvious. It might be sexual prowess, good looks, charisma, fame, social status, class status, artistic ability, academic ability, political power, or just money. Whichever, the bearer is led to the belief that he has so much to offer it would be unfair not to spread it around a bit. The naked ape morphs himself into ‘the big man’, the emperor, the alpha-male lion slouching across the savannah, calmly selecting targets amongst the females; the sheikh reclining in his Bedouin tent, too grand to be contained or satisfied by just one woman.

Obviously these self-perceptions may have little to do with the actual reason an ‘additional’ woman shows interest. Neither François Hollande or Silvio Berlusconi have much of the top predator about them. Alan Clark’s appearance was more sultana than Sultan. As in any human relationship, the things people are fancied-for can differ widely from the things they might fancy about themselves. He might tell himself it’s his intellect when in fact it’s just his hairy chest - or vice versa. Such mismatches of perception can be innocent, even endearing. After all, body and mind are both intrinsic features of a person - who is to decide which is the more worthy basis of attraction? Things become more dubious however when what attracts is something removed from the mind or body of the person. Rather than his square jaw and political acumen, the real attraction may be access to certain social circles, or job opportunities, or immigration papers, or simply money.

Money is obviously a big player and the one that detractors will be keen to seize upon, but it would be untrue and unfair to suggest that it is always the case. It’s understandable and forgivable when the betrayed wife describes the other woman as a prostitute, but it can be quite the other way round. A truly besotted mistress is surely less of a prostitute than a wife who secretly despises her husband but stays with him for his wealth. At core, prostitution is selling your body, enduring sex for material benefits. The legal status of wife/mistress can be of no consequence. Sex between two people who burn with physical desire for each other is not prostitution at all, whatever the financial backdrop. Equally clearly, sex paid for cash-in-hand and performed with gritted teeth definitely is prostitution. Between these two extremes there are a wide range of alternative reasons people join each other in bed. Some are completely untarnished by economics. Others are tainted to some degree - spectrum whoretism, we might call it.

It seems uncontroversial to assume that many high-society ‘affairs’ reside somewhere on this spectrum. The very concept of the ‘kept woman’ implies an economic imbalance. It requires a certain level of income to ‘install’ a mistress in a little apartment off Rue Cliché in the 6th arrondissement. The telling counterfactual would be whether the sex would still be taking place without the material benefits. It may be pure co-incidence of course, but the incidence of wizened men seducing teenage beauties does appear to rise and fall in tandem with the gentleman’s income.

We should note however that desirability is not the only economic factor at work in perpetuating mistress culture. Just as prostitution commodifies a woman’s body, women can also be viewed as negative assets - liabilities. This view will be familiar to readers of Jane Austen. Women are born into these fictions as millstones. However smart, beautiful or compassionate they might be, at core they remain a problem, an issue that needs to be resolved. Fathers pace hallways, mothers sit and wring their hands - what to do with this creature when it blossoms? Crippling dowries are raised in the hope of bribing potential suitors into relieving them of this burden.

If prostitution transforms a woman’s body into saleable furniture, a dowry is more like a fee for house clearance. Honestly, you can’t give this stuff away. And of course the daughters play along with it all, frittering their youth away wittering about husbands, dresses, grand balls, eligible soldiers and the horrors of spinsterhood. It’s quite a bind. Daughters are infantilised to the extent that they can never become economically independent, and then resented as an economic liability. This remains a fair description of the status and treatment of women in some parts of the world today. But even in supposedly liberal and enlightened societies something similar is still lurking in the background. A rich man can still picture himself as the saviour of a poor woman, shouldering the economic burden of womanhood. These are the ‘saved’ women of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Pretty Woman. As a mark of their philanthropic largesse, some of these big-hearted fellows save several women at the same time.

Some will shrug and dismiss all this as ‘natural’ - the male inclination to pay for sex is as old as human history. But note that male inclination is only half of the deal. How many 'kept' women would be prepared to accept that role if their income already matched that of their lord and master? The supply of street prostitutes, porn workers, and fragrant mistresses to atrophying politicians and business tycoons is only as large as the gap in income between men and women. While some men might well be inclined to pay for sex, a more democratic society would be one where the economic position of women was such that fewer women would feel inclined or compelled to meet market demand.

Asset or liability, the commodification of women necessarily positions men as the owners of women. Daughters are the property of fathers, wives the property of husbands. Consequently, much as he deserves a big house and scores of servants, a ‘big man’ deserves more female properties. He should be free to collect women as he might collect cars - a practical model for daily use and some hot ones to take for a spin at the weekend. This object-owner relationship underlines the other sense of superiority at play in mistress culture. As well as one man’s superiority over another, it also suggests gender superiority. Men own women because men are superior to women. Men have dominion over their wives and mistresses for much the same reason as the dairyman has dominion over his cattle. Men are the movers and shakers in this world. Women at best are support staff, nurses to the doctors - essential but auxiliary.

Unpleasant as it is, this is the base assumption that supports all the rest of the mistress nonsense. The glib claim that it is quite normal for French men to have mistresses has an unavoidable flipside: It is quite normal for French women to accept their role as subordinates. I’m sure this can’t be true across the board, but it is amply alluded-to in literature old and new, celebrated in fact. It's the worldview parodied by Nancy Mitford in her novels (at least I hope it is parody.) The ‘good wife’ accepts her husband’s infidelities, forgives his transgressions, whatever pain and discord they might cause. It would be improper, meddlesome, to question him over such trifles. Access to this high quality being comes at a price - the price is that you have to tolerate sharing him. He is the big man, the weight of the world on his shoulders, and his family must respect his needs. It would be cruel, against nature, to cage the lion, etc etc.

As is often the case with oppressive relationships the oppressed play their part in maintaining the injustice. Mitford again:

"'well then, perhaps you can tell us' said Madame Rocher 'how, in a country where there are no brothels, do the young men ever learn?'"

Whatever lessons young men might learn, we can see that the brothel worker's development is of no consequence. Women are a means rather than an end; a stone to be stepped-on, or over, by life's protagonist, on his ascent to adulthood.

For all the short-term thrills, it’s hard to see any real winners in this game. The covert philanderer lives in constant fear of being caught; his partner lives in ignorance and impending heartbreak. The brazen philanderer has all the home comfort of a partner stricken with perpetual mistrust, anxiety and worthlessness, or she simply hates him. And of course it’s not just adults that suffer. Indeed whenever ‘nature’ is invoked to justify such behaviour it is worth considering the reflex responses of small children on this subject: ‘Would you prefer it that your parents only love each other, and only sleep with each other? Or would you rather they also sleep with other people, and perhaps raise other children in other homes?’ Is their response not as natural, as instinctive, as any adult urge?

I add the qualifier ‘small’ children because their answers may change as they move into adulthood, in no small part dependent on the example set by their parents. And so the seeds are sown. Boys grow into men who see fidelity as wimpish, a sign of unmanliness. Girls grow into women who assume that men are not to be trusted, and so either develop the capacity to stand by them in a state of anxiety, or just loath them and avoid them completely. And so the whole mess rumbles on.