spinoff

According to a poll (ed. – I thought we’d agreed never to start pieces like that) Kenneth Clarke is the joint front-runner in the Tory leadership race, along with David Davis. This is nice for Mr Clarke. It is also nice for Mr Davis. It is not surprising that, just as the leadership contest is hotting up and the Conservative conference getting under way in Blackpool, a rather unpleasant story has cropped up in the media concerning Mr Clarke.

 

The story is interesting. It maintains that Mr Clarke, who works for British American Tobacco (BAT), lied to a Commons Select Committee about BAT’s operations in South America. The firm was accused of smuggling cigarettes into South America to get more people hooked and boost sales. Clarke denied it. Today however, a legal document circulated amongst BAT top brass – of which Mr Clarke is one – implies that the firm knew all along contraband tabs were getting into South American markets. The implication is that Mr Clarke lied.

 

There are several forces at work within this story, and two of them are interesting. The first is that of the media – how crass it has become, how predictable and repetitive. The Mail and Telegraph bleat on about political correctness, house prices, immigration, what a bastard Tony Blair is and how fat, lumpen members of the proletariat are stuffing yours and my tax money up their arses in the form of benefits; while at the same time the Guardian parps on about how awful America is, how fat men in suits are trying to take over the world, how right wing Christian extremists are trying to drag us back to the twelfth century, and how hideous and awful and wrong about everything the Tories are. And that, pretty much, is it.

 

And so, with predictable ferocity, the Guardian has launched itself at the throat of the Clarke campaign. I mean, come on; the timing of this one is nothing short of miraculous. If this story wasn’t being held back by the Guardian as a Tory Conference spoiler / Ken Clarke derailer, then this Spinoffite is a monkey’s uncle. What we have therefore is a case of the media sticking its oar in and trying to knobble one of the runners. But do we want the media sticking its oar in, especially when it uses as its weapon a case which was the subject of a 4 year enquiry that concluded nothing untoward had been done at all? Not really, no. A judge, perhaps. A select committee, or perhaps even a panel of Tory grandees. But a newspaper?

 

The second of these forces at work is that of the mythic, almost pathologically feared, unseen fat men in suits who secretly run the world with the help of vast global corporations. Western Europe is highly secularised. We have little truck with notions that god is up there overseeing things, a trend of thought manifested in the rapidly-dwindling numbers of bums to be found on the UK’s pews. But although intellectually god has been cast out of the window, the god-creating urge within the human animal to seek out and elevate individuals and organisations above the rest has not. We still, in effect, worship, but instead of worshipping a god this urge has found satisfaction in football teams, celebrities, pop idols, contestants in ‘reality’ television shows and, in some cases, cricket teams.

 

But although these objects of worship are provided, what is not provided is an explanation for the machinations of a seemingly chaotic and random world, an explanation that the Christian god used to provide. And so now, we worship gods, but gods that are, in effect, supine. Will Young for example provides a splendid basis for a million and one posters, t-shirts, videos, interviews, PR splashes and is in many ways the consummate pop idol. However, it would be an altogether deluded individual that would savage Young for the growth of global warming, or the continuing famines in sub-Saharan Africa. Completely wide of the mark.

 

So we are left with idols that have no power to influence our lives. In other words, there remains a god-shaped gap for most western Europeans – for though we have idols of all sorts, these idols have no substance other than in their superficial, surface idol-ness – and it is into this gap that the image of the evil men in suits, the Bilderberg Group et al., fit. And they fit so perfectly, so comfortably, in doing so picking up the reigns of power which were dropped by the Almighty after Nietzsche so unceremoniously bumped him off in the late nineteenth century. And it is into this gap that British American Tobacco slots so perfectly, and into the role of, ‘First Fat Man Wearing Suit,’ that Kenneth Clarke falls, apparently without any effort at all.

 

In short, the BAT story plays on this psychical replacement of god by big business, by showing Clarke up as a secret overlord of the murky, geo-capitalistic, fascistic world of third world-exploiting, child murdering, world-running, sweatshop-owning bastard-ness. Not, in other words, the kind of chap you want heading a major political party, or for that matter, the country. The Guardian has brought this to light because Clarke is a serious contender for the Tory top slot and they reckon that, by doing so, they can damage him.

 

Two conclusions arise from this. Firstly, it is vital to keep in mind at all times that ‘news papers’ are nothing of the sort. Secondly the human animal requires a god, and if no such god is forthcoming, then some form of substitute is required. As Voltaire put it, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.” These inventions are, on the whole, best ignored.

 

Yours etc.,

 

Spinoff.