Mission-driven Government means raising our sights as a nation and focusing on ambitious, measurable, long-term objectives that provide a driving sense of purpose for the country.Labour Party Manifesto, 2024
Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has for several years been telling anyone who cares to listen that it will be “mission-driven“. The population are now going to find out exactly what that means – good and hard. What they will discover, too late, is that (except for very limited exceptions which I will come to in due course) the last thing on Earth that anybody should want is a Government that has a mission. That is because a Government with a mission needs conscripts. And being a conscript is not a good position in which to find oneself.
The English political philosopher Michael Oakeshott helps us to understand all of this very succinctly. Human associations, he tells us, are almost always “enterprise associations” – they have purposes, however vague. Companies are supposed to make money for their shareholders. Sports clubs are supposed to win games. Fire brigades are supposed to put out fires. Church congregations are supposed to evangelise or worship God. The Terra Nova expedition was supposed to get to the South Pole. And so on.
Very often, an enterprise association will have more than one purpose (a sports club is supposed to win games but also to serve a role for the community; a church is about mutual support and socialising as much as it is about worship; the Terra Nova expedition also wanted to bring back an emperor penguin egg; and so on). But generally speaking when people bring themselves together into an organisation of some kind, it is in order to do something, or some set of things.
Not all human associations are like that, of course. The obvious example is the family. Oakeshott – a notorious womaniser and libertine – did not write much about that subject. His interest was in the contrast between enterprise associations and something which he called a “civil association” – an association which has no purpose, and which is joined together “solely in terms of the recognition (not the choice or the desirability)” of a system of law and a system for administering that law.
Such an association, in Oakeshott’s view, did not exist anywhere on Earth, and never had. But it was the only morally legitimate basis on which a state could be constituted. she State, for Oakeshott, only had the moral right to exist if it had no purpose, goal or objective; it could only be moral if it consisted merely of rules and a means for making, enforcing, adjudicating, applying and amending those rules. And it could only have a moral relationship with the population, it followed, if that relationship inhered only in the recognition on the part of the population that the system of law and legal administration exists and has force.
This may all sound very abstract, but it is of critical importance in understanding our current predicament, so let me unpack it. If the state has a purpose, mission, objective etc., then it obviously becomes one of Oakeshott’s enterprise associations. But the crucial point for Oakeshott was that, unlike any other type of enterprise association, the state is one which the individual cannot choose to join (one is simply born into it), nor choose to leave (except by actually physically no longer being within the state’s jurisdiction at all). One is stuck with things as they are.
And what this means, of course, is that, whether one likes it or not, one has to work towards – or at least not work against – whatever purposes one’s Government has in mind. One does not get to choose (to come back to Labour’s manifesto) whether there is, for example, a National Wealth Fund, or Britain becomes a clean energy superpower, or we get a young people’s mental health “hub” in every “community”. And nor does one get to choose even whether to abstain from participation in the realisation of the state’s purposes – because at the very least one’s wealth will be appropriated and directed towards those purposes, and one will very often be compelled, nudged, coerced or cajoled into otherwise taking part. One is not, then, in those circumstances, free. One has liberty only to the extent that one does not interfere with the state’s “mission”. And that is no liberty at all.
But Oakeshott was no mere knee-jerk libertarian. He was a making a subtler and deeper point. His concern was that, if a state has a purpose or mission, then that means the population is deprived of the very conditions of morality as such, as Oakeshott understood them. This is because the only option available for any individual citizen in such circumstances becomes obedience of whatever commands, obligations or precepts come from on high, in the name of whatever objectives Government has in mind. And that is not in fact to act morally: it is merely to pursue morality “as the crow flies”. It is to do somebody else’s conception of the “right thing”, on the basis simply that one will face severe consequences if one does not. It is to have one’s behaviour subject, as Oakeshott put it, to causes, rather than reasons. One is not, in such conditions, exercising choice on the basis of reflection on what is right. One is simply doing what one is supposed to, because one must.
This can be contrasted with the state imagined as a civil association. It will be remembered that the civil association, as Oakeshott described it, was a state which has no purpose, and which only makes, enforces, adjudicates, applies and amends rules. Clearly, coercion is not absent in such a state – enforcement of rules, after all, is nothing if not coercive. But unlike in the state-as-enterprise-association, it is a morally legitimate form of coercion, because it serves to preserve the sphere of moral choice for everyone. A society in which there are no rules is a society of might-makes-right, and that is, obviously, one in which there is no moral freedom either. Coercion in the civil association happens only on the basis of maintaining the social order necessary to ensure that there are rules of conduct which have any application at all, and that moral choice can in fact be exercised by everybody.
This puts Oakeshott’s conception of morality very close to that of Michel Foucault (not necessarily the first person to leap to mind when thinking of examples of moral philosophers). Foucault once said that “freedom is the ontological condition of ethics”. This is a French post-structuralist’s way of making a point that is fairly obvious when one really thinks about it: if one is not free, then one is not acting ethically, or unethically, because one has no choice. It is only if a person has the choice to do right or wrong, and chooses to do the right thing (or not to do the wrong thing) that he or she can be said to be exercising ethics. Otherwise, he or she is what Oakeshott called a mere “role-performer”. He or she exists only to obey.
Morality, then, is about choice, and Oakeshott labelled the state a “moral enormity” when it takes on the characteristics of an enterprise association, because when it does so it deprives the population of the most human capacity of all – the capacity to exercise free will in respect of what is moral. And in so doing, it not only sets itself up as moral arbiter, but reduces the human individual to a purely instrumental position – a tool for the achievement of the state’s purposes, rather than a soul with independent value in its own right.
We are all, I think, familiar with the feeling of being subjects of the state-as-enterprise-association. As Oakeshott was at pains to make clear, all states in modernity have at least something of that character – there is no pure civil association in anything like the terms he described. But that feeling is going to become particularly acute for those of us who live in Britain as Labour’s grip on power strengthens, because it is of course the Labour Party that always bills itself most forcefully as having grand overarching purposes into which the population will be conscripted. That, after all, is in essence what the Labour Party is for.
In my last post, I described that drive – to “deliver [the population] from the great anxiety and fearsome torments of free and individual decision” – as always existing at the heart of Labour Government, and used as an example the case of mooted capital gains tax on the sale of primary residences. But the news is now each day veritably packed to the gills with such examples.
Last week we learned, for instance, that Labour will be conducting a school curriculum review – led by somebody who once complained in print that the U.K. education system had an “obsession with academic achievement” – and that it will force every school in the country, whatever its status, location, history or pre-existing mission, to teach the same, centrally mandated curriculum. Whether a school is state-funded or fee-paying, religious or secular, an academy or a bog-standard comp, the curriculum and its objectives will be ineluctable – and the population will have to accept it. Since all schools will be teaching the same curriculum, the option for parents to send their children, if they so choose, to a school which has an independent set of values will be extinguished. The only option, to repeat, is to be conscripted into the national educational “mission” – and simply to hope that the people exercising choice on one’s behalf are wise.
And so what we have here again finding expression are the same, almost primal instincts which Labour politicians in particular always display: towards control, command and coercion in the name of achieving some social purpose or other, and against the freedom, responsibility and self-sufficiency which are the necessary features of moral autonomy. And the parents and teachers of the land will simply have to respond accordingly, through gritted teeth, whatever their own views about the rights and wrongs of education might be, whatever they think of the people in charge and wherever they think the interests of children really lie.
The tenor of the next Parliament is therefore well and truly set. This will, of course, not exactly be entirely out of keeping with what has been happening since 1997 in some form or other, and it is one of the great failings of Conservative Party rule since 2010 that at no point did any Government seriously grapple with the question of how big the state and its control over moral choice should be. To bring us back to the introduction to this article, the position in which we will likely find ourselves, perhaps in five years, perhaps in 10, will be one in which the state is bigger than ever before, and – much more importantly – its control over moral choice more commanding. We will then be well and truly within the scope of one of the rare exceptions I mentioned in my opening paragraph, in which mission-driven Government is actually desirable: it will simply have to happen in order to reconfigure the state towards the core function of maintaining a strong and secure system of law, and to force it into returning at least some matters of morality, freedom and respect to the population once more. That will be one hell of a battle, and whether we have it in us to form and elect such a Government is quite another subject; we will in any event in the fullness of time find out.
Dr. David McGrogan is an Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School. You can subscribe to his Substack – News From Uncibal – here.
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That is the dumbest thing I’ve read all day and I’ve read a lot of dumb stuff today.
Take the AZ vaxx and get 100% protection from Bruce Springsteen gigs.
It’s the only promotion tag line so far that makes having a jab seem even vaguely OK.
Very good. Didn’t see this before I posted.
You win Joke of the Week Award
Best comment ever…
I have a life long aversion to Bruce Springsteen sadly, after having him inflicted on me at full volume late at night on an almost permanent basis by a flat mate [she thought he was the closest thing to God you could get] so I agree with you on that score.
I have decided henceforth to no longer refer to the gene therapy as a jab. As per Vernon Coleman’s description I will be calling it “death in a syringe”.
100% correct on Bruce and the experimental biological
What a load of BS!
The Boss telling people what to do
LONDON ANTI LOCKDOWN EVENTS https://www.standupx.info/
Sun, 20 Jun, 1pm – Streatham Common, SW16 5TF
Mon, 21 Jun, from 8am – Gather at Speaker’s Corner, Hyde Park
Mon, 21 Jun, from 12pm – Ready to march to Parliament from Speaker’s Corner
Is this just a Covid information website? It NEVER promoted the demonstration in advance. We do’t want to upset Good Ol’ Boris.
Nothing says rock and roll like coercing your audience into genetic engineering.
Springsteen has been a fake from day one.
He’s openly admitted that his, “Boss,” persona is based on his blue-collar, working class father.
Bruce himself is an America-hating vegan who is amazed he’s been able to get over on the rubes for this long.
Personally, I’d need to be genetically-re-engineered, mentally and aurally, to go to listen to this bloke. Can’t stand his music or his “schtick”.
His stuff is flabby, overwrought nonsense, signifying nothing..
One day, they’ll be locked up for this discrimination.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/vaccine-passports-are-business-rights-more-important-personal-freedom
I’d rather/only see Van Morrison or Eric Clapton anyway.
Ian Brown live, even if he can hardly sing.
Watch recordings of his concerts to absorb what he means to his fans.
Van rocks!!
Imagine all those poor deluded AZ victims if this nonsense takes hold and all those who submitted to the AZ death in a syringe are told that it doesn’t count.
Another one of those “rare” blood clotting cases again .- this time a father and his son …
‘There’s no other explanation’: Utah mom blames COVID vaccines after her 17-year-old athlete son and her husband were BOTH hospitalized with rare blood clots after getting Pfizer and Moderna shots.’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9695451/Utah-mom-blames-COVID-vaccines-son-husband-hospitalized-blood-clots.html#comments
VAERS may also be deleting entries.
https://mobile.twitter.com/HowardSteen4/status/1405741004095770635
Robert Kennedy’s Children’s defense news (USA) gives a very clear VAERS report each week. Makes for an eye watering read. So far 5,900 dead post vaccine,with nearly a half a million adverse events. Fda postponed their “emergency” meeting to discuss vaccines for children. Guess it really wasn’t an emergency. The deaths and adverse events are occurring around the world. Why has there not been a stop to this nonsense?
Worth reminding ourselves that Moderna has not previously been in the business of developing/supplying vaccines for human usage. The fact people are accepting jabs from this particular brand is astonishing.
That’s OK, they are not being used by humans.
It’s the status shot, don’t you know.
When I was mingling with the venture capital community a few years back, Moderna’s CEO was viewed as “weird & distinctly unpleasant”.
Now, if you’ve ever spent time with venture finance folk, you’ll know that describes the average phenotype anyway, so I’m not entirely surprised.
You won’t know unless told, but this lady is I believe the niece of Mitt Romney.
He hasn’t even called her.
According to a senior US politician I’m in touch with.
I’m gratified to learn that he BELIEVES me & wants to link up. It’s a first step.
So many countries are avoiding the AZ experimental biological. I wonder why? Some countries now telling their vaccinees to avoid long flights, if they have taken the blood clot inducing biological. What on earth is next?
Medical apartheid has already begun. Tough luck if you’re a disabled fan who can not get the non-vaccine even if you wanted it.
Isn’t this medical apartheid!
Yes, but he’s ‘the boss’.
Foo Fighters being the other bunch of cunts enabling this bollox. Kurt Cobain wouldn’t have put up with this shit, despite all the drugs he pumped himself with.
I am deeply disappointed by the Foos over this.
Also disappointed by their last album. Didn’t buy it.
Grohl might be one of the nicest guys in the rock business, but on this he’s a dumb*ss
He also wouldn’t have taken part in the dreadful but doubtless long forgotten ‘Eazy Sleazy’ token anti-lockdown dad-rawk collaboration with Mick le Jagger from two months back, featuring such nuggets as:
“Shooting the vaccine. Bill Gates is in my bloodstream. It’s mind control…”
Quite….
Expecting ‘Street Fighting’ from Jagger is risible..
What comes around will eventually go around.
Or even the other way around
Yet asymptomatic transmission has zero scientific support, and you’re told having the vaccine doesn’t prevent you from contracting, or if symptomatic, spreading the virus!
I think at least some of the vaccine fascism is about rewarding those who have been jabbed. If they see the unjabbed getting the same freedoms, they will wonder why they bothered and feel grumpy. As always, nothing to do with public health.
Zero scientific support?!
44,000 preprint, papers or citations currently.
There are many hundreds of papers if you bother looking.
Well they closed down the auto plant in Mahwah late last month
Ralph went out lookin’ for safe jabs, but he couldn’t find none
He came home too drunk from mixin’ Tanqueray and wine
Tried to go to a Bruce gig; now they call’m Johnny 99
Down in the part of town where when you hit a red light you don’t stop
Johnny’s wavin’ gig tickets around and threatenin’ to blow his top
When an off-duty cop snuck up on him from behind
Out in front of the Club Tip Top. they slapped the cuffs on Johnny 99
Well, the city supplied a public defender but the judge was Mean John Brown
He came into the courtroom and stared poor Johnny down
Well the evidence is clear gonna let the sentence son fit the crime
Prison for ninety eight and a year and we’ll call it even Johnny 99
A fist fight broke out in the courtroom; they had to drag Johnny’s girl away
His mama stood up and shouted, “Judge, don’t take my boy this way”
Well, son, you got any statement you’d like to make
Before the bailiff comes to forever take you away
Now, judge, judge, I take blood thinners every day
The vax is no good for me it could take my whole life away
Now I ain’t sayin’ that made me an innocent man
But it was more ‘n all this, Judge, that put Bruce tix in my hands
Well your honor I do believe I’d be better off dead
And if you can take a man’s life for the clots that’s in his head
Then won’t you sit back in that chair and think it over judge one more time?
And let ’em shave off my hair and put me on that execution line
Love it!
<Insert rapturous applause *HERE*>
Yeah!
Good, but to get a better sense of the range of our brethren, Bowie’s “I’m afraid of Americans” takes sone beating.
Well – I wasn’t going, anyway.
But bang goes a reputation in one easy move!
… a quick jump from hero to establishment zero.
He’s been a fake from day one.
Cringeworthy “get together” with Obama made me suspiscious. Another feature of the “pandemic”….finding out people who you thought might just be ok aren’t. Mr Springsteen joins some of my family, all of my neighbours, and pretty much most of the people I know.
James Corden on the other hand; well I always knew that fat bastard was a waste of space so no burst bubble there.
Yes, I am stunned to be siding with Russell Brand, who knew!
It’s not easy. All my U.K. family are on side & never doubted me.
My three overseas siblings, one with a law degree & another a PhD say I’m a conspiracy theorist.
One brother is a cable TV guy & insists he’s right, discounting to zero my 40 years life sciences training & practise.
Not even any inquisitiveness on why I’ve Taken the stance that I have.
I sent them all a two page summary & a dozen or so references.
Since then, crickets.
i don’t suppose you could let us have a copy of that summary and references?
Dr. Yeadon- Thank you so much for all you are doing to get the truth out! You are a true hero. I followed you on twitter and saved about 40 pages of your tweets and I still share them all over the internet.
Fuck You, Bruce!
I always liked the other Bruce better, have to find out what he thinks.
No Brucie bonus with AZ, not that I ever thought he was worth listening to, let alone watch
BBC
Estimates that 20,000 Scotland fans would travel south for the match have been been described as “very conservative” by a London Assembly member.
A dispersal order has been issued for central London, giving the police extra powers to break up groups of people where they believe their behaviour is causing a nuisance, harassment or distress.
Dear Cressida and your female hating TSG
Very best wishes with your dispersal order
You may find it gets shoved somewhere where the sun doesn’t shine very often, but all the best anyway
Signed
An inmate who is not gruntled
That’s ok Bruce. I’m good with not going.
Is this is anything price wise like the last Broadway run for the “man of the people” you will be a lot wealthier watching the same tired act on Netflix.
Disappointed that musicians of all people are happy with medical apartheid. And to think they were the anti “sun city” generation.
Not really newsworthy as it seems this will become the norm for the forseeable future.
Bruce can go fuck himself, sideways, but I did lol at the AZ ban. In the UK we’ve shitloads of that poison with its extended expiry date to get rid of. They are trying to offload it on anyone when really it needs pouring down the sink.
Think of the poor bloomin’ fish!! Or does this chime with TY chucking his face mask in the river? Cripes ‘The River’, we’re back in Bossland!
If these guys fancy rna are safer, they gottta Big shock comin’, man.
There seems to be a lot of people out there who have had 2 jabs and presumably a third to come this winter who are frightened of catching covid.
And I haven’t had any of them and am not in the least bit concerned. Odd that.
Fuck the boring old woke twat
Bruce is a cuck of epic proportions.
I wouldn’t want to be in an auditorium full of a bunch of sheep shedding spike proteins all over the place anyway.
So there are some upsides to getting the vax then.
Just another load of BS!
And if Bruce Springstein or indeed any other artist continues to perform with these divisive rules in place they are no better than if they were performing in Apartheid south Africa or supporting the Nazi party in discriminating aginst Jews. This is segregation and discrimination. Springstein should refuse to appear under such rules. If he does then we can judge what sort ofperson he is
The good old Beatles would not stand for segregated audiences.
Segregation, who would have thought it, or is it only vaccine coercion
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if there is something else and much simpler behind this, and if this was just the trial balloon or signal for it.
After all, we and the EU do not recognize the Chinese and Russian ‘vaccines’.
So why shouldn’t the Americans not accept the 3 American ones only?!
I would not be surprised at all now, if the AZ jabbed were treated like the unjabbed by and in the US once it reopened.
So much for the special relationship or a fabulous new trade deal.
The New York/New Jersey (note the Bruce/Broadway proximity) based US pharmafia is just calling the shots here (pun intended), and that, as usual, for a single, everything else overwhelming motive: $$$$s!
Because they can.
Yeah, I wouldn’t buy a probably highly overpriced ticket to this dried up, old windbag in the first place.
Totally love it! Anything that shows the faux-vaccines for what they are is ok with me! The fact that some aged wanker wants to be the vessel to do it, even better. Party on dude!
Above all, worse than the laws and regulations and nitwit politicians or scientists with sinister and coercive intent, above these are the scum which breathe life into this shit show by managing their little section of the world, like THIS.
makes me sick
Always thought he was over-rated and his music was crap anyway. Stick it up your rectum Brucey Boy.
Initially we were “all in it together”, clapping the carers, shopping for shielders etc. Then they brought in masks and suddenly there were “others” who went free-faced. Then they brought in the vax, and we split again, vax heroes and un-stabbed scum. Now, it has to be the “patriot vax” or nothing. See where this is going?
Facilis descensus Averno…
I think we can conclude that most celebrities are actually as thick as pig shit. No amount of virtue signalling will protect them from the side effects of the experimental gene therapy. Ah well.
What a cnut.
Contrast the attitude of this overrated entertainer to artist Eric Clapton, who eschews any kind of segregated audience.
Appalling behaviour from the artist.
Be more like Ian Brown & Van Morrison, both of whom will never play to segregated audiences. I respect them both immensely.
“At the direction of New York State, Springsteen on Broadway and the St James Theatre will only be accepting proof of FDA-approved Covid vaccines,” the website says.
It doesn’t say “at the direction of New York State and Bruce Springsteen”…
He was only following orders?
GMAFB.
This is “at the direction of New York State”. We don’t know if Bruce had any say in the matter.
Of course he has a say. “No” would be a good start.
I think it was Voltaire who said something like:
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities”.
Scarily accurate.
New York is in a mess. Ignore. And if Bruce had anything to do with this decision he will have lost many loyal fans including me.
Wheres the surprise?
AZ is not FDA approved. It’s unlikely to be FDA approved due to its extreme lack of efficacy vs other vaccines.
You can expect many other countries to not recognise AZ in the future for the simple fact that is really doesn’t work very well.
Jesus another casualty of adverse vaccination reactions (no I haven’t been taking any gene therapy treatments). I used to love Springsteen NO LONGER. He can go and stick his concerts, music and his vaccines where the sun don’t shine. KNOB.
Think I’ll take a rain check!