Watching the watchmen: Elites in 2014
As we beleagueredly stumble from the wreckage of 2014, Matt Tidby speculates on the future of our relationship with Elites.
Elites have been big this year, and not in the way they’d like. Elites don’t like being part of the buzzword-y zeitgeist — not only does it put them in the suspicious company of ‘bae’, it messes with the schedule for their clandestine putsch to put Philip Schofield on the throne of our first Martian colony.
But 2014, and indeed the last few years, has been dominated by new information and new suspicion, focusing the glare on the people and institutions behind the frosted glass of our public life. As a new year blearily shakes us from hibernation, what happens next?
With pinstripe predictability, it’s time to install a government update — to spend half a year watching the reboot forming and failing before being bitterly disappointed at the lack of any noticeable change. The barnstormin’ discontent of 2011 has passed into social media folk memory, lost in the morning mists of a barren political Dartmoor, over which Nigel Farage and Russell Brand loom on precarious tors of bullshit, chanting hashtaggable dogma and disagreeing about the comparative sartorial value of open necked shirts versus Bayeux tapestry ties.
The fears for #GE2015 (yes, that’s how it works now) are painfully obvious — the throbbing temple vein of UKIP purple could burst and splurge over Middle England, Ed Miliband could eat more difficult sandwiches, the Tories could win. Or perhaps worst of all, with the apparent death of the majority, another hung parliament could preserve the uneasy blue cheese curd of Tory-Lib Dem coalition. At least the press conference would be different this time — there are no rose gardens on Dartmoor*.
Is there a way to escape this entropic vortex of Burton suits and #bbcqt? UKIP’s Carry On dystopia is obviously ghastly, whilst the bearded Hackney apostle refuses to be drawn on the route map of his revolution. In 2015, let’s forget about them. Are more referenda, with 16 year olds voting, a key to public engagement? The Scottish Referendum was certainly successful in this regard, but opened up many more questions about localised powers and voter apathy south of the border — more exciting chances for Westminster to get it wrong.
Radical thought is antithetical to SW1, but that is what we need — we’re getting to the stage where a higher proportion of the nation’s 16–34 year olds are aware of the correct way of typing Ke$ha than the name of the Health Secretary. I’m not saying that Jeremy Hunt needs to do a track with Pitbull to resurrect public interest in politics, but it would probably help.
And it’s not just the political elite that are merrily crazy paving their own path to destruction. The people behind our public amusements too have shown themselves to be undeserving of public trust. Even those once anointed crucibles of masculine identity, those Theaters of Dreams full of Captain Marvels and Special Ones, have been undermined by an endless parade of grotesque, remorseless millionaires.
Zooming out from Westminster on our dickhead Maps, the nation’s most popular distraction Panto, ‘The Football’ continues to crash and burn. Who knew that a multi-billion pound industry based on competitive masculinity and localised identity would lend itself so readily to corruption? Football has long shone proudly on the lapel of our national identity — it’s a shame that it has become such a screamingly soulless shit show.
The hope is fading and the villains many. Rejected Thunderbirds villain Sepp Blatter, so merrily skewered by John Oliver earlier in the year, continues to do his underwhelming Smaug impression, atop all that Russian and Qatari gold beneath Prick Mountain. The vile shadow of rapist Ched Evans has loomed at the door and the boorish ‘bantering’ bonhomie of Malky Mackay and Dave Whelan has shattered the illusion that it’s just the players who can be repellent scumbags. Trying to retain a casual interest and enjoyment of my childhood sport has been like drinking petrol from a Toy Story sippy cup.
As far as I can see, there is only one recourse: the current model for the sport needs to die. Let’s sell off the assets and invest that money in the communities that have funded these extravagant cathedrals of profit for too long. The FA and FIFA must change. The strength of football should be in humour, friendly localism and earnest competition — not in global scale, broadcasting rights, rocketing share values or corporate power.
Let’s ply Stewart Downing with a saucer of warm milk and release him into a pile of autumnal leaves; let’s cast Neil Warnock in the next season of New Tricks, and finally permit Joey Barton to take up his oft-ignored urge to study the Classics and destroy the patriarchy. Everyone would be happier.
But for now, the games keep kicking and the elections keep failing. Our national dislike for elites, for the immovable establishment, has long been subsumed into our public consciousness and subdued with Simon Cowell and vacuous Tabloid faux-fury, with beer and red meat.
But these days even Middle England is getting pumped up for action on their Actimel yoghurt and Times paywall fury — the information age is slowly pulling the dust sheets off the grotesque basement waxworks of the powers we assumed knew how to lead.
2015 may well be the year we choose the direction of our reaction — into anger or apathy, to chase choice and change, the Farage blame game or the Brand end game.
I’ve got everything crossed, 2015 — I hope we make good, collective decisions, or just less studio-based sitcoms. One or the other.
*there probably are, like, in the actual place.
Originally published at abstractmag.com on December 31, 2014.
