There is a lot of fluff flying about Russell Brand's 'sensational' interview wit

h Paxman and his appointment to the guest editorship of the New Statesman. I tho
ught I would try and make sense of the actual substance of Brand's claims about
the current political system and how best to change it.
Firstly, I do not think that Brand is necessarily unqualified to edit
New Statesman nor do I think him a 'very trivial man' - a very silly
s, given Sachsgate and ill-advised behaviour in the past, but a funny
heless whose wordy ways denote a man who has devoured vast quantities
ure.

the august
man perhap
chap nonet
of literat

But there's the rub. Big words are fine, especially if you know what they mean,
but they do no more than put the finishing touches on a well-built argument, or
disguise a shoddily constructed one. They are very much the ornaments that can e
asily lead to rhetorical ben trovato (there's a nice phrase for you to look up).
Seriously though, I think that Brand made some good points in his flamboyant gal
limaufry of an article, which I was more drawn to because I thought his performa
nce on Newsnight was, well, a performance. He is an actor, after all. Between hi
mself and Paxo, he comes off better in the beard department, but barba non facit
philosophum. So I read his New Statesman call-to-arms because I knew that Paxo
wouldn't have been over his shoulder glaring and questioning every letter he typ
ed. Firstly, he is completely right that politics is too frequently the playing
ground of a narrow elite*, and what's more an elite with vested interests. The a
mount of politicians who lobby on behalf of corporate interests is staggering, a
nd regular exposs of these machinations turn up in the current affairs magazine P
rivate Eye every fortnight without fail. To name a recent example, 'An Evening w
ith Boris Johnson' was an event event at the latest Tory Party Conference. One o
f its sponsors was Indigo Affairs (truly a blue night with Boris, eh ladies?) In
digo Affair's speciality is to help the supermarket chains win planning permissi
on from government, and they were caught out earlier this year by Telegraph jour
nalists for revealing that they know the ' tricks of the trade to get doors to open
for developers that will otherwise not get opened .' (More on this story here: http
://tinyurl.com/cy7uxyk) Rather flagrant, and definitely awful.
A more socialist, egalitarian system based on redistribution is certainly a favo
urable idea for anyone left-leaning - Brand speaks of continuing the 'great lega
cy of the Left', and so his political alignment is unambiguous. I actually think
the bigger question is how much to redistribute without discouraging effort and
reducing incomes to no more than a pocket-money sized allowance. Levying a tax
on something and then using that revenue to pay for a benefit everyone receives
(say, greener energy, because presumably everyone benefits from lower CO2 emissi
ons since they contribute to the greenhouse effect) is relatively uncontroversia
l and we have been practicing redistribution in the UK for decades. The trouble
in the UK is that the Tories generally minimise or even repeal a lot of these me
asures. In the USA, whose political malaise Brand briefly mentions in his Paxman
interview, it is looked upon as a downright sinister idea by right-wingers, des
pite evidence that it does address inequality. (See here for a small example: ht
tp://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/obama-and-redistribution/)
Amidst the stream of vignettes Brand makes other pressing observations, such as
his pithy definition of an immigrant as being 'just someone who used to be somew
here else'. But his 'solutions' lack rigour. The necessity of a government that
preserves order and allows civil society to flourish is evident to me, but Brand
is equivocal on that. He certainly wants a revolution, but most revolutions ins
tall new governments. The reasons are apparent: The purpose of many revolutions
is to install better government (however disputable that may be). The tacit prem
ise is if you don't have a government, you get anarchy. What good are individual
rights if you don't have a system that protects those rights and deals with any
threats to them? That's why anarchy is predominantly a state when the most male

volent aspects of humanity are exercised; so there has to be some order. Let's c
all it a government for the time being (I'm sure Brand has a fancier and less co
nnotation-laden word for it). How is a government best formed that represents th
e wishes of the people. You guessed it - it's by a popular vote. I realise that
despondency with the present political system as we have it might lead one to co
nsider more radical solutions, but these usually mean the use of force against o
thers to implement them. This is not the 'primarily spiritual' solution that Bra
nd opines; rather it's primarily brutal. It's why revolutionary forces usually h
ire require a 'vanguard' of thugs to coerce or even execute opposition to the mi
ghty wave of revolution (check the historical records for verification of this).
Revolution itself is essentially questionable as a means of change, since prope
rly defined revolution is 'the movement of an object in motion that described a
closed curve, and thus always returned to the point from where it started'.
So instead of force, we have civil society and a vote. We have voted for parties
in the past that put acts on the statute books to grant universal suffrage, int
roduce the NHS, sanction collective bargaining and trade union relations, decrim
inalise homosexuality, formalize the unlawful nature of discrimination on race,
gender, ethnicity etc and abolish the death penalty. We can also protest. And th
at rebellious act can take many forms: It can mean marching on the streets with
local protest movements or petitioning members of the public. All the above acts
have resulted from a combination of approaches - persistent, large political mo
vements comprised of normal people lobbying elected officials (and some ones who
aren't, but that's another post) to change the political landscape for the bett
er.
So it follows, you should protest as much as possible if you're unhappy with thi
ngs as you see it, and if you think that these protests mean nothing in the pres
ent day, then think what clicking a few buttons on an email from 38 Degrees can
achieve. Yes, this organization has successfully lobbied government to rethink i
ts stance on things such as selling off our national forests, building toxic was
te dumps in the Lake District, and Murdoch's attempt coup of BSkyB. The front-ru
nners of this group wouldn't have been able to do it if people didn't sign up in
their thousands to undersign the pressure group's earnest pleas for political s
anity, and I have no doubt that they will achieve much more in their time. This
is the sort of ground-level action that everyone can do who is miffed with the c
urrent set-up. It only serves to illustrate that so much more can be done, and t
hat being all smug about your 38degrees subscription is simply inadequate if you
actually give a hoot about the political system.
There is no reason for apathy in respect of voting or social change (on the flip
-side there is always a reason lurking behind any indifference) and Brand's spra
wling anecdote-ridden piece gives the lie to his disenchantment. He could have s
topped his piece 3,000 words sooner if he was absolutely apathetic, but he is re
latively apathetic to the current 'democratic' system - and for the reasons I've
just outlined above, I think he's completely wrong to be (and a fellow comedian
, Eddie Izzard, would seem to think so too, having professed an ambition to 'hol
d high office'). His confused, contradictory article which seeks to legitimize b
oth apathy and fanaticism, simultaneously despairs over and exalts mankind, is i
ndicative of a mind that hasn't thought the problems through thoroughly enough.
But he may have done us a service by acting as a verbal catalyst (and given his
love of language, that is a role he might enjoy) for more meaningful action. In
this regard, he can justly be thought of as an alarm clock that reliably awakens
one from a complacent slumber.
* Though we should remember that eminent political campaigners such as Bertrand
Russell, Michael Foot, Hugh Gaitskell and Tony Benn were all Oxbridge educated.