Suzanne Moore
Wednesday 21 January 2015 15.30 EST
In his open letter to Chris Bryant, the posh crooner fails to realise that it is the privileged who are promoting envy of the powerless
‘This posh spat involved a posh crooner taking umbrage and lapsing into cliches about “the politics of envy”.’ Photograph: Franziska Krug/Getty Images
If I were James Blunt I would form a band named Posh Spat immediately. This waspart of a headline on the BBC website that I fell in love with on the spot. You know, just like he did in that sex-pest-on-the-subway song that made him famous. Actually, Blunt makes songs that many people like. Fine by me.
But he did a very unclassy thing with his open letter to Chris Bryant. Open letters are the drunk texts of the great, the good and, yes, the already privileged. That’s why they get read. They imply an access to attention that is taken for granted – if not huge awareness.
The great myth is that public school gives all its pupils unusual charm and confidence. Only one of these things is true. It is terribly ill-mannered, if you have been born into good fortune, surely, not to acknowledge it, be grateful for it and give other people a leg up. Really, how little effort that takes.
But this posh spat involved a posh crooner taking umbrage and lapsing into cliches about “the politics of envy”. Does being concerned about lack of opportunities and access for working-class kids equate to advocating ideas that are “envy-based”?
If you asked most people if they preferred a politics based around fairness to one of envy, what would they say? Envy, though, is used over and over again to dismiss even mild challenges to the ruling class, because it is so emotive. Irrational feelings are utilised politically but often sanctioned by a gleam of so-called logic. I would say it suits the elite to encourage a widespread culture of envy.
Envy, like outrage, is now part of our mood music. You can’t escape it. Women, especially, are often addressed as already in a constant state of envy – of the rich, of the famous, the thin, the young, the beautiful. Every day we are shown pictures – in Daily Mail speak – of some woman’s “enviable” assets. We are apparently to envy a Kardashian “derriere” as we would a yacht, although neither of these things loom large on my horizon. There are indeed so many enviable assets in the world that you could feel a failure, and end up not wanting to bother at all. Envy brings inertia, and then, when it can rouse itself, shame.
The celebrity class exists for us to act out all these ambivalent feelings. We want them, we want to be them, but we also increasingly get our kicks from gloating when it goes wrong for them. We glory in their unhappiness. We like to watch them abuse each other in boutique zoos or eating maggots. That’s entertainment.
When envy shades further into actual resentment, we can actually wish people harm because of what they have. The minute the 99% don’t accept that the 1% earned their place at the top of the hierarchy through sheer talent and ability alone, anarchy will ensue. So there are the endless justifications for inequality again, as though it were a personality trait rather than a political product.
The go-to villains here include Mitt Romney and his offensive nonsense about God being on the side of the 1%. Or Bono’s reinterpretation of De Tocqueville, who had noticed the American ability to keep envy at arm’s length. Bono said that when Americans look at a man who lives in a mansion on a hill they think: “If I work really hard I could live in that mansion. In Ireland, people look at the guy in the mansion on the hill, and go, one day, I’m going to get that bastard.” Some of us look at man and mansion and wonder about taxes, but never mind.
Obviously, it would be nicer for the megarich if we all simply worshipped them while punishing ourselves for our own inferiority. We spin round contradictory ideas: anyone can make it, any time, anywhere; the exceptions prove the rule. Yet given the slightest bit of class mobility, many seek to purchase the connections that will help their children “get on”. For a Labour MP to say that there are fewer and fewer exceptions to the rule is not exactly class war; it’s just stating what we know to be the case.
All of this is part of that other fairytale: meritocracy. If we were a meritocratic society, we would do away with private education tomorrow, because we would trust our children to be able to get on in the world. Instead, we have this very peculiar roleplay, where the rich and powerful present themselves as being victims of the class system. It’s not easy being posh.
More seriously, a culture of envy leads to entire political parties based on one emotion: resentment. Hatred travels downwards and sideways. What else is Ukip? It is not a project based on anything but envy, this nasty, depressing and insular emotion. Envy neutralises empathy, thus the cause of people’s problems is seen to be those with less, not more power and wealth than them. Envy privatises anger, so we feel individually bad. We should indeed transcend the politics of envy – but that would require a graciousness that even well-born pop stars are unable to muster.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/21/james-blunt-politics-of-envy-punching-down
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