New Labour’s policy on celebrity sheen - populism without popularity - was part-and-parcel of a well-documented world of spin, shady unelected advisers, myriad consultants and a pernicious hyper-real feeling that politics was all about being seen to do something, but not actually doing it. Whether we think that New Labour was a continuation of the Thatcher project, or, alternatively, that the Cameron-Clegg axis is a continuation of the New Labour project is perhaps less important than the fact that this unpopular populism is still guiding policy. Alongside the interminable restructuring of public services, particularly education and health, we have flashy, gimmicky one-liner celebrity interventions whose supposedly popular appeal is, at the end of the day, profoundly mysterious, if all pervasive.

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The recent announcement that Niall Ferguson has been invited to ‘revitalise the curriculum’ for history is very depressing but entirely in keeping with this tendency. Ferguson proposes to introduce a ‘world war two-based video game designed for use as a classroom aid’, but promises he’ll avoid Eurocentrism by claiming that he is also interested in ‘the stagnation of China, the underachievement of Mughal India, and why the Ottoman empire – despite its good mathematics and good-ish astronomy – ultimately failed. It just failed to be part of the scientific revolution.’ May I not-very-controversially suggest that avoiding Eurocentrism isn’t best served by misrepresenting the supposed ‘underachievements’ of other parts of the world. ...

Infinite Thought