Richard Jenkyns, in his survey of the current jitters about the English language, uncovers one of the iron laws of modern life: the less you have to say about something the more obscure or evasive becomes the language in which you say it. The law certainly applies all too often to both academic and political life.?
Much nonsense is spoken about the crisis of democracy in Britain, but at the start of an election year it is worth asking why our political language seems so impoverished. It is in some respects the consequence of welcome developments: more probing, less deferential media and a convergence on the political centre. The former causes politicians to hide inner-party argument behind platitudes of unity, the latter demands a language of waffly consensus without losers or clashing interests.?
New Labour has added its own twist to this story. When Tony Blair became party leader in 1994, he helped to clean up British political discourse. By abandoning Clause IV, Labour's ancestral commitment to socialism, he removed a great weight of bad faith from the back of centre-left politics. Then came 1997. In the run-up to the election, Labour stressed the micro-moderation of its programme - summed up in the famous five pledges. But the landslide felt like a kind of generational shift. And what filled the gap between the sobriety of Labour's programme and the post-landslide expectation was an inflation of political language. Blair felt compelled to find a heroic narrative to describe the destiny of a New Britain that didn't exist.?
Notwithstanding David Blunkett's Shakespearean tragedy, New Labour remains a competent and progressive political enterprise. But its language can be awful. Politicians have a role providing us with stories about our lives and where our country is going. They can best do that by speaking as plainly and honestly as possible. There remain significant differences between the main political parties, but sometimes the grandiloquence of political language seems in inverse proportion to the smallness of the issues over which they argue. Blair recently gave a speech about minor reforms to the welfare state in which he spoke of "destiny" and "revolution." Michael Howard responded by saying, "People don't want a date with destiny, they want a date with the dentist." For once, he was right.
