Liberals, Power and Poetic Analogies

Friedrich Nietzsche used to say that he tried to express in one page what most people couldn't manage in an entire book. The obvious advantage to this style being that most people are far more likely to get to the end of your page than to the end of your book. Today it seems that a sentence is a more appropriate length for a complete reading, how else can we possibly explain the tremendous popularity of Twitter. Although in general i would add my voice to the 'If 135 characters is enough to express yourself, you shouldn't bother' brigade I'm making an exception today for a comment by Simon Titley, the editor of Liberator (aka 'Liberal Democrats' grassroots trouble-makers' - Michael Crick). He writes that the liberal democrats mood, reflecting on the coalition that they have found themselves in, 'resembles that of first-time clients in a high-class brothel; feeling gratified but somewhat soiled, and unsure who's been screwing whom'. No amount of characters can express the brilliance of this statement. As a pure statement of analogy for Liberal Democrat feeling it is fantastic enough, but better than that it speaks to something about power in a general sense (something that I'm sure Nietzsche, as the supreme theorist of power, would have certainly approved of).

The Liberals have found themselves experiencing the kind of  power thrill that they must surely have always discounted as a real possibility, even if they would have never admitted it. No explanation should be needed of why they should, must and do relish this chance. But for them, Lord Acton's party - who have always held more or less to his most famous remark, they have become their own mythical antagonist. A good liberal never acts, even for the good, until they know that their power to do so is exercised legitimately. Many would say however, and I would add my voice to them, that this can seem almost impossible in government. Socialists and conservatives can make their excuses- most commonly that the means can be justified by the ends in the former, and that ultimately government cannot rule much at all out in the latter. For liberals though this must surely generate what Titley describes as the 'soiled' feeling, what I would call guilt.

Perhaps though I'm being grandiose and over-philosophical, it wouldn't be the first time, and instead of all this talk of brothels and Nietzsche a simpler analogical explanation will do. Reshaping the the world according to our own vision is a thrill that anyone who has ever succeeded at some kind of DIY task will recognise. But the problem with putting up those shelves yourself is that you will always notice, more than anyone else, the corner that you accidentally chipped off with the claw hammer. Maybe in the end it's the disappointments in the results, perhaps an even more inevitable side effect of government, that will eat at Lib Dem consciences. This will probably relate to the Tory measures they have to put through, but it might be as much at their own bit of the coalition agreement- they will have higher hopes for it after all. I wish the coalition well, not least because they haven't yet raised my tuition fee's but these unavoidable strains must surely spell trouble.