Clarity Part 2: Authentic Hope is not Restaurant Hope
This is the third piece in a writing exercise I’m undertaking at the start of 2024 to figure out what I see as the work that needs doing in the world, and the work I need to do. Check out the Introduction for a little more framing, and Clarity Part 1 for the first step in the logic. If any of it sparks something in you, post a comment or email me, I’d love your thoughts.
I’ve long resonated with Rebecca Solnit’s articulation of hope. But one person in particular has challenged me deeply on this, pushing me to identify authentic hope much more distinctly, and becoming a friend in the process.
Ece Temelkuran, the Turkish writer and political thinker, came to the world’s attention as a result of her 2019 book, How To Lose A Country: The Seven Steps From Democracy To Dictatorship, which tells the story of the rise of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, and shows how his playbook was reflected in Trump and Brexit and so much else. It is an intensely powerful diagnosis of the path to authoritarian chaos we were and are all on, not just Turkey; Temelkuran’s essential insight is that we are simply at different stages in the process. She was moved to write a follow up, Together, in order to respond to the question she was asked at every event she was invited to: “Where, then, is hope?” The book opens with her growing anger and irritation at the question:
I fantasised about handing the next person who dared ask me the question a menu for Restaurant Hope. I pictured a quaint brasserie serving a main course of Back To Our Senses Stew. Diners would be offered a bowl of Democracy served in a rich sauce of Sensible, Grown Up Politicians, with all the Global Turmoil evaporated off.
What she is saying here is that the reimagination of our societies is not going to happen for us, without us. We will not be able to sit comfortably and be served with the solutions to the crises of inequality, isolation, and ecological catastrophe that are the lot of our generation. This is vital: the result of the Polish election does not mean that Back To Our Senses Stew is the dish of the day, any more than the presidency of Javier Milei represents a wholesale embrace of the arguments of the far right. I worry very deeply that this is something too many good, decent politicians from both sides of the political spectrum — Tusk in Poland, Anthony Albanese in Australia and Keir Starmer in the UK, to name but a few — have not yet grasped.
Canute politics
Albanese’s election came about in a very similar manner to Tusk’s, in May 2022, as Australians voted to reject the combination of increasingly hard right leanings and basic indecency of the “Liberal” Party under Scott Morrison (rather than for Albanese’s Labour). His project since has been to recommit to the existing political systems and structures, but do them better. As one supportive journalist recently put it, “Albanese wanted to disrupt algorithmic-fuelled anxiety and aggression — the cultural bequest of globalised social platforms, propagandising cable news conglomerates and rolling live coverage — by putting his head down and getting on with things. The values he wanted to project were empathy and order, and he sought to do this institutionally, by leveraging the ramparts of democracy.”
Starmer looks likely to be the next beneficiary of a similar electoral dynamic, and there are strong signs in his rhetoric of the same flavour of project. In his first speech of this election year, setting out his version of “Project Hope,” he said “I promise this: a politics which treads a little lighter on all our lives. That’s the thing about populism or nationalism, it needs your full attention, needs you constantly focusing on this week’s common enemy. And that’s exhausting.”
What Sensible, Grown Up Politicians. The only problem is they have not the slightest chance of being able to deliver.
Albanese has already experienced the reality of this: in October 2023, the day before the Polish election, the referendum on creating a “Voice To Parliament” for Australia’s Indigenous peoples was lost in a storm of right-wing fear-mongering. With it went his government’s approval ratings. And if those ratings stay where they are, what happens at the next election? Another nation will be at the stage of Temelkuran’s process where Argentinians found themselves: with a choice between a living embodiment of a system people clearly see is broken, stuck insisting he can still make it work, and, should they (understandably) wish to reject that… the far right.
The referendum on the Voice could have been almost anything — and could well be followed by something else before Albanese’s term is up. A new pandemic, which is arguably what did for Jacinda Ardern’s franchise of Restaurant Hope in New Zealand. An even more significant war than those already in progress. A major climate catastrophe.
In reality, it is more than likely that at least one such event will occur. In these times of ecological and geopolitical crisis, the only real certainty is uncertainty: situations will come about that sensible managerialism cannot counter. The idea that Albanese would be able calmly to guide the ship of state on behalf of the little people of Australia was always for the birds. The chances of Starmer having a quiet few years at the helm to tidy everything up for us here in the UK are equally vanishing. Even if it were genuinely desirable, we simply don’t live in a time where politics can or will recede into the background, nor will the far right allow it to.
We are a generation faced with serious challenges and huge decisions. Pretending that these challenges and decisions can be dealt with for us with better management is to be Canute, calling the tide to turn simply because we want it to; and Canute is Canute, whether born king or elected prime minister.
This is not (just) on the politicians
I want to be explicit on one important point: I do not see politicians as the problem, and I believe it is dangerous to lump them all together and dismiss them as such (as in, for example, the framing of this New York Times piece). They have a vital role, and change is needed. But this is also on all of us, or more accurately, in all of us.
One of the projects I have been working on over the last year has been with the Apolitical Foundation, an organisation with a mission to “update political leadership for the 21st century,” and a deep commitment both to helping existing politicians do their jobs better, and to getting new and different people into elected office. I have been working with them to interview politicians from across the world and across the political spectrum to understand the barriers and opportunities for greater adoption of democratic innovation (from citizens’ assemblies to participatory budgeting to legislative theatre, and much more). The first output of that work launches soon, and I’m sure will come up again later as I follow the logic of this writing. But one anecdote, told to me by a politician who had been on a state visit to Obama’s White House, has stuck firmly in my mind.
Before our meeting, it was lunch time, and he walked out with a lunchbox, and he was like, “I’m just gonna eat this lunch quickly and I’ll see you guys in a minute.” And I thought, in my head, I probably saw that Obama eats lunch at a set-up table with three forks and knives on the side and there’s a butler. Okay, but no, he’s grabbing a moment in a corner with his little lunchbox. He’s just a human too. We’re all just humans.
The first point here is that all politicians are mere mortals, just like the rest of us (and as per the title of Apolitical Foundation’s previous output on politician’s wellbeing). The second, and more important, is that we all risk carrying in our heads the story that they are not. Even politicians carry that story about other more famous politicians. What is at fault here is not the politicians, but our whole idea of what politics is. Something to be done for us, without us, so we can get on with our lives. Something done by another group of creatures, who live on an entirely other plain. Something that is their responsibility to get right. There is a couplet in the musical Hamilton which perfectly encapsulates the situation:
We want our leaders to save the day
But we don’t get a say in what they trade away
It’s the story, stupid
I think my pursuit of clarity is getting towards its goal. We risk descent into authoritarianism, not because that is what people want, but because something has to change. When we reject authoritarianism, the purveyors of Restaurant Hope celebrate our renewed custom, but cannot possibly provide a satisfying meal. So the cycle continues, and deepens.
But perhaps the work of breaking the cycle is as much on us as it is on the politicians. We co-create and co-perpetuate the political culture of Restaurant Hope with them on an ongoing basis, unconsciously complicit in a system and a story that tells us that the right thing for us to do is wait for someone to hand us the menu, then choose the option that best takes our fancy.
In the pursuit of authentic hope, our destination is not Restaurant Hope. But what we need is not so much a different destination, as a different way of seeing the world. It’s time to look at all this through the lens of story.
