Dear {{first_name | Friend}},
Once upon a time, Nostalgia was a branch of Politics. Now Politics is a branch of Nostalgia.
And I blame Hal Riney.
If you haven’t heard of this political giant, you may have heard from him, and his voice may be familiar. It was Mr Riney, an ad industry legend, who gave his Marlboro Man vowels to the single greatest minute of political communication in modern history. This came to be known as Ronald Reagan’s unbeatable “Morning in America” ad of 1984.
If you haven’t watched it, please do. It really is as good as democratic story-telling gets. Going for his second term, Reagan, whose own voice might have been the most mellifluous of any President whose voice we have on tape, wanted to tell Americans they had turned the page on the gloomy 1970s: that his first term had raised their eyes and their hopes and their wages, and that after the stagnation and scandal of the 1970s, this happy decade was only going to get better and better. It is darkest before dawn; and in America, argued Reagan, it is dawn.
Watching that minute of history, it’s impossible not to be seduced. The ad is faultless, and wins over the punter in every possible way. The metaphor of the morning is immediate, simple, and relatable to everyone. Who wouldn’t want to live in that advert, full of smiling middle-class Americans, with their blemish-free skin, handsome apparel, and strong torsos? Not a drop of rain in sight; the Stars and Stripes flutter in a gentle breeze, and family life seems to consist of co-operation across low garden fences, rather than, just to take a random example, interminable bickering over whether an Oreo is a snack or a treat. Forty seconds in, a lovely key change conveys a sense of progress.
We are constantly told, in the age of algorithms that I have charged headlong into, that we need to grab people in the first 3 seconds; that we must have a “killer hook”. The first 3 seconds of this ad are perfect: a couple of gentle notes, and then Mr Riney’s magnificent, rasping voice.
(By the way, vocal charisma - which is different from accent - might be the most neglected aspect of political talent. It’s not very PC to say this; but one reason, among many, that Sir Keir Starmer, who is a hugely able, clever, and good man, may no longer be Prime Minister concerns his vocal charisma, or lack thereof. I shall return to this subject in future.)
Except, listen again to those first 3 seconds. Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” speech was “iconic”, every AI assistant is telling me. Except Mr Riney doesn’t say, “It’s Morning in America.” He says, “It’s Morning again in America” (my emphasis).
“Again” turns out to be the most important word in this, the best advert in modern politics. The MAGA movement is many things, in fact millions of things, because it is millions of people. Perhaps above all, it is the means by which Donald Trump deployed nostalgia to become the most powerful man in the world, and to do it more than once. The “again” does so much work; those two syllables evoke a mysterious, ill-defined, but sepia-tinged inheritance; an all-our-yesterdays heritage that everyone can make some claim on. I think Reagan’s influence on Trump has been somewhat under-appreciated. In Trump’s re-inauguration speech, the first held indoors since Reagan’s second inauguration, Trump told a soothing, compelling story about American greatness. And, like The Great Communicator, he hailed a new Golden Age in his nation. America had been great once; it would be great, again.
And where have you seen “Again” recently? Ah yes, “Hope Again.” This was the slogan of the recent Labour Party conference. The Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, dared Britain to dream again. But the weight of his words, as quite often, was not in the vision of a sunny tomorrow, but rather the oft-repeated mantra that this country has been on the wrong track for the past 40 years. Burnham is strongly of the view that the Thatcher years - the 1980s, broadly - enabled the deracination of many communities, such as the one he was brought up in. Ergo, the time before - that is, the 1970s - was better. The Prime Minister was born right at the start of that decade, on January 7th 1970, so would know better than me. But the history books tell me that maybe the 1970s, what with the terrible inflation, oil crises, IMF bailouts, political turmoil and stagflation, culminating in the Winter of Discontent, weren’t all that - but hey I wasn’t there.
This week, Kemi Badenoch said “Nostalgia is not a plan for our politics”. And her conference speech, like many of her interviews, did focus on the big challenges of today and the hard yards necessary for the years ahead. But shortly before the conference, she published a pamphlet, with the title The Right Way. This was an explicit evocation of Mrs Thatcher’s 1976 pamphlet, The Right Approach. What she was trying to do, in inviting the comparison with Mrs Thatcher, was evoke the 1980s, a decade the Tory faithful look back on with glee and gratitude (many of them having bought houses in it).
Interestingly, just as Mr Burnham was born right at the start of the 1970s, so Ms Badenoch was born right at the start of the 1980s - 2nd January 1980. She was a child of the Thatcher years, albeit she spent some of them in Nigeria.
The profound irony here is that Mrs Thatcher was herself a creature of nostalgia. Though the free-market globalisation she unleashed was antithetical to the settled ways of life she cherished, I have long been persuaded of the view that she was, to a large degree, trying to re-create 1950s England. The profound irony here of course - what made the Iron Lady the Irony Lady - is that the post-war era she venerated was itself an artefact of Labour collectivism, as John Gray puts it.
Nigel Farage’s greatest heroes in politics are Enoch Powell and Mrs Thatcher, and you simply cannot understand his world-view without recognising the supreme element of nostalgia. “I just want my country back”, he will often say. Mr Farage is a Second World War buff, who used to do walking tours of the fields where famous battles in that war were fought. Nostalgia is central to his politics. It was often said of Paul Dacre, when he was Editor of the Daily Mail, that he wanted to re-create 1950s Britain. Well, Mrs Thatcher did too, and Mr Farage wouldn’t mind my saying he reckons that Britain had a bit more going for it then than now. The slogan “Take Back Control”, which Dominic Cummings conjured and Mr Farage deployed to devastating effect, combines the lure of nostalgia with the promise of the very thing most voters lack, and say they yearn for: Agency.
Naturally, you can’t understand the Green Party, or Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party, without seeing them as a direct result of the decade we’ve missed out: the 1960s. British socialism - the tradition that unites Corbyn and the Greens - owes a huge debt to the youthful, flower power spirit of the 1960s generally, and the anti-imperialist, street protest spirit of 1968 specifically.
We have reached the stage in our island story when politics is reduced to a game I call Decade Bingo. Choose your favourite decade, and let’s all head there! And I must say, I’m up for it. My decade of choice, perhaps unsurprisingly, is the 1990s. And why not? Nostalgia for the 1990s is a surging tide in our culture today. There’s an exhibition about 90s Fashion and Style at Tate Britain. There’s another documentary out next week about Oasis, who recently reformed in order to monetise that nostalgia. It’s called Don’t Look Back in Anger - a nod to nostalgia. On streaming platforms, you can’t move for documentaries about 90s boy bands, or 90s celebs. Online recently there was a huge trend asking parents what they were like in the 1990s. And the truth is the 1990s were… great. Low inflation, 3% growth, Cool Britannia, Euro ‘96, Brimful of Asha, Del Boy and Rodney in their pomp, Mandela’s release from prison, and Kit Kat Chunkys. Incredible.
It's become common to say all this nostalgia is awful, and gloomy. In a wonderful column a decade ago, reflecting on Trump’s MAGA-ness, the great Daniel Finkelstein argued that nostalgia is a con trick, and twice over. First, because the past was never as lovely and kind as people like to think. And second, because the past is, well, past. It’s not coming back, and to pretend you can turn back the clock is just a lie.
Up to a point, Lord Finkelstein. The second point is stronger than the first. Yes, the past is past, and isn’t coming back; but in many ways, several generations now know, and another generation are now led to believe, that it really was better.
And in important ways they are right.
Nostalgia tickles the child in all of us. Who could watch the Hovis advert of 1973, with the timeless track from Dvorak, and not want just for one day to be that boy walking up that hill, then cycling down it to meet with his reward? (Fun fact: the ad was directed by Ridley Scott).
Getting old really sucks, and nostalgia is a natural reaction. But I think there is another explanation, which is that the nostalgia that dominates politics today is in direct proportion to the anxiety we feel about the future. The more terrifying and unstable tomorrow seems, the more we yearn for the reliable habits and solidity of yesteryear.
The prevalence of nostalgia also flows from the speeding up of history. I’ve written elsewhere about how we’re living in an Age of Jerks: an era moving so fast that talk of The Great Acceleration just won’t cut it. This astonishing rate of change is not the natural course of human affairs. The more things speed up, the more we want them to slow down. Change has been so dramatic, so abrupt, over the past two decades that we can’t quite make sense of it. And yet, at the same time, we do get that, on various observable metrics, the past actually was just better.
Naturally, this is the perspective of a London-dweller in what is still, for most people across the world, the best time ever to be alive. But not if you’re a kid growing up in poverty in modern Britain. In the second half of the 20th century, in America and Britain, for all the poverty, inequality and injustice, if you were an averagely clever person from an average family, with an average education, you could have an average quality of life. And back then, average was quite good. Today, average is over.
One of the great battles of our age is Technology vs Democracy. The danger is that Democracy looks ever more like the past, while Technology looks ever more like the Future. If you scan Elon Musk’s X feed, in amongst the sharing of hard-right memes, there are plenty of computer-generated images of something like the future he intends to create. You can make up your mind whether it’s utopia or dystopia. The point is, it’s the future, and he and his fellow tech bros are, by force of will and a lot of money, making it real. Meanwhile, the “hopey-changey thing”, as Sarah Palin put it, is the great vacancy and gap in modern democracy.
It’s all well and good saying Nostalgia is not a plan for our future. But in the absence of a persuasive plan, it seems to be the best we’ve got. Millions of people, maybe more, across the world are yearning for a story they can buy into about how tomorrow will be better than today. Until a politician comes along who can sell that future, voters will back the politicians who re-write the past.
How Good Was Burnham’s Speech?
Excitable chatter in recent weeks suggested that Andy Burnham’s conference speech was the best by a British politician, or Prime Minister, for a very long time. I’m not so sure. It was strong on emotion, and the section on Mr Burnham’s late father Roy was very affecting. There was also political skill in the offer to Liberal Democrats: electoral reform, rejoining the EU and social care are Ed Davey’s top priorities. But the real political skill, and courage, would have involved reaching out across the aisle, rather than to his Left-ish base. The absence of a clear strategy on growth, debt, and welfare was a bit weird. And there wasn’t a phrase or quote that will live down the ages. Mr Burnham is a man of huge gifts, and very good at communication. He is also, by the way, a very nice guy, and that should count for a lot. But it’s not yet clear how he’s going to fundamentally get Britain out of its decades-long rut.
Allow Me to Introduce… our First Guest on ARC!
Our first long-form interview goes live next Thursday. I actually can’t quite contain myself. It is with an icon. He is one of the most remarkable men I’ve ever met, with deep lessons on how to win the future from a very particular, very special, and - on all measures - very successful life. Though in his early career, what seemed to define him in public life was a very famous failure. Can you guess yet?
As promised, you will be the first to know. I’ll send a special, short email out on Wednesday morning alerting you to his identity. The episode proper drops on Thursday morning.
If you haven’t subscribed to The Amol Rajan Connection on YouTube, now is the time to do it. From next Thursday, you can subscribe on all podcast platforms too.
Your Questions Please for… Jacob Dunne
Owing to the very particular circumstances of our first few recordings, and the top secret guests, we’ve solicited questions from friends of The Amol Rajan Connection for our guests.
You might recall that each Thursday, we’ll have the long ‘Hero’ episode with our brilliant guests. And then on Monday, we’ll have the Questions episode (we’re dubbing it QUARC: Questions + ARC, geddit?) where I put your questions to our interviewees.
Sometimes, depending on their diaries and our recording schedule, I’ll ask for questions for more than one guest. This week, I just want your questions, please for Jacob Dunne.
Jacob is quite simply the most remarkable man I’ve ever met. The last conversation we had was life-changing for me, him, and others. I hope this one is going to be even more special. He grew up in poverty in Nottingham and had very tough beginnings indeed. When he was 18, he threw a single punch that killed James Hodgkinson, and went to prison for manslaughter. There, he struck up a correspondence with Hodgkinson’s mother which changed his life. After prison, he turned his life around, nursed his dying mother, looked after his brother, met Hodgkinson’s parents, and set up an amazing charity called Common Ground, which campaigns for restorative justice. He is now an adviser to the government.
James Graham’s extraordinary, sell-out play Punch is based on Jacob’s life.
Please send your questions to [email protected] - and if you can attach a voice memo or short video, even better. One minute max. Please. Thank you! This is your chance to really connect with the remarkable, dynamic, super-smart guests we invite in.
The ARC of Recommends
A weekly selection of life-enhancing delights, curated by your humble correspondent, in response to popular demand. I think you will enjoy them.
Visit:
Battersea Power Station. Do you know, despite being the proudest Londoner I know, I am embarrassed to say that I hadn’t been to the newly invigorated Battersea Power Station. In fact, I’m a bit ashamed of myself, to be frank. I was there this week for a private dinner with some business leaders and political types, but just walking round the outside was like being on holiday in a sunny country. The bars were heaving. And inside, the new Apple Music Hall is a remarkable addition to the life of the capital. It takes the very idea of sound to another level, promising an intimacy with performers that is hard to replicate anywhere in the world. Music in the capital just reached another level.
Read:
Camilla Cavendish on why people across the world are having fewer children. I used to get teased by colleagues on the Today Programme for always banging on about demography, the secret engine of global history. I did a whole series of Rethink for Radio 4 on it. Camilla’s thinking is fresh and fascinating. She reckons social contagion - the way we ‘catch’ behaviours from social groups, because as social animals we’re so deeply connected - explains it.
Watch:
Bill Ackman on the coming crash - or re-set, as he calls it. Ackman is the legendary founder of Pershing Square, a combative and very rich investor and hedge fund boss who is always engaging. I’ve watched perhaps a hundred hours of his various interviews. In this one, he outlines his thinking, which happens to be very close to mine, on the coming financial storm. In short, we’re already in a debt emergency.
Listen:
Table Manners with Stephen Graham. Ok ok I’m biased. Jessie Ware is a proper mate of mine and, like everyone I know, I’m in love with her extraordinary mum Lennie. I also have an extremely high regard for Stephen Graham, having shared a stage with him in Westminster recently to talk about fathers and sons. And before that, I spoke to him and Erin Doherty, his co-star, about Adolescence. He’s an amazing guy, and this is an old-fashioned lovely listen, with three human gems at the height of their conversational powers.
Have a great weekend.
Yours ARCfully,
AMOL
