The Bully State: another view

Wednesday March 3, 2010

Suzy Dean welcomes The Bully State (“an uncompromising stance on liberty of lifestyle and a rich resource of examples on how government regulation has crept into our private lives”) but wonders whether Brian Monteith’s book is a missed opportunity.

The Bully State is published by The Free Society, price £5.99

Few would dispute that government regulation has come to seep into almost every corner of our once-private lives. Brian Monteith’s The Bully State: The End of Tolerance (published by The Free Society) is rich with examples of how our homes, cars and pubs have become the target for government regulation.

While his development of the concept of denormalisation is useful and identifies ‘whats new’ about regulation today, his analysis of the how and why lifestyle regulation has come to be so widespread leaves more to be desired, as does his recommended antedote to over-zealous regulation.

Monteith challenges the extent to which our day to day activities such as what we drink and eat have become a matter for politicians; he makes the point that people should be left alone to live the way that they want to. Monteith argues that what has replaced the nanny state of past is a bigger, tougher state which opts for coercion over convincing the electorate and seems to know no limits when it comes to meddling in our business.

Corrosive

The personal policing that these paternal interventions demand have had a corrosive effect on individual responsibility according to Monteith, despite being dressed up as being ‘for our own good’. Monteith argues they often undermine our ability to make judgements despite the fact that left to our own devices most adults tend to make the same decisions that become forced upon us (iii).

Monteith’s real contribution to the discussion around the changing role of government and fixation with personal behaviour is in his explanation of what he calls ‘denormalisation’. Starting from the point that laws being passed leave little room for common sense and cultural practices Monteith goes on to explain how legislation has come to denormalise activities by limiting where and when they can take place.

For example, the banning of smoking in the pub, then outside offices and now in open spaces. The concept of denormalisation is on the money; it captures the ‘nudge nudge’ thinking (as popularised by Thaler and Sunstein) which underpins the government’s desire to move people in the ‘right direction’ and to ‘encorage’ individuals towards the ‘right’ behaviours without an outright ban while shifting social perceptions of what is normal behaviour is.

Disappointment

The Bully State’s biggest disappointment is that it does not really explain why there has been a ‘creep of lifestyle control’. In his introduction Monteith asks why politicians are such liberty takers but never really answers this question. Although in one breath Monteith makes the point that ‘it is politicians of all parties who are to blame’ he more often links the development of increased government interference and policing of private lives to socialism and the welfare state, which he refers to as a cost of welfarism.

Monteith gives lifestyle interventionism an ideological backbone when he associates it with the ‘social democrat who, in employing centralised planning of the state…incrementally removes our freedoms’. Yet in associating increased regulation of our private lives with ‘socialists of varying hues’, Monteith fails to acknowledge the lifestyle interventions introduced by the right and so fails to analyse the development of lifestyle interventions and new authoritarianism as a trend in itself.

Monteith ignores Thatcher’s introduction of seat belt law and moralisation around AIDS/promiscuous sex – which was the first apparently evidence based panic undertaken in a style not dissimilar to the way in which the passive smoking junk science was used to justify the smoking ban. The consequence of blaming the left is that Monteith does not allow himself the room to explore where and why the trend towards increased intervention has emerged.

Encourage

At times Monteith seems to make an argument for an individualistic response to regulation. His final call at the end of The Bully State is to encourage individuals to fight for the right to live life as they see fit. Yet the problem is that lifestyle regulation has been able to spread precisely because there has been a breakdown in public discourse about what we will accept.

So, rather than an individualistic response it seems to be the case that a social one is required where we establish and defend social etiquette together and defend it. It seems more than a little improbable that anybody would take up Monteith’s suggestion to ’ support those whose habits we may not necessarily like or indulge ourselves’ at a time when we are more detached than ever from each other.

The Bully State is an uncompromising stance on liberty of lifestyle and a rich resource of examples on how government regulation has crept into our private lives. Refreshingly, Monteith steps back and asks ‘do we allow ourselves to be frogmarched own the road to the bully state … or do we take control of our lives?’.

Few are asking such questions and too few are attempting to understand the trend of increased regulation in its own right as Monteith does. It is therefore a real shame – even a missed opportunity – that Monteith does not sink his teeth into what is going on more holistically.

Suzy Dean is a writer and journalist and co-founder of To The Point Manifesto