{"id":17484,"date":"2015-06-08T11:14:42","date_gmt":"2015-06-08T10:14:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=17484"},"modified":"2015-06-08T11:14:55","modified_gmt":"2015-06-08T10:14:55","slug":"what-do-the-radicals-of-this-generation-want-when-they-win-power-not-what-earlier-generations-wanted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=17484","title":{"rendered":"What do the radicals of this generation want when they win power? Not what earlier generations wanted."},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>&#8220;\u2026 what do the radicals of this generation want when they win power? The success of Syriza, of Podemos in Spain and even the flood of radicalised young people into the SNP in Scotland makes this no longer an idle question. The most obvious change is that, for the rising generation, identity has replaced ideology. I don\u2019t just mean as in \u201cidentity politics\u201d. There is a deeper process going on, whereby a credible identity \u2013 a life lived according to a believed truth \u2013 has become a more significant badge in politics than a coherent set of ideas.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is a perceptive comment in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2015\/jun\/07\/young-greek-radicals-power-remake-world-paul-mason\">a piece<\/a> in today&#8217;s &#8220;Guardian&#8221; newspaper by Paul Mason, economics editor of Channel 4. I think that we are seeing a serious and sustained loss of support for established political parties (and churches) as we witness a decline of ideology (and theology). Many people &#8211; especially young people &#8211; no longer have a &#8216;big picture&#8217; view of the country or the cosmos; instead identity is taking over from ideology.<\/p>\n<p>These trends have massive implications for political programmes and policies. As Mason explains:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">&#8220;A 25-year-old who has known only temporary work, on an individual, performance-driven salary, is going to find the concept of a wage agreement puzzling. A young person who expects to move jobs, cities and even countries several times over in their working life would, if asked to design a welfare state from scratch, do so in a way that allows people to carry their entitlements with them. And designed from scratch today, by a generation hooked on choice and networks, it is unlikely the NHS or education would come out as monolithic single systems.&#8221;<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">These trends also have enormous implications for political parties and democratic politics. I have written about the challenge to the older democracies <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/democracy\">here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;\u2026 what do the radicals of this generation want when they win power? The success of Syriza, of Podemos in Spain and even the flood of radicalised young people into the SNP in Scotland makes this no longer an idle question. The most obvious change is that, for the rising generation, identity has replaced ideology. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17484"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17489,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17484\/revisions\/17489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}