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Utopia or fantasy?

One of the most slender majorities achieved in the 2015 general election saw the shadow chancellor Ed Balls beaten by the Tory candidate Andrea Jenkyns. She won the seat with a majority of just 422 votes thus consigning Balls to the political wilderness. This week, Balls took time out from his latest venture as a contestant on "Strictly Come Dancing" to launch a withering attack on Jeremy Corbyn's "Leftist Utopian fantasy".

At best it was a desperate comment from the man whose past record is far from enviable. On losing his seat in 2015, he was reported to have received a "golden goodbye" payment of £88,000. Since then, he has become a Senior Fellowship at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, a visiting Professor of King's College London and Chairman of Norwich City football club. Good work if you get it. Like Corbyn in 2015, Balls had stood as Labour leader in 2010 but where Corbyn succeeded, Balls failed. The political career of Ed Balls will be forever linked with the man who repeatedly promoted him; Gordon Brown. Neither man leaves an enviable legacy. The history books are cruel indeed.

But if we trawl back five hundred years to 1516, we find a book whose legacy continues to fire our collective imaginations. "Utopia" was written by Thomas More and he coined the term from the Greek and it's literal meaning is "no-place". The book described a fictional Atlantic island society and "Utopia" has since come to describe an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or near perfect qualities.

So when Ed Balls bemoaned Corbyn's "Leftist Utopian fantasy", he was right in the sense that any Utopia is, by definition, fantasy. That Corbyn's version is deemed Leftist is of little relevance. Since More's 1516 book, there have been socialist, capitalist, monarchical, democratic (whatever that is!), anarchist, ecological, patriarchal and feminist versions to name but a few! It is ironic for a former shadow chancellor to criticise the current Labour for having Utopian ideals. But More was by no means the first to imagine such a concept. Plato's "The Republic" was another famous example and for those of a religious bearing, few could argue with the Garden of Eden. Plato's Republic envisaged a society overseen by philosophers whose collective wisdom would seek to distribute resources fairly to eliminate poverty and deprivation. Given the obvious comparison with Corbyn's vision, it is difficult to understand that the two men come from the same political party. But maybe that is the point. Perhaps Ed Balls represents the ghost of Labour past while Corbyn is the ghost of Labour yet to come?

If Plato's version of Utopia is accepted, it is very difficult to understand how elusive Utopia remains 2,500 years later. A fairer society being run by philosophers would at least spare us "Sir" Philip Green, Donald Trump, Robert Mugabe et al. The newly "elected" Prime Minister Theresa May famously referred to her Conservative party as "the nasty party" in 2002. As it's new leader, she must now make some very big decisions but before she does so, I would refer her to another of those influenced by Thomas More; Abram Maslow.

In 1943, Maslow devised his now famous "Hierarchy of human needs". It is depicted in the diagram below and ranks human needs according to their basic importance. Thus we find air and water at the bottom with self-actualisation at the top.





Maslow's model would most closely fit the vision of Plato's Republic. Instead though, we have a succession of governments pursuing vanity projects such as HS2 while food banks proliferate alarmingly amid record levels of poverty.  For people living in North East Wales who have recently had a bus service collapse, such a luxury as HS2 is a far cry from their daily realities.

Only today, we learn of an NHS trust deciding to delay by 12 months non-essential surgery for smokers and the obese. This confirms what many of us have feared for a long time; namely that the NHS of Bevan is now a thing of the past. It is no longer free at the point of access for every man, woman and child. Presumably, the vision of Bevan would be deemed a "leftist Utopian fantasy" by such luminaries as Ed Balls. But to effect change in our flimsy democracy, MPs first need to get elected. On that basis, Corbyn has a chance of realising his vision. Balls has a chance of winning "Strictly Come Dancing" but I know which one I'd rather see accomplished.

Had local county councillors in Denbighshire based their voting on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs when deciding which cuts to accept in 2014, our county would now be in a much better place. As it is, Utopia seems as far removed from Denbighshire as ever. Our food banks are now seeking larger premises though!


   
 

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