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Music & Theatre
28 July 2017

Mick Jagger has written not one, but two hideous songs about Brexit

“Chaos crisis instability Isis”. Let’s take a look at these political lyrics in a little more detail.

Let me begin with a confession: I am an enormous fan of Mick Jagger. I spent my contrarian, anti-femininity, please-let-me-in-your-treehouse-guys youth collecting Rolling Stones records and staring into the eyes of black and white Mick Jagger photos. In my eyes, the man can’t do much wrong.

But, alas, even I must admit that I have never, in the words of John Doran at the Quietus, lain awake at night wondering, “Yeah, I get that the social, political, economic and moral climate in the UK is currently pretty bad and things are getting worse on a daily basis but when oh when are we going to find out what Mick Jagger thinks about Brexit, immigration and the amount of fast food we’re all eating?” And yet, here we are.

Jagger has released two new videos – for “England Lost” and “Gotta Get a Grip” – this week. In fairness, the visuals are great! Both feature good-looking people sweating and running around: the first, Luke Evans in a black and white, wartime British throwback chased-to-the-beaches style thing (ah, sure) and the second, Jemima Kirke hassling a DJ in a nightclub and looking really, really amazing under the coloured lights.

Let’s take a look at these political lyrics in a little more detail.

Gotta Get a Grip

Let us begin with “Gotta Get a Grip”, a song that tells us to, well, get a bloody grip. Because what are people like these days? Writing hot takes! Fake news! Something something Isis! (No, seriously, this is as good as it gets.)

The world is upside down
Everybody lunatics and clowns
No one speaks the truth
And madhouse runs the town

Crazy world we’re living in, right guys? Crazy, crazy world.

Everybody’s on the take
The news is all fake
Let ‘em eat chicken and let ‘em eat steak
Let ‘em eat shit, let ‘em eat cake

I really hope “on the take” here also puns on hot take culture. Brb, telling my editor I’m busy “on the take” forever. Anyway, fake news is bad! Let them eat cake (?!) and also chicken, steak and shit. Is this a dig at the meat industrial complex? I hope so.

Chaos crisis instability Isis
Lies and scandals, wars and vandals
Metadata scams and policy shams

I love how vague these first three words are. Lulls you in a false sense of security, doesn’t it? Ah, Mick is just warbling on about the bad things ever-present in fallible human society, chaos, bla bla, instability, yada yada, then – WHAM. He hits you with ISIS. Bloody Isis! The fuckers. Also, more songs should include the word “metadata”, in my honest opinion. Fuck the police! A song about the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 is long overdue. 

“England Lost”

I went to see England, but England’s lost

Ah, a nostalgic and fatalistic lyric about the fall of England that is also totally meaningless. Someone get Pete Doherty on the line! Jagger uses a football game as a metaphor here, which makes you think, doesn’t it?

I went to find England, it wasn’t there
I think I lost it down the back of my chair
I think I’m losing my imagination
I’m tired of talking about immigration

The nadir. The peak. The climax. Rhyming the words “imagination” and “immigration”. Truly inspired.

It’s a déjà vu
I’ve seen it all before
Different season, same score
Everybody wants your head on a spike
But they were singing your praises the day before

One thing that confuses me about both these songs is whether they seem to think we are living through a genuine turning point in British politics, a true moment of crisis – or just same shit, different day. Surely both cannot be true? And if this is a crisis moment, is the problem the terrible government and geopolitical chaos or just, like, people being mean on Twitter? Unclear.

Skepta, adding his contribution here, doesn’t seem any more sure, ranting about “everybody” running hot and cold on “you” (who?), but immediately afterwards talking about immigration paranoia. (“No new faces allowed in / They said it’s getting overcrowded”.)

Still fighting over houses
So I just pick it up put down and leave it where I found it
Feel like Macaulay Culkin
I’m Home Alone
Come to my window and throw a stone
Because I hate talking on the phone

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?! Does Skepta pick up a house and leave it where he found it? If the housing crisis is so bad why does anyone have a house to themselves, à la Kevin McCallister? Or is Skepta saying that his house feels too big for him when so many people are living like sardines? Who’s throwing a stone? Why? Is that a searing comment on technology’s isolating effects on our lives or does Skepta just really hate talking on the phone? What is going on?!

Had a girl in Lisbon, a girl in Rome
Now I’ll have to stay at home

Ah, the real tragedy of leaving the EU: Mick Jagger potentially losing easy, visa-free access to sexually available women in mainland European cities.

Truly, poetry of our times.

Anna Leszkiewicz is the New Statesman's deputy culture editor.

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PHOTO: SIMON DAWSON/ BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
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Books
5 March 2018

The jokey nature The Growth Delusion is at odds with its serious economic arguments

Each chapter of David Pilling’s book begins with a wearily cheery anecdote.

It is not easy to think of many exports from Belarus that have fundamentally changed the way we look at the world. In Minsk there is a very good, old-fashioned chocolate factory, and elsewhere they make lots of guns, tractors and huge trucks that Arabs like to race in the desert, but those are rather niche products.

Only the concept of GDP might be counted as a significant Belarusian gift to the world. In the 1930s Simon Kuznets, an exile in America who was born in Pinsk, Belarus, but fled the Soviet Union with his family in 1922, developed a set of national income accounts while working for the US department of commerce. The first set was prepared in 1937, and in 1942 annual estimates of gross national product began to be published. They have been central to economic policymaking ever since.

The US economist Paul Samuelson described Kuznets’s achievements as “among the great inventions of the 20th century… GDP and related data are like beacons that help policymakers steer the economy”. Later, Kuznets won the Nobel prize.

David Pilling, the Africa editor of the Financial Times, takes a different view. He rejects the idea that Kuznets caused light to be shed on areas of darkness. He thinks that when we measure GDP we are looking into a fairground mirror, not at a true reflection of economic activity. GDP, he argues, “is good at counting”, but it counts in a peculiar way. It records activity, whatever its source. So it “likes crime because it is fond of large police forces and repairing broken windows… it likes Hurricane Katrina and is quite OK with wars”. As a result, in Pilling’s view it is a very poor aid to economic policymaking.

Some of the criticism he advances is valid, some is overstated, but some is a bit silly and beside the point. Pilling adopts a jokey style that is quite at odds with the nature of the arguments he is trying to advance. Each chapter begins with a cheery little anecdote. So a chapter on inequality begins, “Imagine for a moment two people, Bill and Ben.” A chapter on the informal economy starts, “In the summer of 2012 Janice, a 64-year-old former sales assistant living near Stamford in Connecticut, felt pains in her chest.” There may be people who like that sort of thing but I suspect that most of them don’t read books designed to challenge the prevailing economic wisdom.

Still, buried in the wearyingly chirpy prose is a serious argument. GDP is indeed a curious construct that can mislead commentators and policymakers. Quite apart from its many measurement difficulties, and a propensity for being revised retrospectively from time to time, it does largely ignore voluntary work and the informal sector. It is neutral between worthwhile endeavour and damaging behaviour. It pays scant attention to sustainability, and it tells you little about who is benefiting from economic expansion. Highly skewed growth whose benefits accrue largely to the already super-rich is measured in the same way, and valued as much, as broad-based wealth creation.

Nonetheless, as Diane Coyle recently concluded in GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History – a rather better book that covers similar ground – GDP is “a bright light shining through the mist”. Her view is that it measures what it measures, and after 80 years still does so quite reliably. We would miss it if it left us, although it needs careful interpretation, and there is a risk that it becomes the only important thing if not carefully qualified. In fact, in spite of the hostile packaging designed to make a splash, I suppose, Pilling eventually reaches a similar conclusion. His proposals for change are surprisingly meek and mild after what comes before. We should focus more attention on GDP per head than aggregate GDP (never!); we should look at median income as well as mean; we should talk more about well-being – although most of the attempts to produce indices of happiness have had a limited impact so far; and we should also incorporate some measures of sustainability, especially in relation to CO2 emissions.

In fact, the accounting profession has done a lot of work on that already. The idea is that “integrated reporting” should capture the extent to which a company is using scarce and non-renewable inputs. The results of energy companies look rather different on that basis. But integrated reporting, which for corporations is where the action is, doesn’t merit a mention here.

So, if you enjoy a bit of knockabout fun at the expense of statisticians who can’t answer back, The Growth Delusion is for you, flowerpot men and all. Otherwise, dig out a paperback copy of Diane Coyle. 

Howard Davies is chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland and a former chairman of the Financial Services Authority

The Growth Delusion
David Pilling
Bloomsbury, 352pp, £20

This article first appeared in the 01 March 2018 issue of the New Statesman, The rise of the radical left

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