Pope Francis: the "austerity pope"

The election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the new Pope Francis has made many "firsts". The first pope from South America and the Southern Hemisphere, as well as the first Jesuit pope, are all significant in themselves, but these mould-breaking "firsts" are not even the most significant.
The cardinals deciding to "break the mould" had already known a lot about Bergoglio from the last conclave in 2005, as Bergoglio had come second that time around. Sources said at the time that Bergoglio insisted that other cardinals stop voting for him and transfer their votes to Benedict to ensure a smooth election; this sign of humility - a now-familiar trait of Pope Francis' personality - makes it clear why he was so widely respected amongst his peers.

Bergoglio had not been considered one of the papabile by observers this time around due to his age. The fact that he was also an "outsider" (as not part of the Curia or with any obvious links or experience in the Vatican bureaucracy) was considered another barrier; as was the fact that he was a Jesuit, a Christian order that had been mistrusted by previous Popes, most recently John Paul II.
As it happened, Vatican observers had been led up the garden path by the gossip that had been circulating about the conclave, and possibly by their own preconceptions: that there were no clear favourites, implying a more lengthy voting process than the last time. But the unique context that prompted the conclave being called in the first place - Benedict XVI's resignation - seems to have played a large part behind the cardinals' thinking, and this crucial factor was what many observers did not fully appreciate.

Benedict XVI's resignation may have officially been down to exhaustion from old age, but it's clear that the various scandals - abuse and corruption in the Catholic church - had taken their toll on Benedict's mental and physical state, to the extent that he felt the best thing to do was to pass on the baton to someone with a clearer mind and better health who could better deal with the huge task of reform. Benedict's last remarks when resigning as pope displayed a clear moral revulsion at what had unbeknownst happened to the Vatican under his watch; in the manner of his standing down, Benedict displayed more about his high moral character than at any other time during his papacy. Nothing marked the symbolism of Benedict XVI's papacy better than the manner of his resignation.
It is this - reform - which is what is most needed in the Catholic church, and it is this reason why the cardinals decided that the best person to carry out this task was Cardinal Bergoglio, now Pope Francis. As Benedict XVI had resigned due to the scandals that had engulfed the Vatican, the cardinals realised that with the Catholic church facing a moral crisis unprecedented in modern times, they needed to be bold and bring in someone with the force of personality to bring about a decisive shift. As one priest said, what the Catholic church needed was "a miracle"; Jesus with a MBA, part manager, part radical reformer, with a Christian moral compass to match. With Bergoglio seemingly in the cardinals' mind from the last conclave, they chose a man who they thought would best fit the bill.

So, although Pope Francis has "broken the mould" in being the first Jesuit and South American pope, the main reason he was chosen was because of what he stood for, not just where he was from. As Pope Francis jokingly told the cardinals on the first day of his papacy, "May God forgive you for what you have done!".
Behind this joke is a clear point: Francis' morality is sincere and deeply-held. His years of pastoral work, his connection to helping the poor and disadvantaged had left a strong impression of what the true purpose of the Catholic church should be - morality, yes; but more importantly, improving social justice. The real meaning behind Francis' comment to the cardinals may be to make them understand that the pope is there as a moral icon. Taking the name of his namesake St Francis of Assisi, he means to demonstrate what Catholicism means to him personally, but also where he thinks the long-term future of the Catholic church lies; less in dogmatic points of morality, but in practical, on-the-street action. In the past when an archbishop, he strongly admonished those of his peers who he felt were enjoying too many of the comforts of their positions; as pope, cardinals and the Curia may well need to expect the same. Although Pope Francis joked to his cardinals, what he perhaps really meant was: I hope you realise what you have voted for.

For those in the Curia used to easy comfort, majesty and the splendour of Vatican life, Pope Francis may well be "the austerity pope" in more ways than one. In the coming weeks and months, the new pope may well take a very firm brush to what he sees as the perceived excesses, inefficiency and corruption in the Vatican.

What has caught the imagination of many Catholics and Vatican watchers, more than his simple personal manner of dress, is Pope Francis' easy-going and expressive personality. Francis comes across as a "man of the people" so easily because it seems to be his second nature. This has been honed through decades of pastoral service, selflessly dealing with the poor and the sick in Buenos Aires, making him almost a male comparison to Mother Teresa. In becoming pope, Francis already gives the impression of being close to sainthood; the charismatic and spontaneous personality more often seen in a populist leader married to a deep and sincere concern for social justice.

It is therefore by strange coincidence that the papacy has been endowed upon a man who has the qualities of a natural populist and icon of the poor, only a matter of days after the passing of another charismatic leader and social campaigner, Hugo Chavez. Chavez may have been a polarizing figure to the outside world and the moneyed classes of Venezuela, but he was a charismatic icon to the poor, whose concern for social justice he put into practice on the ground. In a strange act of poetry, it almost as though the torch of social justice held by a charismatic populist has passed from Hugo Chavez to the person of the pope himself.

Pope Francis' election to the papacy, as an outsider voted in with a mandate for vigorous reform, comes to Italy at the same as the rise of Beppe Grillo's "Five Star Movement" in reaction against the corruption of the Italian political class. A parallel comparison could be drawn from the events in the Vatican in the last month. In both cases, Italy and the Vatican, we see administration mired in scandal and corruption, its electors (cardinals in the case of the Vatican) choosing that it's time for a new approach led by an untarnished outsider, to save the broken system from itself.

The "pop star status" that Beppe Grillo has received since he became involved in the Italian elections, and even more since he became Italy's "kingmaker", is now mirrored by that of Pope Francis. In both cases, the near-hysteria of their respective "fanbase" is not just down to the protagonists' charisma and open personal style, but also to the fact that at times of moral and social crisis, people need to have someone they can believe in.
To an extent, over in the UK, the personal popularity of Nigel Farage and his UKIP is also a result of the moral and social crisis that has gripped the country since the beginning of the Financial Crisis. When "the system" is so clearly failing the people, it is often at these moments that individuals of special charisma and vision suddenly appear as if from nowhere. In reality, they may have been there for a long time; the people simply weren't listening very hard because it wasn't the right time.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio may well have had the opportunity to become pope in 2005, but the time was not right; Benedict was the natural choice, and Bergoglio saw no reason to change that. This time around, with the Catholic church facing multiple scandals and in need of a radical overhaul, the cardinals realised that this was Bergoglio's time.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

Guiseppe Grillo, the Italian Elections and The UK's "Waldo Moment"

Monday evening saw an interesting coincidence.

 In the UK, Channel Four was broadcasting the last installment of Charlie Brooker's "Black Mirror" second season, called "The Waldo Moment". It was a sharp political satire about a foul-mouthed blue bear cartoon character called "Waldo", who stands in as an independent candidate in a by-election, as a protest against the political status quo.
In Italy, the national election was being counted, which resulted in an inconclusive result. The two main parties were more-or-less tied (the centre-left PD narrowly ahead), with the third "party" being a non-partisan, anti-establishment movement led by Guiseppe (Beppe) Grillo, a comedian and satirist. Grillo's most famous epithet was, uncannily like the UK's fictional "Waldo", simply "Fuck Off" to the establishment.

Call it Italy's "Grillo Moment".  Let's be clear: what has happened in Italy is unprecedented in modern European political history, certainly in a major European country. In Greece last year, the left-wing SYRIZA coalition came close to victory on an anti-austerity ticket. In the end, their moment passed, and the self-destructive foreign-imposed austerity has continued as before.
But nine months on from that election in Greece, attention has turned to Italy, in a much more financially-dire situation that even Greece. What Beppe Grillo has achieved has been to turn the system against the establishment. He bypassed the normal means of electioneering, turning to the internet and a massive grassroots movement that has mushroomed in exponential terms in a matter of months. Grillo has been able to tap into the massive undercurrent of apathy, turning the disillusion into a focused rage against the broken corrupt political system. The "Indignados" movement in Spain has close parallels, but seems to lack one central figure for people to direct their attention on. With luck, that may change.

Southern Europe is now in the throes of different popular, grassroots uprisings: SYRIZA in Greece, the "Indignados" in Spain, and now Beppe Grillos' "Five Star" movement in Italy. SYRIZA, as a loose political alliance, is the more conventional of the three, and has an identifiable and articulate leader in Alex Tzipras. But while SYRIZA represents the "traditional" left and an easily-identifiable enemy for the political and financial establishment to target, Grillo's "Five Star" movement represents something far more difficult to identify - and therefore far more dangerous to the establishment.
What makes Grillo's movement so effective is the way it cuts through the traditional pigeon-holes of politics. As Grillo himself has said, his movement is against the established left and right parties and political system. What Grillo wants is to disengage, to resist against the system as it currently stands. In this sense, Grillo's methodology implies an anarchic approach to resolving political and national problems. Grillo's success in the Italian elections is perhaps the first political success of an anarchist movement in a major European country. The "MPs" that will represent his movement in parliament are not politicians, but ordinary people, from the unemployed, to students, to housewives. Grillo has found a way of bypassing the system.

One possible outcome of this is an eventual informal deal between the biggest party, the centre-left PD, being supported on a case-by-case basis in parliament by the "Five Star" movement: called "confidence-and-supply" in the UK. Some of the PD's MPs have already dismissed working in a "Grand Coalition" with Berlusconi's party; the other alternative to an informal PD-5SM deal is paralysis in parliament, with Mario Monti staying on in a caretaker government. This would find it virtually impossible to get anything done through parliament, so would also be a non-option for effective government.
Judging from the masterly way Grillo has turned the electoral system against the establishment, it is unlikely that Grillo's movement will fade away. It is just possible that this "Grillo Moment" may not be just a "moment", but a turning-point, and an inspiration for other similar movements across Europe.

This brings me back to the fictional version, "The Waldo Moment". Charlie Brooker sharply shown how to tap into the deep well of apathy and disgust at the political system in the UK. Grillo's movement became so popular because many people saw their political system as corrupt and closed, and saw a way of getting their own back. But in some ways the UK's system is even more closed.
Italian politics may well be more openly corrupt than in Britain. But at least Italy's political system is representative. The entire reason why Grillo's movement has become the key broker in Italian politics is because its PR electoral system is a fair representation of the votes cast. A grassroots movement like Grillo's would have no chance of gaining anything like the same proportion of seats in Westminster, due to the FPTP system.
The last election was a case in point, where the LibDems gained nearly a quarter of the vote (almost as much as Grillo), but less than ten per cent of the actual seats in parliament. UKIP, whatever your views on its politics, is being prevented at every turn from even having a single MP in the national parliament. Although it regularly gains around ten per cent of the vote in national polls, the only way it can get even a single MP is by convincing the voters in a single constituency to vote for it above all other parties. This makes the UK political system the most closed in the EU, if not Europe (barring Belarus). In other words a party could get thirty per cent of the vote in every constituency in the country, and still have no MPs in parliament. This is the system we have in Westminster, the so-called "mother of all parliaments". It is worse than a joke; it is a national disgrace. It is this reason that there is so much apathy towards the political system in the UK, and why British people feel so disconnected from their political masters. If you know that your vote will be wasted because you happen to live in a party's "safe" seat, or a "marginal" between two parties you don't like, then what other feeling can you have?

So how could a "Waldo Moment", or even a real-life "Grillo Moment" happen in the UK?
The first time it happened in modern British politics was in 1997, in the Tatton constituency, when local people voted tactically for the Independent MP Martin Bell, in order to remove the incumbent Conservative. Since then, there have been a few other independent MPs, as well as a Green MP for Brighton, and the left-wing demagogue George Galloway. But these are people working with the system, not against it. In the UK, it is the voting system itself that keeps the political establishment closed to new movements.
So unless you can somehow manage to persuade a vast apathetic cross-section of society to vote tactically in key constituencies, the chances of a "Grillo movement" gaining a good slice of parliament using the current system are next to nothing.
The last time the UK political establishment was terrified of its people (as all good democratic governments should be) was during the infamous "Winter Of Discontent". I described these events in more detail here, but the way that ordinary workers gained the attention of government then was by mass, spur-of-the-moment strikes. The country was effectively paralysed for a number of weeks, but the workers got what they wanted: better wages and conditions. Mass civil action would be the most obvious method to use to, and is most likely to get politicians attention. Unfortunately, with current UK laws, it is also likely to get many people at the wrong end of the police. So you would need to gain the trust and implicit support of the police. Police are unable to strike; however, they are allowed to interpret the law as they see fit.
So some kind of agreement between the police and a mass civil movement (which offered the police better working conditions and fewer unworkable laws to enforce) would be the most effective way to terrify the political establishment. Remove the link of subservience to government: give the police genuine independence from government, and reducing its workload by allowing it to give more discretionary cautions against unworkable or politically-motivated laws. That would be the first step, and would make police less over-worked and our criminal justice system more efficient. This would also terrify and emasculate the government in equal measure.
The second step, like Grillo, would have to be disengagement from the orthodox political system. UKIP, and Nigel Farage, in particular, have found a way around this, by discrediting the political system. The problem that UKIP has is that it hasn't managed to find a way to get tactical voting, or a political stalemate, to work in its favour. The 2010 election was the nearest thing we've had so far to a "Grillo Moment": that turned out to be a "Clegg Moment". And we all know the result of that.

The problem with the UK political system is that to change it, you have to do it from within. So how do you disengage from the political system while also bringing about change from within?
Political change only comes about after a social crisis. Political reform in the UK happened this way, and is the most likely way it will happen in the future. In order for this to happen, the people themselves have to realise that there is a crisis to begin with. And for that to happen, there has to be a turning-point; a moment of revelation.

After the government's "bedroom tax" kicks in, and changes to DLA, perhaps that "moment" will not be long in coming...

The Decline And Fall of The Roman Empire, And The Rise Of The New Holy Roman Empire

History is full of dejavu.
The politics of Europe of the early 21st century is really not so much different from that of Europe in the 11th century.

The recent histories of the modern states of Italy and Greece, and that of France and Germany, contrast oddly with their more medieval counterparts; the Holy Roman Empire, the Papacy (and Italian city-states), and the Byzantine Empire.

The Treaty of Rome, signed in the 1950s, created the prototype for the EU, beginning with the core members, France and Germany. After the moral and economic wreckage of the Second World War, hitherto mortal enemies France and Germany vowed to a future of economic alliance. Italy, amongst others, joined this association some years later, followed by Greece.

This suited all parties well, and then this association became a formal economic union with one currency. And this is where it became much more complicated. While Germany and France were the two strongest powers on Continental Europe - a contemporary "Holy Roman Empire", economically joined at the hip - Italy and Greece, the two ancient imperial powers, had been economic basket cases since the Second World War.

Both Italy and Greece had been through a succession of elected governments since the war. Greece even had a period of miliary rule. But both countries' governments, especially in the last forty years upto the 2008-11 financial crisis, utterly failed to manage their countries responsibly. In stark contrast to Germany, whose economy was destroyed after the Second World War, yet had gone from strength to strength, the ancien regimes of the Med, Italy and Greece, had gone from modest growth to profligate insanity.
Both Greece and Italy's problems were essentially the same, albeit that Italy's were much worse as their economy was much bigger than Greece's. Their governments, until very recently, had run their countries as a weak parent appeases and spoils an errant and tantrum-throwing child: the state provided generous subsidies and pensions, because they didn't want pensioners and unions marching on the street; the state turned a blind eye to rampant tax evasion and corruption because they didn't want the middle-classes and shopkeepers on the streets.
In other words, the Greek and Italian governments were repeating the same mistakes that all failing empires in history made - through governmental weakness, allowing their country to live beyond its means and avoiding the uncomfortable (but inevitable) truth.

So, it came to last week, as the New "Holy Roman Empire" of Europe (the Franco-German economic duopoly) ultimately calls the shots on the Eurozone, called time to Italy and Greece's governments.
Italy's premier, Emperor Silvio (whose title can be sybolically conferred as being the longest ruler of Italy since the time of Mussolini, and since his moral exemplar sometimes seemed to be Caligula), after ruling his state for much of the previous twenty years through corruption, mismanagement, and moral indifference, was forced to symbolically relinquish his crown to Italy's ceremonial President. Then the President, acting in the role once held by the Pope a thousand years ago, shortly after bestowed the title of Italian premier (once called by the name "Emperor of the Romans" in the days of the Papacy) to an Italian bureaucrat experienced in the politics of the Eurozone. In other words, a person far more suitable to the New "Holy Roman Empire" for the sake of European stability.
The same story can be said of Greece: after months of indecision and instability, the Greek premier bowed to the inevitable and resigned, to be replaced by a Greek bureaucrat experienced in the politics of the Eurozone, friendly to the interests of the New "Holy Roman Empire".

It could be argued, then, that what has happened in the ancient imperial territories of Greece and Italy is a kind of New "Holy Roman Empire" economic regime change. That may be so, but niether is that something that should surprise anyone who understands the modern world.

Or, for that matter, the medieval world. The Papacy had been a plaything of the Imperial Powers of Europe, such as the Holy Roman Empire, for centuries, especially around a thousand years ago, when there were Popes and anti-Popes for much of the time. Italy and its city-states were a plaything of Popes, Holy Roman Emperors and Byzantine Emperors (all three of whom, by the way, claimed the title of ruler of the Romans); not long afterwards, the same became true of what is now Greece and the Balkans.

So, who runs Europe these days? The answer is, basically, the same as the answer was a thousand years ago: Germany. A thousand years ago, England was peripheral to the fate of Europe; France was still figuring out where its loyalties lay; Spain was a mess; Eastern Europe was in transition, while Constantinople/Istanbul was maintaining its position economically, and had made diplomatic in-roads in the Middle East.

So what's new? At least Germans these days are pacifists.