To build a utopian world, idealism should be what drives politicians – The Guardian

If leaders such as Theresa May so obviously lack inspiration themselves, how can they inspire others? Photograph: Rebecca Naden/Reuters

Torture, secret prisons, the death penalty and assassinations. These nightmares dominate my day-to-day work at Reprieve, so utopian discourse may not seem my natural bedfellow. Yet focusing on an ideal is critical if one is to engage in a meaningful way with the notion of terrorism, and the horrors born of the war waged against it. It is the lack of a utopian discourse that has led us to the mess in which we find ourselves today.

One tragedy of contemporary political life is that, if challenged, most of the current crop of politicians could not identify a dream, other than getting into power.

Theresa May is an important example she appears to blow with each political wind, with political expediency as her main signpost. One day she backs Barack Obamas push for military action against Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons on his own people, and then on the eve of her visit to see Donald Trump she and Boris Johnson suggest that Assad might run for re-election; one day she opposes the Equality Act, the next she proposes it. The Financial Times describes her as a non-ideological politician with a ruthless streak. Yet not only does she espouse no ideology; she appears to have no dream for her country or the world.

If leaders such as May so obviously lack inspiration themselves, how can they inspire others? As a result, those who have perverse dreams have an open playing field, whether it be Trump and his xenophobic plan to make America great again, or Osama bin Laden and his bizarre promise that Sunni Muslims will achieve eternal life by killing apostates and non-believers.

Without a dream, it is impossible to tackle the challenges faced by a troubled society. In 2011, when she was home secretary, May offered a programme called Prevent (Educate Against Hate) that was meant to stop disillusioned youths from signing up to Islamic extremism. The current official government training catalogue runs to 40 extraordinarily negative pages that offer no positive vision of a society that someone might like to choose.

Just as a censor never triumphed in a debate, so too Prevent inevitably fails to win the battle of ideas because it offers no alternative dream. So when the same disillusioned youths turn to a radical version of Islam, the politicians turn to arms, launching Predator Drones and Hellfire missiles to defeat Islamic extremism. Yet a bomb never won an argument either.

So let us consider an earlier ideal that managed to win the hearts of the people: socialism. It is a vision that inspires hope in the hopeless, and encourages selflessness in the selfish. Democratic socialism the evolution of society towards that ideal provided a counternarrative to fascism from Franco to Hitler.

It is instructive to consider its application in the Arab world, which many would see as the seat of so much of the violent unrest in the world today. In the mid-20th century, fundamentalist extremism (as it is described today) held little appeal. Rather Baathism, an ethnocentric form of socialism, gained popular support, offering a vision of a new secular society, free from the shackles of colonial rule.

The vision was later tainted: just as communism in the Soviet Union would end up being unrecognisable to Karl Marx, so too Baathism was perverted by Assadism, Saddamism and Colonel Gaddafi. However, the ideal had stirred nations towards freedom and a dream of equality.

Socialism is just one way to describe an idealist vision; it is not so very different in its content to the New Testament of the Christian Bible. Most of us would agree on the key elements of an ideal world, for they are simple and effectively universal. There is no space here to do more than touch on how it would be a decent place, where we eliminate inequality, and focus on helping those around us rather than ourselves.

Such notions would ring true to any scholar of Marx, but no less to scholars of various religious traditions. Indeed Marx had his own spiritual certainty, the inevitability of history, a messianic vision without a messiah. Likewise, most religious idealists strive to improve the world as we know it. Take Thomas More, now a Catholic saint, who coined the word utopia in 1516. More proposed an ideal society in the New World where, for example, priests reflected their pious ideals, rather than their contemporary reputation as the fathers of most of the bastard children.

The Armageddon ideal is perhaps an exception to the general rule: some Christians and Muslims (perhaps viewed as slightly out there by the vast majority) look forward to the Last Days in which the world must be destroyed in order to achieve their paradise. This is as true of some fundamentalist American Christians as it is of a stereotyped Islamic extremist.

Without any kind of ideal, without any vision of how the world can be better, we are surely lost. Sceptics might say this is unrealistic, but their critique is founded on a straw man: the notion that an ideal is somehow certified as tomorrows reality. It is not. By definition, utopia will never be achieved: Mores original word means no place in Greek. Those who think it might be brought about by revolution are doubly foolish. However, we can most definitely take steps in the right direction, and if we do not have a goal, an ideal, we cannot know where we are trying to go.

Most current leaders offer nothing, so they lead nowhere. Unsurprisingly, they seem to find their political decisions difficult, primarily because they have no beacon before them. If they made choices according to clearly expressed ideals, they could show actual leadership in seeking to persuade the electorate to move gradually towards a better world. Indeed, they would find decision-making much easier: does the vote take us closer to the ideal, or further away? With very few exceptions (that take a lot of justification), the rule becomes simple: if the former, we vote yes; if the latter, we vote no.

Thus, in their misguided global war on terror no matter what euphemism they use to describe it politicians of all parties are failing in their most obvious duty: to offer an inspiring alternative. Idealism is also integral to neutering the dystopian visions of Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen and even Osama bin Laden.

We need much less Prevent and much more Inspire.

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To build a utopian world, idealism should be what drives politicians - The Guardian