EU Referendum


UK politics: voters are out of touch


13/10/2014



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You have to give some credit to Matthew Parris in The Times (paywall) for his sheer chutzpah, putting two fingers up to received wisdom, and telling it as he thinks it is.

I couldn't begin to agree with all he says in his column, but he does start in splendidly acerbic form, telling his readers to "ignore the piffle about Westminster needing to reconnect with a disaffected public". It should be the other way around, he says.

Commenting on the desertion of Labour (Rochdale) voters and Conservative (Clacton) voters, both to UKIP, Parris goes on to tell us to pin back your ears, then, brace your retina for an autumnal babble, in broadcast and in print, about how each of the two mainstream parties must now "reconnect" with its "core".

But, while there are contradictions in the various messages sprayed out by UKIP, he says, there is a deep internal consistency between the voices of Clacton and Rochdale Man. It's called populism, and if you ask it for its manifesto you miss the point. Dislike of the present and fear of the future is what drives it. Fear, in the end, has no manifesto.

But the trouble with populism, Parris concludes, is that it isn't popular: not in our country. Or, rather, it attracts a grumbling chorus of support from its client groupings but tends to repel the rest of us.

And rather than being "out of touch", he asserts that today's parliaments are the most inclusive, diverse, unpretentious, least corrupt, most streetwise, hardest-working assemblies that Britain has ever elected, and by a long chalk the most in touch with the concerns of ordinary citizens.

MPs do know how the other half lives. They try ceaselessly - they try too hard - to understand and empathise. They inquire, they engage, they research, they listen. They're painfully aware of the impact of policy on people.

Politicians do know what to do: in Jean-Claude Juncker's phrase they just don't know how to get re-elected after doing it. So cut the crap about reaching out to Rochdale or connecting with Clacton. There are parts of Britain that need to reach out to reality. Sometimes it's the voters who should try harder to "engage": engage with those who have to govern.

Perhaps the aggrieved citizen who wants lower taxes, higher government spending, cheaper whisky and buckets more money thrown at the NHS, should reach out to the chancellor as he burns the midnight oil with his sums. Perhaps the disaffected pensioner who wants free transport, higher pensions and no tax to pay is the one who doesn't get it?

Perhaps it's the tweed-jacketed squire who should understand the agriculture minister's concerns, the chain-smoking couch potato who's out of touch and needs to focus more on the health secretary's worries?

Here, I have to admit to more than a little sympathy for the Parris thesis. Reading comments on this and many other websites, and discussing political expectations with a wide range of people, one is constantly dismayed by the torrent of ignorant – and sometime quite aggressive – criticisms of ministers, over issues where, actually they are trying to do their best.

What often fortifies the aggression is a child-like naïvety – a fundamental inability to understand the way governments work, and the limitations of power – especially ministerial power.

The Ollivander tendency is alive and kicking, as so many people expect politicians to wave magic wands, and cure their grievances, despite often the fiendish complexities in so doing, the like of which the child-voters don't even begin to understand, or even try to understand. It is so much easier to whinge.

As for the culprits, those who promote this mindset – these simplistic and often irrational expectations - Parris says that, "if you're really looking for arrogant metropolitan snobs then look no further than those on the Right. They are the ones who want to use the poor as a vehicle to lend a fake salience to their own nutty opinions about Europe, immigration, diversity, climate change or whatever".

We could argue long and hard about this, but the point is broadly correct – even if the culprits are poorly chosen. People like Farage, for instance, are quite deliberately exploiting mistrust and disaffection. Like the strangler fig with its seed in Central Africa, Parris says, they lodge their arguments in a host - the poorer citizen - whose welfare is not their first concern; put down their roots; and thrive on the sap of his own despair.

UKIP is not the fault of Clacton: Clacton is just the parasite's unlucky host, he concludes. We do not do best for Clacton by simulating "engagement" with the town's opinions. We do best not by patronising its voters when we know they're wrong, but by levelling with them and telling them so.

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