When did British politics become so deeply unserious? On a continent at war, with the price of just about everything surging, swathes of our media remain transfixed by the crucial question of ‘who ate and drank what during the pandemic?’.
The circus has now arrived at Labour’s door, and Keir Starmer apparently enjoying a perhaps-somewhat-against-regulations beer with colleagues after a work event in Durham.
It’s hard to imagine Woodward and Bernstein writing this paragraph from a recent Mail on Sunday write-up.
‘In a further twist, a delivery driver for an Indian restaurant yesterday claimed that he had dropped off ‘quite a big order’ at the hall of ‘about four bags’ of curry, rice and naan bread.’
One possible conclusion is that British politics has become deeply unserious because the general drift of national politics would not stand up to serious analysis. Our political classes are there for various reasons, but the hard slog of serious analysis is not usually one of them. Voters aren't keen on it either.
6 comments:
Ah but was it naan, pitta or tortilla wrap? The economy turns on this matter.
I guess the comedy chickens have come home to roost. The baby boomers were a much less serious and hard working generation than their parents and subsequent generations worse still. All that satire, comedy, popular culture and reduced standards of education, rigour and discipline have all taken their toll. Our public life and politics are thus degraded, hardly surprising really.
Here's another possibility. Our political class now realise (due to surveys, focus groups, and the like) that they need to appeal to the semi-educated new useless graduate class of voters. People who think they are clever and demand a say, yet cannot grasp the important features of policy. They spend a lot of time on social media, chat a lot, and have often been trained to be highly critical of our culture and institutions.
Whereas the politicians could previously rely on people who were dyed-in-the-wool party voters with lifelong allegiances and who couldn't really be bothered with thinking about politics, our new useless graduates need to be flattered with simplistic wibble about honesty, curries, cake, and affairs.
The reason for all this is that there are simply many more journalists than the limited number of serious news stories calls for so they often need to write trivial stories to justify their existence. Cull half the scribblers and send them to more productive work flipping burgers and the world would be a much better place.
The Wizard of Oz view of modern politics:
Toto pulls back the curtain to reveal that the Wizard is not who Dorothy and the others thought he was. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” the “Wizard” yells in vain. He has been discovered and they see him for who he really is.
I suspect that politics as ordinary people hidden by a curtain has come to an end. You cannot take seriously an ordinary man who needs smoke and mirrors to deflect attention. And all politicians are but ordinary people.
Perhaps the current round of 'Party Gate' and 'Beer Gate' are just politicians doing their best to pull each other's curtains aside?
James - Starmer doesn't want to say but I'm not convinced he'd know what to do with any of them.
Tammly - I agree, it seems to be important that we are less insulated from the ups and downs of real life.
Sam - I'm sure you are right. It's as if too many middle class people are exposed to abstract ideas they can't handle. Politicians just use them.
Vatsmith - yes, the BBC newsroom demonstrates that. There are probably too many middle class jobs generally, especially in the public sector.
DJ - that's a good analogy. Many people seem to go along with major political narrative without being completely on board with them. As if they know about the curtain, prefer to go along with the illusion but could possibly pull the curtain aside if things become too bad.
Post a Comment