His desire, beyond everything else in life, was to be honest: to pretend to no emotion that he did not truly feel, to see exactly how he felt about life, and to stand up before it unafraid and uncowed. Honesty seemed to him the greatest quality in life;
Hugh Walpole - The Cathedral (1922)
Suppose we do a thought experiment and attempt to imagine ourselves as Ed Milband. Not that the idea makes sense and presumably most people would reject it anyway, but the point of the thought experiment is to raise the question of why we wouldn’t want to be Ed.
No doubt there are quite a few reasons, but to my mind the important one is honesty, our honesty is something we can’t imagine giving away, yet modern UK politicians do not put much value on honesty.
In other words, the thought experiment is not unlike an invitation to imagine downsizing, perhaps from a pleasant house in a reasonable area to a caravan in somewhere like Jaywick.
Yet millions of UK voters vote for political parties which do not put much value on the honesty of their candidates. Then after each election, attitudes towards the political arena end up as akin to attitudes towards cheating in football - okay when our side does it but appalling behaviour by the other lot.
Voting for political parties doesn’t work, it doesn’t deliver reasonably honest politicians and we’ve known it for decades, yet we put a high value our own honesty. It's odd.
Yet millions of UK voters vote for political parties which do not put much value on the honesty of their candidates. Then after each election, attitudes towards the political arena end up as akin to attitudes towards cheating in football - okay when our side does it but appalling behaviour by the other lot.
Voting for political parties doesn’t work, it doesn’t deliver reasonably honest politicians and we’ve known it for decades, yet we put a high value our own honesty. It's odd.
3 comments:
There are probably two parallel processes going on here. We vote for the party or individual we prefer, and thereafter expect them to take part in a process marked by dishonesty. We accept they will be lied to, and they will tell a few lies. They won't be as many or as serious lies as the other guys, because we think their view is relatively more accurate.
On the other hand, Rob Henderson makes the telling point that most political argument consists of trying to associate your opponent with low status ideas. Lying remains low-status, so we pick up on our opponents doing it.
And quite devoid of conscience, the charlatans.
You'll be laughing on the other side of your face when Weird Ed replaces Sir Very Very Kleir.
Post a Comment