David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg: The harder they try, the more people despise them. What do the British want from their politicians? That must be a question the aides of all the party leaders agonise over. It is what they are trying to answer as they slave over the latest soundbite or policy initiative, before sending their leaders out into a hostile media environment to chorus: “I am not a phoney like the others! I am my own man slash woman!”
The Russians have their answer: Bare-chested aggression is what floats their boat. The merciless sturgeon-eyed tyrant. The Russians do not want to vote for the kind of sap who would not rig the election if they did not. After centuries of dysfunctional relationships with their leaders, they have given up resisting: The fact is they are attracted to a strong man, even when he slaps them about a bit.
The British are fussier. Of late, the closest they came to electing a genocidal maniac was probably Tony Blair. And, as psychopaths go, he was pretty low-key — he kept all the killing abroad, the sound principle on which the British empire was founded. Very much your iron-hand-in-a-velvet-glove type, rather than the kind of guy who likes to be photographed swimming amid bear carcasses. I like to think of him slipping silently into hotel rooms by night, dressed in black, seeing by the light of his teeth, to leave poisoned boxes of chocolates by opinion-formers’ bedsides.
Blair was also the last prime minister for which the country felt anything approaching a consensus of enthusiasm. And Britons will never get him back. He is lost to them, swept up in a whirlwind of tax avoidance and yachts. Dividing his time between high-level business meetings, absurdly remunerated public speaking and marathon sessions in his bespoke sunbed-cum-confessional.
Which leaves us with the current bunch. Cameron the posh, flushed hunting pink with the effort of appearing to make an effort; Miliband the wonk, undergoing hundreds of hours of presentational skills training so he can give impassioned speeches without audience members worrying that he will swallow his tongue; and Clegg the promise-breaker, who disappointed so many of his supporters within days of taking office that his critics failed to notice he was also posh and a wonk.
I do not think most of us could honestly tell them what they would need to do to gain the respect of British people. Britons just do not like them and we wish they would turn into people the Britons do like — a wish they share, which we despise them for. Is it the public’s disdain that forces them into more behaviour that people dislike? It seems like they are in a vicious circle — desperate not to annoy, desperate not to seem desperate, frantic in their demands that their advisers find them something to do, or say, or be, which will come across as unselfconscious — like a reasonable, normal, grounded man, the kind of bloke you would have a pint with, but subsequently come to obey. Someone, and they must burn their tongues as they utter the syllables, more like Nigel Farage or Boris Johnson.
But if you want to be like someone, you have got to think like them — that is why Dustin Hoffman has won more Oscars than Mike Yarwood. And mainstream politicians’ whimpering eagerness to please could hardly be more alien to the attitude of big swinging Johnsons like Farage. Those guys just do not seem to care so much, which is probably because they do not actually care so much, and reverse psychology mixed with good old-fashioned human self-loathing means that voters are instinctively attracted.
There is always a chance that people will decide who to vote for according to policy and by “people”, I mean the people that matter: The indecisive minority who change the party they vote for from election to election according to whim, and consequently determine every result. But it does not seem likely to me that policy is what is going to swing the swingers this time — although I may only think that because the Labour party’s policies are still largely secret. I suspect everyone is going to be cutting budgets while having rhetorical rows about how quickly and which sort of hard-working person is being screwed least assiduously. And Europe, I suppose — that is actually a thing, although I do not think many of us can see past our knee-jerk isolationism or internationalism to honestly know what the best course of action is.
I do not think Cameron and Miliband believe policies are going to clinch it either, or they may be keener to discuss them. Last week, the prime minister, after doing some running for Sport Relief, said: “I am delighted to have taken part in such a fantastic event that is bringing people across the UK together to get active, raise money and change lives.” It is so inoffensive that, for me, it pushed through the other side and was on a par with Holocaust denial. “Change lives” is the real kicker — it is actually from the Sport Relief press release. Nobody talks like that. Changing lives is not a good thing anyway, unless you are changing them for the better. Changing lives is what Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy did in Trading Places. It is what Miliband wants to happen to him and Cameron.
I found it hard to admire that aspiration of Miliband’s when he said last week, on the subject of Grant Shapps’s twatty bingo advert: “Have you seen a more condescending, patronising, arrogant, haughty, out-of-touch, misconceived piece of nonsense?” I didn’t like the advert either, until I heard Miliband’s hyperbolic gloating. His crowing glee at the sight of a passing bandwagon, the intense joy because his opponents have messed up, and so he is closer to his aims without having to do anything good, made me want to puke. And every time a Labour politician says “out of touch”, I want to scream, which is difficult to do if you are already puking. I can’t shake the feeling that someone in Miliband’s team thinks it is unbelievably clever that they keep repeating that phrase, basically as a synonym for “Old Etonian”, and I want that person’s feeling of cleverness to be ripped out of them without anaesthetic.
Politicians just cannot win with people like me. But then they appear to have stopped trying to win and to be willing to settle for losing least, which, as Cameron can attest, brings with it the same job title. Is it fair to blame them? They get maligned for who they are and when they try to conceal that they get vilified for “not being themselves”. They must feel terribly bullied. And, unfortunately for them, public opinion is not the sort of bully you can stand up to — unless you are Vladimir Putin.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
