Premier League thinking cap

Today's big news in the world of football.

"Does this go far enough?" asks BBC Sport, of the news that price caps are to be trialled in the Premier League.  My initial reaction was that actually, it goes rather too far.

It may be a controversial view amongst football fans, but I have long been of the opinion that football clubs, as privately-run organisations, should have the right to charge what they like for the services or commodities they offer (including tickets to matches) – and that what is a "fair" price for tickets is determined by what people are prepared to pay to go to a game.  I have vocally defended the rights of clubs to raise their ticket prices, on various football discussion forums – normally in the face of near unanimous opposition from fans whose view of the matter is romanticised, rather than rationalised – and told people that if they think the cost of tickets is too high, the answer is to stop buying them.  This, after all, is how markets work; prices are set by what people are willing to pay for whatever is on offer.

But the more I think about the matter, the more I question my steadfast defence of the laws of supply-and-demand, in regards to ticket sales in football.  I am instinctively pro-free markets, and against intervention and price control, I make no bones about that.  But how "free" really is the "market" for football tickets?

After all, can the laws of supply-and-demand be said to apply equally to football, when the attitudes of "consumers" are so fundamentally different from in other areas?  In light of today's news about price caps on away tickets, I have been giving the issue some considerable thought; I don't claim to have any conclusive answers about the economics of football, not by a long way, but I am going to set out a few of my thoughts on the topic here, and invite comments – to my mind, this is a fascinating discussion, which we (as football supporters) should be talking about more openly.

So, let us first consider a "standard" model for a "free" market.  The same products or services are offered by multiple providers, and this creates competition in the market – different companies producing, say, washing powder are competing with each other for the same customers, and this encourages each company to produce better quality washing powder at a lower cost, in the hope of attracting consumers to purchase their products over the rivals' similar offerings.

In this way, what washing powder is "worth" is set by the people buying it, not by the people selling it – if the majority of consumers decide they won't pay Company A's higher prices, because they don't think it offers any real benefits over the cheaper washing powder offered by Company B, Company A will be forced to lower their prices (or prove that their product is worth the extra money) due to a lack of sales as consumers choose Company B instead, believing their product to be better value.

Now, contrast this with the "market" for football clubs.  At first glance, it is similar to the washing powder scenario; there are many football clubs, all around the country, all offering the opportunity for consumers to pay to watch football – some offering higher quality, some offer lower quality, some have high prices, some have lower prices, etc.

But this is a false equivalency.  It assumes that "consumers" of football are simply paying to watch football, and that they don't much care who is playing – just as consumers of washing powder probably aren't too bothered by which logo is on the box, as long as their laundry is clean and fresh.  No, unlike washing powder users, for football supporters the "brand" (ie. which team is playing) is all important; a lifelong Spurs fan (for example) isn't suddenly going to go and watch Leyton Orient play instead because the tickets are a bit cheaper – for him the important thing isn't simply watching football, it is watching Spurs.  And there isn't another Tottenham Hotspur Football Club just down the road, offering consumers the chance to watch the same team play for slightly less money.  In other words, the football "market" has an illusion of "competition" – but in reality, each club actually has a monopoly over its own "brand".

Brand loyalty exists in many areas of the market.  But nowhere is it so visceral as when it comes to supporting a particular football club.  The feelings many football fans have for their club go well beyond simple loyalty to a certain "brand" – the idea of football supporters as consumers who are willing to switch supplier to save money is ludicrous.  As such, it is difficult to apply the laws of supply-and-demand to the football "market" in exactly the same way as other areas.

Of course, "consumers" still have a choice.  But that choice is a binary one – either go to the game, or don't go.  No one is being forced to pay for something they feel is not worth the asking price, and there is an argument to be made that "consumer power" (ie. not buying tickets deemed to be "overpriced", and thus sending a club a message about pricing structures through the medium of lost ticket revenue) is still a better way of tackling the issue than imposing price controls.  But football blurs the boundaries of the way people make decisions; there is a huge cultural element to football, and those of us who wish to approach this discussion with cerebral objectivity would be foolish to ignore that.

I imagine (with no data to hand) that a not insignificant proportion of football fans would still prioritise going to matches over what might rationally be considered more "essential" expenses, if it came to that choice.  That is how serious the game – and perhaps more pertinently, the club – is to many people.  A central tenet of support for free markets must surely be a belief that people are able to make their own decisions, and a commitment to allowing them to do so; is it not therefore necessary to at least attempt to understand how they make those decisions?

The "value" of football to many people is more than simply a monetary value.  Much as my natural response might be not to interfere, and to allow the free market to take its course, I am forced to accept that the nature of football, and it's importance to many people, means the market choices may not truly be "free".

That is not to say that I am wholeheartedly endorsing the price cap on away tickets in the Premier League – I think there could be complications that arise from this, and that it could end up creating as many problems as it solves – but even if it goes against my instincts, more in-depth thought on the matter has meant I have had to concede that there is at the very least a decent case for giving it a try.  It will be very interesting to monitor the situation over the next few seasons, as the price cap is trialled, and then reevaluate things.

How the SNP ruined referenda for all of us

As a bit of a politics nerd (yes, I admit it), I have been looking forward to the pageantry around this referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union.  There’s something about these political events – whatever they are ultimately about – which thrills and fascinates.

The debates!  The interviews!  The triumphs!  The cock-ups!  Staying up all night eating curry and watching David Dimbleby filling time as the results slowly filter in!  I love it.

But this excitement has been spoilt somewhat by those killjoys in the SNP.  Ever since the Scottish people’s own referendum on their national future in September 2014, those who campaigned for Scotland to leave the UK have made it their business to ruin not just this referendum, but all referenda.  Never again can we sip from the cup of a national plebiscite, without tasting the taint of Scottish nationalism.

The simple fact is that the tactics of the SNP and their supporters have changed the way that referenda in this country are fought – and, in my view, not for the better.

But in order to understand how this affects the upcoming referendum on the EU, let us first briefly examine the two key faults at the core of the way the SNP operates.

The first is that the SNP and its party machinery are seemingly unable to view politicians and activists (of any party) as individuals.  This is a topic I have touched on before.  The SNP is the only party in the UK whose rules actively prohibit its MPs from speaking out against party policy.  There can be no ‘rebels’; no dissenters; no brave individuals who put principles before career prospects to defy the party whip.  Not in the SNP.

No, the gradually dwindling numbers of SNP MPs in the House Of Commons (we all know it started out as fifty-six, but two have already been suspended by the party…) speak with one voice on every issue.  All of the (almost) one-and-a-half million Scottish voters who chose the SNP at the 2015 General Election might just as well be represented in Westminster by one single person, voting on all issues according to Nicola Sturgeon’s orders.  (Maybe that’s something they should look into?  It might at least save a bit on Parliamentary travel expenses.)

The second is the SNP’s unshakeable belief that the only thing which really matters is Scotland’s independence.  Any other political problems are subsumed by this one great issue.  Tax?  Health?  Education?  Infrastructure?  It doesn’t matter what the challenges facing these policy areas – all will be solved in the blink of an eye, come Independence Day.  And, until independence, there is nothing that can be done about any of them, so they may as well go hang.

These two central conceits were underlined for me recently by a conversation I had with an SNP activist while a protest march against the Trident nuclear weapons system was occurring in London.  I challenged something that he wrote on Twitter about the future of Trident; his response was, weirdly, about Scotland.  Apparently, I was wrong about Trident because “I didn’t understand the Scottish people”; I tried to say that I wasn’t talking about Scotland as a nation, or as a people, but that I was responding to what he had posted on the topic of nuclear missiles – but he was unable to make the distinction.

Within a few Tweets, our Nationalist friend had successfully twisted my disagreeing with one specific thing he had said about Trident into me being somehow anti- the entire country of Scotland and its population.  Because no issue, and no policy, can be discussed without it inexorably transforming into The Scottish Matter.  And because ‘The Scottish People’ (whose ‘mindset’ I was assured I ‘didn’t understand’) are one homogeneous groupthinking bloc, rather than over five million individuals representing a plurality of opinion across all areas of policy.  Such is the SNP mentality: everything is about Scotland, always – and all Scots think alike, on every issue.

So where does this leave our European plebiscite?  A referendum in this country has traditionally transcended ordinary party politics.  Faced with an issue deemed to be of such burning national importance that it is not enough for our elected representatives simply to vote on our behalves in Parliament, as is normal for most day-to-day political decisions, the usual rules and ways of operating are thrown out of the window.  The party whips are suspended, and the campaign is not split along party lines like at a general election.  Strange alliances are forged – fractious, often, but motivated.  This is not ‘politics as usual’.

The SNP, it appears, cannot understand this.  The fact that the ‘Better Together’ campaign – which pushed for, and eventually won, a majority ‘No’ vote in Scotland’s independence referendum in 2014 – was supported by all three of the major UK political parties has become a standard campaigning tool for the Nationalists.  That Labour (traditionally the SNP’s main opposition in Scotland) had campaigned on this issue alongside the Conservatives makes them – apparently – ‘no better than the Tories’.  (And what worse insult could there possibly be, for anyone whose understanding of politics reaches no further than the end of his own nose?!)

Once again, we see how the importance of the independence debate sweeps aside all other concerns, in the eyes of the SNP faithful – that Labour and the Tories agree on Scotland’s constitutional future makes them politically identical, no matter how many other major policy areas they vehemently disagree on.  “Who cares if Labour and the Conservatives disagree on far more policies than they agree on?!”, say the SNP supporters; they agree on the only one which actually matters, so they can be lumped in together for all time.

(Of course this ignores even the basic maths of a referendum.  With only two possible outcomes to choose from – ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ – there is bound to be some overlap in campaigning.  There are simply not enough answers on the ballot paper for all the political parties involved to have one each, so you will, at some point, inevitably find yourself on the same side as politicians who are normally your opponents.  But then, figures aren’t exactly the SNP’s strong point, are they…?)

“Well, what a short-sighted, obstinate, overly simplistic view of party politics!” you might very well be thinking now.  Well, yes.  Exactly.  And yet this pervasive, barely-literate nonsense is now shaping the way our politicians are gearing up for the referendum on the European Union.

Keen not to be tarred with the same brush as their sworn political enemies, simply because they happen to feel the same about one point of policy, MPs now seem reticent to engage in the very cross-party campaigning which makes a referendum campaign different, and worth having at all.  The fear of ‘sharing a platform’ with one’s usual political enemies – and the damage this could do to one’s own political image and career in the future – is distracting from the more pressing matter of actually campaigning for the result one believes is best for the country.

If this – or any – matter is of enough significance to be put to the population as a whole to vote on, rather than being left to representatives in the Commons and the Lords, is it not also important enough to put aside party political bickering and campaign alongside whoever happens to want the same outcome as you?

In a referendum such as this, you don’t get to choose your allies – you work with whoever happens to agree with you as to the best path for the country to take.  And you should reasonably expect to do so without the threat of this being held up as a stain on your character in years to come, once the referendum is over and political life has gone back to normal.

If some cabinet ministers believe Britain should remain in the EU, while other ministers feel strongly we should leave, they should be free to campaign on whichever side of the argument they wish.  It is not ‘weak’ of the Prime Minister to allow his ministers this freedom – and it is not very edifying to see politicians from other parties attempting to portray him as such, choosing petty political points-scoring over the matter at hand.

And if a politician from any party finds himself by some happenstance on the same side of this debate as a politician from another party (which – as I have said – is mathematically certain to happen, given the limited number of options for campaigning), this does not suddenly make the two politicians, or their two parties, indistinguishable from each other on all matters.  It would be sheer folly to suppose it did.  And yet, that has been the SNP’s take on things for over two years, now – and it is a view starting to permeate the mainstream national consciousness.

I can’t help but feel sad that the SNP’s small-minded, parochial mentality is being allowed to set the agenda for a national question about which many people feel very strongly – and as a result, we are all being denied a proper referendum campaign which truly cuts across, rather than entrenches, party lines.

Suit up!

Why does it matter how Jeremy Corbyn dresses?  Given all the many other things of which one can accuse the leader of the Labour Party, his somewhat scruffy attire is surely one of the least objectionable things about him?

Well, maybe so.  But the outrage of Corbyn's supporters over David Cameron's remarks in Parliament during Wednesday's Prime Minister's Questions is still opportunistic, hypocritical opprobrium of the highest order.

Those who say that politics should be about ideas and policies, not about appearance – and that Cameron should be engaging with Corbyn's arguments, rather than making snide remarks about how he dresses – might have a point if they hadn't spent the past six years taking every opportunity to bring up irrelevant personal issues such as which school the Prime Minister went to, along with endless tedious references to the Bullingdon Club, photos of the Prime Minister in formal white tie attire (which are evidently supposed to make us think badly of him, for some reason), and an endless stream of increasingly tiresome 'PigGate' 'jokes' on social media.

The left-wing journalist and commentator Steve Topple wrote in The Independent that Cameron's use of 'personal attacks' against Corbyn proved the Prime Minister had 'lost it'.  A quick check through Mr Topple's Twitter account reveals he's not above a few 'personal attacks' himself.  It takes a special sort of unscrupulous chain-puller to deploy those kind of tactics against someone for years, then get on your high horse the moment it is returned in kind.

But all of this rather misses the point.  Because actually, Corbyn's appearance does matter.

Maybe it doesn't matter very much.  Maybe it matters an awful lot less than Trident or Hamas or austerity or housing or anything like that.  But it does matter.

Partly, of course, because how you choose to present yourself to the world matters.  For anyone.  Your clothes, your hair, the way you speak, how you act – all of these things send an instant message to people about what kind of person you are.  In politics, where so much of the job is about communicating well, it is foolish to assume these things have no significance.  As in any job, if you want people to take you seriously, start by taking yourself seriously – and show up looking like you actually give a damn.

But also because, as Leader of the Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn is lining himself up as a potential next Prime Minister himself.  He is asking an electorate to look at him, and choose him to be the person who represents Britain on a global stage.  That's not a trivial thing.

Polling has shown us that one of the reasons Labour lost last year's general election is because the public simply didn't see Ed Miliband as a Prime Minister-in-waiting – and nobody could say he wasn't trying.  In his ill-fitting, shabby brown jacket that looks like he picked it up in an Oxfam shop, voters don't see Jeremy Corbyn as someone who can go to the United Nations, or the G20, and make people take Great Britain seriously.  Facing David Cameron across that dispatch box is an audition to be more than just a backbench MP agitating for fringe causes – to be a statesman.  And Corbyn is not coming off well.

What do we gain from #Brexit?

We know, now, the date of Britain's referendum on membership of the European Union – 23rd June.  Soon, the campaigning will begin in ernest, as politicians attempt to convince us either to 'Remain' a member, or 'Leave' the EU.

Personally, I am undecided on how I will vote.  I can see good arguments on both sides – and I can see wild hysteria and condescension on both sides too.  However, it's my view that the burden of proof is on those who wish to 'Leave'.

The lawyer and legal commentator David Allen Green writes on his blog Jack Of Kent that he is 'neutral' about 'Brexit', observing that the referendum's outcome will make little difference to law and policy, on a practical level.  Neutral, perhaps – but in reality this is a de facto argument to 'Remain'.  If things will be basically the same either way, why would we go through all the hassle of leaving, and all the tremendous upheaval that will entail?  Unless we can be fairly sure that getting out of the EU will tangibly improve life for most people in Britain, aren't we better off just staying as we are?

To my mind, 'Brexit' is not a matter of life-and-death.  The UK will basically be fine, whatever happens.  For all that the zealots on both sides of the argument would have us believe otherwise, neither result will truly be a catastrophe.  Maybe I will lose some friends by saying that – but friendship shouldn't be contingent on sharing a particular viewpoint on the European Union, should it?

But as I say, the onus is on the 'Leave' camp to make their case – and unless they can convince me of some very real benefits of leaving the EU (and I am still open to being persuaded), I shall end up as 'Remain' by default.

Maybe this seems uncaring, or half-hearted; a rather uninspiring way to make a decision about the future of the country.  But if it would be a touch unfair to say this is a vote about minutiae, it is at least a vote about something which few people really see as the crucial matter of our time.

For those of us who follow politics closely, it's a chance to spend a second year in a row geekishly obsessing over exit polls and sitting up all night eating takeaway food and watching David Dimbleby looking for something to say to fill in time – however, I think the wonks who inhabit the fringes of political society for whom Europe has always been a burning issue seriously overestimate the number of people who hold strong, passionate opinions about the EU.

To large amounts of people, the European Union matters vastly less than those who shout the loudest on either side of the debate could possibly comprehend.  Plenty of people are, like me, quite happy muddling along as we are – unless the case emerges that 'Brexit' would leave us decidedly better off.  Perhaps the initiative in this referendum campaign will ultimately be seized by whoever is the first to grasp this.

Eighteen awesomely quirky ways to show someone you love them this Valentine’s Day

Dinner and a movie?  Yawn.  A dozen red roses?  Snore.  Scented candles?  Oldest trick in the book.  These days, if you want to impress that special person in your life, you have to pull out all the stops and do something different.  Dating is hard, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to stand out from the crowd when it comes to making your feelings known.  My handy list of eighteen awesomely quirky ways to show someone you love them this Valentine’s Day should give you some ideas.

1. Breakfast in the shower.
   Everyone serves breakfast in bed – surprise her with a plate of her favourite breakfast while she relaxes in the shower instead (toast not recommended).
2. Hire a skywriter.
   Write her name across the skies in ten-foot-high letters of coloured smoke, for the ultimate grand gesture.  Or, better yet, her National Insurance Number – if you know that, that proves you really know her well.
3. Valentines cards are so cliché!
   Instead, carve ‘I Love You!’ into the side of a courgette.
4. Remember, love rewards originality.
   When you pick her up for your date in the evening, don’t go in the car – turn up on a Segway.
5. Make journeys mean something!
   If you do take the car, reprogramming her SatNav so the names of all the towns are your name will remind her of how your love is everywhere.
6. Get her a gift she’d never think to get herself…
   …something no one else has got – like her very own, working printing press.
7. Subvert expectations.
   Everyone buys flowers.  Turn an old Valentine’s Day classic on its head by getting her wholemeal flour instead.
8. Learn Flemish.
   Foreign languages are sexy.  Conduct the whole evening in Flemish.  She’ll be putty in your hands.
9. Discover her an element.
   Give her something totally unique – a new element on the periodic table, named after her.
10. Make her mayor of Walsall.
    Power is sexy.  Especially local government power in a borough in the West Midlands.
11. Make yourself taller.
    Everyone wishes their partner were taller.  Yes, everyone.  This Valentine’s Day, why not make that wish come true?
12. Plan your future together.
    Show her you’re in it for the long haul.  Hire actors who look like the two of you to enact scenes from your future together – your wedding; your children’s graduations; you crying at her funeral following her tragic and unexpected death while engaged in a top-secret government mission off the coast of Norway.
13. Make memories that will last forever.
    What does everyone want to hang in their living room?  A framed selfie with Stoke City and England right-back Glen Johnson.  His agents are Stellar Football Ltd.
14. Build her a treehouse.
    Tell her she is in charge of who is or isn’t allowed in.
15. Do the gardening.
    Remember, it’s a short step from ‘weeding’ to ‘wedding’.
16. Stare into the eyes of Persephone, Queen of The Underworld.
    Prove your bravery by meeting the baleful, unflinching gaze of the Greek goddess who carries into effect the curses of men upon the souls of the dead.
17. Turn her flat into the ultimate playground.
    Install a roundabout in her kitchen and replace her sofa with a see-saw.  Everyone loves their partner to show their fun side every once-in-a-while.
18. Clone her.
    What better way to say “I can’t get enough of you”…?

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Should Norwich sack Alex Neil?

No.

I suppose I could leave it there – and this will have been the most straightforward, stress-free thing I've ever written.  But I imagine most people are expecting me to go on and explain why we should keep faith with Alex Neil, despite a recent run of poor form which has seen us sink into the bottom three of the Premier League table…

Let's start with something that should be obvious, but oddly never seems to be: sacking the manager is not a 'silver bullet' that fixes everything instantly.  Of course, I have written about this before, but that doesn't make any difference; as soon as you lose a couple of games, people start murmuring about sacking the manager, as if that always cures everything – if that were the case, clubs would have twenty different managers every season.  They don't, because that would be absurd.  Knee-jerk sackings are not the answer – and if you're the sort of person who would see their team lose and immediately reach for the P45 at the final whistle, without a moment's thought, you maybe need to reevaluate how you make decisions.

This view is a bizarre extension of the 'Something must be done!' attitude which sadly pervades many areas of life at the moment.  Anything that happens is met with a chorus of demands to ban something, remove something, change something, legislate for something…  Because something must be done!  Regardless of what that 'something' is.  It is the response of a feeble mind – and it won't help our club.

But let's move on from there.  Let's assume that we've got past reflexive demands for action-for-action's-sake, and decided that a change of manager actually might be no bad thing, on its own merits.  Before we do anything, we need to have a replacement lined up who is better.  Not 'just as good' – and certainly not worse! – but a guaranteed step up in quality from the manager we currently have.  And we need to be sure that this person is not only a better calibre of manager than the incumbent, but is available to start immediately, and would be willing to take a job at Norwich (a relegation-threatened club with, in Premier League terms, a relatively small budget).

So who is there who fits that bill?  If no names spring alacritously to mind, I'm not too surprised.  I can think of top-level managers who are out-of-work – but would they want to come to Norwich?  I can think of managers whose services we probably could secure – but would they really be better than Alex Neil?  I'm not convinced.  And unless both of those stipulations are met, we're better off doing nothing at all.

Oh, how short are the memories of some football supporters…

But what of Alex Neil himself?  Even if a good manager is available, and happy to start work tomorrow…  Does Alex really deserve the sack?!  This is a manager who came into the club midway through the season last year, when our promotion challenge looked to be fading, and turned things around.  We all remember the euphoria of our Play-Off Final day out at Wembley, don't we?  He did that.

This is the manager who got us promoted to the Premier League.  This is the manager who got a point away to Liverpool; the manager who got a point at home to top four Arsenal; the manager who beat Manchester United on their own turf.  That deserves recognition.

Yes, he has made mistakes – he is only thirty-four years old, and he is still learning his craft while having to adapt to a level higher than any previous challenge he has encountered in his fledgling managerial career – but he has potential and ambition aplenty, and has never been under any illusions about how tough a league the Premier League is.  Comments like 'out of his depth' or 'lost the plot' are harsh, to say the least.

It is unreasonable not to permit a young manager still finding his feet to make errors.  How else does one learn?  Not only is it unreasonable, though, it is stupid.  It is illogical.  Those mistakes, more often than not, stem from inexperience.  How does one gain experience?  Not by being sacked.

At this rate, the 'sacking culture' in modern football will cut off far too much promising young coaching talent at the knees.  Where will the next generation of football managers come from?

In ten years' time, people will look at the Premier League and ask: "Why are there so few talented British coaches managing at the top level?  Why is there no new blood in management in this country?"  Because they were sacked after four games in charge by ruthless CEOs acceding to the demands of unforgiving fans who cared more about exacting their pounds of flesh than looking to the future of either their own club, or the sport of football as a whole.

Alex Neil is a young manager who deserves his chance.  Norwich City need to give it to him.  And – who knows? – there is opportunity yet for that faith to be repaid.  Time has not run out; panicking now solves nothing.

Addendum (added Monday, 8th February, following various discussions on the topic):

Those who would favour Alex Neil's immediate removal have cautioned me more than once about the dangers of the club "leaving it too late" to sack him.  It is an argument – and an expression – which I abhor.  Even leaving aside the arrogance of thinking you are the person who can tell with absolute certainty when the optimum time would be for the club to act, what baffles me about this line of argument is that that it seems to skip over the question of whether or not Alex Neil should be sacked; it assumes that it is self-evident that he should be, and that the only matter left to settle is when.  It is an assumption which speaks to the central conceit of this outlook – that sacking the manager is always the answer.

The mindset seems to be that a manager's sacking is inevitable; that the only question around the issue is not "if" he should be sacked, but "when" to do it; and that sooner is always better.  This cannot be good for the club, or for the sport.  That is not a healthy attitude to have, and the worry here is that we will creep inexorably towards a farcical scenario where it is standard procedure to sack the manager after every loss, most managers last only a few weeks in a job, and the pool of managerial talent dries up completely.

No one can have principles except me

A curious trait of many who are politically active is the strange way they seem to think that they (and those who agree with them) alone have a monopoly on 'principles'.  This is, of course, an extension of their political outlook generally – these are people, after all, for whom politics is about 'belief' and fervour, not objectivism and reasoned discussion.  But it leads to a logical fallacy, which these people can only fail to see due to their commitment to 'the cause' consuming the rational part of their brain.

If it is possible to take a strong, principled stance in favour of something, then it stands to reason that it is possible to be equally strong and principled in opposing that same thing.  This is common sense.

It is, however, difficult – almost impossible, in fact – to get anyone (regardless of where on the political spectrum they might sit) who truly believes in their political cause to concede this self-evident fact.

Whether we're talking about hardline UKIP 'Brexit-eers', or committed Corbynites, the attitudes are always the same.

I'm sure. They see their careers terminated or on hold. Instead of turning on Cameron, it's JC who is their enemy. https://t.co/4z93azO3nW

— John McPartland (@McPartlandJohn) January 23, 2016

Yes.  The reason 'moderate' Labour MPs are criticising their party leader is because they are venal careerists and they are scared; in the mind of a Corbyn loyalist like McPartland, this is the only explanation there can possibly be – he simply cannot comprehend the idea that MPs might hold different ideas from Jeremy Corbyn for genuine reasons, and that they might believe them and fight for them just as passionately as Corbyn himself fights for his own ideals.

Tory cabinet Ministers 2 worried about climbing greasy pole & Ministerial salary, rather than the interests of Brits https://t.co/g5h3SoD3hO

— uKipaLotmoreIan (@UkipaLotMoreIan) February 2, 2016

It's never occurred to Ian that these cabinet ministers might have weighed up the arguments on both sides very carefully and genuinely concluded that remaining in the European Union might actually be in 'the interests of Brits'.  I'm not saying they have, necessarily – maybe Ian is right that some ministers' reasons for not endorsing 'Brexit' owe more to expediency than conviction – but he can't be sure of that, and neither can I.  The possibility does exist that some ministers might have chosen not to campaign to leave the EU because they genuinely feel that staying in is the right choice, rather than because they are afraid to lose their salaries.

But fanatics like these cannot allow such impure thoughts to pollute their minds.  To admit that the enemy might actually be a relatively decent, normal guy who just happens to have a different outlook on certain issues – rather than an agent of evil itself whose dastardly propaganda racket must be smashed – is to admit defeat.

It is this demagoguery which allows activists to fight for their causes so passionately.  The single-minded belief that we are right because we have principles – whilst anyone who disagrees with us is necessarily a scurrilous, treacherous, two-faced, good-for-nothing hypocrite who's only looking out for himself – allows the movement (whatever it may be) to affect an air of moral superiority and rise above the petty objections of 'facts' and 'data'.

Most people, however, are (rightly) sceptical of zealots.  For the average person in the street – the very person, often, who needs to be convinced of one point-of-view or another – the ardour of anyone banging the drum too loudly, or too often, will actually be quite off-putting.  Such dogma – and such refusal to countenance the idea that the other side might, just occasionally, not be total schmucks – ends up being damaging to the cause.

But for an activist truly to dedicate him- or herself to a cause, he or she must completely believe that those who disagree are not just wrong, but malign.  These are people who have convinced themselves that they are fighting the good fight; that they, and they alone, are on the side of righteousness, justice, freedom and truth; and that it therefore follows that anyone opposed to their agenda has a sinister ulterior motive.

In short, they are deluded.  And they wonder why the rest of the population views them with such deep suspicion…?!