The politics of grievance requires a 'bogeyman'. An all-purpose evil on which can be blamed everything that is wrong with life – and the only thing that stands between us and a vague promised utopia.
Bogeyman Politics asks you to believe that there is one simple cure for all of the interconnected problems of messy, complicated, fragile day-to-day life. Can't get a hospital appointment? Blame the Bogeyman. Wages don't stretch far enough? Blame the Bogeyman. Can't get on the housing ladder? Blame the Bogeyman. Marriage breaking up? Blame the Bogeyman. It is a crass oversimplification, peddled by charlatans who want you to think that they alone, in this big scary world, are on your side. It is a con.
For some, the Bogeyman is 'bankers', or 'neoliberalism'. For others, 'Westminster'. For many, it is 'immigration'. For the majority of people who will vote to leave the European Union tomorrow, it is the EU that fills that role; the EU is the Bogeyman, responsible for everything bad about Britain, and the one and only thing that's holding us back from being truly great (or, if you are of a nostalgic bent, 'great again').
Real life is more complex than that. More difficult than that. Anyone selling you the idea you can fix all your problems with one fell swoop is not telling you the truth.
Which is why it is sad to see campaigners for the 'Remain' camp in the EU referendum rebutting the 'Leave' campaign's Bogeyman Politics with a few choice Bogeymen of their own. All day today I have watched a steady stream of smug, supercilious Tweets and Facebook posts along the lines of "Oh, you think single issue x is to blame for everything bad? Ha! You fools! Can't you see that single issue y is to blame for everything bad…?"
No doubt the people posting this stuff think themselves very clever. They aren't fooled by the narrative that the EU is the root cause of all our nation's problems! They can see right through that! They know what the true cause is. But they have allowed themselves to be duped by a different narrative – one which is just as seductively simplistic, and just as destructively wrong.
As with most things, there is no one simple answer. The 'Bogeyman' concept is attractive because it is comforting. It is less frightening to be told you are a basically 'good' person who has been a victim of some malign conspiracy – and that you have it within your power to rise up and take back what is rightfully yours from those who have done you wrong – than that you are adrift on a rolling sea of entropy in the ever-changing, unforgiving, big wide world. Having someone, or something, to blame – giving it a form, a name, a face – makes life easier to cope with. At last, the question "Why do these things always happen to me?!" seems to have an answer.
It is an understandable, human reaction. But political movements based on grievance, where politicians knowingly perpetuate the 'Bogeyman' narrative to mobilise great swathes of the general public, have a long and ugly track record of turning very nasty indeed. And when campaigners for 'Remain' offer up an alternative Bogeyman as a focal point for the mystified anger of 'Leave' voters, they are guilty of it just the same.
The trouble (for both sides) comes afterwards – once the Bogeyman is slain. The Bogeyman may have been defeated, but the problems of ordinary life have not gone away. The hospital waiting times, the tax bills, the energy prices… These things have not disappeared overnight. The sunlit uplands of utopia glibly promised by the politicians who cynically played on people's fear of the Bogeyman to win votes seem as far away as ever.
And so, the search for a new Bogeyman must begin. Something has to fill that void. Something, or someone, has to be to blame. Who do we think that might turn out to be? When Britain votes to leave the European Union, and people's lives are not magically improved overnight, the public anger which did so much to drive the anti-EU movement won't just vanish – we should all be very concerned about what (or who) that ire might end up focused on next.
Showing posts with label westminster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label westminster. Show all posts
Wednesday, 22 June 2016
Tuesday, 25 August 2015
Corbyn can't lose – it will be someone else's fault
There is a part of me that is tempted to think Jeremy Corbyn’s imminent victory in the seemingly interminable Labour leadership contest would actually not be such a bad thing. That part of me is not a secret Corbynite, keen to see the renationalisation of industry, the reopening of coal mines, and ‘political compromise’ with the murderous, barbaric Islamic State; no, that part of me hopes that when Corbyn’s agenda is rejected by the electorate in 2020, there will be no further excuses left for the Corbynites.
To many on the left, y’see, the Conservatives didn’t win the general election in May this year – even though they got more seats than any other party, and that is how you win an election – and Ed Miliband’s Labour didn’t suffer the party’s most catastrophic defeat since their infamous 1983 campaign.
No, what really happened (even if you don’t remember it like this) was that the British voters were victims of a con, perpetuated by the ‘smears’ of the ‘Tory media’, and the ‘Westminster elite’ (who were ‘running scared’); or the voters were just too stupid to realise what they really wanted, or what was actually good for them, and so, in their ignorance, they voted Tory – poor deluded souls that they are; or Labour’s manifesto was simply not left-wing enough, not radical enough – millions who voted Tory just a few months back did so with a heavy heart, thinking ‘if I only I didn’t have to do this, if only somebody were offering some genuine Trotskyite socialism!’
With Corbyn in charge, however, no one could say the public weren’t offered a real alternative. And so his defeat would prove once-and-for-all that they don’t actually want his ‘real alternative’.
But that part of me is sadly mistaken. For it underestimates the ability of blinkered ideologues to make any number of tortured excuses rather than admit they got it wrong. When Jeremy Corbyn loses the general election (as he is almost certain to), it will be anyone else’s fault but his.
Corbynites will be quick to blame ‘the Establishment’ for Corbyn’s defeat; it wasn’t that he couldn’t win, or that people didn’t want him to – far from it, people voted for Corbyn in droves, but ‘the Establishment’ wouldn’t let him win! It’s all a stitch-up, y’see!
(It’s worth pointing out that the amorphous cabal of nefarious busybodies which makes up ‘the Establishment’ is rarely, if ever, properly defined by those who claim to be held down by it – it is a term used to describe anybody one doesn’t like, or anybody who doesn’t share ones aims, or even anybody who does share ones aims but disagrees about the means. Essentially, ‘the Establishment’ can cover anybody who is not ‘one of us’. And thus, those who disparage 'the Establishment' paint themselves as maverick outsiders and freedom fighters; 'we' are virtuous, simply because 'we' are not 'them' [regardless of what views we actually hold].)
This was the attitude of the UKIP faithful (remember them?) shortly after the general election earlier this year. Nigel Farage, the Dear Leader, couldn’t possibly have been rejected by the voters of his specially chosen constituency, Thanet South – it must’ve been a fix. The hashtag #ThanetRigged gained some traction on Twitter as angry ‘Kippers hit out at ‘the Establishment’ for not allowing Beloved Nigel the shot at glory he fully deserved; journalists such as Isabel Hardman, who covered the Thanet South story, became the victims of abuse and harassment online – but then, that was no more than those Establishment shills and propagandists deserved.
This will, of course, be familiar territory already for anybody who followed the referendum on Scottish independence this time last year. If you weren’t a Nationalist – a ‘Yes’ voter – you were a traitor to Scotland. Facts and research which backed up the Unionist position were simply dismissed as ‘smears’ – even though they were backed up by cold, hard figures.
And anybody considering voting ‘No’ was not doing so out of his or her own free will. It was ‘project fear’ ‘scaring’ people into voting for something they didn’t really want.
This attitude is dangerous and worrying for two reasons. The first is that when you believe so uncompromisingly in your own unshakeable position, to the extent that any evidence which does not back up your predetermined convictions can simply be dismissed as somehow not valid, you turn your politics into a religion. Your political stance becomes an article of faith; unbending, even in the face of conclusive evidence to the contrary, or overwhelming popular opposition. Everything gets twisted to fit conclusions you have already drawn; facts cease to be facts, but become soft and malleable; you distort everything you see to ensure is allowed to betray ‘the cause’.
The second problem with this way of thinking, however, is how little credit it gives the public. The voters, you end up saying, are incapable of making up their own mind, or of having any thoughts of their own – they are mindless husks, herded by a malevolent media who serve only their masters in ‘the Establishment’, and who disseminate propaganda telling the poor, brainless electorate what to think.
Not only is this terribly insulting – you are telling the very people you need to convince of your argument that they can’t think for themselves – but it makes very little sense. If individuals need to be told what to think, who tells ‘the Establishment’ and their lackeys in the media what to tell people to think? They, after all, are individuals too. How are they able to form their own views, and exercise self-interest, when us ordinary folk apparently cannot?
The remarkable thing is, so far, Corbyn has actually got off relatively lightly in the press when it comes to his links with various racists, religious fundamentalists, and other unpalatable individuals – even though politicians from a party perceived as right-wing, such as UKIP, would likely have been hauled over the coals (from the newly reopened mines, presumably) for similar transgressions. But viewed through a Corbynite prism, this comparative leniency is still tantamount to anti-Corbyn propaganda; anything in the media which isn’t actively cheerleading for Corbyn’s campaign is ‘biased’ against him.
However, pro-Corbyn commentators such as Owen Jones believe that this lack of support from large sections of the media (sorry, the 'Tory media' – we must remember to preface everything we don't like with the descriptor 'Tory', of course) is because 'they' are 'scared'. As I have already demonstrated on Genius, this is a simplistic and fatuous argument – but it is the automatic defensive position of Corbynites like Jones. Any criticism, any derision, any attack, must necessarily be cover for a deep-set and troubling fear. In the Corbynite world view, it is just not possible for anybody genuinely to think Corbyn is a bit rubbish; there are only those who love him, and those who fear his power and what it would mean for their cosy establishment hegemony.
But much as Jones and those like him might wish this to be true, I'm afraid it isn't; as Janan Ganesh points out in the Financial Times, the Tories who are mocking Corbyn don't secretly fear his might – they really do think he would be a laughable Labour leader. But pointing this out makes one anti-Corbyn, and therefore an enemy. Whoever you are.
Even staunch Labour members, councillors, or MPs – people who have dedicated decades of their life to serving the party – becomes 'the enemy' when they voice criticism of Corbyn. Guardian columnist Giles Fraser (whose inanity has featured on this Blog before), writes on Twitter:
Apart from being extremely silly to dismiss criticism of Corbyn based on who is doing the criticising, instead of on the merits of the arguments being made, it is indicative of how the Corbynites are only interested in granting credence to views which already chime with their own. Giles Fraser dismisses the Labour figures who are warning against the shift towards Corbyn's leftism as 'the old guard' – he paints them as has-beens whose advice is not worth heeding. Perhaps their advice isn't worth heeding. But who would Fraser and his ilk listen to?
If somebody very much 'of the left', who agrees with Fraser on many issues, and whom Fraser has always respected and listened to, suddenly said Labour should be wary of electing Corbyn would the response from Fraser (and others in a similar position) be: "OK, I didn't listen to 'the old guard' because I don't respect them, but this guy is someone I have always liked and who has always spoken sense – now that he is saying this too, perhaps I should reconsider my views"…?
No, it wouldn't be anything of the sort. Even if you hadn't been 'the old guard' up until now, disagreeing about Corbyn would suddenly make you 'the old guard'. Put simply, if you are considered 'sound' by the left, voicing criticisms of Corbyn (even well-founded, valid criticisms backed up by plenty of evidence) doesn't mean that those criticisms will finally be taken seriously – it will mean you will be denounced as a traitor, a secret 'Tory'.
This is the default Corbynite perspective – everyone who doesn’t agree with us precisely is a quisling and deserving of being put in the stocks for stopping the people getting what they really want (which is what we tell them they want, even if they haven’t quite realised it yet). The popular revolution, y’see, must not be impeded by it’s complete lack of popularity.
And thus, when the 'revolution' inevitably fails at the ballot box, it won't be the idealists who carried on pushing Corbynism in face of a huge body of evidence against it (because 'evidence' you don't like is just a 'smear' by 'the Establishment', of course) who are to blame. It will be everyone else. And the whole cycle will begin again.
Rafael Behr wrote an excellent and very apposite article in the Guardian quite recently on how so many people have lost the ability to admit when they are wrong. In it, Behr warns of the danger of 'echo chamber' politics, particularly on social media, where people only let themselves read or engage with content which confirms their pre-existing prejudices and reflects their own views. This is especially noticeable with the Jeremy Corbyn phenomenon; no matter how much of a disaster the Corbyn experiment proves to be, nobody who insists they are right about it now will admit later than they got it wrong.
Jeremy Corbyn's almost certain victory, followed by Jeremy Corbyn's almost certain defeat, will prove nothing to those who will not allowed themselves to be swayed by any amount of evidence. There must be some other factor affecting it. They didn't really lose, at all. The fight must go on.
To many on the left, y’see, the Conservatives didn’t win the general election in May this year – even though they got more seats than any other party, and that is how you win an election – and Ed Miliband’s Labour didn’t suffer the party’s most catastrophic defeat since their infamous 1983 campaign.
No, what really happened (even if you don’t remember it like this) was that the British voters were victims of a con, perpetuated by the ‘smears’ of the ‘Tory media’, and the ‘Westminster elite’ (who were ‘running scared’); or the voters were just too stupid to realise what they really wanted, or what was actually good for them, and so, in their ignorance, they voted Tory – poor deluded souls that they are; or Labour’s manifesto was simply not left-wing enough, not radical enough – millions who voted Tory just a few months back did so with a heavy heart, thinking ‘if I only I didn’t have to do this, if only somebody were offering some genuine Trotskyite socialism!’
With Corbyn in charge, however, no one could say the public weren’t offered a real alternative. And so his defeat would prove once-and-for-all that they don’t actually want his ‘real alternative’.
But that part of me is sadly mistaken. For it underestimates the ability of blinkered ideologues to make any number of tortured excuses rather than admit they got it wrong. When Jeremy Corbyn loses the general election (as he is almost certain to), it will be anyone else’s fault but his.
Corbynites will be quick to blame ‘the Establishment’ for Corbyn’s defeat; it wasn’t that he couldn’t win, or that people didn’t want him to – far from it, people voted for Corbyn in droves, but ‘the Establishment’ wouldn’t let him win! It’s all a stitch-up, y’see!
(It’s worth pointing out that the amorphous cabal of nefarious busybodies which makes up ‘the Establishment’ is rarely, if ever, properly defined by those who claim to be held down by it – it is a term used to describe anybody one doesn’t like, or anybody who doesn’t share ones aims, or even anybody who does share ones aims but disagrees about the means. Essentially, ‘the Establishment’ can cover anybody who is not ‘one of us’. And thus, those who disparage 'the Establishment' paint themselves as maverick outsiders and freedom fighters; 'we' are virtuous, simply because 'we' are not 'them' [regardless of what views we actually hold].)
This was the attitude of the UKIP faithful (remember them?) shortly after the general election earlier this year. Nigel Farage, the Dear Leader, couldn’t possibly have been rejected by the voters of his specially chosen constituency, Thanet South – it must’ve been a fix. The hashtag #ThanetRigged gained some traction on Twitter as angry ‘Kippers hit out at ‘the Establishment’ for not allowing Beloved Nigel the shot at glory he fully deserved; journalists such as Isabel Hardman, who covered the Thanet South story, became the victims of abuse and harassment online – but then, that was no more than those Establishment shills and propagandists deserved.
This will, of course, be familiar territory already for anybody who followed the referendum on Scottish independence this time last year. If you weren’t a Nationalist – a ‘Yes’ voter – you were a traitor to Scotland. Facts and research which backed up the Unionist position were simply dismissed as ‘smears’ – even though they were backed up by cold, hard figures.
And anybody considering voting ‘No’ was not doing so out of his or her own free will. It was ‘project fear’ ‘scaring’ people into voting for something they didn’t really want.
This attitude is dangerous and worrying for two reasons. The first is that when you believe so uncompromisingly in your own unshakeable position, to the extent that any evidence which does not back up your predetermined convictions can simply be dismissed as somehow not valid, you turn your politics into a religion. Your political stance becomes an article of faith; unbending, even in the face of conclusive evidence to the contrary, or overwhelming popular opposition. Everything gets twisted to fit conclusions you have already drawn; facts cease to be facts, but become soft and malleable; you distort everything you see to ensure is allowed to betray ‘the cause’.
The second problem with this way of thinking, however, is how little credit it gives the public. The voters, you end up saying, are incapable of making up their own mind, or of having any thoughts of their own – they are mindless husks, herded by a malevolent media who serve only their masters in ‘the Establishment’, and who disseminate propaganda telling the poor, brainless electorate what to think.
@PCollinsTimes And revealing. They cannot believe people form opinions by themselves. Individuals have no agency.
— Janan Ganesh (@JananGanesh) August 21, 2015
Not only is this terribly insulting – you are telling the very people you need to convince of your argument that they can’t think for themselves – but it makes very little sense. If individuals need to be told what to think, who tells ‘the Establishment’ and their lackeys in the media what to tell people to think? They, after all, are individuals too. How are they able to form their own views, and exercise self-interest, when us ordinary folk apparently cannot?
The remarkable thing is, so far, Corbyn has actually got off relatively lightly in the press when it comes to his links with various racists, religious fundamentalists, and other unpalatable individuals – even though politicians from a party perceived as right-wing, such as UKIP, would likely have been hauled over the coals (from the newly reopened mines, presumably) for similar transgressions. But viewed through a Corbynite prism, this comparative leniency is still tantamount to anti-Corbyn propaganda; anything in the media which isn’t actively cheerleading for Corbyn’s campaign is ‘biased’ against him.
However, pro-Corbyn commentators such as Owen Jones believe that this lack of support from large sections of the media (sorry, the 'Tory media' – we must remember to preface everything we don't like with the descriptor 'Tory', of course) is because 'they' are 'scared'. As I have already demonstrated on Genius, this is a simplistic and fatuous argument – but it is the automatic defensive position of Corbynites like Jones. Any criticism, any derision, any attack, must necessarily be cover for a deep-set and troubling fear. In the Corbynite world view, it is just not possible for anybody genuinely to think Corbyn is a bit rubbish; there are only those who love him, and those who fear his power and what it would mean for their cosy establishment hegemony.
But much as Jones and those like him might wish this to be true, I'm afraid it isn't; as Janan Ganesh points out in the Financial Times, the Tories who are mocking Corbyn don't secretly fear his might – they really do think he would be a laughable Labour leader. But pointing this out makes one anti-Corbyn, and therefore an enemy. Whoever you are.
Even staunch Labour members, councillors, or MPs – people who have dedicated decades of their life to serving the party – becomes 'the enemy' when they voice criticism of Corbyn. Guardian columnist Giles Fraser (whose inanity has featured on this Blog before), writes on Twitter:
The more of the old guard they get to trash JC the more emphatic I become in my support for him. No more Labour business-as-usual please.
— Giles Fraser (@giles_fraser) August 19, 2015
Apart from being extremely silly to dismiss criticism of Corbyn based on who is doing the criticising, instead of on the merits of the arguments being made, it is indicative of how the Corbynites are only interested in granting credence to views which already chime with their own. Giles Fraser dismisses the Labour figures who are warning against the shift towards Corbyn's leftism as 'the old guard' – he paints them as has-beens whose advice is not worth heeding. Perhaps their advice isn't worth heeding. But who would Fraser and his ilk listen to?
If somebody very much 'of the left', who agrees with Fraser on many issues, and whom Fraser has always respected and listened to, suddenly said Labour should be wary of electing Corbyn would the response from Fraser (and others in a similar position) be: "OK, I didn't listen to 'the old guard' because I don't respect them, but this guy is someone I have always liked and who has always spoken sense – now that he is saying this too, perhaps I should reconsider my views"…?
No, it wouldn't be anything of the sort. Even if you hadn't been 'the old guard' up until now, disagreeing about Corbyn would suddenly make you 'the old guard'. Put simply, if you are considered 'sound' by the left, voicing criticisms of Corbyn (even well-founded, valid criticisms backed up by plenty of evidence) doesn't mean that those criticisms will finally be taken seriously – it will mean you will be denounced as a traitor, a secret 'Tory'.
This is the default Corbynite perspective – everyone who doesn’t agree with us precisely is a quisling and deserving of being put in the stocks for stopping the people getting what they really want (which is what we tell them they want, even if they haven’t quite realised it yet). The popular revolution, y’see, must not be impeded by it’s complete lack of popularity.
And thus, when the 'revolution' inevitably fails at the ballot box, it won't be the idealists who carried on pushing Corbynism in face of a huge body of evidence against it (because 'evidence' you don't like is just a 'smear' by 'the Establishment', of course) who are to blame. It will be everyone else. And the whole cycle will begin again.
Rafael Behr wrote an excellent and very apposite article in the Guardian quite recently on how so many people have lost the ability to admit when they are wrong. In it, Behr warns of the danger of 'echo chamber' politics, particularly on social media, where people only let themselves read or engage with content which confirms their pre-existing prejudices and reflects their own views. This is especially noticeable with the Jeremy Corbyn phenomenon; no matter how much of a disaster the Corbyn experiment proves to be, nobody who insists they are right about it now will admit later than they got it wrong.
Jeremy Corbyn's almost certain victory, followed by Jeremy Corbyn's almost certain defeat, will prove nothing to those who will not allowed themselves to be swayed by any amount of evidence. There must be some other factor affecting it. They didn't really lose, at all. The fight must go on.
Monday, 13 October 2014
Throw away your television
As Douglas Carswell returns to parliament today as the first ever UKIP MP to be elected to the House Of Commons, the issue of whether UKIP leader Nigel Farage should appear in the party leaders' television debates in the run up to next year's general election is once again in the spotlight.
It's easy to think there's no simple answer to this conundrum. Some people say the debates should be restricted to those party leaders who have a realistic chance of becoming the next Prime Minister - in which case, should Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg even be included, since the next Prime Minister is likely to be either David Cameron or Ed Miliband? Other people, however, say that UKIP have a right to be included, now that they have parliamentary representation, and can therefore claim to be a serious political movement - but in that case, shouldn't the Green Party, who've been represented in the Commons by Caroline Lucas since 2010, also be involved? And how about parties like Plaid Cymru, the SNP, the DUP, etc. - all of whom have more MPs sitting in Westminster than either UKIP or the Greens?
However, there is a simple answer, and it is this: scrap the television debates.
That's right. Let's get rid of this clunky, unnecessary, counter-productive political device which has been imported from America and shoehorned into our vastly different political system with practically no alterations.
In America, voters have a straight choice between candidate this guy and candidate that guy - the television debates can help to set out the difference between each candidate's vision, and allow people to make a more informed choice when they go to vote. Here in the UK, we have a multi-party parliamentary system; very few of the people watching the debates will actually be voting for David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg or Nigel Farage - and with many parties competing for representation in the House Of Commons, looking to influence policy, the choice facing British voters is not a simple 'this or that' decision.
The televised leaders' debates serve to make our electoral system seem more presidential, and in doing so, diminish the link between local MPs and their constituents. They oversimplify politics in a way which doesn't serve the country at all. It's time to admit that they were a mistake in 2010, and we'll be better off without them in 2015.
As for UKIP…? They have one narrative - an attempt to frame political discourse as a simple case of UKIP and their supporters against the world (because all the other political parties are the same), and whether they are involved in the television debates or not, this too will be twisted to fit this narrative.
Exclusion from the debates will prove that UKIP are victims of an 'establishment' conspiracy to keep them down - whilst inclusion will give Mr Farage the chance to show how the other party leaders are all 'ganging up' on him, proving that there's no difference between the main parties, and that UKIP is the only credible alternative to a Westminster consensus which is only looking out for itself and not the interests of the country at large. Once again, we're better off without the debates altogether.
It's easy to think there's no simple answer to this conundrum. Some people say the debates should be restricted to those party leaders who have a realistic chance of becoming the next Prime Minister - in which case, should Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg even be included, since the next Prime Minister is likely to be either David Cameron or Ed Miliband? Other people, however, say that UKIP have a right to be included, now that they have parliamentary representation, and can therefore claim to be a serious political movement - but in that case, shouldn't the Green Party, who've been represented in the Commons by Caroline Lucas since 2010, also be involved? And how about parties like Plaid Cymru, the SNP, the DUP, etc. - all of whom have more MPs sitting in Westminster than either UKIP or the Greens?
However, there is a simple answer, and it is this: scrap the television debates.
That's right. Let's get rid of this clunky, unnecessary, counter-productive political device which has been imported from America and shoehorned into our vastly different political system with practically no alterations.
In America, voters have a straight choice between candidate this guy and candidate that guy - the television debates can help to set out the difference between each candidate's vision, and allow people to make a more informed choice when they go to vote. Here in the UK, we have a multi-party parliamentary system; very few of the people watching the debates will actually be voting for David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg or Nigel Farage - and with many parties competing for representation in the House Of Commons, looking to influence policy, the choice facing British voters is not a simple 'this or that' decision.
The televised leaders' debates serve to make our electoral system seem more presidential, and in doing so, diminish the link between local MPs and their constituents. They oversimplify politics in a way which doesn't serve the country at all. It's time to admit that they were a mistake in 2010, and we'll be better off without them in 2015.
As for UKIP…? They have one narrative - an attempt to frame political discourse as a simple case of UKIP and their supporters against the world (because all the other political parties are the same), and whether they are involved in the television debates or not, this too will be twisted to fit this narrative.
Exclusion from the debates will prove that UKIP are victims of an 'establishment' conspiracy to keep them down - whilst inclusion will give Mr Farage the chance to show how the other party leaders are all 'ganging up' on him, proving that there's no difference between the main parties, and that UKIP is the only credible alternative to a Westminster consensus which is only looking out for itself and not the interests of the country at large. Once again, we're better off without the debates altogether.
Wednesday, 8 October 2014
#Zzubwords - Westminster
Everybody knows what political ‘buzzwords’ are. Words which have become so ubiquitous simply to mean ‘a Good Thing™’ - empty words which convey a feeling, rather than a meaning. Words like ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’; everyone means slightly different things when they say them, but that doesn’t matter - they don’t need qualifications or explanations, because they instantly connote a vague feeling of positivity, and ‘being on your side’.
I have noticed, however, an opposite group of words - words which are used interchangeably without context, to mean a vague, generic ‘Bad Thing™’. I am calling these zzubwords, and I am hoping to compile a small dictionary of some of the more common ones, and to make this into a semi-regular feature on this Blog.
Westminster
Although not exactly first in our Dictionary Of Zzubwords alphabetically, in the wake of last month’s referendum on Scottish Independence, this seems an apposite starting point for my collection. Westminster, of course, is actually just an area of Central London - but those who prey on the prevailing disaffection with mainstream politics to advance their own aims and agendas have realised that an association with politicians and traditional political processes can make almost anything seem sleazy and corrupt.
By perpetuating the idea of some great, expansive divide between ‘ordinary people’ and ‘professional politicians’ - two apparently separate species, who simply cannot understand each other - it is possible to make people suspicious and mistrustful of almost anything, just by associating it with ‘Westminster’, the by-word for self-interested, out-of-touch politics with nothing to offer.
I have noticed, however, an opposite group of words - words which are used interchangeably without context, to mean a vague, generic ‘Bad Thing™’. I am calling these zzubwords, and I am hoping to compile a small dictionary of some of the more common ones, and to make this into a semi-regular feature on this Blog.
Westminster
Although not exactly first in our Dictionary Of Zzubwords alphabetically, in the wake of last month’s referendum on Scottish Independence, this seems an apposite starting point for my collection. Westminster, of course, is actually just an area of Central London - but those who prey on the prevailing disaffection with mainstream politics to advance their own aims and agendas have realised that an association with politicians and traditional political processes can make almost anything seem sleazy and corrupt.
By perpetuating the idea of some great, expansive divide between ‘ordinary people’ and ‘professional politicians’ - two apparently separate species, who simply cannot understand each other - it is possible to make people suspicious and mistrustful of almost anything, just by associating it with ‘Westminster’, the by-word for self-interested, out-of-touch politics with nothing to offer.
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