by Peter Watt
Sometimes politics is a noble and even beautiful pursuit where words can capture a moment and inspire. Just think of Martin Luther King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 or any one of a number of Churchill’s wartime orations.
Then there are political decisions that become once in a generation moments that end up uniting most of the country like the decision to go to war in 1939 or to create a National Health Service in its aftermath.
Other decisions remain more controversial but can still be seen as being decisive moments like the decision to join the EEC, the privatisation program of the 1980’s or the second Iraq war. The point is that over the years politics has mattered because it involved inspiration and decisions being taken that mattered even if they were opposed.
But in the last few years it has felt that politics has mattered less and less. Partly this is because the world has changed so that politics seems to have less influence than say global big business or the seemingly uncontrollable economic forces.
And partly it is the advent of the information age where the internet and social media has fragmented the sense of a shared experience. The reality is that you can set your “virtual preferences” so that you can simply block that which is of little interest or irrelevant.
But politics itself also has to bear some responsibility. In recent months, in addition to being seen as irrelevant, politics has also been ugly. And that ugliness will have served to further drive a wedge between them-and-us; between the tiny band of political warriors and the majority more interested in fuel prices, the security of their family and Gangnam style on YouTube.
Just think about the way that the welfare debate has been played out by the Tories. No more caring conservatism. Instead we have classic divide and rule hysteria about scroungers and cheats. George Osborne has set out to create an enemy that needs to be defeated – and they are all workshy, shell-suited and unwashed. As he said in his Conference speech last year:
“Where is the fairness, we ask, for the shift-worker, leaving home in the dark hours of the early morning, who looks up at the closed blinds of their next door neighbour sleeping off a life on benefits? When we say we’re all in this together, we speak for that worker. We speak all those who want to work hard and get on.”
Martin Luther-King it certainly isn’t! Instead it is a crude attempt to simplify a complex debate at the expense of some pretty weak members of our society. And in doing so he belittles and undermines the strength of his argument about the very real need to actually reduce the size of the welfare state. He assumes that it may be electorally successful, and he may be right, but he ultimately diminishes himself as well – few people like a bully.
But the left are as bad, in some ways worse because they (arrogantly) consider themselves to be basically nice people with good instincts. Yet the response of the left to the death of Mrs Thatcher has on the whole been appalling.
Ed Miliband in the House during the recall debate following her death was a very notable exception. He showed that it is possible to oppose some of her policies and still respect the politician. This excellent post over at Labour List from Dan Jarvis and Michael Dugher was also a respectful but balanced political piece on the terrible impact of closing coalfields in the 1980’s with no plan for what next. It was devastating in its assessment of her record; but it was not ugly and personal.
But so many others on the left have resorted to personal attacks. These “nice folk” of the left have resorted to their own version of ‘them-and-us’ by taking to the airwaves, the phone-ins, Twitter and blogs calling her ‘evil’, ‘wicked’ and worse. They have sought to impugn the motives of her and her administrations in order to justify parties celebrating her death. Class war has been re-declared by those comfortable in describing her as a tyrant or a despot with some even comparing her to Hitler for her approach to the trade unions.
God forbid that she might have been a politician who made decisions that we disagreed with and even made mistakes! Oh no; she has to be evil as well.
It is an ugly and crude attempt to simplify a complex debate about the pros and cons of an often controversial eleven year premiership. And in doing so it belittles and undermines the strength of argument against her approach. Ultimately it diminishes those doing the insulting – few people like the abusive.
So many on both the left and on the right, seemingly unable to get noticed or get people’s interest, are both resorting to type as the game of politics is played by fewer and fewer. Instead of appealing outwards they are instead retreating to their comfort zones and appealing to themselves and those who think in the small minded ways that they do.
The result is not a politics that inspires or that challenges. It is not a politics that sets out to change the world. It is a politics that justifies celebrating the death of a former prime minister and a politics that brands people as scroungers. It is tribal, divisive and ugly. And it will do nothing to reverse the decline in the perception of the relevance of politics to the lives of most people.
For Labour it also seriously undermines the welcome attempts by Ed Miliband to try and reverse this decline in the trust of politicians by creating a different sort of community based politics. Instead, tragically, it will confirm to many that politics and those who play its silly games are simply irrelevant.
Peter Watt was general secretary of the Labour party