Man About Town
Thou shalt not judge
Jamie Pollock discusses the positions of other Varsity bloggers, Patrick Kingsley and Dan Hitchens, and the debate they are having about how politicians should be judged.
Cute kittens: screw the nuclear family, this is the ultimate election strategy.
Reading this week’s blogs by both Patrick Kingsley and Dan Hitchens, I can’t help but thinking that their debate about how we should judge politicians entirely negates the realities which lie at the heart of the modern state. In selecting our leaders, we are directly concerned with the kind of people they are. Fully aware of their humanity, we rightly expect them to appear as more than human. What of it?
Kingsley asks us to remember that politicians are people. How could we forget? It is something they try to prove to us everyday in front of television cameras, on radio broadcasts and billboards nationwide. It is the reason we see the leader of the opposition on Webcameron, outlining ‘the serious and bold plans we have to fix our broken society’ in front of a garden shed. That’s just Dave all over: mucking in, on his knees, digging us out of crisis. It is the reason our Chancellor tells us he’s a fan of The Killers. Smile like you mean it Darling, you couldn’t be more offensively inoffensive.
Kinglsey’s story is a sad one. The image of the disheveled and redundant tea-lady looks like some strange cameo performance by Father Ted’s Mrs. Doyle in The Thick of It. But that’s just it. When the rulers select the ruled, they should and must be highly selective about the individuals they choose to run the country. The Westminster village is brutal. So be it.
Having served some time in Parliament as the mail-boy for my own MP, I actually had a particularly brief encounter with Kinglsey’s Lib Dem hero Charles Kennedy, who, with one stare managed to completely convince me that he was the most excellent chap in Parliament. Catching my eye as I nodded off up in the galleries, Kennedy raised a smile and winked at me. What a guy! Neither of us gave a shit about bendy buses or why Doncaster’s 78A was always late. There was I, opening letters for some decrepit old Tory who didn’t know my name, whilst Charles Kennedy was flapping around down there like the great big lovable Scot I’d been longing for. I felt it, Kingsley, I loved it too.
Without being disrespectful, he’s a guy I would be happy to buy a drink. But should the country care that a prospective PM was an alcoholic? Absolutely. In discerning whether or not a leader displays the capacity to govern, one of our first points of reference will, within reason, be their ability to manage their own lives. I agree with Kingsley’s proclamation that ‘public mismanagement, however, shouldn’t lead to personal vilification’. But without some personal vilification, do we not leave ourselves vulnerable to public mismanagement?
The way MPs spend public money, their dependences upon prescription drugs or alcohol and their illicit sexual relationships are surely reflections of their values and how they put them into practice. Dan Hitchens scorns Kingsley’s apparent “attempt to translate the virtues of social life into the virtues of political action”. He argues that “a social virtue – kindness, generosity, interest in other people, cheerfulness – is not necessarily the same kind of thing when one has responsibility for tens of millions of other people.” Perhaps it is not “necessarily the same kind of thing”, but they are probably the best descriptors voters have.
Both Hitchens and Kingsley expect us to pass judgement on our politicians without fully scrutinising their private lives or the quality and rigour of their social virtues. Yet, in their own ways, they are highly misguided. Dan Hitchens wants to judge politicians merely by the consequences of their actions. Where does an appeal to kept promises leave voters trying to judge what a Cameron government might feel like? Kingsley’s call for us to refrain from personal abuse denies the very cut and thrust of the political, which keeps politicians on their toes. On that note, you may or may not enjoy http://mydavidcameron.com/. He’s not your David Cameron quite yet. You may judge him whilst you can.
Topics: Charles Kennedy, Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Politics
Hello Jamie, nice to meet you.
You’re right: personal abuse is “the very cut and thrust of the political”, but it’s nothing to be upbeat about. That image and posture have taken the place of ideology and policy should be a cause for regret, not relish. That people’s voting intentions are defined more by a personal dislike of Brown’s angry demeanour than an analysis of his party’s policies is more worrying than pleasing.
It’s not a good thing that the main way we “keep our politicians on their toes” is through something as fatuous as Punch-and-Judy-style PMQs, where what they say is less important than how they say it. It’s a shame that, for the last year-and-a-bit, Cameron’s run roughshod over Brown not because he has better policies (we’ve never really been told what they are) but because he looks less grumpy; nor that it is only in the last few weeks, now that the press has finally begun to look beyond the posturing, the “personal abuse”, that we discover that Tory policy is actually quite flaccid and vague.
So my point isn’t just that “Kennedy’s a nice bloke, treat him with respect.” It’s also that personal vilification distracts us from what’s really important – the policies.
Of course, I would absolutely agree that personal abuse takes away from focus on policy. Further, you are right to argue that the dichotomy between personal abuse and the relevance of personality is a false one.
I think that you hit upon something in noting that the last few weeks have brought an exposure of the Tory’s lack of policy which seems to be taking precedence over Brown’s hopelessly unglamorous style. Perhaps it is the case that personal abuse and scandal serve as one of the few institutions shaping government in between elections, but that come polling day, policy intentions count for much more.
When Cameron fails to form a government in May, it will be because of mistrust surrounding that policy haze he has presented. Yet, surely his personality has added to uncertainty about what a Conservative government would look like.
Dan wants to separate social virtues from those which shape political decisions, yet because intentions rarely convert into results, personality has always served as a key indicator for voters.