Policy Exchange: Stirring up cynicism
March 8th, 2010 | This post was written by Policy ExchangeMost political news is about personality and politics rather than policy. At the moment that’s particularly true – the big stories of recent weeks have been about Brown’s behaviour, Lord Ashcroft, what the polls say. Next week promises more of the same – a Channel 4 programme on Cameron, and the court appearance of some of the people charged as part of the expenses scandal.
I’ve often wondered how much difference all this news makes. Sit through a focus group, or speak to your least political friends and you will hear one thing time and time again: “they are all the same”. So much of this bad political news is just reinforcing what people think anyway – it is “already in the share price” as they say in the City.
Danny Finkelstein made the point nicely in an article last week:
The cynicism about politics is so pervasive that it embraces almost all political activity. Use a statistic? It’s a lie. Cry on television about your dead child? It’s an election gimmick. Attack your opponents’ policy? You would say that, wouldn’t you. And this cynicism extends to the media and our coverage. So not only politics, but news about politics, is seen as a fiction inside an untruth wrapped in a piece of spin… Most of politics and most political coverage proceeds as if there was still a reasonable degree of trust. As if the messages were still getting through, still being listened to, still being weighed up.
For the government of the day the clear implication is that what really matters is not their spin but whether they can deliver better results on the ground (a point grasped by Tony Blair some time in his second term). It is rather more difficult for the opposition to act on this insight. However, at the start of his time as Conservative leader David Cameron did emphasise that he would always aim to “show, not tell” people that the party had changed. And there was something of this in Cameron’s initial reaction to the expenses scandal – when he was prepared to take a stand unpopular among some of his MPs.
The big problem for Cameron is that the Government has managed to shift so much the real-world pain the public will feel until after the election by running up huge debts. So right now the public services are still hiring away. On the ground, things don’t look so bad. At least, not yet.
We know more or less what the Budget is going to say already.
The Government is thinking not about how to reduce the soaring deficit – but how to spend the receipts from the super-tax in a pre-election giveaway. We will see mock “surprise” at how much the bonus tax has raised, and condemnation of those who “said it wouldn’t raise any money”. We will see big figures for savings based around finally officially scrapping the disastrous NHS IT programme and merging a few Primary Care Trusts. If Liam Byrne has his way (and he probably won’t) the government may even nod to the markets by stressing how “tough” it is planning to be on public sector pay post election (nominal rises less than 1%, meaning small real-terms cuts). The one thing it won’t do is make any meaningful effort to control the vast deficit. Instead the Government will try to keep the debate narrowly focused around the timing of cuts – not the content.
Ironically, this is where public cynicism might ride to the rescue of the Conservatives. The idea that politicians will spend now and cut after the election is highly plausible for most world-weary voters. In the 1974 election Willy Whitelaw accused Harold Wilson of going “round and round the country stirring up apathy”. The Tories won’t need to go round “stirring up” cynicism about the budget. But they will need to try and be in a position to exploit it.
Neil O’Brien is the Director of Policy Exchange
Related posts
Tags: Accountability, Commentators, Elections, Ethics, Money, Think tanks, Voters
Posts
