No. 118 - A New Word, a New World and a New Party
Dear James,
An ugly new word has been forced into my vocabulary of late. ‘Relatable’ is a neologism, a verb made adjective by the distortion of a perfectly good infinitive. If someone is ‘relatable’ it means they share your view of life. 'He’s a good bloke'. 'He’s someone with whom you would share a pint'. The word came into my ken last week on a Channel 4 programme on ‘focus groups’, those special organisation where pollsters interrogate a select group to find out what they really think. This group focussed on Labour voters who changed to the Tories last December 12th. Why had they betrayed their traditional party? The answer was that they had found Boris ‘relatable’ while his opponents were, I suppose, ‘unrelatable’. In other words, they thought Boris, this uber-privileged product of Britain’s best known public school, was more like them than the others. Ouch!
What is happening to our world? Everywhere we look in the ‘free world’, populations seem to divide roughly 50-50. In the Western world this split consists of the so-called ‘elites’ on one side and, on the other, those who feel they have been neglected by what the elites decided. In the UK, in the USA, in Brazil, in India, in France, in Turkey, in the Philippines and in Israel, one half of each population has become a stubborn ‘base’ deriding the other half for hanging on to what we might call ‘evidence based’ policies. Trump, Johnson, Le Pen. Erdogan, Modi. Bolsonaro, Netanyahu and Duterte court their resentful followers with their ‘avuncular’ versions of the strongman. These ‘alternative elitists’, the new populists, have better answers to the complex problems of their nations. In the Philippines, they have a drugs problem. Answer? Get the police to kill the offenders. In India, the Muslim minority are a threat. Answer? Ban Muslims as new citizens. In Israel, the Arabs are threatening their nation. Answer? Increase Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. In the UK, they suffered ten years of stagnant incomes. Answer? Cut ourselves off from the biggest free market in the world.
The ‘alternative elitists’ are no nonsense and even cuddly characters. They bolster their cases with fake news and exude the confidence of the gut. Remember Mussolini? Stalin? Sadaam Hussein? Hitler? They all gave the comforting image of the ‘uncle’, the older man who was ‘relatable’ and knew what was what. Mr Trump is the latest version. He has been impeached for abusing his power and obstructing Congress but despite the most detailed, meticulous and convincing prosecution of the case by the Democrats, the Republicans will find him not guilty. A conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin tweeted: “The gap in character and intellect between the two parties is stunning.” But we know who will win. The ‘alternative elitists’ are all relatable. Until they are not. And by then it is too late.
In our own country, the Labour party is now in turmoil after its recent massive defeat. Under the ‘unrelatable’ Corbyn it lost many of its natural voters because they failed to understand their natural constituencies. They failed to understand that such people are fine with the implicit racism of Boris Johnson when he talks about burkas and letterboxes. They failed to understand the resentment to the constant attention to minorities or to ‘foreigners’ displaying entrepreneurship in the local corner shop while they languish in the back streets. They failed to feel what a majority of people in our small ‘c’ nation feel. This is voting by instinct. Voting by emotion. It is a massive challenge to ‘content’ voting. And these people now represent 30% of your MPs James!
Most people don’t like to think too much. They prefer instinct. Smell. Gut feeling. And the ‘alternative elites’ know this. They flood the internet with fake news to create misinformation and confusion. In the face of this people go to the next best thing to real ideas. They go to ‘relatability’. The bloke who you could have a drink with. The bloke who says he can get things done. To Boris. To Farage. To Trump. And of course to yourself, James in South Suffolk. You are relatable James. Particularly to the retired colonels and tweedy ladies of our constituency. Not so sure how you’d go down in the North though.
Unfortunately, in the real world, every relatable politician carries real messages. They are usually hidden and, often, the carrier does not even know that he or she is carrying them. One day however, they will emerge. History will make sure of that. Only then will we know. Only then will we be able to say, ‘I told you so!’
Kind regards,
BH - Your Concerned Constituent