Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse (14 page)

None of the problems discussed above is primarily our politicians’ fault. And that’s a bigger problem. Modern politicians don’t seem to do much – everything happens despite them, not because of them, starting with the credit crunch.

That crisis happened in spite of what Gordon Brown did – he certainly wanted to avoid it. His political opponents claim that his policies created the conditions for the crash, but few really believe it would have been averted if a Tory or a Lib Dem had been chancellor of the exchequer since 1997 instead. So it didn’t matter who the politicians were or, seemingly, what they did – the disaster was inevitable. Whoever we’d voted for, it wouldn’t have made any difference.

But they command quite a few column inches for such an irrelevant section of the community, probably even more than footballers and royals. In this section, I look at their desperate attempts to say what we want to hear, and at their transparent obsession with how they come across.

As Gordon Brown’s government meandered towards its lacklustre conclusion, it had plenty of feeble ideas, but I was particularly depressed by one from June 2009, largely because the Tories were so envious of it.

Sir Alan Sugar, the government’s new “enterprise tsar” (calling him “captain of the enterprise” would have been more fun), could lose his TV show if the Tories get their way. Jeremy Hunt, the shadow culture secretary, reckons BBC rules would be broken if Sugar continued to front
The Apprentice
while working for the government.

Apparently, presenters of BBC shows are supposed to be impartial. I’m not entirely clear what that means. It is sensible that people presenting programmes shouldn’t secretly be in the pay of McDonald’s, Ukip or the Pipe Smoker of the Year organisation. But presenters are allowed to appear in adverts, so it seems that some transparent partiality is OK (thank God). No one’s afraid that Gary Lineker is covertly putting a cheese and oniony spin on the football results.

So if an openly held bought allegiance wouldn’t stop Sir Alan being a presenter, then surely an equally open set of political opinions should be fine? Not according to Hunt, who said of Sugar: “The idea that he is politically neutral is a bit of a joke; he has written in the
Sun
, the
Mirror
, the
News of the World
criticising David Cameron and the Conservatives in a highly partisan way.”

Who is “politically neutral”? Do the Tories really expect all BBC presenters, even of programmes as trivial as
The Apprentice
(we’re not talking about
Newsnight
here), to hold no opinions at all? Has it not occurred to Hunt that, in expressing his anti-Conservative views, Sugar isn’t revealing himself to be part of an insidious cabal, but merely saying what he thinks? He is demonstrating that he’s someone who, like all of us except a few morons, holds opinions.

The fact that these opinions are to do with party politics doesn’t make them invalidly “partisan”. They’re still his views about what is right and wrong – the same as if he’d said he regards theft and murder as immoral. And I don’t imagine the
Tories would criticise him for writing an article that was openly anti-BNP – and that’s a party political view, however much it’s self-evident to all but a few thousand weirdos.

But as soon as the opinions become subtle enough to be of any interest, the Conservatives claim Sugar shouldn’t be allowed to express them, merely because he hosts a pantomime version of a business show. It would help no one if every TV face were chosen from the tiny minority whose views are so bland that they tread a perfect median between left and right.

What is Jeremy Hunt’s real fear here? Does he think that Sir Alan will start adding a quick “Vote Labour!” every time he says “You’re fired!”? He can’t be genuinely worried that the show will turn into a party political broadcast, because people would stop watching if it did.

No, the Tories are just desperate to rob Labour of its little publicity coup because Sir Alan Sugar comes across on TV as exactly the sort of cock who Tory voters like. His brand of “no-nonsense” nonsense and secondhand rhetoric, and his public affirmation that wealth makes what you say more important, are perfectly judged to appeal to the sort of idiot who thinks David Cameron talks a lot of sense, even though all he does is repeatedly bleat “change” like a tramp in a doorway, and his only stated policy is “to become prime minister”.

I’m now sounding like exactly the kind of person who the Tories think shouldn’t be allowed on the BBC. But let me assure Jeremy Hunt that it’s not because I’m “biased” that I say that Cameron is a chancer who’s even more woefully unfit for government than Gordon Brown. It’s because I sincerely think it – just like I think that grilled tomatoes are nicer than tinned and Sean Connery was the best Bond. I honestly, unpromptedly believe it. Maybe I’m wrong. It looks like I’m going to get the chance to find out.

The real problem with Sugar’s new appointment is that it’s such an obvious and grim attempt at populism. Brown is either so short of ideas or so despises the electorate that he thinks the best way to demonstrate that the government is coping with the biggest business crisis in a century is to make it the responsibility of a man whose day job is telling self-regarding mediocrities that they should take off their Mexican hats before trying to put on their jumpers. A man who has made himself rich, but whose career as a tycoon has gone sufficiently quiet that he’s got time to do TV.

Top-end billionaires are too busy for that – Rupert Murdoch and Richard Branson don’t have their own programmes, they have their own channels. Alan Sugar is no longer primarily a businessman – he portrays one on TV. Brown might as well have given the new tsardom to the bloke who played Boycie in
Only Fools and Horses
.

What is even more depressing than Brown thinking that this might impress people is that the Tories, the only plausible alternative government, agree. That’s how to survive in politics: don’t focus on the country’s problems, get someone shouty from the telly to talk stridently about them. And then go on
GMTV
and say you’re personally concerned about Susan Boyle’s health “because she’s a really, really nice person”.

Does Brown honestly believe that’s how to get people to respect him? To make them think that, in the middle of the greatest crisis in his career, he’s still taking a personal interest in the health of a random middle-aged woman he hardly knows? Does that kind of prioritisation play well with voters? What is still more depressing is that it might.

Sir Alan Sugar is perfectly suited to the job of “enterprise tsar” because it’s not a job – it’s an exercise in presentation, just like his role on the BBC. In less bewildered times, an ambitious opposition would welcome the opportunity to ridicule such a
disastrously craven government appointment. Instead, they’re meanly trying to block it because they’re annoyed they didn’t think of it themselves.

As the election campaign got under way, I found myself watching another bunch of entitled men tire themselves out …

I went to the Boat Race for the first time this year. It turned out to be an exciting one – quite close. “Not like those deathly dull processional contests of the 1990s!” everyone said. I remember watching those on TV: Cambridge would take an early lead and then gradually increase it until, after about halfway, you couldn’t get both crews in the same helicopter shot. By the time the exhausted and heartbroken Oxford boat heaved itself over the line, the Cambridge rowers had already necked an aperitif and ordered their starters. In those years, it was difficult to understand how Oxford weren’t better, considering how much longer they seemed to spend rowing.

I didn’t find that dull – I thought it was great. I don’t give a damn about the quality of the race, I just want Cambridge to win. I don’t completely understand why. “Because I went to university there” doesn’t seem reason enough. I suppose there’s something comforting in any long-held allegiance, however arbitrary. That’s why people support football clubs – it gives a sense of belonging, of shared achievements and disappointment. We allow ourselves to enjoy a victory we didn’t contribute to because we know that in the event of defeat, we’d also have felt the pain.

But I can see that to people who don’t have a connection with Oxford or Cambridge, it’s just the close Boat Races that are diverting. Similarly, to an exhaustedly indifferent electorate, only the close elections are worth following.

1997 was an exciting election, even though it was a foregone conclusion, because the result pleased a lot of people. Everyone is saying how exciting this year’s is going to be because you genuinely can’t predict the result. This is a reason to engage, to enthuse, to speculate – all of which activity, like organising a wedding to breathe life into a failing relationship, disguises the awful truth that we don’t much care any more.

A regime which has led us into recession, debt and open-ended war is difficult to get behind, even if some of the crises weren’t primarily its fault. And the likely alternative seems almost wilfully unappealing: slick but lacking substance and desperate to avoid expressing any kind of opinion in case it puts some voters off.

I can see the wisdom of that when they’ve got the likes of Chris Grayling knocking around. I don’t think his suggestion that B&B owners, perhaps balking at how those initials might be interpreted by gay couples, should be allowed to turn homosexuals away makes him a homophobe. It just means that he hopes homophobes will vote for him. The fact that he thought he could secure their support without repelling the rest of us shows a curious mixture of cynicism and ineptitude.

It’s unfair to harp on about how posh a lot of the shadow cabinet are – there’s nothing wrong with being posh. Some people have been kind enough to say that I come across as a bit posh sometimes. Eton is a good school – I see no reason why someone who went to Eton shouldn’t be prime minister. That’s the kind of broadminded guy I am.

But it does seem a devil of a coincidence that David Cameron – the dynamic new Tory who is going to lead his party out of the wilderness and his country into a sort of loving Thatcherism (which must be the political equivalent of S&M) – should have such a similar background to many of the old Tories whom he claims to be so unlike. It’s an irony that you’d think he might have referred to amid all his talk of change.

The key Cameron claim slipped out on Tuesday when he said of the government: “Frankly, we couldn’t be any worse.” It’s also an admission that they might be no better. “But even in that eventuality, what have you lost?” he’s imploring. Meanwhile, Labour’s contention is that these difficult times call, as Lord Mandelson put it, for Brown’s granite rather than Cameron’s plastic. (It depends if we’re making an iPhone or a tomb, I suppose.) Cameron plugged this into the Central Office Witulator™, which came out with the brilliant riposte: “Well, I would say it’s rust versus steel.”

What awful, awful people. A few days into the campaign and I want to scream at them all to shut up. Even poor Nick Clegg, who hasn’t got a chance, can’t help being deeply annoying. One of his campaign launch soundbites was: “Our change is change that really does make a difference to ordinary people and families.” Apart from the blandness, it’s the “and families” that’s maddening. Doesn’t “people” cover families? Of course it does, but he’s got to say “families” because some research document has suggested that that’s a word that people (and families) want to hear.

The endless talk of “fairness” and “hard-working families” and “change” has become dispiritingly meaningless. Politicians are completely failing to connect, even when they’re saying “Politicians are completely failing to connect.” They make words worthless; they all say that they don’t go in for negative campaigning while standing in the shadow of hoardings smearing their opponents. Do they think we don’t notice that blatant lie? If so, how much must they despise us?

I know I’m stumbling into the cliché that politicians are all as bad as each other, but I can’t remember ever feeling it more strongly. Increasingly, they, and much of the media that scrutinise them, seem to come from an insular political community, which explains so much of the razzmatazz surrounding the
election: they’re genuinely excited – they haven’t noticed that Britain is weary and sceptical. We’re supposed to be countering political apathy, and yet several TV channels devoted hours of broadcasting to Brown’s car journey to and from Buckingham Palace to confirm an election date that everyone already knew. Compared to that, the state opening of parliament is like
The West Wing
.

Yet it’s important. Understanding the tiny differences between one drably plausible group and another may be crucial to our future happiness. Our past failures to do so have had horrible consequences: one of the many truths that politicians will never utter is that their mediocrity is, ultimately, a reflection of our own – our failure to understand, scrutinise and care, which is then exacerbated by the disappointing people that that failure allows to come to prominence.

This election race isn’t going to be close in a good way. It may be tense, but the standard won’t be high. They’re not rowing so much as messing about in boats – hurling abuse and trying to ram each other. Millions so despair of the fixture that we’re glumly hoping for a draw.

When I first heard someone say “No publicity is bad publicity”, my instant response was: “Yeah, I bet that’s right!” It sounded so clever and cynical. “Life’s all about grabbing people’s attention and keeping it,” I thought. The squeaky hinge gets the oil, the country that threatens nuclear proliferation gets the aid, the most-papped glamour model gets the book deal.

It’s an old saw that seems horrible enough to be true, and whoever’s running the Cambridge Union Society clearly subscribes to it: the debating society has announced that it’s offering pole-dancing lessons to female students. They’re to
be held in the Blue Room, which, I assume, someone thinks is humorously apt – unless it was chosen over the “Boobs Library” or “Legs Akimbo Lounge and Conference Suite”.