This stage managed, policy free election

The real drama of the election so far was provided after the GMB union called a strike at Nestle’s York factory to protest at the management’s announcement that they were going to shift production of Blue Riband to Poland. Although the company merely talked about cutting costs, the local Labour MP blamed Brexit.

The day began with Theresa May, frontrunner in the forthcoming election, visiting both company management and union leaders to discuss the situation. The real drama began when Tim Farron, leader of the Liberal Democrats, who is campaigning to allow another referendum on Brexit, ambushed May by visiting workers who were picketing the factory. The anti-Brexit candidate shook hands and took selfies, and later said there was no doubt that the job cuts were a direct result of Brexit. I’m on the side of the workers who will lose their jobs as a result of leaving the EU, he said.

But Mrs. May was not to be outdone. After her talks she too went to talk with workers on the picket line, despite chants from some of the workers of ‘we want a second referendum’ and ‘Farron for PM’. She talked with them for an hour, and although she might not have convinced them that she could help, she did win the respect of some.

This is fiction of course, apart from the job losses at York. But those who read this Guardian article, or who live in France, will know that this is exactly what happened in the presidential run-off, with Le Pen performing the ambush and Macron having the courage to subsequently talk to the striking workers. As the article pointed out, this French political drama is in complete contrast to the stage managed campaign of Theresa May. In addition Macron has not refused to debate Le Pen for tactical reasons, as both May and then Corbyn have done.

This and the last election have been about selling brands, but unlike advertising there is no requirement to tell the truth. 2015 was all about a strong economy in capable hands: the economy was not strong and the hands sacrificed the economy for political gain but they kept on saying ‘long term economic plan’ and won. This time they are selling Theresa May as strong and stable, strong enough to bow to pressure on self-employment tax and stable in her views on Brexit, but again the marketing will win.

There is no doubt that something is very wrong when politics becomes about selling advertising slogans that are not true. But who is to blame for this situation? Janan Ganesh says the problem is that there are just two attitudes among the public about politics: indifference and obsession. I often think that the indifference is summed up by the phrase ‘all politicians are the same’. Taken at face value this assertion is clearly wrong, but what I think it means is that the person talking does not have the time or inclination to work out how politicians differ in a way that matters to them.

But this indifference does not stop people forming political opinions, often quite strong opinions. So why are we getting an election where the Prime Minister wants to avoid debate or questioning as far as she can? Krishnan Guru-Murthy is right that the media should try and discourage this way of running elections. But that needs to involve more than telling people when meetings are completely stage managed. The media needs to look at why spin doctors might want to minimise encounters with the media. For part of the answer you only need to look at how it puts gaffes before policy, as Diane Abbott discovered on Tuesday. Guru-Murthy’s own news program led with it, and all the discussion was about gaffes rather than police numbers.

Justifications along the lines of how this can reveal something about the competence of the person who made the gaffe may sometimes be true, but as a general defence it is not very convincing. As Mark Steel tweeted, if she had only put the numbers on a bus she would have got away with it. The real reason broadcasters make so much of gaffes is that they make great television. Who doesn’t want to see a politician embarrassed? But the consequence is politicians retreat to gaffe-proof platitudes. Labour politicians used to speak in a strange manner that seemed to be designed to avoid giving ammunition to the Daily Mail. It was one of the reasons Jeremy Corbyn, who said what he thought, won the Labour leadership.

If the broadcast media saved all the time they currently spend commenting on the polls and instead used that time to talk about policy, it would allow viewers to connect their own opinions to each party more easily. We do not want to end up like the last US election, where the average voter who just watched the nightly news on the non-partisan TV channels saw more time devoted to Clinton’s emails than all policy issues combined. That way we will end up with an incompetent, dishonest leader running a party whose policies will harm the country. Oh, wait...

The French election and two-dimensional politics

Unless something very surprising happens, the French presidential election will be between Marine Le Pen of the Front National and François Fillon, who recently won the primaries for a collection of parties (essentially the right wing republican party). Fillon’s platform was extremely neoliberal. As Renee Buhr describes here:

“His policy proposals largely indicate a small government, low taxation and free market approach to economic policy, while his campaign rhetoric takes aim at the usual ‘boogeymen’ cited by liberal politicians – government regulations, public expenditures, high taxes and public sector institutions and employees.“

This makes we worried that Le Pen will win.

If you see politics as all about a left/right axis, my concern makes no sense. Choosing someone whose economic policy is very much to the right of the centre/right parties should eat into Le Pen’s support, while those on the left will vote (reluctantly) for the lesser of the two right wing parties. However this one dimensional view is far too simplistic, and perhaps fatally so in this case.

To illustrate why, I want to briefly look at a piece by Jonathan Wheatley, which uses UK politics before the 2015 election. A sample were asked their views on 30 different policy issues. A technique was then used to find a pattern in the responses. The first interesting result was that the strongest pattern was two dimensional: there seem to be two common factors underlying these responses. To quote:

“The first is an economic dimension, drawing on issues such as the mansion tax, the bedroom tax, and privatisation of the NHS. The second is a cultural dimension, drawing on issues such as EU membership, immigration, same-sex marriage and English Votes for English Laws.”

We could say the cultural dimension was about identity, varying from communitarian to cosmopolitan views. He then looks at the political party people supported. Here is the result:

On the cultural dimension, party supporters are where you would expect. But on economic issues UKIP supporters are less rather than more right wing than Conservative party supporters.

I know of no similar analysis that looks at French voters, but this does not matter for the point I want to make. Suppose we use the same diagram to represent a political party's policy position. In that case the area occupied by UKIP in the diagram above does seem to correspond to Front National policies. Their position on the identity axis is certainly well to the south of other parties, but their position on economic issues is far from neoliberal. In choosing who to vote for, the voter will position themselves on the diagram, and look for the party that is closer to them in this two dimensional space. (Of course we cannot use the diagram to actually measure distance, as the implicit weighting between the two aspects is arbitrary, and may not correspond to that of the voter. But the conceptual argument still works.)    

From this two dimensional perspective, choosing a candidate to oppose Le Pen who is pretty right win in economic terms does nothing to capture Front National voters. But more seriously, it risks losing the support of left wing voters. While they may dislike Le Pen because of her stance on immigration and other identity issues, Le Pen is more acceptable in terms of economic policies than a very neoliberal candidate.