Wednesday 17 December 2014

Most people dislike politicians but I think we are still too deferential

MPs have never been the most popular people in the world, unless perhaps they're your MP and you think they're doing a great job. In recent years, as more and more people have become tired of spin and soundbites and feel that they are not being represented, politicians have become even less popular.

So why do we believe them? Conservative MPs in particular are able to latch onto negativity and humankind's instinctively defensive nature and attack whole sections of society as excuses to hide their state-shrinking, low-tax, privatised UK policies. And yet, polling continually shows that people trust the Tories on the economy more than Labour.

I think I should quickly sum up reasons why the Tories are not to be trusted with the economy:

1) Their stubbornness over extreme austerity is recent. If it's the only answer to sorting out the deficit, then why did they pledge to match the Labour government's spending?

2) The change in policy came about in response to the economic crash. The Tories claim the problem of the deficit was Labour's 'over-spending': 'over-spending' that the Tories pledged to match. The real cause, as we know, was a global banking disaster, where the teetering piles of debt finally became too much for the tiny amounts of actual capital in the system. The deficit is mostly due to the huge sums of taxpayers' money that saved the City. And if they really believe that it was Labour's 'over-spending' that has caused the deficit regardless of bailing out their city chums, then again: why did they pledge to match it?!

3) The vast majority of respected independent economists correctly predicted that the Tories' austerity measures would not bring the growth that Cameron et al claimed it would. Many also correctly predicted that their targets to "pay down" the deficit were not realistic and that austerity would cause economic stagnation significant enough to counter-balance the reduced spending.

4) The national debt has continued to rise despite the cuts we've faced.

5) Austerity and stagnation has caused a double-sided problem for the treasury: lower average earnings means more benefits to pay out and less tax coming in. We need one to pay for the other but the Tories' permanent dream of ever-lower taxes makes the situation twice as hard to cope with. Other countries which have not pursued such strict austerity might have had lower growth but it hasn't hit the economy as hard because wages have not been dragged so far down and public services (which help to reduce personal poverty by providing things that people would otherwise have to pay for) have not been cut so hard.

I could go on but I'm repeating things I've been saying for years.

So why do people still trust the Tories with the economy more than Labour? I've often mentioned the dominance of the right-wing in the mainstream media but I've started to think it's also partly deference. I think that without realising it, people do feel that upper and upper middle class people with posh accents and expensive suits know how to run the country best. And even though there's very little to choose between Tory MPs and Labour MPs in terms of presumed status, the Tories are the party of the establishment in the eyes of the voting public.

People are used to the wealthy and powerful looking and sounding a certain way because it's always been thus. Tony Blair succeeded where Neil Kinnock failed because he looked and sounded like the politicians and minor royals we've always known. Blair spent most of his childhood in Durham and Edinburgh. But instead of a mixture of Scottish and North-East, his accent is pure 'home' counties.

There are many left-wing politicians and activists speaking out for much fairer and more progressive policies but they can easily be dismissed by suited, privately-educated men with "ohh, it would be wonderful if it was all so simple but unfortunately, we've just come out of the deepest recession since blah blah blah..." People need to actually listen to what is said and learn to read between the lines to work out what the person speaking really wants, rather than just believing the person who looks and sounds like they were born to rule.

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