Watching the Labour Party trying, with some apparent
difficulty, to select its next leader is very revealing, not just about the
Labour Party, but politicians of all views and hues in general.
There are 4 labour candidates, Jeremy Corbyn, Andy
Burnham, Liz Kendall and Yvette Cooper. Of them, only Mr Corbyn appears to be
real. What marks him out is that he appears to sincerely believe what he says.
Whether you think it makes sense or not, is not the point here. It's that he
comes across as more or less authentic, answering questions and talking his
mind, much perhaps as he would if asked the same thing by a fireside or in a
pub. This is indeed rare in politics, and especially unusual with a politician
on the stump.
By comparison the other three could not appear less
authentic if they deliberately set out to be. It's as if they have forgotten
how to talk like normal humans; every utterance is as an opportunity to slight
another, undermine a "colleague" with oblique barbs or attack an
opponent for holding a different view. In the case of Cooper and Burnham
particularly, it seems that both have had every last shred of individual
character burnt out of them after too many years in the House of Droids. Perhaps it's their watery, shifting stances
on any issue slightly more contentious than apple pie (yes, even motherhood
became an argument). Perhaps it's the smoothly meaningless word-salads they
regurgitate at the sight of a press opportunity or television camera. In a
sense, they are the meat puppets manufactured for and by a political machine
that seeks power for power's sake but which has long since relinquished the
need for real, meaningful views about anything at all.
This is not unique to one party though, they are largely
all the same. In the USA by coincidence the same process is unfurling in both
the primaries as they select their presidential candidates. The ultimate
exemplification of ruthless, insatiable hunger for power is manifest in the
Clinton campaign. The anointed machine candidate Hillary, robotically practiced
and carefully coiffured, is the CGI of
the perfect candidate designed by a political focus group. What is on show is
in reality the composite expression of power-lust, privilege, wealth and vested
interest.
Set against the Clinton machine is the outsider, in the
form of Bernie Sander, daring to challenge preordained Democratic Party fate.
Sanders is a bit like the U.S. version of Corbyn. Angry, seemingly genuine in
his views and an apparently authentic politician. Whether you support these
views is, again, not the point. His views are his, not those of a circus of
spin doctors, lobbyists, political focus groups and special advisors who have
lost all sense of the real amidst a psychosis of trend and data analysis,
sampling and polling.
In the Republican camp you have another outsider in the
form of the very weird Donald Trump. "The Donald" and Sanders could
not have less in common ideologically, yet they are both mavericks challenging
the party machine. Trump is currently riding high because, amongst other
things, he is seen as speaking his own mind (again, whether you like the
clutter that emerges is not the point here) and not being some soulless cut-out
suit, pre-programmed with a pattern of politically correct strap-lines and all
the personality of an empty paper packet. He is now being pushed by another
"un-political" politician in the form of a retired neurosurgeon, Ben
Carson. Once agin, trailing away in a dusty third, fourth and so on come the
droids of the party machine.
Ultimately, even if elected, any one of these mavericks
will probably fail, for as we know, good intentions are not nearly enough in
politics, just ask Alexander Tsipras. The now famous quote that "All
political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end
in failure", could be regarded as the First Law of politics. If so, the
Second Law would be that, "Eventually, all politicians will at best
disappoint, at worst betray, those who vote for them". Even the mavericks.
Just ask those who voted for Alexander Tsipras.
