Authentic politicians: Only the Mavericks are real.

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.