Democratic Society blog archive

You don’t often look to the London Evening Standard for inteligent political comment – it’s owned by the Daily Mail, after all – but today it provides an example of interestingly stupid political comment.

Page 2 has an article about immigration policy, which shockingly reveals that Labour’s immigration policy was – I don’t know if I can bear to write this – written with political considerations in mind. Yes, amazing as it may seem, the Standard is attacking politicans for taking political points into account when making a political decision.

In fact, the point is even stupider than that, suggesting that the Government made immigration policy more liberal in order to “rub the Tories’ noses in multiculturalism”. This doesn’t sound like good politics in a country engaged in a hysterical bout of paranoid racism about immigration, but no matter – the usual anti-immigration voices are wheeled out to say what an evil travesty it all is.

So, the Standard thinks politics is bad and sordid, right? Wrong.

On the very next page, the Standard attacks the EU for seeking to appoint Tony Blair as “EU President” (sic) “in secret and without a vote”. Again, the warhorses answer the bugle and tell us how this is a travesty of democracy, and evil and anti-democratic. If only it were political! If only there were a popular vote!

Of course, the last thing that the UK press really wants is more EU democracy – that would mean the EU moving significantly closer to being a fully empowered democratic state. They ought to be happy with what they’ve got: a normal fudgy EU appointment process which they can present as a step on the road to serfdom.

But then again, why would the media feel the need to be consistent? They expect politicians to be consistent in their views for twenty years, or else be accused of slippery hypocrisy. They themselves, however, have such little respect for their readers that they feel no need to be consistent from one day – or one page – to the next.

Here’s a funny thing (spotted via NewsCorpse and PatriotRoom). Rasmussen Reports, an American polling company, has created a new demographic category called “Political Class” when reporting its polls.

It works like this. When a poll is reported, such as this one on whether the US Government has too much power, the results are reported both for mainstream Americans and for the political class. So, 85% of mainstream Americans think that Uncle Sam is too powerful, while only 2% of the political class agree.

So, how do Rasmussen define the political class? Congressmen? People working in think tanks?

No, it’s based on the answers to three questions, they explain. The three questions are:

• Generally speaking, when it comes to important national issues, whose judgment do you trust more – the American people or America’s political leaders?

• Some people believe that the federal government has become a special interest group that looks out primarily for its own interests. Has the federal government become a special interest group?
• Do government and big business often work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors?

Call me a commie European girly-man, but aren’t those very odd questions? Maybe I’m just a member of that nasty old Political Class, but if you answered ‘yes’ to all three questions, I wouldn’t call you a mainstream American, I’d call you paranoid.

Now, this is in part because the American tradition of populism has never (yet) had much traction in Europe. In US history, there have been parties and movements that would have wholeheartedly agreed with all of those questions. But is it fair to call those people “Mainstream”? That’s a strongly positive brand – implying to most people that they should think that way too.

Even more unpleasant is the categorisation of anyone who agrees with any of the questions as a member of the “Political Class”. You can see how this would skew results towards blog-pleasing populist headlines about how “Mainstream Americans” don’t want universal healthcare, support Sarah Palin, want to have machine guns, and so on.

And as for those people who think that government can occasionally do the right thing? They’re only members of the Political Class, you can safely hate them, you don’t need to listen to what they say.