Tuesday 10th July
Not that most people are concerned at all, after all they mostly ignore politicians. They still blame them, of course, for what goes wrong, which is most of the time, but they cannot be bothered between elections to actually listen to what is being said. The daily nitty gritty, the cut and thrust of daily politics, is just too boring for them. Or so they think, it all just passes over their head, or so they will tell you. But in its insidious way it does seep in. Dismiss the papers by all means, and most of us don’t read them every day as we used to, but they still matter. It is also all too easy to avoid the news these days, with hundreds of channels to switch over too, when those dread news drumbeats roll out after your favourite escapist viewing. But still it gets through and we form impressions of politicians or parties despite our apathy. ‘Labour are in the hands of the unions’ ‘Cameron is a posh boy’ ‘the Liberals cannot be trusted’ etc etc. But much of what we hear is planted, and most of it to denigrate the opposition; after all it is much easier to criticise the other lot than to say something constructive yourself. And this is where the lies, the smears and the truly bad politics come in. It is almost an industry these days, because like advertising, no matter how much you may disagree – it works. And that is why Ed Balls was so angry with George Osborne when he was accused of trying to persuade Barclays to lower it’s Libor submissions. As if it really matters, but it certainly did to Ed. Because one of the main deciders of the next election will be for the Tories to portray Labour as untrustworthy, and so far they are doing quite a good job. They reckon that no matter the state of the economy in their hands the public perception will be that it will be better to stick with us than trust that lot again. But sometimes those lies and smears can just be bad politics. If Labour can turn it on its head and show that the Tories are blatant liars they become discredited and the voters will feel that maybe Labour aren’t that bad after all. It is still three years to the next election, but believe me it has already started.