Polling has had a huge effect on the life of the nation in the past few weeks. 55% of Conservative members surveyed by this site thought it was the polls that were the decisive factor in stopping the election. The up/down on/off drama which trapped Gordon Brown in a bind of his own design hugely weakened him and boosted David Cameron.
This particular polling dynamic is a new development: until quite recently, we didn’t have the conference season constantly punctuated by the latest measures of voting intention, and for two very good reasons. First, my industry used to say, polls during or just after a conference are distorted by the increased media attention that a party gets, so if they are read as settled opinion, they are misleading. Second, until YouGov came along, polls just couldn’t be carried out that fast. I was once criticised by Sir Bob Worcester for running intra-conference polls, but now that we’ve all sped up on delivery, the whole industry is scrambling to meet the demand.
Whether it’s right or wrong, we now have a continuous feedback loop. Personally, I think it’s right: the more that politicians interact with public opinion, the better for democracy. But only if politicians learn to interact with them appropriately. The tragedy for Gordon Brown was that he didn’t understand the proper way to deal with this new situation. He held the cards in his hand, played them wrong, and was trumped. He deserved no better: this card game was only about winning elections, not about winning for the country.
Politicians should be responsive to what the public wants, but in the right context. Polls should not be an aid to public manipulation, they should inform good governance. It’s not the headline voting intention figures that should matter most to them, but the rest of the survey, which communicates the underlying drivers of the public’s reaction.
Of course the interaction of personal ambition and higher motives is complex. Democracy works by the carrot and stick of being hired or fired. The vanity of politicians, their desire to get and then hold on to the top jobs, is what ensures they respond to the public in the first place. They are not philosopher-kings, but competitors who must please the rest of us - at least a little bit - if they are to avoid the sack. They too are subject to fear and greed.
So maybe we shouldn’t be too censorious that politicians are driven by their vanity: it’s just another example of private vice and public good.
One hopes that David Cameron will not let the wrong kind of vanity divert him from his course. Those who tell him it was his speech which turned things around are not helping him. Imagine life on 23 Acacia Avenue: the kids are having problems at school, grandpa is in pain because he can’t get that operation, Mum and Dad are stressed from overwork; in the streets there’s graffiti everywhere and anyway one doesn’t want to be out there after dark because of all the crime. The ten o’clock news comes on the telly and gosh! there’s David Cameron! Isn’t it fantastic that he’s managed to memorise a whole speech! What a guy! Doesn’t the world suddenly look brighter!
It’s funny that politicians, who are themselves so driven by their own desire to get a better job, should think that the rest of the population is motivated by some fuzzy ideal. The rest of us care about our own personal advantage too. Those hard-edged Conservative policies changed the political scene because they can actually make a difference to our real lives. That’s why Labour copied them so swiftly.
I’m not saying, of course, that tax cuts are the only answer, flanked by immigration and law’n’order and Europe and privatization - just that the aim must now be to reconnect with suburban England, not to make oneself acceptable at fashionable London parties. The Conservatives need no longer be afraid to move away from the liberal consensus, because now we know that when they get it right – in this case a tax cut that is seen as fair and sensibly funded, maybe tomorrow, genuine reform of public services without making people feel insecure – the others will be forced to follow, and look weak for doing it. If the polls have jolted politicians into the reality of normal human motivation, they will have served a useful purpose.
It is amazing how detached most politicians are from the 'real world'. You only have to spend some time sitting down and talking to people to realise that a lot of them share common concerns which need to be dealt with quickly but carefully - especially the amount of money people have in their pockets.
Posted by: Letters From A Tory | October 15, 2007 at 09:06 AM
I must admit I've been critical of polls in the past but there is no doubt that the polls scared the life out of Gordon Brown. I certainly agree that politicians should be in tune with what the public want. That is true representative democracy and the complete opposite of the top-down ideologically driven politics we get handed down to us by Labour. The great advantage David Cameron has over Gordon Brown is that David listens to people and Brown talks at people. David Cameron is making a real connection with the British people and making a real case for Conservative change in our country.
Posted by: Tony Makara | October 15, 2007 at 10:01 AM
LFAT- I agree. Yesterday my wife and I went for a walk with a couple of neighbours. They are on the face of it about as far away from me politically as I could imagine, being ultra-green, left-leaning people who dream of a Scandinavian-style social democracy and who would rather we became more European and less American. But their views on legal immigration from the EU would have made the government blanch if it had any shame. If archetypal New Labour supporters like them can see that the government has shut down intelligent debate on immigration and the impact it has on services and housing so as to call into question how much tax we pay and whether it is well spent, then there is hope that we can show that there is a better way.
Posted by: Angelo Basu | October 15, 2007 at 11:20 AM