We like spin, contrary to what most journalists tell us. We like PR and having our emotions manipulated
Published 28 May 2001
Is the election actually taking place? The question isn't entirely frivolous. Tony Blair and William Hague hold forth at their news conferences, candidates roam the television studios, and the party political broadcasts keep our remote controls busier than ever. But it all seems strangely unreal, a muddled and overlong melodrama whose cast have left their scripts on the bus. Even television, which usually imposes an illusion of reality on events, has begun to falter. Jeremy Paxman is clearly bored out of his mind, and Peter Snow's swingometer looks like an antique flying machine built by an eccentric psephologist. Point the arrow and flap your arms.
It all reminds me of Jean Baudrillard's polemic The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, in which the impish philosopher argued that the heavily censored news reports, the absence of casualties and the video-game footage of smart bombs dropping down chimneys did not constitute a true war in our minds. By the same token, the present election seems curiously inauthentic, as if the result has been agreed beforehand and everyone involved is going through the motions. Here and there, reality breaks in. Blair is harangued outside a hospital by a patient's upset partner, and John Prescott throws the most famous British punch since Henry Cooper's left hook decked the great Cassius Clay. I was amazed by how po-faced some politicians and journalists became, even suggesting that Prescott resign. What they were complaining about was that Prescott's spontaneous action broke the spell.
Elections are now held as a public information service, like the VD and drink-driving campaigns of old, to maintain the necessary illusion that politics matters. Long ago - in 1997, with new Labour's accession to government - the public accepted the consequences of refusing to pay higher income taxes. No one seriously expected Blair to transform the NHS in the near future, to improve our schools and fill the streets with police. The gap between the reality of the tight wallet and the dream of a fairer society could be filled by only one thing - public relations. We accepted that, and even preferred it to the hard truth. We like spin, contrary to what most journalists tell us. We like PR campaigns and having our emotions manipulated. We like mood music, and we like promises that will never be kept. They remind us of a far more real world than politics, the consumer culture, where we conduct our ordinary lives. We spend our happiest moments in hyper-markets and shopping malls, where everything is designed to make us feel better, while often making us worse off.
I like Blair and find it difficult to grasp why so many of his supporters are hostile to him. He reminds me of the man next door, with four children, a mortgage and an attractive, slightly harassed wife. Blair's great advantage over his rivals - Hague, Michael Portillo, Ann Widdecombe, Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson - is that he alone has children. It's possible to imagine that he likes nothing more than an afternoon going round IKEA. As Prime Minister, his main function is to steer and cue our emotions, and to turn every political occasion into a scene from suburban life. His speech to the St Saviour's schoolgirls was perceived as a nationwide PTA meeting. PM's questions in the Commons are seen as the attempts by a decent and public-spirited man to silence a noisy bore on a bus.
But once Blair leaves the scene, he will be sadly missed. His heir-apparent Gordon Brown, constantly gabbling about fiscal this and percentage that, has all the charm of a speak-your-weight machine that has somehow acquired a degree in economics. Portillo, on the other hand, has the TV-honed skills to become a real threat. He smiles to camera like a basking shark sliding through a sea of warm plankton. Out here in the suburbs we murmur: "Miguel, Miguel . . ."
I'm told by friends in Notting Hill and Hampstead that their houses have tripled in value in the past five years, pushed up by the spate of huge City bonuses and share options. One senses that no one who earns less than £300,000 a year counts in any real way. The middle class is the new proletariat, forced out of inner London and clinging to antiquated notions such as the belief that education matters, just as the old working class believed in the sanctity of the job. In due course, our saviour will appear on the scene, a cross between Ralph Nader and Arthur Scargill. The May Day skirmishes were the first sign of middle-class restiveness, and were put down with significant ferocity.
I recently went back to Tate Modern, a year after the opening party, a celeb-packed feast where I turned at the bar to find that the man on my left was Jack Straw and the woman on my right was Tracey Emin. This extraordinary gallery has replaced the Dome as London's great inspirational venue. From the outside, the old power station looks smaller than it is, and the vast interior of the turbine hall is a stunning surprise. You mentally expand to fill this enormous space, and have the distinct feeling that you are one of the exhibits, a piece of performance art like Emin's bed. Sadly, I could think of nothing to say to her or Straw, though Tony Blair gave my partner Claire the warmest smile as we left. "That's no politician!" I exclaimed, and perhaps I was right.
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