Labour are Hard Work

I say this as a life long left leaning voter: the Labour Party of today is too much like hard work. Not because of the endless internecine squabbling between the left and the centre ground although, God knows, that doesn't help. If they want to get back into the reckoning they are both barking up the wrong tree.

It has always been a bit of a puzzle to me that the dominant political force of the UK go under the unambitious name 'Conservatives'. Before they have uttered a word, the name is saying 'vote for us - we won't change anything!' Its uninspiring but clearly persuasive looking back at election results.

I was thinking about this in the light of this week's local election and the Hartlepool by-election results and I had an epiphany: Michael Gove was right. That ranks pretty high in the list of things that I never thought I would say or write.

In 2016, while he was campaigning for the Leave vote in the Brexit campaign, Gove famously said:

People in this country have had enough of experts.

I was one of many people who spluttered in indignation. As businesses queued up to stress their concerns about the implications of Brexit and we saw economic models predicting dire consequences, it seemed like Gove was desperately clutching at straws in defiance of all the available evidence. It was as if he was saying 'look, ignore all that and listen to me, just... because!'

But he wasn't saying that, or at least that was only partly what he was saying. My epiphany was actually the pretty mundane realisation that people are tired. When they finish their working day, they just want to relax and forget. Many of us choose to sit in front of the TV for a couple of hours to achieve this but real life intrudes at regular intervals in the form of the news.

Whether it is fair or not, the BBC is seen as being to the left of the political spectrum and every night at ten o'clock they pop up with a list of things to worry about. For each story, they will present the facts and then speak to an expert who will use their domain knowledge and experience to explain the implications of those facts. In the interest of balance the final say often goes to someone with a contradictory opinion.

What is the tired TV viewer to make of this? Work can be trying but we do the best that we can and hope that is enough to make headway. It can be galling then to spend part of the evening listening to experts telling us that we have damaged the environment with our car journey to work or that our choice of sandwich filling was heartless and cruel. When the alternative explanation is presented, it is natural to conclude 'no one really knows' and 'what is the point of experts if they can't agree on anything?' Polar opposites of opinion are presented as equally likely with everything in between remaining a possibility. Seen like this, of course there is no value in expert opinion so the viewer is left to choose the version that makes them feel better about themselves.

When politicians are interviewed, Labour come across like a mum nagging you to do your homework where the homework is more tolerance or more awareness or making sacrifices for equality. The Conservatives are left to paint themselves like a lenient uncle: "You've worked hard enough for today, don't worry about this thing, its probably nothing." In other words "leave it as is" or "we won't change anything". By comparison Labour are hard work.