Monday, 12 March 2001
It is a time of unprecedentedly low participation in conventional politics. More people vote to evict people from the Big Brother house than vote in many elections. So what do politicians do about all of this? They try to look more like us - William Hague drinks people under the table and all Cabinet ministers are card-carrying football supporters. They wear jeans and appear on Richard and Judy.
It is a time of unprecedentedly low participation in conventional politics. More people vote to evict people from the Big Brother house than vote in many elections. So what do politicians do about all of this? They try to look more like us - William Hague drinks people under the table and all Cabinet ministers are card-carrying football supporters. They wear jeans and appear on Richard and Judy.
But none of this works. It doesn't work, because these people aren't remotely ordinary. They're politicians. There's nothing ordinary about being the Prime Minister and something deeply disturbing about wanting to be leader of the Conservative Party since you were 15 years old. No one can carry it off because it's not them. By and large, these are extraordinary people who have achieved a lot and get little credit for it. They think that we would like them more if they were like us. But they're missing the point.
George W Bush is the conclusion of all this, and I don't think we want to go there. A man who was elected president because he was less well qualified to do the job than the other guy. "Yes, he's a bit dumb like us, and he's never left the country either, so we'll have him. At least we know that he's not smart enough to confuse us."
This pursuit of ordinariness renders the institutions these people represent completely obsolete. Prime ministers are meant to be special people with vision and leadership ability. They're not meant to be your next door neighbour. Take the royal family - The entire principle of royalty is that you have a mystique, a magic surrounding the institution that makes you believe they have a special significance. If they end up succeeding in saying "hey, I'm just like you," then you end up with a group of fairly unappealing individuals who cost us all a vast amount of money for no apparent return.
They understand this in Hollywood. Julia Roberts' publicists aren't falling over themselves to send her to Patagonia to clean toilets. Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones didn't get married in a registry office in Carmarthen to prove that they're just like us. These are people who are fascinating to us because they are extraordinary and lead lives that fascinate us, precisely because they are so different to our own. Catherine Zeta Jones is simultaneously us and what many of us want to be. She can appear in films wearing Prada and lounging in the California sunshine, but she still has a vestige of a Welsh accent that reminds us who she is - both familiar and extraordinary at the same time.
Even the most oft-quoted example, is not really an argument for ordinariness. Victoria and David Beckham are about as far from ordinary as you could ever imagine. You have a woman who has pretty much given up her life for the pursuit of fame and fortune. She's working extraordinarily hard to win the hearts and minds of 12-year-olds across the globe. She's one of the most successful marketing people of the last decade. Her husband is the most gifted football player of his generation, combining the looks of a fashion model with the skills and reflexes of a gifted sportsman.
These people are not remotely ordinary, and that's why they're fascinating. The problem the politicians have is that their undoubted talents are not really coming to the fore. The pursuit of ordinariness in all things prevents us from seeing what they're really for - delivering a vision and working hard to implement it.
It's important to work out what people's aspirations are and try to help them achieve them. That's what politicians should be for. Working out what people are like and then trying to look, talk and dress like them rather misses the point. People would rather be inspired than mimicked.
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