We don't need a "National Food Plan" - not even slightly

I’ve been holding off talking about food strategies despite Bradford’s little colony of Green Party councillors ramming one down the District’s throat helped by assorted rent-seekers and political activists. But Mary Creagh, the opposition lead on food has penned an utterly stupid, misinformed and largely ignorant article in the Guardian that requires comment. Ms Creagh leaps into action on the back of a report from the Sustainable Development Commission:

It is a wake-up call for ministers, warning that "policy development within government still remains inadequate". It makes for challenging reading with serious recommendations on how to define and respond to food poverty in the UK.

Now, leaving aside that the Green take on food – obsessing about “food miles”, local production, grow-your-own and organic production rather than how to sustain cheap food production – is the very antithesis of what poor people need, you have to wonder when Ms Creagh starts talking about food prices and makes this suggestion:

Food will be one of the defining issues of the next century – but compare the political attention it is given compared to climate change. We need as much attention on food security and sustainability in the coming years ahead as we have devoted to climate change in the last decade. That means an urgent food plan at home and an international-style Copenhagen agreement for food. It also requires the missing ingredient from government – leadership.

The perennial response of the socialist – managed trade, market intervention and a host of boondoggles for “food strategists” to fly off to and feel important – will make no difference to the issues raised. So for Ms Creagh’s benefits let me explain:

1.       The cheap food strategies of supermarkets (much though I hate the places) have provided more social benefits than all the state intervention over the past 50 years. Ordinary families can afford to eat – indeed, judging by the streets of Bradford: overeat – at a cost unheard of by their ancestors

2.       Developments in higher yield crops, the use of pesticides and fertilizers and other agro-engineering innovations – including GM varieties – are further extending that cheap food strategy

3.       Other pressures – growing population, dietary changes in China and India, non-food crops such as biofuels and climate variation – are pulling in the opposite direction to this cheap food strategy

4.       Our (indeed that of the entire developed world) food policy has been misplaced and producer dominated – in Europe, the Common Agricultural Policy results in skewed land prices, corruption, subsidy for not farming and a host of other insanities. It also kills more people in the developing world that any other western policy

We don’t need a “food security” policy or another load of green cant about “sustainability”, we need just three things:

1.       Free trade in agricultural products

2.       The scrapping of producer subsidies

3.       Ending the restriction on GM crops and other innovations

If we do these three things we will go most of the way to solving the “problem” that Ms Creagh identifies. And, if people like me want to eat locally-grown, quality food, the market will provide for us too  – whether we wish to be locavores or gourmets. All the government has to do is bog off out of the way! To paraphrase P J O’Rourke, we need to take food strategies round the back of the barn and finish them with an axe.

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We are all idiots: thoughts on democracy and representation

Since the lovely Anna Raccoon featured my ancient little piece praising idiots on her blog recently I feel inspired to a little update on the philosophy of idiocy – and its goodness. At least in part this is because a thought struck me – namely that representative democracy is looking a little old and tired these days. Or rather our Western European version of representative democracy has become rather like grandma’s stair carpet – fine at a glance but decidedly threadbare on closer examination.

In Europe (and for that matter in places like Canada, New Zealand and Australia) we choose representatives through the proxy of the party system. In most places political parties have sufficient brand equity to be able to prevent the system becoming too fragmented. And even where the nature of the electoral system encourages schism and division, the election of representatives is predicated on them being from a political party. Yet – and I really think this is very important – nearly everybody isn’t a member of a political party. Our representatives are – in effect – chosen by a tiny number of people who happen to have paid across £25 or so to their favoured party.

Which brings us to our good idiots – let me remind you:

So let’s look at our typical idiots. Round here they’re probably in their thirties or forties, employed at a middle management level in business and industry. They worry about how well their kids do at school, they concern themselves with making their family safe, they grumble a bit about paying taxes but have enough cash afterwards for it not to really matter. Such folk are ordinary, hard-working and inherently conservative. But they also see little or no link between the act of voting in a politician from one party or another and the significant things in their lives.

The final sentence here is central to the argument – the act of choosing a representative and the deeds of government are not connected. Our representatives – MPs, MEPs and Councillors – really aren’t in charge. And just to stress this point let’s remind ourselves how decisions are made:

The truth is that decisions in local government aren’t taken in the manner most ordinary people – including quite well-informed ordinary people – believe is the case. Us councillors no longer sit on various committees in numbers reflecting the political balance of the council. Eight or ten councillors make up a (usually) one-party executive – often pompously called the ‘cabinet’ – and it is here that the decisions are taken. But understand that any discussion takes places away from the scrying eyes of the public – in Bradford we had a thing called “CMT” consisting of Executive Members and the Council’s “Strategic Directors” where the real decisions were made. You must also understand that most of the decisions are made under “delegated authority” by one or other ‘strategic director’.

The particular flavour of Councillor you elect doesn’t really matter and, even if you are lucky enough to have a “cabinet” member as your representative, most of the everyday decisions that affect you aren’t made by Councillors and only get our attention when you’re upset enough to shout at us.

So what should we be doing? Can we fix representative democracy – by, for example, banning political parties – or is it all rather too late and has the sheer scale of Government got too much for any effective system of representative government to manage? Certainly, those anarcho-capitalist folk would argue that we should abolish such indulgences as elections in favour of that most efficient of choice-based systems – the free market. However, despite a degree of sympathy with this view, I am not convinced of its merit and am convinced of the need for there to be a guarantor of the rules – which you may choose to call ‘government’.

I am also convinced of the need for this guarantee of fairness (by which I mean the equal application of the rules) to be provided by citizens rather than by experts. Hence common law, juries, parish councils and elected officials (as opposed to elected representatives). And in this system there is no real need for members of a parliament who take up their role on a permanent basis – in times past we selected parliaments for a specific purpose and on a time limited basis (just as we did with judges) and can do so again.

Our current system is broken – when barely 50% of those who can vote did vote in the most tightly fought election for decades and where local by-elections are decided by less than 15% there is something wrong. And it isn’t ignorance, apathy or idleness – they’ve rumbled us. They’ve worked out that the system is ramped up to favour political apparatchiks, they’ve spotted that, however people vote, the same nannying, interfering decisions get taken and it’s dawned on them that democracy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And who are they? They are the good idiots the ones who, to quote George Bailey “…do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community.”

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Diageo lines up with the puritans in calling for higher duty on beer.

In what can only be described as an orgy of self-interest, the booze manufacturers and their representative organisations are leaping about trying to sound all good and righteous in submissions and representations to the current Treasury review of alcohol duty. At the forefront is Diageo in calling for higher duty on beer and wine:

Diageo wants to see "full equivalence" between all kinds of alcohol, so that one unit is taxed at the same rate, regardless of the drink. The strongest drinks would therefore pay the highest level of tax. Diageo is proposing the move as a way of staving off political pricing on drinks such as alcopops and strong cider, targeted by health campaigners for encouraging binge drinking.

Now all this is just a little disingenuous of Diageo – makers of eight out of the top 20 spirits brands – since such a change would raise the level of duty on beer and wine considerably. Presumably Diageo think Guinness can take the hit while they increase profits on higher margin spirit and spirit derived brands.

All this has brought a robust response from the beer business with Wetherspoons’ boss, Tim Martin weighing into the drinks company branding them, “a bunch of morons” and this position has been – more moderately – supported by others:

Kristin Wolfe, head of alcohol policy at SABMiller, said: "Excise tax 'equalisation' is a ruse for making high strength alcohol cheaper relative to low strength alternatives," she said. Ms Wolfe pointed to the lower production costs associated with spirits. "Unless spirits are taxed proportionately higher, they can be sold at a much lower price per unit." Mark Hunter, head of Molson Coors in the UK, branded Diageo's call "self-serving".

What should concern us is that booze businesses appear to be lining themselves for a scrap that is essentially over market share within a declining industry. Oh yes, did we mention that alcohol sales have fallen year on year for six years?

And the effect of Diageo’s representation – if implemented – would be a further discouragement for the pub trade. On top of the smoking ban, a further increase in beer duty (dubbed ‘equalisation’) would undoubtedly push a further bunch of long-established pubs from marginal viability into closing.

That any booze producer is calling for any increase in tax is wrong. Yet the prohibitionists, puritans and health fascists will seize on Diageo’s proposal as another little nail in the coffin of the pub. And this time it will be the drinks industry hammering in the nail.

All this despite the welcome discovery that drinking helps us live longer!

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A symptom of the problems we face...meet PWC

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A bunch of jumped up beancounters have announced - in that patronising manner developed over many years by "management consultants" - that the Government shouldn't consult the public because:

...they have "no real idea" what they are being asked to do and are ill equipped to participate.

After years of ever so clever people at places like PWC screwing the country over with overpriced advice, it takes a huge amount of gall for them to insult the public's capacity to understand this simple fact...

"...we are spending more money than we've got to spend and need to make some cuts. What should we cut?"

How hard is that? Shut up and go away PWC - your patronising, self-serving, statist rubbish has help nearly bankrupt the country. Can we leave it to real people for a change, please?

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Idiots revisited (again)

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A while ago I wrote in praise of idiots about those ordinary people who don’t partake of politics:

The ancient Greeks used their word for ‘private’ as a derogatory term for someone who took no part in “public affairs”. That word ἴδιος (idios) is the root for our term for a stupid person – idiot. Today – in the Greek sense – most of us are idiots and I think this represents progress rather than a problem. That barely more that a third of Bingley Rural electors took the opportunity to vote last time I stood isn’t a disaster and those people are well aware of the purpose and value of voting - which I guess is why most of them don’t bother

I also made the point that these folk don’t take part because they don’t see the point. What exactly is going to change in their lives if one patronising besuited politician is replaced by a different patronising besuited politician wearing a different badge? Now not everyone agrees with me – here’s Dick Puddlecote:

As someone who engages with many everyday working people on a daily basis, both professionally and in my spare time, THE most oft-repeated phrase I hear is "I don't do politics".

They'll all advance their thoughts about the ills of the world, though. After all, it's human nature. Van drivers, bricklayers, checkout girls, roofers, teaching assistants, spark's mates, cabbies, labourers, nursery nurses, road workers, cleaners, and the unemployed - they all have opinions. And most of them feel totally ignored.

But then again, a lot of them say they 'don't do politics'.

Dick worries that this active disengagement results in politicians directing their efforts to a more reliable (so far as turning up is concerned) group of voters – and that group of voters will not do anything for the ‘poor’. I have some sympathy with that viewpoint – why else to we subsidise opera and not the club circuit and prioritise sports like rowing and sailing ahead of boxing or rugby league?

However, this recent election – the most tightly fought, attention-grabbing, important, change-making (select your own superlative) – reinforced what I said and, in its way, Dick’s concerns as well. Despite the leaders’ debates, despite a sense that there was a chance to change something, despite wall-to-wall media coverage of Cleggmania – despite all this the turnout at the election was still lower than at every election since 1945 bar 2001 and 2005.

Thirty-five out of every hundred electors didn’t make it to the polls – were either disinterested, disengaged, uninspired or simply not bothered. And this covers up staggering levels of non-registration – people who don’t even give themselves a chance to vote at all. Here’s the Electoral Commission report on the subject:

Evidence available from electoral statistics and surveys of levels of response to the annual canvass of electors suggests that there was a decline in registration levels from the late 1990s to 2006. The same evidence base suggests that the registers have stabilised since 2006, although it is likely that the completeness of the registers has declined since the last national estimate in 2000.

In the late 1990s around 10% of people weren’t registered – the Commission say the situation is now worse. In some places up to 20% of people are not registered to vote and concerns about false registration are making local authorities tighten up registration by removing non-respondents more quickly from the register. And, not surprisingly, the three groups most likely not to register are young people (over half of 17-26 year olds are not registered), private sector tenants (49%) and immigrant groups (31%).

So if 20% aren’t registered and only 65% of the remainder bother voting the real turnout in the election was just 52% - barely half the population bothering with the most closely-fought election in 30 years. Says it all really!

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We really are idiots. And we like it that way.

What the Big Society could look like?

Alasdair Palmer, writing in the Sunday Telegraph wonders about David Cameron’s “Big Society” idea (and I’ll forgive him his rather huge statistical faux pas). Not for once about whether it’s a good idea or not – I guess like me that Alistair sees it as essentially a good idea harking back to the Burkean roots of Tory thinking. Instead he heads with this observation:

“I wonder if Mr Cameron actually knows what ‘being a member of an active neighbourhood group’ involves for someone whose day job has nothing to do with politics, and whose life does not revolve around it. The first thing it involves is giving up large chunks of your leisure time. Instead of spending it with your family or your friends, you have to devote it to arguing about administrative procedures with people you don’t know and may not like.”

Yet again we have the prospect of the “politically engaged” berating those with better things to do. ‘You are all idiots’ is the inference we draw – but that’s how we are. It’s very English of us, as Alistair points out with reference to Rousseau:

“The 18th Century political theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau despaired of the British precisely because we were content with the pursuit of our own private happiness and weren’t interested in devoting our lives to serving the community. He noted that the city-states in the ancient world were true democracies in the sense that every…adult participated directly in every major political decision. But then, as he pointed out, the slaves did all the work.”

So yes we are idiots – good idiots. We will ‘participate’ when it is in the interests of ourselves, our families and our friends. The social capital of modern English society isn't constructed from political engagement but from private activity – from the village scarecrow festival, from the am-dram society, from taking the kids to play football, from drinking in the local (if the smoking ban hasn’t closed yours down yet), from a host of activities where the only role for government appears to be to get in the way, to ban, to regulate and to prevent.

I want a big society, I want people to be active and engaged – but that doesn’t have to mean sitting on committees, worthy ‘social action projects’ or attended mind-numbingly dull community forums. It also means enjoyment shared with friends and neighbours, it means the sponsored walk round the park or the garden trail. It includes the dinner party and the kids’ party. And it includes sitting with a pint and a cigar chewing the fat with your mates (or even - if you insist - playing dominos).

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Abstentions set to top General Election Poll Again!

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Have avoided writing about polls and such like – partly because while I may be obsessed with them most normal folk are not. But mostly because Anthony Wells does such a great job reporting on them that what I add is usually pretty marginal.

However, I was struck by the front page headline in Metro this morning – “Labour loses third of voters”. Now before you all make jokes about Gordon’s carelessness, let’s look at the body of the report which relates to the findings of a Harris Poll for the paper:

“Just 66 per cent of those who backed labour in 2005 intend to vote for the party now, the research showed. It compared with 86 per cent of Conservative supporters who say they will back the party again. The Liberal Democrats have also shed a third of their 2005 voters according to our poll.”

Let’s be clear, if this is literally true that is over 6 million voters who are switching to a voting behaviour other that that in 2005. Polls suggest that about about 1m additional people are planning on voting Conservative. The Liberal Democrat polling figures are all over the place but the poll reported here puts them down 4 point on 2005 – about 1 million votes. And Labour have dropped about 1.5 million on 2005.

We still have 3 million missing voters – people who will not be voting for the main three parties. The Harris Poll shows “others” at 16% - that’s up about 1.5 million votes. So what’s happened to those other 1.5 million votes – about 6% of the electorate?

My guess is they won’t be voting. Expect turnout to drop to its lowest for some while – probably around 55%.

Looks like the good idiots are on course to top the poll come May!

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Idiots revisited....

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As you all know I wrote in praise of idiots a while ago pointing out that we should not condemn people for not “participating” or for being “apathetic”.

Yesterday someone told me about how she came to be a parent governor of a large secondary school. More for curiosity than eagerness for the task this woman had put her name in the hat for the upcoming election of parent governors. And you’ve guessed – only two names were submitted for four places on the governors.

The usual response to this occurance is the throwing up of hands in horror, Guardian-reader stype: “what have we become that just two from the parents of this school’s 1000 plus pupils put themselves forward!” Well I don’t agree – I think it shows a robust customer-supplier relationship. Parents at this school (which is oversubscribed and serves a reasonably well-off catchment) are probably pretty satisfied with the education their children are getting, they get to see teachers when they want, they read reports and know where to go if there’s a problem. Why on earth would they want to spend loads of their precious time sitting at governors’ meetings doubtless supplemented by sub-groups, training days and all the paraphernalia of modern bureaucracy.

So no, it just shows how our society is maturing. And anyway, why do we have boards of school governors?

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On participation...(and why people don't)

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I have written on diversity, on the idea of the progressive and on markets (although I was rather snarky). Since this has become an ongoing theme, I thought I’d set out a few thoughts on another oft-raised “matter of importance”: participation.

Some while ago I wrote a piece entitled “In Praise of Idiots” where I argued that voter abstention wasn’t such a terrible thing.

“Now the good left-wing liberals at the Guardian think this grumpiness, this disengagement, this disinterest is a problem. And that’s where I disagree – the core consideration is the extent to which we are able to live as Greek idiots. Quietly, privately, without bothering our neighbours with our problems – and when such people want change they will get up from their armchairs, walk away from the telly and vote. The idea that not being bothered with voting most of the time makes them bad people is a misplaced idea – they are the good folk.

Above all we should listen quietly to what this “apathy” calls for – it is less bothersome, less interfering, less hectoring and more effective government. Such people want government to be conducted at their level not to be the province of pompous politicians with overblown and lying rhetoric. And they want the language of common sense, freedom, liberty and choice to push away the elitist exclusivity of modern bureaucratic government.”

Which brings us to participation. There is a presumption in policy-making that increased levels of participation result in better policy, more accountable government and variations of society being “fairer”, “more equal” or “more democratic”. So when organisations like the Joseph Rowntree Foundation discuss the issue there is no questioning of that basic assumption – it is axiomatic that higher levels of “participation” are good.

The problem I have with this is echoed in the JRF report:

“Many attempts at community participation fail because organisations promoting involvement are unclear about the level of participation on offer. Limited consultation ,with few real options, which is presented as an opportunity for active participation is likely to result in disillusionment.”

So let’s look at what the typical opportunities for “community participation” encompass:

There’s voting – we get a say in who toddles off down to Brussels, Westminster or the Town Hall but no say over what they do while they’re representing us. We are not participating but passing across our rights to participate to our “representative”

There’s the local forum – nearly everywhere has them plus extensive and expensive bureaucracies supporting such activity. And they’re very useful – for the policy-maker since they are consultative rather than participatory. More importantly, such forums get low turn outs because folk have something better to do on a wet Wednesday evening than sit watching patronising powerpoint presentations in some drafty community centre

There’s the survey – usually self-selecting rather than representative and mostly limited to “yes/no” boxes. And this clearly isn’t participation but opinion research (however badly conducted it may be)

Or how about “participatory budgeting” – a great idea but even in Porto Alegre where it’s something of a religion fewer than 3% of citizens take part. And those taking part ore disproportionately older, richer and better educated than the average

So either we are taking the horse to the water and it is stubbornly refusing to drink or else people think it’s a waste of time. And I’m pretty sure that the problem is the latter rather than the former. Most people do not want to participate in a highbrow discussion about investment priorities, regulatory options and other matters of bureaucratic importance.

If you want people to participate, you have to give them something – not a £5 voucher for filling in a survey but real control over the things that matter to them. And that means the schools, the local health centre, the community centre, the sports hall, the park and the cops. If you make people responsible for something they will participate. If you merely consult – or worse pretend that their input really will affect the policy choices of bureaucratic decision-makers – then people will, quite sensibly, stay at home watching whatever rubbish the telly is showing that evening!

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Welcome to the Slowburn Revolution

I am convinced of the need for Britain’s (in fact Europe’s) polity to change radically. Not for some kind of Blairite “constitutional reform” – tinkering with the voting system, setting up processes and systems of control, burbling on about transparency or accountability. This is a nonsense – it does not change a thing and merely acts to reinforce the current oligarchic arrangements. And radical change is not, surely, about replacing one set of oligarchs with a different set- however much I may prefer the cut of the new lot’s gib.

It’s OK you can sit down, folks, I’m not about to decamp, to head off into the strange world of minority politics. That’s not going to work – it’s not going to provide the revolution. However much people in such little revolutionary groups may wish for it, the world around them is not suddenly going to get up from its armchair, turn off the telly, pick up its pitchfork and overthrow the evil government. However much you shout and swear, it’s not going to happen that way.

So – given I’m not heading off into the wilderness, embittered and muttering about badness or cursing about the evils of politicians – what’s the deal? How does the revolution happen? And will it be televised (presumably with Iain Dale and Paul Staines giving the blogger perspective as it unfolds before us)?

This is a slowburn revolution not a forest fire. By this I mean that the conditions needed for radical change will come about because people become gradually less tolerant of the behaviour their lords and masters (or indeed ladies and mistresses) display. Today’s expenses reports are another hairline crack in the edifice – members of our ruling oligarchy appearing before the courts with the prospect of a time inside.

Other cracks in that edifice are creeping in – the public has long doubted the climate change story - rather seeing it as a means for Government to nanny them, lecture them and tax them. I happen to think that man does contribute to climate change but not many of the ordinary people I represent share that view. The wealth-creating section of the population (for my Liberal Democrat and Labour friends I would say that this does exist despite your best efforts – it’s just you never meet any of them) is royally fed up with being taxed, nannyed and annoyed by better paid, better pensioned, more job secure and more sanctimonious public sector workers. A word of advice to those public sector workers – you’re not liked you know.

The biggest crack is the good idiots (who the oligarchy like to call – completely mistakenly – “apathetic”). There will not be any increase in turnout at the coming general election – unless labour decides its only chance is to stuff the ballot boxes. People are fed up – people of a left wing persuasion just as much as people on the right. People who care about politics will sit at home, stick two-fingers up at the leaders’ debate and say; “not voting for any of you, you’re all a shower” (or something choicer for some folk I suspect).

Those non-voters – of all shapes, sizes and persuasions – will grow in number. Those good idiots will start (as they already are with the endless lectures on smoking, drinking and eating) to ignore what the oligarchy says. They will carry on driving, flying, eating stuff flown in from New Zealand or Chile in refrigerated air freight containers, using the wrong sort of light bulbs, smacking their children, telling slightly dodgy jokes to mates down the pub (assuming the health fascists haven’t closed it down), giving their kids a bottle or two or lager or a glass of wine and generally living the ordinary decent lives they want to lead. And they’ll start to insist that their politicians share those views, that they stop hectoring, that they take their hands from out of the till and that they start to give attention to the things that matter – including allowing people to get on with their unhealthy, early-death-inducing lifestyles unmolested by a bunch of overpaid busybodies.

That’s the slowburn revolution – and I’m blowing on the fuse. Care to join me?

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Idiots, Naomi Klein and the branding of political personality

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The other day, Naomi Klein of “No Logo” fame, penned a long, rather impenetrable and certainly meandering think piece for the dearly loved Guardian. Now Ms Klein is nothing if not consistent and lays into her favorite target: “corporate branding”. And this time those bad old brands have taken over the government.

Now I don’t wish to rehearse the legion reasons why Ms Klein is massively and dangerously wrong – why she fails to realise that it is better for corporations to invest in your and my minds than in the pockets of decision-makers. Why the rejection of the trademarked brand gives power to producer cartels. And why we are rich because of brands rather than the other way round. Ms Klein crawled from out the pseudo-liberal American left with its hypocritical and selective take on freedom and its hatred of the ordinary and everyday. What she says displays a deep misunderstanding of marketing.

However, Ms Klein sparked another interest of mine – the idea of the personal brand (or even the anti-brand as she likes to position herself which is really cute). Naomi, ever glib, slipped out this little opinion:

“So, it seemed that the United States government could solve its reputation problems with branding – it's just that it needed a branding campaign and product spokesperson sufficiently hip, young and exciting to compete in today's tough market. The nation found that in Obama, a man who clearly has a natural feel for branding and who has surrounded himself with a team of top-flight marketers.”

Well leaving aside the rapid falling to earth of this Icarus of politics, I was struck by the significance of the political leader as a brand and the importance of that brand to the success or otherwise of a government. However, I suspect that a few moments glimpse at history (and fiction - Liberty Valance springs to mind straight away) will show that, far from Obama – Man as Brand – being as new phenomenon, he is a continuation of a great American tradition.

We have only to think of Theodore Roosevelt with his “action man” positioning, the “Camelot” of JFK and Reagan’s “Sunrise in America” to appreciate that the ‘personality brand’ is central to American politics. It could be said that the “backwoodsman” image of Davy Crockett – even of Abe Lincoln – was central to positioning and the political brand.

As we stumble towards another British General Election, the ‘personal brand’ is taking centre stage. This isn’t new – right back to Disraeli the individual personality of a politician has been significant – but this will be the first British General Election where that fact has been placed centre stage. The campaign is being drawn as a battle between leaders – a war of champions – rather than a contest between competing party organisations. And the brand positioning of those leaders will be central to the outcome.

I’ve said before than this is a retrograde step – I do not get a choice between leaders but a choice between ciphers who may or may not reflect what those leaders want to do (or even what they say they want to do). And the idea that the careful wrapping up of politics into a nice parcel represents an effective approach to branding and positioning shows yet again that our politicians don’t get marketing strategy either. In truth Naomi Klein is right about branding. It isn’t the salvation its advocates say and it is but one element of one part of an overall marketing strategy.

There is a problem. There really is. But it’s not branding. It’s not that corporations are trying to capture government – nothing new there government has always been corrupt. It’s that we, the everyday idiots, don’t care. One day we’ll wake up, realise our mistake and pull the whole house down. Until then I’m going to carry on drinking Nescafe, wearing Levis and all the other bad consumer stuff that Naomi doesn’t like!

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Social media can't win an election for anyone - get out and knock on doors!

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They’re at it again swallowing the “social media are changing political campaigning” line put out by the blogosphere’s elite. Today Toby Helm in the Observer is peddling this line:

"Election 2010 will show how much the world has changed – and how susceptible election outcomes now are to the unpredictability of events online."

Just let’s be clear, Mr. Helm presents no evidence to support this contention – I’m not a fully fledged psephological anorak but I’m pretty sure there isn’t any evidence of election outcomes being shaped by “events online”. In fact, those last two words are significant and are why Toby Helm and the blogocrats are wrong – events don’t happen on-line, they happen in the real world.

The second reason why Toby Helm and the others frothing out social media cant are wrong, rests with the very selectivity of new media and with the fact that, as I wrote a while back, the electorate are mostly idiots (in the original Greek sense) and I even described them:

"Round here they’re probably in their thirties or forties, employed at a middle management level in business and industry. They worry about how well their kids do at school, they concern themselves with making their family safe, they grumble a bit about paying taxes but have enough cash afterwards for it not to really matter. Such folk are ordinary, hard-working and inherently conservative. But they also see little or no link between the act of voting in a politician from one party or another and the significant things in their lives."

What these folk aren’t doing is reading political blogs, watching Gordon or Dave’s podcasts or YouTube videos or doing anything other than being irritated by politics gatecrashing their gentle Facebook or Twitter entertainment. These people probably won’t be watching the “Great Leaders Debate” – preferring instead whatever else the multitude of channels has dished up for them that day (or maybe a DVD or a computer game). These are good people who understand that life isn’t all about shouty demands for change, who find politicians a little bit sad (if they don’t actively despise them) and really would rather Government bothered more about good services than social engineering.

I like these people but would rather talk with them about football, music, last night's telly, where they’re going on their holidays, the new car…almost any bloody thing but politics. Toby, the next election won’t be won or lost on-line – at best social media will swing a few votes, at worst it will represent a further dumbing down of politics and a greater distance between the politically engaged and the normal man in the street.

Get out and knock on doors!

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Why the arguments for "the great leaders debate" are wrong and dangerous

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I gave ten reasons why the “great leaders debate” is a bad idea some while back – non-one has challenged any of those reasons. All I get is the ‘bestseller syndrome’ – “other democracies have them so must we”. This is a ridiculous approach and a truly crass argument.

However, it seems we are to have these debates so what to make of them...

Argument One: Only Gordon and Dave should debate as they are the only “candidates for prime minister” says Charlotte Vere, Tory Candidate for Brighton Pavilion (who I guess doesn’t want the Green Party leader in on the debates either). Sorry Charlotte, much though I want you to win, you have to find better arguments – we aren’t electing a prime minister. In your case the voters of Brighton are electing an MP – hopefully you.

Argument Two: This is a bad idea because we’re ahead/behind in the polls. The cynics approach to politics – we’ll agree to something because it’s to our political advantage not because it’s right. So a big fail to Tim Montgomerie for his “Christmas comes early..” post.

Argument Three: It will rejuvenate politics by getting the otherwise unengaged involved again through the goggle box. Well I’m with Constantly Furious on this – it ain’t gonna happen guys. Those good idiots, my neighbours won’t be watching so long as there’s something else to watch – and there will be for sure. Only the already interested will watch and it will be accompanied by a ghastly, frothing, ignorant and self-serving barrage of political point-scoring, name-calling and bigotry. I really can’t wait!

Argument Four: Every body else has one so we should – or as Dave put it: “I think it's a step forward for our democracy and I think it's something that, in such a bad year for politics and Parliament, we can proudly celebrate. We've joined the 21st century, when every other democracy seems to have leader's debates, we're now going to have them right here in Britain and I think that's a very good thing.” So places with party-run pseudo-democracies have leader debates – and this advances democracy? I don’t think so – in fact it’s a backward step. What about the smaller and regional parties – Scots Nats, Plaid Cymru, UKIP, BNP, Greens? Or the independent candidates? Are they to be crushed by the Westminster steamroller? How exactly does that enhance democracy?

All the political anoraks out there will look forward to the debates – not because they make democracy better but because it’s more of what we like on the telly. Just as the football fan applauds more football and the music fan more music, the politics fan wants more politics. Hiding behind “enhancing democracy” simply doesn’t wash – debates are a retrograde, anti-democratic, controlling, demagogic innovation that will not get a fairer election, a better government or an improved turnout. It would be better to have no election coverage at all and make candidates go out on the doorsteps and into the high street to make the case rather than merely regurgitating the party line that trots out in these debates.

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