More Than Gender Politics

By now, dear chums, we've established that I know an awful lot about nothing, and thus having set out my stall I thought this week we could discuss politics.

My ignorance of all things political is awe-inspiring in its length, depth and bredth.  The sheer scale of it causes people's breath to catch at the back of their throats; the absence of any real grip of the issues of the day garners pitying looks and sympathetic hand pats.  My dunderheadedness over affairs of state is so mighty, so colossal, so unignorable, that it was actually considered for recognition as a contemporary Wonder of the World, just missing out to Katie Price's poor impulse control. 

The New Mrs Katie Price

Still, it was nothing if not gracious in defeat.

I'm one of those people that hate pointless confrontation — I get a bit sweaty and start breathing through my mouth, but not in a sexy way.  I back away from political debate as if a street performer had broken free from his pitch and was moving robotically amok outside Primark.  

It's not that I don't enjoy debate (but, to remain clear, I do hate street performers),

Keep Britain Tidy, Shoot A Mime Artist

but I've no time for ranters.  The moment my brain clocks someone saying the same thing three times at incrementally increasing volume is when I frantically pat myself down for an imaginary utility belt, praying that I've remembered to pack the Anti-Rhetoric-Spew-Emitter spray.

There are people out there — and a lot of them if Twitter and Facebook are anything to go by — that seem to use venting their politics as a kind of cardio-vascular work-out, a replacement for thirty minutes moderate digging  five days a week.  They delight in their fury, wallowing in the great muddy hole of their indignation, rubbing themselves down with their own brisk cleverness.   Onanists to the last.

Because they don't want us to join in, these ranters; they don't, for heaven's sake, want an exchange of views!  We're meant to be passive receptacles of their wisdom, bullied into mute respect.

And I'll be honest with you, I nod until they run dry so I'm complicit here. Hands up.

Now, being a politico-spacktard actually gives me an advantage, to whit:  because I hold no allegiance to any political institution, this independence of thought (some might more accurately call it 'indifference', a key objective here in The Flyte-Tipping Party) enables me to make some interesting observations.

What with an election on the horizon, let's start with the main political parties in Britain today:  The Labour Party, fronted by gloomy-gus PM Gordon Brown, and the Conservative Party led by the oleaginous (<— nice, 10 points) David Cameron.  Allegedly there is a third party, headed up by Nick Clegg, but I can't remember its name.  I could Google I suppose, but what would be the point?  A party whose leader bears a striking resemblance to David Cameron AND shares half his name with the leader of the BNP is obviously nothing more than a decoy political party, quacking softly in the margins in order to lure the unsuspecting voter into ballot-box confusion.

This is where it gets a bit like Runaround (God bless Mike Reid, now sadly an angel in Reactalights and a camel hair coat).   If you base most of your decisions on how you feel about them, run to the left; if you base most of your decisions on how you think about them, run to the right.

Runaraahnd... naaaaahhh!

Because roughly speaking in broad strokes with gross generalisation, this seems to be how the two main parties work, the fundamental difference.  'Feelers' vote Labour, 'Thinkers' vote Tory, neither being better than the other but 'Feelers' definitely being in the ascendancy ever since Diana forgot to clunk and click. 

A computer-generated image

of how Diana could  look today.

Tory bods recognise this and are twisting themselves in knots to appear emotionally connected.  It's not pretty.  I want to take them to one side and tell them gently "No, love", and teach them the lesson I tell my kids about how you have to be true to yourself and never change just to please somebody, but I can see they've gone too far down the emoting track to turn back.  Doesn't seem to be helping though.  A friend the other day mentioned that despite David Cameron mourning a child she still found the Tory Party cold and lacking in empathy, the irony of which was lost on her. My friend wants a government who cares about her as a person, as an individual, and who wouldn't?  It's a lovely idea.  Just, sadly, a tad impractical when you're dealing with millions of people and a limited budget.

So Labour must be the way to go, right?  They're naturally sensitive.  They care without it hurting.  They're just like us in that all they want is acceptance and credibility. 

Now just as I find the Tories dressing up as Grandma ridiculous and nauseatingly insincere, I find Labour an enigma wrapped up in, um, a baffling confusion. 

Any sociologist will tell you that society works by consensus.  That for society to flourish and be successful, different interest groups must have a shared sense of belonging, a shared sense of a common goal.  Society as a whole is a finely tuned balancing act; a living, breathing machine, utterly dependent on each individual component part working in harmony with the one next to it.   That's us, by the way, for the less imagery-driven reading this.  We're the nuts and bolts.  We're the funky Audi ad.

But in recent years the right of the individual component has taken precedence over the wellbeing of the machine as a whole.  And this is Labour policy in action.  A socialist party.  Ironically, to defend the underdog, to protect and support every minority, to promote diversity, to grant dispensations, to make us all feel special and nurtured — all this flies in the face of accepted sociological theory on how to create a fully functioning society.

Does your head in, doesn't it? 

On the one hand you've got Labour promoting individualism — something they used to tar the Conservatives with — and on the other you've got the Conservatives cynically trying to get in touch with their feminine side, formerly the preserve of the Labour Party.  With so much cross-dressing going on, is it any wonder voters are confused? 

Of course, you could vote for the other lot, but to be frank I've reached the extent of my political curiosity. 

What I do know is this. 

I do love kittens.