Signed, Sealed, Delivered, They're Yours: Is there any person more vulnerable than a jilted lover on the rebound? Or, anything more certain than that the charmer, the predator, the glib spinner of lies and promises will seek such broken people out? Yes, of course, he will love every one of them truly, madly, deeply and forever. If only they will give him their vote.
WHILE NEW ZEALANDERS were kicking-back over Labour Weekend,
Germans and Argentinians were kicking out. In what is fast becoming a familiar
story, “normal” politics has been suspended, incumbents unseated, and voter
anger given free rein.
In German states dominated since re-unification by the
centre-right Christian Democrats, the far-right AFD (Alternative for Germany)
has surged ahead. In Argentina, the political descendants of quintessential
populist, Juan Peron, have been returned to power by a vengeful electorate
grown weary of neoliberal austerity. Everywhere the centre’s hold is tested – as
things fall apart.
There was a time when growing inequality and entrenched
poverty would have seen the Left swept into power. Why isn’t that happening?
What has the Left done to put its traditional supporters in the electoral
market for new friends and causes? The shortest and the most brutal
explanation: the Left has abandoned them.
Not rhetorically, it must be said. When elections roll
around, talk of solidarity and commitment is heard everywhere. The glorious
past is invoked and the grimy glass behind which the old heroes still smile
benignly is given its triennial clean. For many, the rhetoric is enough. That
number, however, is dwindling. For more and more voters around the world the
rhetoric of the traditional centre-left parties is not enough – nowhere near
enough.
What they, quite rightly, suspect is that the leaders of the
traditional working-class parties don’t really understand them anymore. This is
hardly surprising. The incomes and lifestyles of legislators lifts them far
above the stress-filled, cash-strapped lives of the people who are expected to
vote for them. In Western countries particularly, it is now most unusual to
find a member of the legislature without a university degree. Legislators who
have risen to political office from anything other than a professional
background are even rarer. The socio-economic gulf between the great mass of
ordinary voters and their parliamentary representatives grows ever-wider.
What’s worse, many of these voters have begun to suspect
that “their” party doesn’t even like them anymore. The worldview of the
well-paid, highly-educated, professional politician is, they are pretty sure,
radically different from their own. So different, in fact, that they have real
difficulty in identifying anything about their electoral base that they could
honestly say they admired. While the world of these “left-wing” legislators is
chock-full of “tolerance” and “diversity”, their perception of the world
inhabited by their party’s traditional supporters is of a place grunting
obscenely with prejudice and hate. Hillary Clinton branded them “deplorables”.
Less euphemistic centre-leftists call them sexists, homophobes and white
supremacists.
That immigration policy has, in so many Western democracies,
become the issue over which the traditional centre-left parties have finally
parted company with their traditional supporters is not accidental. The
emotions charging this issue are simple and raw: as raw and simple as the
break-up of a love affair. Traditional voters for the centre-left parties feel
abandoned and betrayed; their long-standing trust and affection cast aside in
favour of a whole new slew of demographics: younger, smarter and allegedly free
of prejudice and hate. Even worse, some of these new demographics are being invited
to move in next door!
How else to explain the former Communist Party voters of
France who now vote for Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National? The
former supporters of the German social-democratic party, the SPD, who now vote
for the neo-fascist AFD? The former Great Society Democrats who now vote for
Donald Trump?
When the party you love and trust: the party that made sure
you had a good job and a decent place to live; the party that guaranteed your
kids a better economic future than their parents’; turns suddenly into
something else. When it tells you, sadly, like the guy in the Bruce Springsteen
song: “Those jobs are going boys – and they ain’t coming back”? Well that’s
when you and your workmates, your neighbours, your congregation, begin to ask:
“How did it happen?” and “Why did it happen?” and “Who do we fight?”
Is there any person more vulnerable than a jilted lover on
the rebound? Or, anything more certain than that the charmer, the predator, the
glib spinner of lies and promises will seek such broken people out? Yes, of
course, he will love every one of them truly, madly, deeply and forever.
If only they will give him their vote.
This essay was originally published in The Otago
Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 1 November 2019.
