Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons From Modern Life

by David Mitchell

  Not that Ukip seems to value it. Like David Cameron, Farage is keen to shake off the “nasty party” image. For every Silvester or Bloom incident, he releases a compensating news story about how Ukip is becoming more credible and politically balanced. For example, he suddenly abandoned the party’s entire 2010 manifesto in a TV interview and seeded in the media the concept of “New Ukip”, in which all prospective candidates have to pass a day-long media skills and public-speaking course. One of those who passed and is to be a by-election candidate, Ukip proudly announced, is a former Labour supporter! How normal does that sound?!

  Ukip claims it’s starting to attract women voters and the young. “Women are owning the show in Ukip right now,” said a female activist. “The ‘blokey men’s club’ perception of Ukip is incorrect.” Lisa Duffy, the party director, said they’re “attracting more of the student vote … When we come … they may not be Ukip supporters, but by the time we leave that changes.” And Farage has even spoken in favour of Britain taking in Syrian refugees.

  So Ukip is following where Blair and Cameron have gone before: it’s making a play for the middle ground. It’s saying: “We’re just decent normal people who represent the values of other decent normal people.” “Hard-working families”, “alarm-clock Britain”, “the squeezed middle” – like Satan, they have many names, and all politicians want to appeal to them. “We’re for you, you noble, struggling, put-upon, good-hearted societal contributors! Vote for us, we’ve got your back!” say all the parties.

  Which raises the question: who is there for the nasty to vote for? If the Tories aren’t the nasty party any more, and now Ukip isn’t either; and if Labour is no longer the party of benefit cheats and power-hungry trade unions, but is dedicated to helping ordinary working families, whom the Tories are also dedicated to helping rather than fat-cat bankers and landed aristocrats; and if Ukip is no friend of racists, homophobes, sexists and Christian fundamentalists but welcomes women, students and Syrians; and everyone had forgotten the BNP even existed till Nick Griffin went bankrupt to give us a New Year laugh – then who will benefit electorally from the nasty demographic?

  It’s not as if there aren’t plenty of nasty people in Britain, or that they can’t vote. I suppose some are in prison – and you’d hope that the percentage of prisoners who are nasty was higher than that of the overall population. But there are still millions of law-abiding enfranchised unpleasant citizens to whom the political mainstream and Ukip are pointedly not reaching out.

  One of the problems facing the nasty is that they don’t agree about anything – which is probably why Ukip has proved so ungovernable. Some are rich and believe they should pay no tax, others fiddle their benefits. Some hate foreigners, some hate black people, some hate white people, some hate gay people, some hate women, some hate men. They’re all out there, bickering about what’s horrible, motivated to exercise the franchise, but no politicians want to know. As Tory Treasury minister Nicky Morgan put it: “If we talk about what we hate all the time, we’re not talking about what we like.” But that’s not true: what if what we like is hatred? There’s a significant bile-spouting section of the community – just look online.

  I almost admired our political class for ignoring those with reprehensible views until I asked myself “Who will those who agree with what David Silvester says about gay people vote for now?” and realised the answer is almost certainly Ukip. Even though Ukip has disassociated itself from that opinion, the very fact that it had to do so suggests it’s a party that homophobes are drawn to.

  Similarly, benefit cheats tend to vote Labour. Ed Miliband has worked hard to distance Labour from the “something for nothing” culture, but more significant is the fact that he felt the need to do so – a Tory leader wouldn’t. But most tax-avoiders will vote Conservative, despite government rhetoric. You can detect a party’s unsavoury hinterland not from the people it courts but from the ones it disowns – whose votes it will probably still get.

  So, in light of Ukip’s rise, it may not be entirely good news for the Tories that Aidan Burley is stepping down at the next election. He’s the once hotly tipped Conservative MP who organised a stag do in France at which the groom, Mark Fournier, was wearing an SS uniform (which it later transpired Burley had hired) and a “Nazi-themed” toast was drunk. Fournier was fined €1,500 by a French court for “wearing a uniform or insignia of an organisation guilty of crimes against humanity”.

  No party wants to be seen to appeal to the sort of person to whom that sort of thing appeals. But the central office buffet is running low on fruitcake.

  *

  What do the British want from their politicians? That must be a question the aides of all the party leaders agonise over. It’s what they’re trying to answer as they slave over the latest soundbite or policy initiative, before sending their leaders out into a hostile media environment to chorus “I am not a phoney like the others! I am my own man slash woman!”

  The Russians have their answer: bare-chested aggression is what floats their boat. The merciless sturgeon-eyed tyrant. The Russians don’t want to vote for the kind of sap who wouldn’t rig the election if they didn’t. After centuries of dysfunctional relationships with their leaders, they’ve given up resisting: the fact is they’re attracted to a strong man, even when he slaps them about a bit.

  The British are fussier. Of late, the closest we’ve come to electing a genocidal maniac was probably Tony Blair. And, as psychopaths go, he was pretty low-key – he kept all the killing abroad, the sound principle on which the British empire was founded. Very much your iron-hand-in-a-velvet-glove type, rather than the kind of guy who likes to be photographed swimming amid bear carcasses. I like to think of him slipping silently into hotel rooms by night, dressed in black, seeing by the light of his teeth, to leave poisoned boxes of chocolates by opinion-formers’ bedsides.

  Blair was also the last prime minister for whom the country felt anything approaching a consensus of enthusiasm. And we’ll never get him back – he’s lost to us, swept up in a whirlwind of tax avoidance and yachts. Dividing his time between high-level business meetings, absurdly remunerated public speaking and marathon sessions in his bespoke sunbed-cum-confessional.

  Which leaves us with the current bunch. Cameron the posh, flushed hunting pink with the effort of appearing to make an effort; Miliband the wonk, undergoing hundreds of hours of presentational-skills training so he can give impassioned speeches without audience members worrying that he’ll swallow his tongue; and Clegg the promise-breaker, who disappointed so many of his supporters within days of taking office that his critics failed to notice he’s also posh and a wonk.

  I don’t think most of us could honestly tell them what they’d need to do to gain our respect. We just don’t like them and we wish they’d turn into people we do like – a wish they share, which we despise them for. Is it the public’s disdain that forces them into more behaviour we dislike? It seems like they’re in a vicious circle: desperate not to annoy, desperate not to seem desperate, frantic in their demands that their advisers find them something to do or say or be which will come across as unselfconscious – like a reasonable, normal, grounded man, the kind of bloke you’d have a pint with but subsequently come to obey. Someone, and they must burn their tongues as they utter the syllables, more like Nigel Farage or Boris Johnson.

  But if you want to be like someone, you’ve got to think like them – that’s why Dustin Hoffman has won more Oscars than Mike Yarwood. And mainstream politicians’ whimpering eagerness to please could hardly be more alien to the attitude of big swinging Johnsons like Farage. Those guys just don’t seem to care so much, which is probably because they don’t actually care so much, and reverse psychology mixed with good old-fashioned human self-loathing means that voters are instinctively attracted.

  There’s always a chance that people will decide who to vote for according to policy – and by “people”, I mean the people that matter: the indecisive minority who change
which party they vote for from election to election according to whim, and consequently determine every result. But it doesn’t seem likely to me that policy is what’s going to swing the swingers this time – although I may only think that because the Labour party’s policies are still largely secret. I suspect everyone’s going to be cutting budgets while having rhetorical rows about how quickly and which sort of hard-working person is being screwed least assiduously. And Europe, I suppose – that’s actually a thing, although I don’t think many of us can see past our knee-jerk isolationism or internationalism to honestly know what the best course of action is.

  I don’t think Cameron and Miliband believe policies are going to clinch it either, or they might be keener to discuss them. But they’d rather keep it platitudinous. After doing some running for Sport Relief, the prime minister said: “I am delighted to have taken part in such a fantastic event that is bringing people across the UK together to get active, raise money and change lives.” It’s so inoffensive that, for me, it pushed through the other side and was on a par with Holocaust denial. “Change lives” is the real kicker – it’s actually from the Sport Relief press release. Nobody talks like that. Changing lives isn’t a good thing anyway, unless you’re changing them for the better. Changing lives is what Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy did in Trading Places. It’s what Ed Miliband wants to happen to him and David Cameron.

  I found it hard to admire that aspiration of Ed’s when he said, on the subject of Grant Shapps’s twatty advert boasting about the Tory tax cut on bingo: “Have you seen a more condescending, patronising, arrogant, haughty, out-of-touch, misconceived piece of nonsense?” I didn’t like the advert either, until I heard Miliband’s hyperbolic gloating. His crowing glee at the sight of a passing bandwagon, the intense joy because his opponents have messed up, and so he’s closer to his aims without having to do anything good, made me want to puke. And every time a Labour politician says “out of touch”, I want to scream, which is difficult to do if you’re already puking. I can’t shake the feeling that someone in Miliband’s team thinks it’s unbelievably clever that they keep repeating that phrase, basically as a synonym for “Old Etonian”, and I want that person’s feeling of cleverness to be ripped out of them without anaesthetic.

  Politicians just can’t win with people like me. But then they appear to have stopped trying to win and to be willing to settle for losing least – which, as David Cameron can attest, brings with it the same job title. Is it fair to blame them? They get maligned for who they are and, when they try to conceal that, they get vilified for “not being themselves”. They must feel terribly bullied. And, unfortunately for them, public opinion is not the sort of bully you can stand up to – unless you’re Vladimir Putin.

  *

  “But, Miss Marple, it’s all an absolute mystery!”

  “What is, my dear?”

  “Politics, Miss Marple! The economy! Welfare, taxation, big government, small government, justice, injustice, the NHS, the City – all of it! It’s all so complex and grubby and dark and depressing. Help us, Miss Marple!”

  “Well, yes, of course I understand that you’d think so, dear. But it all rather reminds me of Mr Byrne, the boys’ football coach from Chalfont St Peter.” The old lady paused to reflect. “Yes, a charming village over in Buckinghamshire, but not far from St Mary Mead really. Our organist arranged a tour of their crypt one very wet Michaelmas, I remember.”

  “She’s rambling!” interjected Inspector Pleb impatiently. “What can a village football coach possibly have to do with this mystery of generally everything that the police are trying to solve?! You really must stop wasting our time, Miss Marple.” He stormed out.

  Later on, I asked Miss Marple to explain, and she told me more about Justin Byrne, the 42-year-old company director who used to coach the under-10s in the Buckinghamshire village, until December 2013, when he was suddenly sacked.

  “He sent out rather an imprudent email – oh dear me, yes,” recalled Miss Marple. “And so they fired him. He was ruthlessly dismissed for ruthlessness, in a manner of speaking.”

  Miss Marple looked at her knitting. “Knitting,” she said.

  “Yes, that is knitting,” I replied uncertainly.

  “No. Mr Byrne. He mentioned knitting. He said people thought sport was about knitting. That’s what he told the Daily Mail. That his critics were ‘weaker-minded’ and they thought sport was about knitting. A curious man.”

  “But what was in the email?”

  “Oh, you’ll have to find out for yourself, dear. I’m far too tired.”

  I soon discovered that Miss Marple’s recollections were completely accurate. Mr Byrne had been coaching the under-10s for over two years when he dispatched a circular email:

  “I am only interested in winning,” he wrote. “I don’t care about equal play time or any other communist view of sport. Those that are not as good need to work harder or demonstrate more during training, or change sports. As someone who spends a huge amount of time working with graduates trying to find their first job I can safely say you are not doing your son any favours by suggesting the world is fair or non-competitive. Everything they are likely to do in life will be competitive so my view is get them used to it.”

  And that was the last time anyone asked him to play Father Christmas.

  I showed the email to the inspector. “Quite right too!” said Pleb. “It’s a horrible world. In the long run, kids won’t thank you for being nice to them.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Got no manners these days.”

  I could understand Byrne and the inspector’s point of view. Why shield the young from the harsh realities of the world? Better to get them used to the grim truths of victory and defeat, or acceptance and rejection, at a young age. Let them develop the calluses on their little souls which will protect them from life’s abrasions. Then they will approach adulthood hardened and invulnerable. It worked for Sparta.

  I put this to Miss Marple. “Quite so. But I wonder what you think Mr Byrne’s garden is like, dear.”

  “His garden?”

  “A mess, I shouldn’t wonder. Unless he’s guilty of the same weak-mindedness of which he accuses others.”

  “How does that follow?”

  Miss Marple put down her knitting. “Well, he wouldn’t see the point in keeping it tidy or pleasant, would he? He would have no appetite for the Sisyphean task of nurture, cultivation, weeding, watering, mowing, replanting. He’d see them as a denial of nature’s realities. If something cannot grow and prosper amid such wildness, then it must rightly perish. He must perceive a truer beauty in all-conquering bramble and convolvulus, or count himself a hypocrite.”

  “But, Miss Marple, he is a hypocrite!” I exclaimed. “By his own admission. He confessed that he’d keep his own son in the team, whether or not he was good enough. ‘The only reason I am coaching is for him to be able to play,’ he said.”

  “And you think that makes him a hypocrite?”

  “Of course.”

  “Because he protects his own son?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, I’m only an old lady but it seems to me that you could just as easily argue that, by his own reasoning, he is sacrificing his son for the greater good. Denying his child the vital hardening effect of a merciless under-10 footballing environment purely in order to expose the others to the sort of unashamed nepotism they’ll have to confront in later life.”

  “So he’s an unfit parent?”

  “Quite possibly but, by his own standards, an exemplary coach. No, it is to his garden you must look to prove him hypocritical. And to his outrageous association of communism with knitting, for which I find it impossible to forgive the man.”

  “But what I don’t understand, Miss Marple, is how any of this helps with the mystery of politics.”

  “Oh yes, of course – I’m so sorry, you must think me terribly opaque. Well, what was said, after he was dismissed?”

  Ste
ve Fowler, a spokesman for the club, had said: “This is a friendly village football club that just wants to get as many children playing football as possible, and make sure they have fun doing it.”

  “There speaks a gardener,” said Miss Marple.

  I was just about to call a nurse when I thought I’d ask one last time for Miss Marple to explain.

  “Yes, I may be using too many metaphors – they’ve got me on new tablets,” she confided. “But what I’m trying to say is that all politics is contained within this. It’s like the child in the third world that you sponsor in order to give charitable donations a comprehensible human scale. Well, in a similar way, this football club gives the conflict between the left and right wing a comprehensible human scale.

  “Do you believe that the world is cruel and unchangeable and that we must defer to and prepare for that, as Byrne does? Or do you think, like Mr Fowler, that we can remake the world as we would like it to be – that everyone can play football together? That’s the only real question, dear. When you have answered it, you will have solved the mystery.”

  5

  It’s Not Just Poets That Need Abstract Nouns

  Credit, collateral, equity, market confidence, economic growth, sovereign debt – these are all weird, intangible concepts that we’ve become obsessed with. There have genuinely been days when I’ve gone online and looked up the price of the euro, or the rise and fall of the FTSE, just in the hope of calming myself down about the possibility of global financial collapse. It doesn’t always work. These are statistics I don’t understand and can’t affect, but have nevertheless come to care about and follow obsessively, like a gloomy but weirdly addictive soap opera in a foreign language.