It’s very tempting to have a social media blackout for the next eight weeks. Echo chamber politics is rife, primarily (perhaps exclusively) on the Left, and particularly prevalent on Facebook and Twitter. The problem is, however good it may feel, it doesn’t win elections.
We’ve been here before, as little as two years ago. Remember when Ed Miliband wanted to ‘weaponise the NHS’? Relying on the NHS as an election tactic was meant to be Labour’s sure-fire way of winning the 2015 election, and if you were into ‘Milifandom’ you’d have believed that everyone else was thinking the same thing. This is what worries me at present; by playing down Brexit as an election issue, Jeremy Corbyn is not only missing an opportunity, but he’s going down a tried and tested route. A holier than thou approach to politics not only ends in failure, but it results in legitimate concerns being marginalised. The blogger Nick Tyrone made an excellent point about the NHS strategy back in 2015, namely that ‘crying wolf’ will come back to haunt you.
In the Coalition era, Labour would often say “we have x amount of days to save the NHS”, to the extent that Andy Burnham added the caveat “and this time we mean it” in 2013. Inevitably, this kind of approach resulted in embarrassment, as Tyrone puts more eloquently:
“…the NHS quite clearly still exists. People can still turn up at a hospital A&E or a walk-in clinic and not be asked to produce a credit card or cash. The NHS remains, very obviously, free at the point of service.”
This is still the case in 2017. It doesn’t mean that everything is great in the NHS; far from it. There are big issues over funding, and the A&E crisis is a huge cause for concern. Pontificating and halo-polishing doesn’t help these issues: it makes them worse. The Conservatives aren’t doing a good job with the NHS, but people will still vote for them, as Tyrone illustrates:
“Given the fact that people can clearly still see the NHS is operating, Labour’s over heavy line in 2012…makes everything they say on the NHS hard to buy”.
The same goes for Facebook and Twitter. I’ve no doubt that the Labour Party will get thousands of likes, comments and shares during the election campaign. There will be videos of rallies attended by enthusiastic activists, and people will truly believe that Corbyn will win the election. However, elections aren’t won solely on social media. This is where the echo chamber comes back in: a lot of people who don’t support the Labour Party won’t share their political preferences on social media. This is partly because of the oft-talked about ‘shy Tory’ phenomenon, but it’s also because of political shaming. We can all come up with anecdotes about people who scream “you’re a Tory” if you disagree with their viewpoint. For many, it’s not worth the hassle.
To the Corbynistas, I will no doubt be deemed a raging Tory who is part of a right-wing conspiracy against their dear leader. The truth is, I have done my own research on him, and I’m not buying what he’s selling, especially as I don’t believe it will work. I don’t take any relish in Labour’s election woes, because not only do I want to see an effective Opposition, but I don’t want a complacent Conservative government (which we’ve already seen since the 2016 EU referendum) taking the voters for granted.
I’ve already been told “Jc 4 pm…it’s going to happen…don’t watch the news mate its made by the right wing” (these aren’t made up). Yes, this is just one snapshot, but it is indicative of a failure to recognise that there are other political possibilities – namely that Jeremy Corbyn isn’t going to clinch a landslide majority. I could denounce opinion polls showing that the Lib Dems are below 12% as ‘fake news’, and say that the Lib Dems will win hundreds of seats, but it wouldn’t be the truth, however much I’d like it to be.
If you wail at people and say they’re Tories, then the odds are that those people will turn around and say “okay, I am a Tory” and vote accordingly. If the retort to that is “good riddance – look how many people support us”, then a nasty shock is coming in June. If you assume that most people think the same way as you, and that you know what’s best for people, then you won’t win an election. I saw how people scratched their heads after the 2015 election; if they think virtue signalling and echo-chamber politics will win the day this June, then they better be prepared for more of the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment