During the local and European election campaign, Daughter Number Four and a few of her friends were playing in the front garden, trying to get passing cars to beep their horns at them and handing out home-made friendship bracelets to passing pedestrians. Inevitably, a candidate — boyish and wearing his best suit — handed them some election flyers for their parents to read.
Like all of them, they went straight into the bin. (The flyers, that is). The children weren’t too concerned about this as — based solely on the election posters — their favourite was the candidate they described as “the girl with the nice hair” (who was elected). The candidate they met (who didn’t get elected) was an open-borders-are-destroying-our-way-of-life sort. But the girls said he seemed nice.
On the way to the bin, I did have a look at his leaflet. There was a wild pile of ideas in it, not all of which made much sense to me, along with not much of an explanation as to exactly how our way of life was being destroyed. Except that it was urgent and terrible and, a bit like Superman, only he could prevent it.
It’s Us versus Them: though it depends on the candidate who ‘them’ are
So, I looked him up and then got sidetracked into Alan Kinsella’s excellent irishelectionliterature.com website. Even if you base it on the election just gone, it is heartening that so many people — particularly independents — opt to get involved in the democratic process. It’s also startling to see the towering regard so many of them have for themselves.
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Because even an election leaflet tells a story: about the candidate, what they stand for, or both. Among the most loopy of the nativist candidates, that story was strictly dystopian, James Bond stuff: intersecting world cabals, simultaneously plotting to enforce a belief in fake climate change, get everyone to take a poisonous Covid vaccine and replace the Irish population with others.
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It’s Us versus Them: though it depends on the candidate who “them” are. Right across the political spectrum, election leaflets tend to present a binary view of the world, with the virtuous electors on one side and some version of the establishment on the other. For an election flyer to be really punchy, there has to be a bad guy.
The vast majority aren’t selling conspiracy theories, but an awful lot of them lean slightly conspiratorial by stressing the word “Independent”: even some party candidates do this. “I’m Independent” implies that I can’t be bought or leaned on by vested interests. It implies that the system is a bit rotten.
The Tories seemed to believe those stories too, in the face of all facts to the contrary
It’s a neat trick: simultaneously criticising the “corrupt” system while trying to become part of it — a system where, if you want to get anything done, you have to co-operate with all the morally compromised political hacks towards whom you’ve aimed so much of your righteous anger.
Most experienced politicians in Ireland shrug at this kind of thing. The stories they tell during elections aren’t the same as the more prosaic tales of governing. But there’s always a danger that the more dramatic narratives overwhelm the meat and potatoes of running a country. Just look at the UK. Think what you like about the Tories, but they were fantastic storytellers: and for the best part of 14 years, most British people believed them.
But the Tories seemed to believe those stories too, in the face of all facts to the contrary. That’s why — unusually for the modern era — they’ve been replaced by a political party that didn’t tell a story at all. The main selling point for Labour was: we’re boring
They are a long way off that kind of change in the US, where both of the presumptive presidential candidates are utterly enraptured by their own messianic tales, no matter the cost to their country. But perhaps, in time, US voters might tire of all the drama and opt for boring too. Boring might save the world.