We’re all doomed if politicians can’t empathise with people from other backgrounds. One person can never cover all the bases, but only one person can hold any one seat at a time. We don't expect authors or songwriters to have lived every story they tell, or painters to have seen every scene they paint. And yet many people expect such identity of politicians. This is, perhaps, the biggest problem – the constant assumption by many, not least the electorate en masse, that only someone who has experienced what they have experienced is capable or qualified to represent or understand them, hence the illogical and unnecessary continuation of tribalistic vitriol against 'posh boys' and 'toffs' on the one hand and 'council house denizens' on the other. We are not automatic products of our backgrounds or our skin colours or our genders – of course they affect us, but they are not dominating, nor do they produce necessary and unavoidable results.
The reason I'm discussing this at all is because of the decision, or rather the manner of justification for the decision, of Diane Abbott to run for the Labour Party Leadership, as covered by the BBC and the Guardian (twice). What's at stake in this discussion is not her candidature - I welcome any and all people who genuinely believe they can be the best person for the job, although I do not think she would be anything like a competent or electable leader. What is worrying are some of her reasons for running and what they seem to imply about her opposition. Here is a sample:
"The other candidates are all nice and would make good leaders of the Labour Party but they all look the same... We cannot be offering a slate of candidates who all look the same. The Labour Party's much more diverse than that."
"We can't go forward with a leadership debate where there is no woman"
"If we are going to have a debate about immigration, I am the child of immigrants. Don't the millions of British people who are the children of immigrants have a voice in this debate also?"
Firstly, the children of immigrants already have two voices in the debate - the Miliband brothers are both (obviously) the product of fugitives of Nazi occupation in Ralph Miliband and his Polish wife. This is, of course, personal conjecture, but such a remarkable lack of knowledge in regards to her opposition for the role highlights a patronising arrogance and an ignorance which is too often and too easily on show for even casual viewers of This Week. Indeed, her willingness to put her foot in her mouth, notably in regard to the apparent impossibility of empathic Finnish nurses, is just one of the reasons I believe her to be a hypocrite (along with the well-known schools debacle), and unsuitable for anything beyond representing her constituency. The crux of her eventual apology on the matter - that her main priority was to ensure that her constituents received medical treatment from the very best people "irrespective of race" - is ironically the very point I am making.
But the real deal-breaker in her comments is the implication that only she, as a woman, can speak for or represent women voters, and that only she, as a black person, can do the same for black people. I’ve touched on similar issues before in talking about the black vote in relation to Obama, and the woman’s vote for Hillary. But it is always dangerous to talk about the black vote or the woman’s vote – it implies mass voting blocks, and just the sort of social, racial or gender determinism that I am refuting. No one is denying that different people are hard-wired differently - there is almost certainly a probabilistic trend for black candidates to understand black issues and female candidates women’s issues, and it is also probable (right or wrong, and I would definitely argue wrong) that people identify more with people who share their background or race or gender. But I know plenty of public school products who would rather have Gordon Brown than David Cameron any day. Anecdotal evidence it may be, but it is also empirically observable in the difficulty of marking any clear trends amongst general voter blocks (like the young vote, the black vote etc.).
We must, absolutely must, move towards the realisation that probability is not the issue. We must judge candidates on what they say and what they do – their propositions, their policies, their interactions. To assume that just because someone comes from a particular background – and this applies as much to the results of working class, comprehensive upbringings as silver-spoon, public school boys – that they will automatically hold a certain set of beliefs or be incapable of understanding people from other walks of life is exactly the sort of poisonous idiocy that fuels the tribalism that is miring British politics. This is especially obvious in light of the fact that MPs ultimately serve their constituents, and must come to understand and identify with problems that would never factor into their personal life or their personal politics. If this were impossible, or even improbable, MPs would rarely, if ever, be re-elected. In essence, we must listen to what candidates actually say, rather than what we expect them to say. Do not judge on what is likely, judge on what is.
One of the other problems I have already encountered with Abbott’s stand is how quickly valid criticisms are perceived, in the light of paranoia, as the thinly-veiled barbs of discrimination. Although it remains to be seen whether Abbott herself will do so, many of her supporters have already pulled the race or gender card in response to any suggestion that the Hackney MP is not all sweetness and light. This false expectation of bigotry and enemies all around is just as damaging to the cause of racial equality as those, like the BNP, who actually display it – we should be moving to a point where, insofar as possible, race and gender are irrelevant. Accusations to the contrary only serve to highlight the differences, and is exactly the sort of fuel on which xenophobia thrives. It should be hoped, therefore, that such idiocy is kept to a minimum, to allow the true flow of debate to continue unshackled by fear of unjust allegations.
It may be the case that, in the coming weeks, it becomes apparent from the nomination debates that all the current candidates other than Abbott (Ed and Dave Miliband, Ed Balls, Andy Burnham and the intriguing John McDonnell) are entirely incapable of representing or understanding women or black people, in which case, her comments may be somewhat vindicated. And it may be that she is simply playing to the sad realities of the irrationality of people's existing prejudices in putting greater faith and expecting greater understanding from their own kind. But the former seems unlikely, certainly from what I have heard from the Milibands at any rate, and the latter, if true, I would call cynical in the extreme (though doubtless some would simply label it realistic). Either way, whatever positives may come out of Abbott's candidature (pushing the debate further to the left, apparently re-energising some of the supporter base), they are overshadowed, for me, by a rather inauspicious start. Like her vomit-inducing hypocrisy, it leaves rather a bad taste in the mouth...
No comments:
Post a Comment